Middle-aged flash packers

It’s our 35th wedding anniversary today and we laid in bed until 11am, sipping champagne and giving each other expensive gifts.

Yeah right. I got the very bent card I had packed before we came and hurriedly wrote it out. Obviously Steve hadn’t gone to such trouble but did appreciate the sentiment on the front of the card. However, we have booked a fancy restaurant for tonight on the recommendation of a friend. We went to make a reservation there last night (The Sky Bar) and it was very, well, Soviet. More to follow.

Anyway, today was the day to summit Snezka. It’s 1600 metres which beats Snowdon. You could be extremely lazy and take the cable car up but that would not be the point.

The weather was a bit gloomy and considerably cooler than we’ve got used to. I can’t say PPS is a pretty place, it’s a ramshackle collection of hotels and apartments, so the walk to the start of the ascent was very average. However, it improved as we went on but poor old Snezka is not in the same league as the other walks we’ve been doing.

Anyway, it was a pretty painless walk to the hut near the top of the summit. There was some low cloud swirling about but we could see over to Poland. Snezka straddles Poland and Czechia which is rather nice.

The final ascent to the summit was surprisingly hard. I was quite puffed by the time I got to the top. I noticed people coming off the cable car, gaily skipping down the mountain to the hut we’d just left, clearly oblivious to the pain they were going to be in climbing back up.

Our route down was far more interesting than the route up. Firstly because we were naughty and went down a couple of tracks that were supposedly closed and secondly because it was so much prettier. And the sun came out which always helps.

When we got back home, I put the dishwasher on, sorted the washing and wrote this blog. Steve had a nap. That is 35 years of marriage for you.