The walking plan included two sets of three single-day walks, and one overnight trek. Each walk had much the same pattern. We would be briefed the night before, get up around 0800hrs and walk more than five hours taking a circular route usually taking in in a peak of 800m. These peaks were often well into the cloud line. The importance of accurate navigation was therefore highly emphasised, especially since all the team members were responsible for it, taking turns to map-read individually.

Along the way we discussed some principles of mountain leadership and learned about the MLT course including belaying with ropes, safety harnessing and mountain rescue. We spent the first three days in this fashion, walking for about 15km a day, building up an awareness of the terrain and getting used to the constant changes in weather. A rest day followed before we set off on a longer two-day trek. The journey was to take us to a mountain hut some 20km away up in the glaciated peaks to our north. During our final three days, our navigation seemed much improved by earlier practice. But the worst weather so far had us twice descending before summits could be reached, and it was not rare to find us huddling together to take our lunch.

On 13^th August we broke camp and set off back to Reykjavik, where we spent two days visiting local natural wonders. If the stench of Geysir (the original one) and the wind at Gulfoss (a waterfall) were somewhat over-powering, they did provide a few snapshots, which couldn’t quite be said for the steamy Blue Lagoon. There someone’s false promise of a hot tub on the rock face above had most of us running half naked into a freezing gale. We enjoyed a final dinner in Reykjavik and thanked our hosts, heading for the airport where goodbyes were mixed with assurances that we’d all meet again at "courses camp"/ Sandhurst/ in other frozen wastes.

OCdt Corbet Burcher