Completing the Coniston Challenge for Guide Dogs
A review of a recent Charity expedition by Alex Davies.
I awoke terrified at a time in the morning I had usually only seen before when on call! The Coniston challenge being a 10 hour triathlon (of sorts), means having to have a very early start, and this was something that neither agreed with my eyes or my soul. A sense of fear and anticipation gnawed at my confidence and a sudden realisation that I had maybe not done quite enough training left me more than a little anxious.
It was then that I crawled out of my sleeping bag, grunted some inhuman greeting to my fellow campers and opened the tent zipper. Unfortunately for my battered confidence I was greeted by the "Old man of Coniston", a mountain 2,635 ft high, and one our team was about to climb, it was at this point I decided to go home instead!
The problem with this exceedingly more sensible plan, was that I was fully aware of the amount of wonderful people who had sponsored us, and that rather cunningly Guide Dogs for the blind had placed a huge amount of placards and billboards at the exit that guilt-tripped me into settling down. With a deep breath I prepared my gear, demolished the coffee and bacon butty that had appeared in my hands and vowed to not look at the "Old man" again.
Canoeing on Coniston Water
At about 8:15am we were all down by the lakeside for the kayaking section of the challenge. This section involved two person sit-on Kayaks and was a timed course of about 3Km. I've no idea how we would have looked from the side of the lake, what with the inevitable high pitch "row, row, row your boat" and the flying water indicative of some inexperienced paddling, but we all put our backs into it, and it was event I think we all enjoyed.
Climbing the Old Man
With a lightning fast change we removed clothes sodden from our overly enthusiastic efforts and jogged to the start line for the 8 mile mountain hike. The ascent was hard work and I think all of our muscles began to complain as we clambered on up. To make matters worse driving rain left us cold and exposed no matter how many layers we wore. I began to think of the quote, "why climb a mountain… because it's there!" but I had this nagging feeling that the great climber who had voiced those words had also died doing just that.
Two hours, several buckets of rain, and many chocolate bars later and we reached the summit together. The rain made the descent more difficult as rocks became slippery, but we were back to base camp in 4.5 hours, everyone was sore and exhausted.
The provided lunch was unsurprisingly pasta, but hungry as I was it was a very welcome meal and possibly the fastest one I had ever eaten! A few minutes later we grabbed our bikes and headed to the start of the final event, a 12 mile bike course that began with an unkind uphill slog. I'm not sure how any of us made it, but by 2 hours we'd completed all the uphill sections and it was time to sit back and enjoy the reward of downhill all the way to the finish line!
I really enjoyed the Challenge and I think we all got a great sense of achievement and pride from the completion. It was always emphasised by the organisers this was no race, but we were happy this rag-tag slightly untrained group managed to come in 19th of 31 teams.
Andy, Kirsty, Deb, Shani, Charlotte and myself are all exhausted but proud, and we'd like to thank all those who have sponsored us. I know it's cheeky, but if you were thinking of sponsorship then please follow this link to give securely over the Internet.
My thanks for listening.
