Mountain climbing

Before I start this entry I would just like to remind you that all the activities that we have done with my cousin so far have been within about a half hour drive of our house. Following in this tradition today we decided to keep the car in the garage and wander up the mountain at the back of our house. Actually it is a 529m high mountain and the route we chose to take was far from a simple wander, but a really nice outing all the same.
According to our tour guide (my husband...) about 200 years ago the mountain area was filled with Buddhist priests taking part in strict training. Then about 80 years ago there were 88 different statues of buddhas placed around the area and now you can climb up the mountain and pay your respect to all the different statues on the way. There are two basic courses - one that goes straight up the mountain and another more challenging one that goes around all the different statues and is basically vertical a lot of the way. We took the challenging course on the way there and then came down the fast route. I think it took about 2 and a half hours on the way up and 1 hour and a bit on the way down.
Tom took about 80 photos so here are just a small selection.....