As I’ve said above, a hike in the Brecon Bracons formed the culmination of the POLC. When we planned the hike, it had seemed sensible to spend one night at a churchyard. It was summer, but before we arrived it dark and rained heavily. We found the church porch and sat there, until one person decided to try the door. It wasn’t locked, so we went in, making ourselves reasonaby comfortable on the church pews. We wanted an early start, and so we set up watches and handovers rather than relying on alarm clocks. We drew lots and my watch ended at about 1am. As I talked to the person I was relieving, there was a knock at the church door. Heavens, were we discovered? We shut up for a few minutes and turned off the torch, but as soon as we spoke again, the knock was repeated. When we opened the church door we found, not the vicar, but a couple of Norwegians. Like us, they’d decided to rest in the church porch and had been very surprised and scared when we started making a noise!
The Norwegians made themselves comfortable. I remember that one wrapped himself in the altar cloth(!). We left in the morning without waking them; I like to imagine that, like me, they’ve dined out on their side of this story.