Staggered...

It's now Two weeks since the completion of my epic Stag weekend. I've had time to reflect and decided that yes, I would like to share it's tale with perfect strangers over the Internet.

I had decided to go to Snowdonia. One of my very good friends has a family cottage nestled in the mountains which I always yearn to visit as often as I can - 'tis simply heaven and I couldn't have wanted to be anywhere else for my stag, in the end. Not for me a night out in Blackpool or a trip to Ibiza. Oh no. Give me the Withnail experience every time: A group of chaps holed up in a remote cottage for 4 nights with only a feral peacock, a field of timid-looking sheep, inadequate food supplies and copious amounts of alcohol for company.

Unfortunately, it will only house 8 or so brave souls, so it couldn't really be the all-encompassing stag I'd originally thought it might be. So the idea was to have another night out with a group of mates in London, after a visit to watch our football team play in Wycombe.

Sadly, Stag#1 ended up being a total wash-out due a disagreement on how the night should progress. Basically, all but two of us wanted to spend the night in London, the rest wanted to drink in the Wetherspoons in High Wycombe. That was not really what I had in mind for my stag night out, to be honest.

That evening then became one of the more low-key stags it might be possible to have, with two friends having a perfectly charming Chinese meal in Holborn before slinking off home to bed before midnight.

And so, Stag#2, the trip to Snowdonia, became the one & only stag. And what an event it turned out to be too.




The wonderful cottage: "We've gone on holiday by mistake!"

 

It's normally a good 6 hour drive from London to the village of Llanbedr, nearest settlement to our fabled cottage in Snowdonia. To cut some time off, myself and my Best Man decided to drive through the night and left on Thursday evening, arriving at the cottage very excited at 1215am.

There we found the first arrival, having been there already on his own since 5pm, slumped in front of the fire, Withnail & I on loop on his portable DVD player, having polished off 2 bottles of wine alone. This was an accurate portent of the ridiculous antics still to come.

After a quick re-stoke of the fire embers as they threatened to go out, we three sat together and polished off a ridiculous amount of alcohol between us, and 8am came and went before we saw our beds.

This area of Wales is simply stunning at dawn, the detailed night sky giving way to a beautiful sunrise to the East, and it's always tempting to stay up in an alcohol-infused state on your first night in the cottage, to see it in.




Seeing dawn in with a bottle or two.

  That we did, although I couldn't tell you what then became of the rest of the morning as I did not stir again until 3pm on the Friday for 'Breakfast'.

Very little occurred until the arrival of the rest of the party on Friday evening, but that night saw the beginning of the Stag's legacy... my ruddy gout. Despite one friend arriving with a portable disco with lights and lasers and some raucous fun being had by all - I felt the need to stop drinking shortly after midnight as I could feel the tell-tale signs of Mr Gout beginning to stir in my knees.

And thus I became slowly more sober as those around me got more and more drunk. There's nothing more depressing than watching an impromptu conga snake it's way through a building when you are unable to join in. Ho-hum.

Saturday came with many hangovers. What better cure than by jumping into the freezing cold river half-naked? It was a stag weekend after all and a homo-erotic moment is fine in these circumstances of manly-bonding.

Cold Water: Invigorating.

The water did the trick, but a disappointing curry in Harlech Tandoori that evening left everyone with a terrible post-prandial torpor, and Saturday evening was a little more low-key than the two before it.

Sunday I awoke in lashings of gouty pain. We were meant to be climbing a mountain that day, but how was I to move around freely in such a state? By Sedan Chair of course! So the chaps lashed together a makeshift chair and carried me all of ten paces before giving in and returning to their beers. Was a nice thought though.



Off for the Elephant Hunt. Tsk Tsk.

Having dulled the pain with lashings of Belgian beer, there was nothing left for it but to charge on up a mountain for no apparent reason. We were in Snowdonia, after all. We chose this one below - it's called Carreg-y-Seath.

Carreg-y-Seath: Deceptive.

It looks pretty simple enough, doesn't it? It isn't that high. It isn't that steep. No problem, take us about 45minutes.

Except it doesn't actually have any paths up it. So we were off-roading up the side of a piece of rock that probably hadn't had any humans attempt to mount it in a good while. Unless Snowdonia had also recently played host to a similarly idiotic bunch of ill-prepared adventurers such as us.

We started off easing our way through the terrain quite comfortably enough, but it soon became either boggy or thick with coarse heather that scratched mercilessly at my poor bare legs (I was in shorts, not naked).

Heathery Bogs: Not an approved Rambler's Association Route.

By the time we'd struggled through to the base of the mountain proper, a good 30mins had already elapsed. Yeah, it was probably going to take us a bit longer than we thought... but stubbornly, no-one was going to be the first to say this, were they? So we pushed on, all in the insane belief that all the others still wanted to climb it rather than return to the cottage and a nice cold beer.

It started to rain, shortly before we reached the final rock-scramble to the top. At this point I could clearly hear Michael Buerk's 999 voice in my head - "The stag party had set off in sunshine for what they thought was an easy ascent of the mountain. Little did the ill-prepared party realise what lay ahead for them..."




Rock Scramble: Daunting.

 A couple of us even got slightly vertiginous on the final heave over the top. It was blowing a fucking gale by now as we had got to the top and a clear stretch to the Irish Sea and the winds blowing in off of it.

Yet we all got there, to the top. Christ knows how, and more importantly why, but we all got there. And if we ever form a Prog-Rock band we now have the front cover for our first album.

Now all we had to do was find a way down - there would probably be a path down, right? We'd be able to see it from the top. Well, no, there wasn't. There was a sheer cliff drop on two sides and the boggy heathery mess on the other two. Our one alternative route was to follow the top of a dry-stone wall back down the mountain. It was dangerously loose, but better than the bog we'd come up in. It didn't take long for someone to fall off though...

Dry Stone Wall: Falling Off

We eventually found our way back to the car about 2 and a half hours after having set off on our 45min walk, shattered men one and all - but we had tamed the wilderness. We were STAGS OF THE MOUNTAIN.

So, we returned home to the cottage to find that the one left-behind member of the party had baked us all a Stag Crumble for our efforts. What more fitting end to a boisterous lads weekend away than a bit of plum crumble?

Stag Crumble: A Manly Dessert (serve with cream).

STAGS! GRRRRRR!!!!!!!