Climbing Mountains: Both Literal & Metaphorical

I've never been the go-getter type, the drive to do and explore left the chat for me a long while ago now. But this year I've felt a shift in energy.

This shift kickstarted my drive to start working out, a foreign concept for this former library prefect who used almost every excuse under the sun to escape PE in secondary school. I first stepped foot into the gym with a good friend of mine back in July, I felt like I was walking onto a rather lacklustre space shuttle. On that day, I found out I could bench 65kg on my legs and would tell everyone this fact in the way a toddler talks about something really exciting that happened on their walk from the toilet back to the kitchen.

Then came the text message:

Now, this is a professional blog, so I'm not going to write exactly what I said to that message. But I'm sure you can imagine my actual response...

This was such a huge (literally) hurdle for me to overcome mentally before I even take into account the physical implications of it. A mountain, a whole mountain, with a group of people who are all incredibly fit? Old Holly would've immediately laughed in her face. But this new, slightly livelier version of myself had this nervous energy at the pit of her stomach. I said yes.

It took me a few more gym sessions over the next month to convince myself to purchase a membership, I wasn't too keen on the idea of wasting £200 on something that I wouldn't use so I had to be sure that I was committed to this. I dusted off my "new year, new me" gym clothes and my YouTube tutorial-level knowledge of how a gym works and began working out. To say I'm not physically gifted is the understatement of the century but I still gave it a good go. But as time went on I got more confident, built up my strength and by September made my way up to pushing 73kg with my legs, something I'm still very proud of!

Before I knew it the weekend had arrived. The nervous pit in my stomach had grown to the size of a small African village and I felt like going into witness protection was genuinely an appropriate next step to avoid my fate. The night before our road trip to Caernarfon I got almost no sleep, partially due to the fact that I was sleeping on a sofa that was about half of my body length. The next morning we set off early, all tired from our lack of sleep and the thought of sitting in the car for 5 hours listening to my 'alternative' renditions of our much-loved songs on the playlist we created for the trip.

Not to sound like a 00s property TV show but when we eventually got to the campsite we could truly appreciate the beauty of the Welsh countryside. The skies were clear, the waterfall crashing on the rocks and the sheep in the next field were bleating, I felt incredibly calm and safe in that place.

The campsite ☝️

That night we sat under the stars, fire lit and drank red wine. The Boomers might be onto something with that whole "back in my day..." nonsense. I didn't turn in until about midnight, not that I managed a minute of sleep that entire night. I sat up and thought about a lot of things, predominantly existential but some just downright insane. It got to about 5am and I fully gave up on trying to sleep so I went into the bathroom and got myself ready for the climb. I put on 'Love is Blind' from my Netflix downloads and began the process of washing, brushing and making myself look pretty for god knows what reason. I even painted my nails! This was a very ineffective way of distracting myself from the inevitable climb, something that I'd had all night to overthink.

Category is: Emo Trucker Realness 💅

We drove as close as we could to the base of the mountain, the sinkhole in my stomach had grown to the size of Europe (whichever countries that includes these days), and I wasn't feeling all too confident in my abilities to "girlboss" this mountain. I had a panic attack, assessed my situation and very nearly quit before I'd even made it to the information centre! It was a lot to process to say the very least.

Once I'd calmed myself down and collected my thoughts it was time to set off. The first part of the mountain was surprisingly easy, I don't know quite what I was expecting but it certainly wasn't simple. I took the opportunity to take this photo before I turned into a sweaty thumb-like mess 👇

Not my skin shade-matching my hair 🤦🏼‍♀️

I got a good half an hour in when I noticed that my boots were broken, as in they could be in the new Muppets lineup and pull off an iconic rendition of 'Mah Na Mah Na'. This proved to be a big problem when we got to the Miner's path, a steep cobbled incline that slowed me down significantly due to uneven slabs and accidental flip-flops.

I got to about two-thirds of the way up this cobbled path when I realised I wouldn't be able to climb the whole mountain. In short, I was devastated. More random strangers saw me cry that day than ever before, which if you know me is a big achievement to hit considering the number of public meltdowns I've had in the past. It took me around 45 minutes of walking back to the base to fully process my failure, but by the time I got to the bottom, I felt like I'd calmed to a normal level of sadness.

It took me a few phone calls home and a hot chocolate to truly understand what I'd just achieved. I'd gone from struggling to walk a mile at the start of the year to attempting a mountain and getting quite far with it! I decided that I wasn't weak, useless or inadequate anymore, I just tried something new and it didn't quite work out (which is totally ok!).

So why has it taken me so long to write about this experience? Well, for one I've been quite a busy bee since the start of the semester. The other reason is that I honestly still haven't fully processed the whole trip until now. It was an unbelievably huge milestone for me, it was a huge achievement for me to even agree to go in the first place! I ultimately still feel that agreeing to the climb was the right decision for me, the whole process from training right up to the walk itself allowed me to learn new things about myself, things that have helped shape me in the latter months of 2022 that have lead me to the point I'm at today. I'm happier now, and I firmly believe that that's enough of an achievement in itself.