Not long ago I promised I'd relate a story about the late, much-loved Kate Stokes. Here it is.

As I wrote in her mini-obituary, she and I were both members of the Bangor University Mountain Walking Club. Although she was a first year when I was a third year we were mighty good pals and did some great hills together.

In March 1996 - Christ, ten years ago this month - we both went on a UMWC away weekend to the Cadair Idris area of mid-Wales. Although I didn't know it, I was about to be the first victim of an outbreak of viral gastroenteritis that laid half the club low over the next fortnight. I'd been feeling a bit queasy during the minibus journey down to Cadair, but I put that down to the windy Welsh roads. We found the campsite and pitched our tents. I was sharing with Jonesy. Kate, I think, was in with Caroline Hattam.

I woke up about 2am feeling just a bit funny. Matt was snoring quietly in his sleeping bag next to me. Ten seconds elapsed, and I felt funnier still, so I sat up. 'Matt,' I said. 'Matt!'

'Hrrumph? Har bag zleep. Zzzz.'

'Matt, I think I'm going to be... I'm going to be - BLAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!'

He woke up pretty quick after that, let me tell you. I know this is supposed to be a warm, affectionate story about someone we all loved very much, and therefore taste is an important issue. But I wouldn't be doing the tale justice if I didn't underline the fact that I've never been quite so spectacularly sick in all my life as I was at that moment. I was plastered in vomit, Matt was plastered in vomit; all our precious gear was likewise contaminated. We evacuated to the minibus and stayed there for the rest of the night.

It wasn't a very nice night, either. I was sick again hourly, the bus was freezing and Jonesy was slowly going mad from lack of sleep. Finally, morning came and other club members began to stir. They gathered around the open side door of the minibus to gawk at the whey-faced leper and the delirious Welshman within. A few people asked how I was and kindly brought me a cup of tea, which was handed to me rather gingerly. Nobody came too close. A few said they'd heard me retching in the night, but had decided the noise was actually the distressed bleat of a mortally ill sheep in the next field.

So although there was a decent concern for my welfare, nobody was concerned enough to risk coming too close. Or at least until Kate arrived. She took one look, shouted 'oh, baby!' and threw her arms around me. The fact that she did this at exactly the same moment that I involuntarily began another of my hourly throwing-up sessions - which proceeded to take place over her shoulder and down the back of her jacket - didn't bother her in the slightest. She was that kind of human being.

Occasionally, we'd buy each other books. The one she always claimed to like the most was a facsimile first edition of A.E. Housman's famous collection of poetry, A Shropshire Lad. Housman's a bit simplistic and a bit sentimental, but moving and readable for all that. He clearly spoke to Kate.

WITH rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.

She was tough, clever, determined and enormous fun to be around. She was brave, spending gap years in the less respectable parts of Ecuador and Jamaica. When I first knew her she had a verbal tic: everything good or worthwhile was 'stunning'. Of a book - 'it's stunning'; Ecuador - 'stunning'; a view - 'stunning!'; a plate of egg and chips after a day's walk - 'stunning'. In Kate's world everything was stunning - as, in every sense that she meant the word, was Kate Stokes herself.