Wales, Part 4 (last page)
"The Mock"
– the big field exercise is today. We all pack up and head back up to the
higher slopes of Cader Idris. The weather has closed in again, making me happy
– bad weather means a more realistic experience for the students. The clouds
hide the highest parts of Cader Idris, and a fine mist is falling. Occasional
beams of sunlight and patches of blue sky lighten up the damp, lush green Welsh
countryside. Getting the Outward Bound minibuses up the gravel and grass track
is a bit interesting, with people having to get out and push a couple of times.
We set up base near an ancient stone sheep barn,
which has probably been in continuous use, with occasional minor improvements,
for a thousand years or maybe double or triple that time. The scenario is a
plane crash, with seven victims scattered over the mountain slopes. The students
eventually find all the victims, and though a few die of their injuries, the
survivors are all assessed, treated, and evacuated to the road end at the
operations center.
The doctors stay at base at first, providing
medical direction and advice over the radio, but later in the day, two of them
head out into the field to help the Wilderness EMT students with the most
critical of the patients. Occasionally the mist clears for a minute offering a
view of the rocky ridge of Cader Idris.
Mission accomplished, we head back down to the Outward Bound school and have a quick dinner. After dinner, we have an optional but well-attended session on Advanced Skills (or "Advanced Frills" as some call it) for the Wilderness EMT students, and the doctors and I sit down to listen to some more simulated cases and more discussion of the art and science of medical direction of Wilderness EMTs.
Most of us are pretty tired, and talk about going to bed early – but somehow most of us end up at the pub again. More of a quiet night chatting and telling rescue, caving and climbing stories, and not so rowdy, but somehow midnight rolls around all too quickly.
Jack and I (at the class faculty’s request) coordinate a critique of the mock rescue – the students have all done very impressively well. The performance difference between Monday and Friday was nothing short of amazing. During the critique, we carefully solicit constructive criticism from the students and get some ideas for improving the next class. Nonetheless, the student’s comments are very, very positive. (As one student said, "quit wasting time trying to perfect something that’s already so good!")
Written and practical testing follows. All the students learned the class material quite well, but some have a better medical background than others. EMT training isn’t widespread in Britain and Ireland, and it shows. Some do extremely well, some not quite so well – there’s a wide range of prior expertise in the class – but everyone passes with adequate marks.
Graduation follows, and we pass out patches and certificates. Lots of handshakes and hugs, and the students and staff start to pack up and head out.
Jack and I realize, with a great deal of surprise, that, despite our record from previous classes and lectures in the British Isles, we haven’t destroyed any of our electronic equipment this time. My LCD projector worked fine throughout, and all the laptops are still working, as are our ham radios. (Ask one of us sometime about shutting down most of the power grid to an entire university.)
Jack, Emily and I pack all of our gear, plus us,
into a little Peugeot the belongs to Peter Harvey’s company, Wilderness
Expertise. We do need to help bring back some gear from the class for Peter, so
our car has a Stokes litter in the roof. Somehow, even in a foreign country, we
end up driving around with a rescue litter on the roof!
We head north, through the grey, grey valley of
Blaneau Ffestiniog (don’t you love these Welsh placenames?) This valley has
been a slate mining area for millennia, and the entire valley is grey: grey
slate houses, grey slate roofs, grey slate mountains, and piles of grey slate
mine tailings. The sun is setting and it’s drizzling from a heavy overcast,
making it even more grey. Can’t get a picture, too dark, but picked up one of
the folders for the slate mine tours.
Continue north to a popular tourist destination, the village of Betws-y-Coed. Drive on through the dusk and then a very dark night. I’m squeezed into the back seat with various pieces of luggage falling on me depending on which the car veers. (N.B.: trying to navigate by a penlight and map in the back seat of a tiny car on Welsh mountain roads at night is a very good way to make yourself feel not very well.)
>We drive around for a bit, and finally stop and have a very pleasant dinner at the small Cross Keys Hotel, which dates back to the 14th century. They have two vacancies so we decide to spend the night there.
Spend the day shopping in Betws-y-Coed – need presents for family, and after all Christmas and some family birthdays are coming up soon. Find some nice presents, have a wonderful lunch at the main hotel in Betws-y-Coed – we share a large pile of fresh Welsh mussels, and keeping with the seafood theme, I try a squid curry. The squid is melt-in-your-mouth tender, and delicious When someone questions whether I should be eating Indian food in Wales, I point out something that I learned from the book Why We Eat What We Eat, the very first extant recipe in the English language, from many centuries ago, is – you guessed it - for a curry. Spices from the Far East have been a trade commodity for millennia, and apparently have always figured in the British royal and noble diets.
Drive east through north Wales, past some
exquisitely beautiful villages and valleys, until gradually we enter the flatter
and more congested parts of England. Traffic around Birmingham slows to a crawl,
but then thins out a bit as we head further east toward London. But halfway to
London, there’s a road traffic accident ("RTA" to the British
prehospital people) on the M-40 that means that it took us over an hour to go
five miles.
Finally, after only going slightly astray once, we get to London about 9 PM, and find our destination for the night – Wellington College, near the Royal Military Institute at Sandhurst. The "College" dates to 1856, and is what we would call a prep school. Peter Harvey’s company Wilderness Expertise is based here – they coordinate expeditions, and outdoor training, for the students here and at other secondary schools. Peter’s offered to put us up for the night. Since we haven’t had dinner yet, we head out to a nearby restaurant (Indian, again – great food) and chat about plans for the future — particularly the plans for a WEMT class in the spring in Ireland and a WEMT class at Glenmore Lodge in Scotland’s Cairngorm mountains next fall.
Up early in the morning, and on to Gatwick to catch our flight back. Surprisingly (based on past experiences) nothing goes wrong — neither of our flights is delayed. (On a previous trip to Dublin our plane, after three different kind of delays, took off, only to return to Pittsburgh after an hour in the air. We had to try again the next day.)
Arrive in Pittsburgh, all our baggage comes back with us (won’t bother with luggage stories from previous flights, it would take too long). It’s snowing a bit. Big change from the damp and chilly but fairly uniform climate of Wales — many of the houses along the Welsh shore actually had palm trees in their front yard, as it virtually never snows there, though the mountains are of course different.
A successful trip, all things considered. Jack and Emily and I had a great time, got to know some very interesting characters, and may have done some good.
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