Page 34 - Wish Stream Year of 2019

Exercise AEGEAN ASCENT
OCdt Haynes
Six intrepid Cadets from Waterloo Company caught the first available flight to Athens immediately after the Sovereign’s Parade
of Commissioning Course 182. Although Athens proved to be a place of great interest to us all, it was to be only a stopover in this case. A lengthy ferry journey lay ahead, as the small Dodecanese island of Kalymnos was our final destination.
Kalymnos, famous as the birthplace of sponge diving, was eerily quiet upon arrival in the small hours of the morning. Our personable host, Yiannis, very kindly came to collect us from the port and drove us to his house. An ambitious reveille was set for a couple of hours later that morning for our first day of sport climbing. Mr Kernick, a very experienced climber and the expedition leader, had already decided where would be best for us to begin climbing and brush off any proverbial cobwebs. We set off in two speedy hire cars along some particularly hairy roads to reach the site. It was certainly fair to say that there was a great variety of competence among the Cadets, some relishing the challenge with heads for heights and others making more gentle progress with trembling limbs.
Each training day followed a similar routine of carefully selected climbing pitches and abseils to suit the variety of abilities. On one day, the chosen crag was on a nearby island and we had to charter a small fishing boat to drop us off at the bottom of the climbs. I can safely say that the whole group found the climbing to be a neat
balance of feeling exhilarated, exhausted and on certain sections where one might feel particularly exposed, altogether terrifying. Each of us would admit afterwards that we had all had a moment of self-doubt and fear when up high, but then having the ability to bring such feelings under control was of great satisfaction. Perhaps even greater satisfaction was had by the group, when such feelings were not quite so under control by some of their peers. However, by the end of the trip everyone had developed enormously – both in climbing ability and grappling with the dizzying heights.
Besides the excellent climbing, of which there was plenty, we had opportunities in the evenings to explore the small island in our hire cars, find- ing a great number of cats, a similar number of goats, two sandy beaches, a magnificent chapel set high on rocks, and a very pretty miniature fishing port. We met some great Greek charac- ters along the way; George was very welcoming, and his marmalade and lemonade were memo- rable. Yiannis was a superb host and we ate with him one evening which was great fun. We sam- pled many local delicacies where possible and all took a strong liking for the Aegean way of life.
Travelling to and from the island can be less than straightforward, with high seas causing sea sick- ness and cancellations. However, all involved agreed that this trip had been a great success and we would really consider reproducing such an expedition when in the field Army.
OCdt Macphee reaches the top of OCdt Kernick abseils over a OCdt Noden about to make a climb up a challenging arete stunning cave high above the sea the dramatic cave abseil
32 SANDHURST