Terra Hill Showroom

 It wasn't too cold, around freezing, but later the wind and rain picked  terra hill showroom up and whipped us remorselessly, often ripping my shelter out from underneath me and billowing it into the sky. It was difficult to keep hold of and it annoyed me. Jonathan too. He suffered stoically throughout, with only his nose and lips visible through the mouth of his survival bag.

12.00am to 2.30am

As Jonathan predicted, his wife phoned the police when he didn't return home on time. My wife had gone to bed early so was woken at 02.30 am by two policemen knocking on the door. After they confirmed I wasn't there they asked for a photograph, which I'm reliably told would have been used for body identification purposes if the need had arisen. Not being stupid (unlike her husband, you might say), this upset her and she phoned both her and my parents, who came down to the house.

When Lothian & Borders Police established we were overdue, they called their counterparts in Oban. Two policewomen from Oban Police station checked the road at the base of the hill and found our car still there. They notified Oban Mountain Rescue, who mobilized a team and headed out to search for us. Two runners were sent up our ascent route and the rest of the team headed into Glen Ure where they thought we may have descended.

2.30am to 5.00am

Stiff and cold, nine and half hours after we first sat down, I glanced out the 'window' of my shelter and saw blue lights in the glen below. "Jonathan, I think that's mountain rescue. This is going to be embarrassing". We flashed the standard SOS signal of six flashes and received three in return. Now we knew they knew where we were, all we could do was sit and wait and guess how they were going to reach us.

From what I gather, the Oban Mountain Rescue team leader sent a team with ropes up the head of Glen Ure, presumably with the objective of them reaching the summit and climbing down to us from the top. He had also called the Royal Air Force base at Lossiemouth and at 04.30 am they reached us first. The 'clatter-clatter-clatter' of an RAF Sea King helicopter reverberated around us as it thundered past on its way up the glen. It flew back towards us, lit us up with a powerful torch beam, and slowly edged into the mountainside. Hovering above us, lights flashing and beeping, the pilot held his position in the clouds as a winch operator lowered a colleague down towards us on a wire cable. Landing on our ledge, he shouted "Are you okay?!", pointing at me. I replied "Yes". He repeated the question to Jonathan who gave the same response. "Right, I'm taking you first. I'll be back for you. Stay there!" With that, he placed a harness under my shoulders and knees and his colleague winched us into the night air and pulled us into the warm belly of the helicopter. Quickly detaching me, the winchman headed out again into the night sky and within minutes Jonathan followed me into the helicopter. We both sat in a seat facing the door, and buckled in, as the winchman and winch operator closed the door and the pilot (I believe there are two pilots) banked the helicopter away from the mountain.