Mountain Misery

Mountain Misery

  By

  Stephen R Drage

  Copyright © 2013 by Stephen R Drage

  All rights reserved.

  Version 2.0

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  DISCLAIMER

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance the characters have to real people is purely coincidental.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To my whole family who have given me with so much laughter over the years, and to my wife and soul mate, Anita. Without her patience, encouragement and faith this story would not have been possible.

  MOUNTAIN MISERY

  “Wales?” So shocked was my brother Pete that he dropped his knife and fork and went motionless – his mouth hanging open, treating us all to a nice view of his partially chewed carrots. It was typical of my father to spring news like this upon us, spoiling what would normally have been a perfectly mediocre meal.

  “Yes,” replied Dad simply, and with a firmness suggesting he was unwilling to be drawn into a debate about the location for our upcoming vacation.

  Normally the announcement of a holiday would bring joy to a family, filling the household with expectation and delight. But not us. I felt sure this trip would be another dreadful example of how miserable life can be. I think the weather had something to do with it.

  Each year, during our annual break, we would have to endure the hardship of hail, floods, snow or various other particularly nasty displays of nature’s fury.

  Each year we would be fully prepared to encounter sub-zero temperatures and the frostbite and pneumonia that would ultimately follow.

  It was not that we were unlucky in this regard – it was intentionally planned that way by Dad.

  There were three main reasons for this hardship.

  First, my father dedicated his waking hours to seeking out the most difficult and unpleasant things life had to offer. Prior to being married, his chosen profession was that of a sailor. He could have decided to spend his ocean-going days basking beneath billowing sails, soothed by a warm tropical breeze as he drifted aimlessly round the Caribbean spice islands. Instead, he chose to pit himself against some of the most inhospitable weather in the world, joining a fishing boat that worked in the North Sea during the worst of the winter months. He would gleefully relate stories of bleeding, blistered hands and strenuous work lasting about twenty-three hours a day. His reward was a quick plate of cold, rotten fish before he climbed into a wet bunk for forty-five minutes sleep. Then his eyes would really light up as he fondly remembered the weather, and he would ramble on about freezing rain and waves so high that he had to wear a safety harness as he moved about the boat, chopping ice off the rigging.

  After he left the sea, he sought to recreate this horrendous lifestyle by finding employment that demanded long hours of backbreaking work in harsh weather. He did not like to use anything in the house that would generate heat, and even in the dead of winter would sleep with a window open. His creed was: “If life was not difficult, it was not worth living.” And we would have found this far easier to respect had he not also forced us to follow it.

  The second reason for us having to experience such dreadful weather on our holiday resulted from my father’s aversion to spending money. Because of the seasonal variations in the climate and the reduced cost of lodging and entertainment in the off-season, it is always cheaper to go in the middle of winter. The reduced rates are a result of there being fewer people and therefore less demand, but ironically the places we used to visit did not have less people in winter – they were equally deserted year-round. Although these lower expenses accomplished my father’s frugal objective, it meant that while our friends were packing beach towels and swimming trunks for their holiday, we were packing overcoats and umbrellas for ours.

  Both of these factors would have been acceptable had we been able to retreat to the safety of a warm, comfortable hotel room after spending the day trudging round in the rain, looking at closed shops. Unfortunately, this was not possible either, because the third reason for our discomfort was my father’s appalling choice of accommodation. There was neither a warm hotel with a well-stocked kitchen, nor a less expensive boarding house with a cheerful landlady to serve us breakfast after a soothing night's sleep – not even a cheap cramped caravan with cracked windows and threadbare carpet.

  We had to stay in a tent.

  Camping can be fun. As a young child I spent many a night in the back garden inside a tent made from some sticks, an old broom handle and a blanket. Several of us would cram inside, huddle around a dim flashlight and scare each other with ghost stories. When we became too cold, or scared, or hungry, we would run the twenty yards or so to the house and the camping adventure would be over.

  Going camping with Dad, however, was not like that at all. And this trip was typical of just how disastrous the experience can be.

  We were overjoyed to discover that this time around there would be a refreshing change from our usual dismal routine, and we would enjoy our winter break during the summer. As usual the decision had been made not out of consideration for our long-suffering family, but to satisfy Dad's latest whim.

  For several months now he had been in a mountaineering kind of mood. Over the summer he became obsessed with scaling the most lofty peaks the world had to offer, and had spent an inordinate amount of time in the ex-government shop. He had outfitted himself with ropes, backpacks, axes, boots, high-energy snacks and just about every other item one might require for an extended stay in the Himalayas.

  It gave Dad no pleasure that his peak-scaling goals could not be fully realized living in a country void of significant mountains. There were some rather steep hills you could walk up, but nothing that would allow Dad the challenge every mountaineer dreams of. The only places in Britain possessing high altitude, rocky terrain is North Wales and Scotland.

  Wales was the obvious choice for a number of reasons. It was much closer than Scotland and, given the unreliable nature of our transportation, the less we had to travel the better. Another factor making the choice easy for Dad was that North Wales was known for its dreadful weather – even in the so-called summer months, the climate rivaled Antarctica. But there was one more reason for selecting this remote and desolate region, probably even more significant than the first two.

  My father has always been fascinated with languages and dialects, and would often imitate different peoples from around Britain as he engaged in his daily activities. He was actually very good at it. We knew his bizarre behavior well and were quite accustomed to it, but strangers found it most disconcerting to hear him addressing us in such an inconsistent manner. One moment he would sound as if he were a native of a small fishing village outside Liverpool and then, without warning, he would transform himself into a Norfolk farmer.

  Every so often his obsession would reach a fever pitch and he would decide to learn a language. His current whim was Welsh, and he had been studying it now for several months. Dad would not miss any opportunity to practice his newfound skill and would even speak it to us, knowing full well we had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. So we would smile, nod and humor him, and wish the day would come when he would have the chance to use it in a real-life scenario.

  So, when considering a location for this year's holiday, Dad took into account the atrocious climate plus the strong possibility that we would encounter Welsh-speaking mountaineers, and quickly decided that North Wales was the perfect spot for us. Si
nce an annual holiday for us was more like a high-intensity military training exercise than a restful break, the harsh terrain this region offered was an added benefit.

  Dad was late finishing work that Friday night, so there was not much time to load the car. But the difficulty of the task was eased by my father's orderly nature. He had already arranged all the mountain-climbing equipment in a stack that made loading the car easy. However, once this so-called essential inventory was placed into the boot, there was no room for the tent or other camping equipment. Stacking it on the back seat solved the problem. But this created a new difficulty – finding room for Pete and me.

  Eventually, with the boot full, additional stuff tied onto the roof and Pete and myself crammed and suffering in the back seat with a tent between us, we set off.

  Pete was, as usual, being difficult. Almost from the moment we left he said he had to go to the toilet, but Dad refused to believe him. This was a typical dilemma whenever we embarked on one of Dad’s expeditions. He planned every part of the journey down to the nearest minute, especially difficult on such a long journey because he also had to include variables for roadworks,