A Trip to Wales, Page 2
We head out to scout out the site for the WEMT and WCP classes, the Outward
Bound campus in Aberdovey (Aberdyfi in Welsh). This was the very first Outward
Bound school (1941). Certainly a beautiful place, nicely landscaped, overlooking
the estuary ("Aber") of the Dovey River, with the Welsh mountains
across the river. Compared to the more primitive camps we use for WEMT classes
in the U.S., the accommodations are positively luxurious. We settle in, check
out and arrange the teaching room and our office for the week. Emily is busy
working on her presentations for the WEMT course and the rest of us head out
with Dave Williams, one of the Snowdonia National Park Rangers, to check out
sites for the field exercises.
We headed up toward the high mountains, passing Bird Rock, a rocky spur that
they say is the only place in Europe where cormorants roost inland. Perhaps this
is because, millennia ago when the sea level was higher, the rock was on the
coast – and as the coastline receded, the cormorants continued to roost there.
On past that, we headed up toward the peak of Cader Idris ("the giant’s
throne"), and in the area somewhat below the summit, we found a good place
to hold our field exercises. It was intermittently raining a bit, but as we got
out of the cars to survey the area, we could see a bit of sun coming up the
valley from the sea, lighting up the hills in all different tones of green –
some reddish green, some yellowish green, and all shades in between.
On the way back down, we stopped at the house of the farmer who owned the land we were to use. (Unlike American and Canadian national parks, UK National Parks are almost all private land, though with land-use controls and certain improvements.) This used to be the house of Mary Jones, who as a young woman, hiked 20 miles barefoot across the mountain to where the first Welsh-language bibles were to be sold. We also stopped nearby to look in at a church that dates to the 900s AD., and a castle built by Welsh king Llewellyn in the early 1200s. The evening involved lots of scuttling back and forth from location to location helping (or at least watching) Jel hyperkinetically trying to get everyone picked up at train stations, getting all the manuals ready, radios charged, and so forth. We had dinner in a pub (the Penhelig Arms, in case you’re ever in town) in Aberdyfi (Aberdovey); mine included an starter (appetizer) of Stilton cheesecake with pear slices in a special sauce, and whiting (local fresh fish) with mozzarella cheese and tomato and red pepper salsa, along with a pint of Oxford ale. Wonderful.
Instructors and students began arriving, including some Royal Air Force mountain rescue team personnel and some U.S. Air Force PJs (pararescuemen) stationed in the U.K. With the other instructors, Jel and I gave a demonstration of how to take care of a wilderness patient in the Wilderness EMS Institute way – with a fairly complete history and physical exam, as well as consultation with a Wilderness Command Physician via radio. We had one of the instructors "dislocate" her shoulder, and Jel played the role of a WEMT while I played the invisible Wilderness Command Physician at the other end of the radio.