Fly on the Wall
Spirit of Summit and a Summiteer
I’m lucky enough to still be going on the Summit weekends. “Lucky”? Because I went on one of the very early ones and have been on most of the intervening ones and that is over 40 years. Harold, one of the originators, was with me this last weekend and we both agreed that in spite of the passage of time the spirit of those early trips to Snowdonia was still there. It originates with a love of the mountains and an ethic of passing this on safely to our young people.
Back in the late seventies it nearly died out and the man who revived it was Tony Joyce. Perhaps it is because of Tony and the message he passed on to his Ventures that this “Spirit” still survives to this day. Sadly, as others will have told you, Tony passed away last month. He was an eternal optimist and had more hard knocks in his life than most people. In May of this year at the Sykeside reunion he was there amongst us just as always, with pleasure in our company, and a ready humour. We all knew he would not be with us for long but none of us including Tony himself would let that change another valuable time together with the spirit of the mountains and Scouting.
“Fly”