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Mountain memories by Mary Edmunds Otter (1966-1973)
In the late sixties and early seventies the Westwood
House School Mountaineering Club was organized
by our biology teacher Mrs Bradley together with her
husband Squadron Leader Bradley, often with the
help of Mrs Blagden and her husband. They gave up
their time to lead groups of teenage girls through
wind, mist, rain and occasional sun, across the hills
and moors of upland Britain. Each term there would
be a day trip to the Peak District and in the Easter
holidays a five-day expedition. I went on two of these,
one to North Wales and another to the Lake District.
Our day trips started from school early on a Saturday
morning; a bus-load of excited girls on an outing. A
mix of termly, weekly boarders, and day girls, all
happy to be on an away day. We often went to Edale,
puffing up Jacobs Ladder and onto Kinder Scout, lots
of walking, talking and plenty of fresh air, all ending
with tea at Lyons Tea House in Buxton (with circular
portions of ice cream wrapped in cardboard rolls
which I never saw anywhere else). The journey back
to school in the dark often involved some singing!
The Bradleys were members of the Peterborough
Mountaineering Club, and once they persuaded
members of the club to take us rock climbing. This
was in the days before stringent Health and Safety
regulations and risk assessment or local climbing
walls. We spent a happy day scrambling up routes
on Stannage Edge and also abseiling back down.
Through their connection with the PMC, I also
remember going to hear the mountaineer Don
Whillans talking inspirationally about his first ascent
Scafell Pike summit 1972 – Leaders: Squadron Leader
Bradley (in the rear) and Mrs Bradley (brown coat
seated right), Girls: Sally Eades, Claire Nesbitt,
Unknown, Virginia Lunn, Judy Eades and Linda Vincent
of the south face of Annapurna with Dougal Haston
in 1970.
In 1971 our Easter expedition took us to Snowdonia,
where we stayed in Youth Hostels and walked up
some of the peaks. One Youth Hostel was
particularly memorable, with a dragon of a warden.
The dining room had gory posters of dead sheep that
had been mauled by dogs, and we got into trouble for
turning them to face the wall as we ate our food! Our
dormitory for the night was an adjacent repurposed
chapel with damp walls and bunk beds. We spent the
night scaring each other with ghost stories. On the
final day we all walked up Snowden, but five of us
were chosen (a head for heights being an important
criterion) to do the ‘Snowden Horseshoe’, which
involved ascending via the precipitous ridge Crib
Goch. That night was spent at the famous
mountaineers’ hotel the Pen-Y-Gwryd. We were
awed by the history linking the hotel to the 1953
Everest expedition, all the more so, as the leader
of that expedition Lord Hunt, was staying in the
hotel and handed out ice axe shaped tie-pins to
commemorate our Snowden climb.
The following year we went to the Lakes and walked
from one Youth Hostel to another starting in Wasdale.
We climbed Scafell Pike, but terrible weather stopped
us going up Great Gable, and we had to take lower
level routes between the hostels. The weather didn’t
stop us having fun though.
Over the years I have been fortunate to walk among
the highest mountains of the world and I am grateful
for the time the staff gave up to take us and inspire
us on those early trips to the hills.
Mary and her husband Malcolm in the Andes, Patagonia
with Mount Fitzroy in the background
