Camping

My fears of an early death were borne out!

On the M6, somewhere between Eckaslike and Didheeckaslike we stared death in the face.
I had wandered to the back of the van to roll something to ease the boredom of motorway passengership…
The back tyre of the van blew out. Just as we overtook a huge lorry.
I looked out of the back window to see the lorry bearing down on us. It was like a scene from ‘Duel’! As my Dad would say, ‘My ring dropped so low you could’ve cut 12 washers off it’.. Such a way with words that man.
The van was literally wrestled to the hard-shoulder. After a brief visit to all three lanes.
The RAC man was called and we waited.
We filled our time Blackberry picking. (There are hundreds at the side of the Motorway!) So check out future Police Camera Action shows, I guarantee we are on there!

Our campsite seemed to be the camp for serious walkers and kids. Neither, a favourite of mine.
Walkers with Ballet tights, huge boots and fucking SKI POLES! What’s that all about? All rosy cheeked and terminally cheerful. Bastards!.
About half an hour in to our walk I realised I had made a dreadful mistake agreeing to go.
It was 8 miles long, a round trip to Aira Force.
At the top of the first steep incline my lungs were screaming for mercy. (Bemoaning their 20 a day habit). My heart was trying to burst it’s way out through my throat and surprisingly, my ears!
My ‘bad back’, which in my head has a voice like Eyeore, was saying;
‘Do you think this is wise?’
My sheer ‘bloody mind’ was yelling like a drill Sergeant,
‘Don’t you fucking dare give up!’
At the four mile marker I wanted to be carried and at 7 I was close to tears. At 7 ½ miles I was overcome with the tiredness that usually comes after crying for several hours and just wanted to curl up in long grass.

There is another breed of walker, this tribe wear shorts and trousers with hundreds of bulging pockets. They have plastic wallets on string to protect their OS maps! This lot, I feel, fall into the Beardy Weirdy category.
They have backpacks with fucking straws in them! If they turn their heads and suck, they get a drink. Some sort of high energy shite, no doubt. Essence of Parsnips with Chick pea extract.
Made me want to push them straight off the path..

I don’t think that being incredibly under whelmed by Aira Force helped.
In the campsite handout they bigged it right up!
“If you only do ONE walk it should be this one….”
Aira Force is allegedly some sort of ‘waterfall’ (Aaaah, Pretty I hear you say, NO!)
To be perfectly frank I’ve had more spectacular ‘leaky’ guttering. The worse bit was when after this anti climax, there was another 3 miles to get ‘home’.
Back at the van I got my poor feet out of my boots. Huge blisters. HUGE.
It was suggested to me that my ‘little legs and low centre of gravity’ would have been a boon in this Hilly/Mountainous terrain. Which given the Scottish part of my ancestry, is not unreasonable. Indeed, there did seem to be some ‘genetic memory’ to my legs….
DOWNHILL…
Scots didn’t get a lot of practise running back UP mountains as the English had usually slaughtered them before the homeward journey.

We were told by the nice Scottish people on the pitch next to us that there is a social hierarchy to camping. The people in Caravans and Campers don’t talk to the people in the tents. Weird.
You have tents that appear out from trailers dragged behind 4x4’s. I call those the ‘Just add water’’ tents. They, like some Greek God, spring fully formed from their detached womb!
They are inhabited by loud upper middle class people with kids called Artemis and Apollo, whom they talk to as if they were 46 & 48, instead of 6 and 8...
“Do be careful Artemis, you know you have a cut on your hand and if any of this Northern mud gets in it, not even Roedean will save your vowels”…
Apollo, of course can roll around in any kind of nasty disease bearing medium because he is a boy and will be going to *Eton, Harrow, Marlborough (*delete as appropriate) and anything like that will not hold him back, as long as he is ‘Sporty’… Rugby preferably! These people have carpeting, Fucking carpeting in their tents. I expected hanging baskets with one lot.

Then there are the ‘Lone Rangers’ they reside in tents that a regular sized 8 yr old would find cramped. These are usually militant walkers, ballet tighted AND pocketed. Their sleeping bags have hoods and when they pack up EVERYTHING fits in a rucksack. Mentalists!
These are followed by sprawling affairs with separate rooms and annexes. These are usually Family deals with clusters appearing together with Grans, Uncles and at least 20 kids.
50% of them will be wearing an England Football shirts, the rest will be sporting the shirt of their chosen Premiership team.
Beer is the first thing to be unpacked, the men then stand around a couple of Bar-B-Ques while the women smear unguents on the children and send them off. At any given time one of these children will be crying.

The trip home was uneventful. Fortunately. Found a place on the map south of Birmingham called Lickey End! This amused me all the way to Oxford.

Sorry it’s long.