Dom led the way. It was fairly easy-going at first, and brilliant! Marching songs, rabbits that jumped out of their way, a hawk hovering over its lunch and sheep that seemed to own the mountains and lolloped past with bad tempered baas.
Charles spotted the first yeti, but nobody else saw it, even though the girls all screamed and got told off by Dom. He was in a worse mood than the sheep.
Then it was lunch at “base camp” and back to the bad times for Wasim. Base camp was a flat bit of land where ancient boulders had tumbled from the mountains towering above them and come to a permanent rest amongst purple heather, ferns and sheep dung. Wasim got to the biggest rock while bags of crisps were being thrown out to all the other children. Wasim wasn’t interested in crisps and was pleased with his rock, but somebody ruined it.
“Throw us a Mars, Waz!”
And then everyone was looking at him.
“Not hungry, Wasim?” and even Mrs Scott who had snapped at the Mars bar joker seemed to be checking what he would eat. Wasim pressed his back into the cold stone and had to go through the act of looking inside the paper bag to see what the cooks back at the centre were tempting him with.
And it was tempting. A cheese sandwich, penguin biscuit, blueberry muffin and a bottle of special Welsh Hills mountain water. Wasim’s stomach had started complaining, but as usual it was the thirst that was getting to him.
It was hot under his waterproof, and as base camp had got nearer, the walk had got steeper and harder. The singing had stopped and the puffing had started and all of the others had been taking great drags out of their water bottles.
“Not eating anything, Wasim?”
“Miss, I feel a bit sick, Miss, I’m saving it.” He did feel a bit sick and his head was dizzy. But he was still on guard enough to go for his old trick of changing the subject to divert a teacher’s attention. “But Miss, someone’s been ruining the rocks, Miss. Vandals, Miss” and he stood up to point to splashes of red, blue and green paint daubed at the bottom of his rock.
But Mrs Scott wasn’t worried about paint on rocks, and she had to move quickly to shout Dionne down from the top of the green painted rock that he was balancing on, anyway.
Wasim watched her go and felt as if he had stolen the Mars box. At least he got to put his packed lunch back into his rucksack with no more questions asked.
The groups split up then. They would all meet back at base camp in three hours, the time it would take to follow Dom to the top of Lion’s Lair and then find their own way back down. Wasim looked at his watch.
“Back here by five then, Wasim?” Mr Bird was pulling on his rucksack and squinting through the sun at the climb ahead.
“Miss, yes Miss . . . Sir.”
But Wasim wasn’t checking his watch for a meeting time. He needed to work out how long it was before 8.55, the sun disappearing behind the lion’s rocky mane and his chance to open the packed lunch and kill the pain in his tummy.
There was no singing now. This was a clamber, not a walk. You didn’t need ropes, but it was hard and the only talk was about legs aching and how much longer there was to go.
Wasim didn’t even join in with that. He just looked at the next step, pulling himself up on the strong yellow grass that sometimes popped out from under the rocks. At least it wasn’t so hot, and there were a few clouds skidding across the sun that had been parching his throat lower down the hill.
But it was hurting. His thighs were burning like everybody else’s, and he had cut his hand on a piece of sharp grass that had saved him from falling as he balanced along the footpath – now just a narrow slither between the mighty boulders that kept going up and up.
“I told you this was bigger than Everest.” Even Charles, who could run for every second of a football match without a drop of sweat, was panting and gasping for breath. The line had stretched out and Mr Bird was right at the back helping Daniel Timms who was gasping on his inhaler and Tia who had lost her welly and started to cry.
They rested after about half an hour and Wasim managed to find a way of sitting that helped his tummy, as curling up had last night.
“OK, guys. . .” Dom wasn’t out of breath at all and was standing on a rock waiting for Mr Bird and Daniel to lumber into the clearing.
“Right. This is Lion’s Lair. We’re about a hundred metres from the top but I want you to appreciate this view.”
So they all had to stand up and look out into the blue.
“Down there, that’s the Challenge by Choice Centre.”
“Wow!” they exclaimed. It looked like a lego house, and a white van going through the entrance looked like a toy one.
“Then over there, you can just about see into England. Up there would be Liverpool, and over there Chester, and on a really clear day you could see Manchester. And over there, that nothingness, that’s ocean. Well, the sea, anyway.
“OK, ten more minutes upwards and we’re there.”
That ten minutes was done in silence and Wasim didn’t know how he did it. He had seen two blurred centres when they had looked down, and wiping his glasses hadn’t helped. His legs were hurting too much to be like jelly. But they were buzzing, and they certainly didn’t feel like they were his.
Sleep. Just lie down and have a sleep, his body seemed to be saying. But no. He kept going, the pain from scrabbling on bleeding hands up the spiky stone path keeping his mind away from his hunger and thirst.
And then . . . they were there!
They were at the top, on the lion’s back, and the little ridge ahead was like its mane. It didn’t really look anything like a lion up here. But even feeling as he did, Wasim joined in the excitement of looking out over the whole world and having his breath taken by the wind.
“You OK, Sir?” Dom nodded to Mr Bird. “It’s easy enough coming down, they’ll enjoy it. Just stick to the path, it’s only about forty minutes down. See you then.
“Be good, guys,” he shouted. “I’ll save you some tea.” And there were some sighs at being left with Bird the Nerd and Mrs Scott, but he was gone, leaping down the path with his hands in his pockets and his whistle so tuneless that even the wind got fed up and just took it away.
“OK then, guys . . . umm boys and girls. . . Who wants the map?” Mr Bird sounded enthusiastic, and snatching hands soon had the map in its plastic case with the compass attached.
“It’s this way,” shouted Dionne and they all set off after him.
“Stop, stop, stop.” It was Mrs Scott. “First of all, let’s make sure we can find where we are, just like we practised at school.”
They put the map on the floor and crowded round it. Fingers prodded all over but Wasim couldn’t make out anything apart from big brown swirls, patches of green and red squiggles coming nearer and then fading away. He was seriously unwell.
“We’re here, Miss.” It was Charles.
“Good try, Charles, but that’s the middle of Wrexham and we are up Lion’s Back Mountain.”
Wasim took a step back and sat down, waiting. He wasn’t hot anymore and he untied his anorak and hunched against the mountain breeze that was sending the clouds above the Lion’s Back into racing wisps, galloping in from where Dom had said the sea was.
In the end Mrs Scott had to find where they were and point to the path that they needed. Exactly opposite to the one Dionne had been leading them down.
“Coats on, everybody. It’s not so hot now. Off we go.”
Mr Bird was at the front and Mrs Scott at the back with Daniel and Donna.
Wasim was back with them when the gust hit. It blew off his bobble hat and had everyone screaming and scrabbling for their new CBC baseball caps and sunglasses.
“OK, OK, stick to the path,” shouted Mr Bird.
Too late. The caps had cost £5.50 from the Centre shop and Junior S couldn’t afford to lose that much of their pocket money to one gust of Welsh wind.
Mr Bird blew his whistle and, slowly, moaning at sheep dung stains and cracked lenses, the group strung itself along the path again.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. . .”
“Eight,” shouted Mrs Scott as Dionne leapt onto Charles from a huge boulder.
“Eight. Who is missing?”
Mrs Scott’s voice had lost its school journey friendliness. “Hush. I said, who is missing?” She scrambled for her clipboard and started to bark names.
“Tony, Tia, Daniel, Donna . . . Donna?”
“It’s Donna, Miss. A yeti got her!” There were screams as another gust of wind hit and nearly bowled them over. This one had stinging bites of water in it and the screams got louder.
Now Mrs Scott meant business and Wasim’s stomach gave a different flip from his hunger pain. He had never seen a teacher like this – she was scared.
“Silence! Quiet!” She blew her whistle. “Absolute silence!
“Donna!”
They listened. Wind. A rush of cold rain. Nothing else.
“Donna!”
Nothing.
“Donna! Donna! DONNA!”
Then they heard it – a sob, and then another, above the sound of the next gust that came whooshing in.
“Stay!” Mr Bird had a sudden command in his voice and strode from the path towards the crying that was coming from near to the top.
“Coming, Donna!” Everybody watched as he scrambled upwards and out of sight behind a wall. Not a brick wall, but a wall of mist that the last wind blast had brought in and not taken with it on its howling way over the mountain.
