Gwesty Seren

Today's office view.
Safeguarding training, serious and potentially upsetting but the group did really really well.

And now for a lovely tale....

Late Thursday night four young women from the south coast of England drove up to Snowdonia with adventure on their minds: their plan to climb Wales's highest peak.
They brought a tent they'd been given, food, sleeping bags and maybe a bottle or two of something fizzy. Arriving in the dark they pitched their tent had a few drinks and went to sleep. 
They were woken in the night by the awful weather, the tent, sadly not up to the job, had collapsed and they found themselves soaking wet through, scared in a night far darker than any they were used to. The campsite (which had charged them £280 pounds for the weekend) claimed to have emergency support on call but no one answered. Frightened one of them did what young people so often do and called their Mum hundreds of miles away. Understandably worried, Mum tracked her daughter's phone and seeing a location in the mountains, perhaps confused with how mountain rescue works, called the nearest organisation she could find with mountaineering in its name.
And this is where our hero enters the story, because that's when they encountered Roger.... 
one of my latest volunteers, 77 years young and with a heart of pure gold. He's also my mountaineering clubs local hut warden. 
In the early hours he drove 20 miles in the dark, found the girls cold and crying in their car. He told them he'd spoken to their Mum, he told them he'd come to help not scold and he told them to follow him to our wonderful hut where there were beds waiting for them, hot showers, a drying room, a fully equipped kitchen and they could get a good nights sleep. When the young women gratefully offered Roger money for petrol or a donation for any charity of his choice he told them that wasn't what he wanted. What he wanted most was for them to know there's a community of people that always look out for each other, that always find each other in the dark, that always do their best to make sure they keep each other safe.... and then with the sort of grin that only a 77 year old who looks quite a lot like Santa Claus could muster, he told them that that community call themselves mountaineers.

Me and C stayed at the hut (in our vans) last night where we shared a glass or two with these four young women and listened to their tale of trying to climb Snowden, learning when to turn back, and of the wonderful kind man that had, in their words "saved their lives". We'd spent the day with Roger and he'd never once mentioned it. 
Sometimes, lots of times, I pause and give thanks that I know a lot of wonderful people.