THE MOUNTAIN OF ADVENTURE

                                

DOWNLOAD: THE MOUNTAIN OF ADVENTURE

What could be more exciting that a holiday in the lonely Welsh mountains, staying at a farm in a place called Doth-goth-oo-elli-othel-in (as enunciated by Bill) with a donkey each to ride about on? For once, Mrs Mannering (or Aunt Allie to Jack and Lucy-Ann) is determined to stick with Bill and the children to keep them out of adventure.

The farm house

An ideallic location for a quiet holiday somewhere in the Welsh mountains. What could possibly go wrong?

We see a fair bit of the Evans, Mrs Evans is the usual farmer’s wife, plump and red faced, bustling around and feeding everyone up, while Mr Evans is a jolly sort who finds Kiki utterly hilarious. There’s also the Trefor, the shepherd for the farm and his brother David who is rather useless. He doesn’t speak much English .

Philip adopts a baby goat from the Evan’s farm, who Mrs Evans says is called Snowy. He’s a boisterous little thing, who likes to head-butt the children, and he’s very sure footed. Philip also finds a slow-worm which he calls Sally Slither. Unsurprisingly, Dinah much prefers Snowy to Sally!

Snowy

 The plan is for everyone to go camping for a few days, but Mrs Mannering hurts her hand and Bill stays with her so he can take her to the doctors, this means the children go off on the donkeys with David. 

David, one of the locals, is to guide the children into the mountains on donkeys.

They set off, heading for the Vale of Butterflies. The weather is beautiful and the views from the mountain truly amazing. They travel until evening, then camp for the night. 

The children sleep rough under the stars.

David is rather useless and they quickly find themselves lost. They make camp and that night see a pack of wolves roaming the valley.  David is terrified and runs off, taking all but one of the donkeys with him. 

The pack

The scene is set! Lost in the mountains with no way to carry all their stuff home, a pack of wolves roaming about, a mysterious puff of red smoke from time to time...

and to top it all, a mountain that rumbles and shakes on occasion. Jack reasons that David will go straight back to the farmhouse and Bill will immediately come and find them.

Lucy-Ann shows true mettle in this book—not once, but twice. The first time is when she raises a stick to protect Philip from the "attacking wolves"—which turn out to be around ten Alsations. She's a brick, that Lucy-Ann!

The wolves turn out to be Alsations, and it’s only thanks to Philips skill with animals that the pack is friendly to them. Lucy-Ann spots Sam hiding, and he tells her there are bad men in the mountain, he is then caught by the Alsations and Philip is too. 

Wolves! But Philip, realizing they're only Alsations, saves them all by using his charm.

The Alsations belong to a man who works in the mountain. That's right—IN the mountain. When Philip is taken prisoner by the bad man with the dogs, he seems to vanish into thin air...but upon investigation, Lucy-Ann discovers a curtain of foliage that hangs in front of a crack in the rocky wall. A cave!

The other children find their way into the mountain after seeing a helicopter landing on top of it and inside they find a bizarre world. They must find their way from a cave which seems to contain nothing but a black pool, through miles of passageways, caves, galleries, through a throne room, past a pit which exudes strange lights and smoke and a laboratory full of frightening glass, fires and wires. The children end up getting caught, and are taken to meet the so-called King of the Mountain. He’s a rather mad old scientist who thinks he can create anti-gravity wings. Mieir and Erlick are working with him, organising groups of ex-paratroopers, like Sam, to test out the wings from the the helicopter.

And to the amounts of food the children eat! There was one scene where, even as they were trapped inside the mountain, the children found time to eat some of the leftovers on the king's banquet table. Then, a mere few pages later, they're hungry again and return to finish off! I felt quite stuffed as I was reading this book.

Trapped inside the mountain with a mad "king" running about, the children still find a moment to steal some food.

It's during an experiment, where Philip is forced to put his life on the line, that Lucy-Ann shows her mettle for the second time in this book. She bravely puts herself forward as a better candidate, thus offering to risk death instead of Philip. Lucy-Ann has come through as a really brave kid, despite usually being the first of the group to crumble at any sign of danger.

Philip in the wings

Philip accepts his fate but when the helicopter takes him up the pilot shouts back “don’t forget Bill Smugs!”

With Bill on the case of course things end well, but it’s not easy and for a while it looks like it might not work out happily.

Bill comes through for them in the end, as usual—and when he does, he does it in style! The entire ending of the book, where Bill and the children escape the mountain, is very exciting and on a par with those earlier books in this series. And I'm left feeling overall satisfied that the bad guys have been nabbed, even though some of the nabbing is done "off-screen" in an epilogue-style last chapter.

All in all, a very enjoyable romp, if a little silly in places!