Ben Nevis

... for Deborah.

Um, he starts off in Snowdon, then, uh, he ends up in Ben Nevis, but he's, uh, swimming in a few of the highest lochs in Britain as well.

So, um, yeah, he was saying yesterday that he's the, the fittest he's felt in about 30 years.

So, um, uh, uh, he was keen to point out that if anyone wants to donate to that, you can go on and find that, um, his, his charity.

in all of the worst ways.

Um, Tommy Moran, climbing Ben Nevis, he's listened to us.

Oh.

Do you know, I like this, the fact that our voices are being taken up in these weird and wonderful places.

Uh, so we, we've been up Ben Nevis, mate, without realizing it.

That's great.

Yeah.

So it's the last one in Britain.

It's powered by renewable energy because it's up in the highlands and it's got water flowing off Ben Nevis and that drives the turbines.

And so that's quite attractive.

But it's a tiny smelter.

It's been a while since I've sat down and done one of these on my own, so this is going to be a shorter episode.

Anyway, I was on Ben Nevis recently with an athlete who was doing a long challenge, which I think I maybe talked about on social media.

We were moving fairly hard on the climb and for the first 5 or 10 minutes or so I was breathing heavily enough that I started wondering how long I'd actually be able to keep running at that effort.

Not in any kind of worrying way, I was just aware that I haven't been maybe training in the way I used to.

The descent was similar, it took me about five minutes to find my feet properly and then I started running hard and it all felt very familiar.

I really enjoyed it.

I was there to help someone, it wasn't my challenge, I wasn't testing myself and nobody cared how well I was moving, but I remember having this sense that I knew this place, not Ben Nevis specifically, just that environment, moving hard in the mountains, being tired-ish but capable and needing to look after yourself whilst also paying attention to someone else, it felt really natural.

And for a moment I was tempted to describe that as me finding the athlete again, but it's not really true.

So everyone else who turned up, their lungs were done in the second quarter, but Denver were lighter, faster, and they were acclimatised.

So I think if we haven't got enough altitude, we'd have to build a stadium on the top of Ben Nevis or something.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah.

Drowned wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep, Another cannot wake thy giant sighs.

ben nevis read me a lesson muse and speak it loud upon the top of nevis blind in mist i look into the chasms and a shroud vaporous doth hide them just so much i wist mankind do know of hell i look o'erhead and there is sullen mist even so much mankind can tell of heaven mist is spread before the earth beneath me even such even so vague is man's sight of himself here are the craggy stones beneath my feet thus much i know that a poor witless elf i tread on them that all my eye doth meet is mist and crag not only on this height but in the world of thought and mental might 1818.

End of poem.

This recording is in the public domain.

So the day of this recording is Wednesday, September 9th.

So it was four days ago on Saturday that I decided to hike Ben Nevis, which is the United Kingdom's tallest mountain.

I found a group of fellow digital nomads who were eager to climb it, so we decided to go on Saturday.

Just so you understand how dire this was, here is a voice note I sent to two friends after I got back Sunday morning.

I've been in Scotland for two months just working remotely.

The Highlands were like the number one place that I wanted to visit before leaving.

And our route from Glasgow to Ben Nevis took us through Glencoe, which was the area I was most interested in seeing.

The drive was stunning.