The welcome of satay

“We're lost, aren't we?”

I nod.

We're half way up a mountain, the snow and wind are pinching our cheeks like an over-enthusiastic great-aunt at a family wedding, and we're definitely lost.

The MD, Head of Marketing, and Finance Director form an increasingly- hysterical huddle. They're the ones who organised this “nice, little walk,” a team-building trip to the Lake District. They're the ones who came prepared with maps, waterproof trousers, and previous hiking experience. Each is clutching a compass in one frozen hand, and holding a corner of the wind-whipped map in the other. Over the screaming storm I can't hear what they're shouting at each other, but their collective body language and frantic pointing (in various directions) is speaking volumes from within that cluster of parkas.

They're arguing over which way is North.

Most of the team huddle in an anxious, angry mob, watching the leaders try to decide which way the compasses are supposed to point. The faint trail we’ve been following through the crunchy, frozen grass is slowly being obscured by a layer of fresh snow. It won't be long before it disappears completely beneath a sea of frightful white.

It's getting dark and we've had enough. There's mutiny on the gusting wind, angry accusations and tears. We tell the MD we're turning back.

Following our own faint footprints, we head for the last trail marker we'd passed. It feels like it was hours back; we reach it in thirty minutes. It's a direct route back down to a town. It's not the destination our MD had planned, and we don't care. We scamper along the downhill trail as fast as our frozen limbs and the slippery terrain will allow (which isn't very fast at all). The MD brings up the rear, plaintively.

In an hour, we're back in the valleys where the snow has yet to settle. The glowing lights and promised warmth of a tearoom are the first things we see, rising before us like a clotted-cream Shangri-La.

We stumble out of the dusk, like a defeated army of zombies in a bad horror film, into the blessed heat of the empty tearoom. The Finance Director has a twisted ankle and is leaning heavily on the arm of Marketing. The MD looks like someone has stolen his teddy bear.

“Tea,” barks the MD as we collapse into a cluster of chairs, shedding a woollen rainbow of hats and mittens all over the hardwood floor.

The matronly woman behind the counter looks up: “Been on a nice, little walk?”

Our screams of hysterical laughter make the teapots rattle.