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When people tell me to close my eyes and think of a relaxing image, I always think of the same thing. A river. Not just any river, either, but a very specific one. It is the little stream flowing down the tallest mountain in England and Wales; Mount Snowdon. I have climbed that mountain with my family innumerable times, and every time we are there, we swim in that same stream on our way up, as a relief from the hot August sun. To tell you the truth, I haven't been there with my family since I became a teenager, but the memories of those times are incredibly precious to me.
I am what my father terms a “water baby”. If I can possibly swim, I will. In fact, I've been known to plunge fully clad into the English Channel in February, two days before a heavy snowfall. Needless to say, I wasn't feeling too well the next day! At other times, I've been swimming with my friends in the revoltingly dirty river running through my hometown, and in a reservoir marked very particularly “No Swimming Allowed” with my much more rebellious brother. However, the memories of those swims in the stream running down Snowdon are incalculably beloved to me.
I can remember the cool water lapping around my toes as I stuck an experimental foot just below the surface of the stream, the coconut smell of the suncream that my mother insisted on coating me in, my brother's dark, dripping head appearing seemingly out of nowhere after he had swum underwater to duck me. I can still feel the blazing August heat on my back, and taste the green boiled sweets that we used to eat “for energy” during the climb. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can even feel the grassy edge that my mum used to sit on to watch her husband and children play, and see the mist at the top of the mountain that we used to call “Giants' ice cream”. As you may have guessed, those times playing in the stream halfway up Snowdon are some of my most vivid memories. I have no idea why they have stuck so tenaciously in my mind, nor why my memories of the mountain itself are so vague, but I thought I would share a little piece of my past with you.
God bless.
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