New Years Eve Eve.

Last year we (Tash, Chris and a few of Chris' relatives) were up around Loch Ness doing stuff. This year we thought we would head up to North Wales and do a two or three day jaunt on Calder Idris or something of the ilk. Just after Christmas Tash and Chris popped over and they (Chris especially) were looking grim. So we decided to bin the big walk but had plans to try a smaller hill for fun. We settled on Pen Y Fan, the highest hill in southern Wales. Neither Chris or myself had made it up, I'd almost got to the top with a Duke Of Edinburgh's group from uni but we (the supervisors) decided it was too windy to push right to the summit so we stacked early.
As it was, Chris was still too ill to join us so Tash, myself and her dad started off at 7 (which, given my love for mornings, is remarkable in itself), drove to the hill and walked up, starting boots wet at just gone 9.
It was cold and we were in cloud almost from the get go with about 50 m visibility, people heading down told us that the top was clagged in and frozen. I knew we were in an high pressure situation and was hoping that the inversion (where the temperature increases, the air dries out radically and the cloud is capped) would have been below the summit but ahh well. One fell runner passed us (still don't understand them) and many, many people, often with dogs.

It was cold enough that the dogs had ice eyebrows and my eyelashes froze together. We stopped for a break at the subsidiary top then carried on to the summit, at which point, things changed.
Just as we got to the summit the inversion dropped to our level, the temperature started to increase, the visibility increased to about 60 km and the cloud cleared. I'd never managed to be above the clouds like this before and the beauty was just sodding jaw dropping!

Apart from a "little" navigational mistake involving two paths and 20 minutes extra walking we made it down comfortably although there were SOOOO many people on the hill. Seriously, there must have been a couple of hundred people on the paths that day. Chris would have absolutely hated that part of the walk.
Next day being NYE I drove up to Tash and Chris', about 320 miles including about 1.5 or 2 hours stationary in a traffic jam on the M6. They were both still ill so I saw in the New Year with the cats and a few beers. Shame I couldn't make it down to London when Tris called, that would have been epic! I think next year I'll hit a city/biggish town for the parties. Might be working for Christmas, but if I am I'm going to bounce over to Inverness for Hogmany. Might be elsewhere, but we'll see what happens, neh?
So now I'm back home, with at least one of the viruses I've been exposed to making life less than pleasant at the moment and my bank still being a general arse and it's back to work tomorrow on an early shift. Still need to sort out a new bed (falling onto the bed while drunk shouldn't lead to a collapse of such disastrous proportions!) and still some unpacking to do but it's good to be home. And the fish survived, which is nice.