New Year, New Skills

On Friday 1st January, me and my dad got up, had some breakfast, faffed a bit, waited for Simon to to get up, faffed a bit more, spoke to a few people suffering from hangovers from New Year, waited for Simon some more but in the end gave up and decided to go without him, because we couldn’t find where he was sleeping to wake him up.

Before we started I was very nervous because I had never done a trip like this with just two of us.

This was going to be our third time together to the columns. Although it was our third time together, it was our first time with just us.

When we went down to the columns, we took some rope which I carried and when we got to the slope down to cairn chamber, we decided to leave the bag of rope at the top. Normally we use the rope on the large hole and on the slope to cairn chamber but for the first time we decided not to use a rope on any of them. Based on last time, our trip was supposed to take four/five hours but it took us only two hours.

At the hole I was more nervous than before, I always had a rope and someone to hold onto to step across the hole because I can’t reach any of the handholds, because I only have little legs!  But we didn’t have enough people so I didn’t have the rope. (Not strictly true - we didn't use the rope because he wanted to try without , and he managed to reach the handholds fine with just a spotter) After I got over the hole, I felt really proud and the same thing happened at cairn chamber.

From the entrance I had to find my way to the columns without any help from dad, because he made me! Which at first I was very nervous about but when we got to the columns and back I felt pleased with myself. I didn’t even get lost!

James - Age 11.