On our way

It was finally the morning of June 22nd 2018. I was anxious, I hadn't slept well in days, I hadn't eaten a thing in days apart from 3 complan milkshakes. They were the only nutrients my body had had in four days and my mood was awful, of course. Underneath all that I had a little buzz, I'd been waiting for this for months. I was determined I was going to do it, People had gone out of their way to make this happen for me. The event of that week at first made me not want to go at all, but slowly changed into even more of a reason to go. I forced myself out of my bed to the realization that I'd completely forgotten I had things to do the night before. That burst of panic quickly turned to gratitude as Ii had things to do now, which was definitely a good thing for distraction. I got everything done that I needed to do, waved my daughter off to school and set off to my mums with my son. There we unpacked and repacked our bags 20 times, changed what snacks we were taking 3 times and chattered nervously, because what else what do you when you are us..... We sat and drank our coffee, and waited in anticipation for our taxi to the train station to arrive.


We said our goodbyes to my stepdad and my son, and off we went. From what I remember for the majority of that journey, the conversation pretty much consisted of us keep asking each other what the fuck we thought we were doing, and questioning our sanity. That was a running theme for quite a large amount of the next 2 days!

All Aboard!!

Luckily, when arriving, there was no wait from collecting our tickets to getting on the train. Again, no time to think about it helps. I got a little shaky. The anxiety and emotions from the week were latching on and I was frustrated. I was nervous that this would ruin what I'd imagined it would be and I wouldn't get out of it what I needed to. On top of that, I was on a train.
Until only recently, I was terrified of trains, for years my anxiety just wouldn't allow me on one at all, (I had confronted that with some gradual self-exposure therapy but that's another story) and had gotten to a place where I was comfortable being on a train. 
However, with the underlining anxiety, the lack of seats due to so many people, and knowing that I'd not done a journey this long yet, I was anxious. I remembered that I'd brought my medication for my anxiety and kicked myself for not taking it earlier.
Mum comforted me, conscious to tell she was going to touch me before she did, so I didn't jump out of my skin, and trigger a major panic attack (it happens). That consideration alone made me feel better, she subtly stroked the back of my neck and chatted, told me I was OK, and reminded me of why we were here. After a while, It passed.
We did our changes and had cig breaks in between. I drank the Ensure that I brought with me in case I still couldn't manage any food. We found our connecting trains, chatted a while, listen to music a while and took in the sights on the way. We passed a huge castle. I only saw it briefly because the train was moving quickly, but I saw enough to know that I want to go there. We had fun trying to pronounce some of the Welsh signs and listening to the Welsh language over the station tannoys. Excitement growing, the closer we got. We were there, Bangor. The last leg of our journey. Four hours on trains, and all we had left was one "Tacsi" to Llanberis.

It was BEAUTIFUL!

We were dropped in the village of Llanberis by the lovely lady driving. It was quaint and colourful, Outdoor/Camping shops on every block, the obligatory village pubs with nice beer gardens, perfect for the weather that day.

We walked a little bit until we came to a bit of grass by the lake......

We sat in relief that we were here astounded by our surroundings. The sun was warm and bright, the clouds were just puffs of sporadic prettiness, and a 360-degree view of mountains. The reflections on the water sparkled. I didn't realised it at the time, but I was completely in that moment. I wasn't stressed anymore, I wasn't anxious, I wasn't plagued by trauma, I was just sat, peacefully, in that moment, with my mum, fully enjoying my experience.
I got my scotch eggs out and apprehensively chomped away, I knew I had to get something in me. Mum passed me the apple crumble she had prepared the day earlier in a cute little jar, I couldn't manage much but the bit I did was scrummy! Mum figured out where we needed to go to meet our group and guide, and we went and found it, so we were sure of where to go later on.
With a few hours to pass we took a small walk around trying to avoid tiring ourselves out before the climb.


We came across the station for the Snowdon Trainline, the line takes you all the way to the summit and takes around 2 hours. We tried to figure out which of the mountains we could see was Snowdon, turns out it was none of them. My back was already hurting from carrying my rucksack, all the extra clothes and water for our walk and the 20 tons of snacks we decided to bring made it weigh a ton. I think mum had a similar concern, she had brought more water than I had which just added to the weight. I knew I should have done some of my walks while carrying a heavy rucksack, I just never got around to it. We sorted through our rucksacks, again, and took out what we thought we probably wouldn't need. By the time we had finished we had more than halved our snacks and mum had gotten rid of some of her water and there was still more than enough. (I think we may have panic bought, better to have too much than not enough was our motto while shopping.) We soon realized that in reality, we didn't need anywhere near as much as we had brought, we ate what we could and dumped the rest. My backpack was now at a weight I thought I could stand.

We took another walk, straight through the village and had look around, finding little bits of Welsh heritage and learning a few Welsh words by reading the signs, every sign was in Welsh and in English, some were impossible for my tongue to jump around.

I couldn't get over their seemed hatred of vowels and love of double or even treble
consonants, apart from the occasional word which was an overflow of vowels. My favourite was Breckwast, which means Breakfast, my mum took a liking to Tacsi which meant Taxi but when you say it as its spelt in Welsh, it makes you sound Welsh.

We found a shop we were going to return to in the morning for souvenirs before we went home.

We still had a fair bit of time to kill and decided to sit and have a drink in the beer garden. Ice cold lemon and elderflower, feet up, taking in the rays, yet again, surrounded by the most superb views, spending time with my mum doing quite a lot of nothing, it was brilliant.

A few hours had passed by now and it was starting to turn slightly colder, well, I thought it was, I think mum disagreed. We went inside the bar and ordered a coffee each. They sent us to their restaurant part which was lovely, nice and polite, helpful staff and some quirky movie reference decor. The coffee was half decent for someone that usually drinks coffee that looks like cats piss, the food they were bringing through looked sooo tasty, you could actually taste the smell. We had seen that they did cooked brecwast 7-10, so that was that box ticked for our celebratory bacon butties in the morning. We had a couple of coffees until it closed at 10 pm, then Mum asked the barman if he knew of somewhere we could go until our meeting time at 12.30am and he pointed us in the direction of a small country pub. It was a cute little pub with a fireplace that I would die for in the winter. The atmosphere was buzzy, people were playing pool and laughing. Mum and I had a couple of drinks and waited for the time to come around.

I had already enjoyed our trip so much. I see my mum often but the only time we ever get to spend long periods of time together is when I'm poorly and go and stay with her. That isn't even close to being fun and hasn't happened in a long time now. It was so nice, we just enjoyed our time, it didn't matter that we were just sat around, the company was great, even when we were quiet and taking everything in, it was nice. We laughed and shared our fears and excitement. Before we knew it, it was time to go to our meeting place.

We got to our meeting place and waited for people to start arriving. We knew that there would be a couple of different groups so hovered around to see if we could overhear where we were supposed to be. After the initial anxiety of being social fucktards, my mum saved the moment and socially navigated her way carefully around a couple of people to see if she could find any info. We found the group we belonged with and were happily taken in by some equally socially inept ladies who swore their heads off and shouted at each other for making them do this, as were mum and I. We waited for our guides to arrive, still unsure and nervous that we were in the wrong place. We were relieved to see the guide with a list of names, ours was there thank god. We were part of the yellow team that consisted of around 40 people (I thought there would only be around 10, not the first of my assumptions that would come to bite me on the arse.) We got passed a glow stick that we tied to our backpacks so we could see where the rest of our team was as we climbed. We got our safety talk and instructions, and plans for the ways the groups would be split up. There were several guides who would each take smaller groups after the first half hour, once they could see where everyone's fitness levels sat.

It was here. Months of waiting, months of planning and conversations, excitement, nerves and blockades to break through. I'd finally eaten, I hadn't thought about all the stuff that been tormenting me, I spent the day with my best friend, explored a beautiful place and I was finally about to begin the journey that called me. Layered up and buzzing to get started. My head torch, looking perfectly dorky: like the crown of a dream a warrior.