Extreme Sleeps

Phoebe Smith set herself the challenge to sleep at all of the extreme points of mainland Britain, by herself, on consecutive nights. Here she recalls what it was like to spend a night alone on Ben Nevis in the depths of winter.

- Phoebe Smith

MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW what it’s like to sleep inside a refrigerator. It was never my intention to be one of the few who might. However, at 2am in the early hours of a December morning, I experienced something very close. I was lying, cocooned within my sleeping bag, in the emergency shelter on top of the highest mountain in Britain.

Above me, every few minutes, a gathering globule of condensation would collect and slowly stretch until, finally and painfully, with the sting of an icicle, it pinged onto my head.

I tried to sleep, but every time I felt my eyelids grow heavy, another droplet would land on my nose or the back of my head and I’d be wide awake again, cold. You might be wondering why a perfectly sane would choose to be here, on the roof of Britain, in the middle of the night, in the middle of winter – so I’ll rewind a little…

This was the penultimate night of seven in which I had set myself the challenge of sleeping at all the extreme points of mainland Britain, by myself, on consecutive nights. A full-time job and other commitments meant that I could only make it work in winter. I’d already ticked off the northernmost, westernmost, easternmost and centremost points of the country and spent the night at the lowest elevation too. Now was the turn of Ben Nevis, the highest point.

Plenty of other people have slept on top of our tallest mountain. Indeed, up until 1916, for a mere 10 shillings you could secure dinner, bed and breakfast in the four-bedroom Observatory Hotel on top of the Ben. All that remains of it now is a cluster of old stones and window arches, at this time of year encased in a thick layer of ice.