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Photo Gallerys... Report... Guess what, you lucky people have got me writing this trip report again. Me and Phil had to come on this trip after the little disasters that happened on the last trip while we weren’t there, I’d have much preferred to be on the last trip but unfortunately I had a re-take and it probably wouldn’t be the best idea less than a week after my accident. This report is gonna start not at the start of the trip but the night before at the sports awards where we were nominated for the best outdoor pursuits award. Most of us met at Mocha’s flat at 5:45, some of us having already had some drinks, in my case it was 2 pints of Strongbow at Morals and a glass of Pimms (WARNING, Pimms has been known to cause serious bleeding from the head in very rare occasions, trust me it has happened and it hurts) at the sports bar on route to Mocha’s. I arrived there to find Al, Maddy, Stu and Rach enjoying a bottle of wine, with Mocha playing with her rope. We got ready to go, but Mocha’s mum wouldn’t let her come out with us. We got to the sports centre by 6:15 and met Dan who was late, just for a change. We were greeted by another glass of Pimms. There were group photos taken (ours was pretty much the smallest group there so we had to nab some climbers to get a decent number of people in the photo, plus we really wanted Cat in the photo as she was HOT in her sexy black prom dress (if your Cats boyfriend reading this, Dan told me she was hot, I wasn’t staring at her for long periods of time or anything like that)).
We then made our way into the marquee in the sports hall for the meal, we had the pleasure of a nicely laid out table with balloons (2 of which would end up being released during the speeches and 1 ended up tried to the back of my trousers, just so no one lost me) a bottle of white wine, a bottle of red wine and prawn cocktails for everyone. The wine was shared out evenly, 5 people had a glass of red wine and I had the bottle of white wine as there was only me who liked white wine. The prawn cocktail went down excellently with everyone; even Maddy (the supposed vegetarian) wolfed the dish down (and the prawn cocktail on it of course). After the starter, we were approached by a girl who wanted to know what fell walking was, she seemed to think we walked off cliffs or summin. The main course was real posh a la carte, it consisted of a little piece of meat (dunno what meat it was) and some veg. (again can’t quite remember what veg. there was). The main course went down well, not to mention really fast, 1 mouth full and it was gone. After the main course there was chance to stock up on wine, 2 bottles of red for the 5 red wine drinkers to share and a bottle of white for me. Maddy managed to continue her habit of decorating the table cloth at meals as she knocked her wine over again (she knocked her wine over while we were in Scotland, most of it ended up going on me in Scotland). There was also some inter-club chatting and club sign swapping, We were approached by 2 attractive girls from the hockey club who wanted to swap our fell walking sign for their hockey sign, and of course me, Al and Dan immediately agreed, they stayed and chatted to us to find out what fell walking was exactly, we must had made it sound good as I’d nearly got one of the girls persuaded to go on the Lake District trip, I was told I had to go to Clementine’s after the awards by one of them (I never went, I had other things on my mind at the end of the sports awards). Then I think we had the speeches and the presentations, usual boring formal stuff. As far as I remember the sub aqua club received the outdoor pursuits club of the year award, though I do remember Al making a speech, but I think that was when he was presented with his desert. During the speeches 2 of the balloons were released and Dan was gonna be paid to stand on his chair and shout at the head of the sports centre. At the front of the hall we could see our sign being waved. The desert was fruit cocktail and crème, which was also very good and was a decent sized portion. This is about the point when Al’s memory gave up. During the desert the Kaiser (Phil) arrived in a really posh suit and an amazing hat. On finishing the desert Dan pulled out a cigar, everyone on the table stood up and we started smoking the cigar in the middle of the sports hall, we did move outside soon after.
After getting another drink we headed back into the sports hall, where the disco was going on, there were several people dancing, then we all started dancing, and the people who were dancing before we got there went to the bar. Could this just be a coincidence or were they driven away by something, it could have been the need for a drink that made them leave the dance floor, it could have the fact that the disco wasn’t brilliant, or it may be that they were scared away when the president of a little known sports club went topless (and he doesn’t remember it). As the disco drew to a close Al decided that he fancied some of his special brew, so he got a wine bottle and started collecting the dregs of every glass and bottle in the hall and mixing them all up, it all went in, wine, bitter, spirits, lager, everything. He then stood happily drinking this minging concoction, until the Kaiser stopped him and took his bottle away from him. In the meantime Dan had decided to pick an argument with 1 of the senior people at the sports centre over why the rowing club get to use the 4 wheel drive and we don’t, well done Dan, he ain’t gonna let us use it now. This is about the point that my memory becomes very hit and miss. I don’t actually remember what we did now, or when we left. Apparently Al, the Kaiser, Dan, Maddy and Rach went back to the Kaiser’s to do some fencing (that’s sword fighting, they didn’t erect a fence) and Al had a rather random shower. I, on the other hand decided that I fancied a Chinese meal, as you do after 2 glasses of Pimms, 2 bottles of wine and about 5 pints of Strongbow, so I set of to Headington to find a Chinese take away, I then went to Marston and finally to Cowley to find an open Chinese takeaway, I didn’t find 1 though. On the way back down cuckoo lane I met Dan coming home from the Kaisers, he was off to get attacked in front of a security guard outside Cheney Student Village. Altogether a very successful night and well worth the £20 for a ticket. Apologies if I missed anything out; I was a bit drunk that night as most of you might have guessed. The next part of the report is about the trip itself. We were meant to arrive between 8 and 9 am to be off by 9:15am and some people actually believed that we would keep to these times, Ha. Viola arrived at the centre for sport at 8am, followed by Petter soon after. I was the next to arrive at 9:15 with my cider (I got my priorities sorted), cloths and bedding. Then I popped back for my tent, kit and water. I admit my stuff was very badly packed, but packing at 7am in the morning with a head that is in severe pain (from the inside this time) is not good. Dan arrived soon after me and rang Al to find out where he was, as he was meant to pick the minibus up at 8 and we were meant to have left by now. Al was still in bed and would have been asleep for longer had some inconsiderate lad not rung him. He made his way to the sports centre while Me, Petter and Dan went routing through the stores for some tents and cooking gear. Upon Al's arrival Me, Al and Viola took the minibus to load up at Al’s house and collect Rim (Al’s house mate) and Amy (Rim’s), while Dan and Petter went to try to wake Kaiser Phil up. On our arrival back at the sports centre there was no Dan, Petter or Phil to be seen, so Al phoned Dan and the message that he told us he’d got was that they’d had to drag Kaiser Phil out of bed and Petter was gonna have to carry him down to the sports centre with Dan carrying his stuff. Kaiser Phil seemed to be walking ok with his own kit when he arrived though. Then we just had to pick up Maddy and we were on our way there, with Al driving. At this early time in the morning Al would have been clearly over the limit to drive, maybe even still slightly pissed, which may have been worrying to some passengers, other road users and of course to the sports centre as he might cause an accident and damage the minibus, and possibly the passengers but they ain’t so important.
When we reached the Lake District we got a bit of a nasty shock as for some reason Al hadn’t booked us in at a campsite and there were rather a lot of people in the Lakes. All the campsites were full in the whole of the Lake District, what are the chances of that on a bank holiday with good weather. We decided that our only choice was to wild camp in the woods (after all Al’s already demonstrated that he is fairly wild in Scotland. We chose our spot, but couldn’t go set up camp until later so we popped into Ambleside to grab fish, sausage or Haggis and chips and a few supplies. We headed to our camping area which was a beautiful man made lake with a few little peninsulas in it. Petter found us a nice spot on 1 of the peninsulas and we set up camp. After setting up camp (which took about 10 seconds for Kaiser Phil, 2 minutes for me and over 5 minutes for everyone else) we had a battle with the rockets and The Kaiser got wet as Dan had not expected his emission to be quite so powerful, so The Kaiser had to go swimming to get it. I’m talking about the rocket here, Dan launched the rocket with too much power and it landed in the lake/reservoir, then the Kaiser had to swim out to fetch it, naked. Petter, the real hard core ex Norwegian army member of the fell walking group managed to surprise us all as he pulled out a large air bed and a large pump and stood there for 5 minutes pumping up this air bed so he could be really comfortable in his tent. Some of us had a bit of a walk and then the few hardcore members left up gathered round Slug Man (better known as Kaiser Phil) for some staring at Rim’s Egg (Rim has an egg light that glows different colours, we weren’t just sat staring at an egg which Rim had brought with him or laid there). We soon all retired to our tents, except Slug Man who just closed his eyes where he was lying by the lake side in his sleeping bag and fell asleep. The following morning was an early start at 7am (yes, that time does exist) so we could get tents down and get back to the minibus before we were caught, There was time for Rim to have a dip and us to have a quick battle though. We got back to the minibus, had some food and pack our stuff for the days hike. We then had another little rocket battle and got a rocket stuck in a tree, but thanks to Al’s ingenuity he got it down, by chucking a sleeping bag into the tree to dislodge it, we nearly got the sleeping bag stuck but who cares, as long as we got our rocket back. We then headed to Glenridding where we would start our 2 walks for the day. Before starting the walks we did a bit of shopping in the village and used the toilets as the toilets at our camp didn’t amount to much (there was a choice of trees, that was it). We started out on our first supposedly really gnarly walk with Al leading the way. We arrived at our destination really quickly. Al had brought us to what he obviously considered to be a local beauty spot, we looked back and we could see the minibus. The minibus was about 100m away in the car park next door to the local pumping station where he’d led us. We headed back to the minibus and started to climb in, but we were soon stopped and told that he’d got another gnarly walk to do. We accepted, half expecting him to take us to the local electricity sub-station or summin, but he’d got help navigating now from Aiden and we were actually heading for Helvellyn, the 3rd highest mountain in the Lake District at 3118 feet, just 92 feet less that Scafell Pike.
The 1st part of the route was a steady incline on road, followed by steeper steps up to a dry stone wall where the steps stopped and we debated having a 1st lunch, but decided to press on to the Hole in the Wall. The hike up to the Hole in the Wall was steep with no steps, this was no match for us though and we made our way up at a decent pace. We did have a debate half way up as people wanted to stop and eat, but this was soon sorted as a bloke on his way down mentioned that there were bacon butties for sale at the top, and Al had supposedly been told that there was Strongbow up there too, so for a while the rest of the group got to follow the Adders shaped blur. We got to the Hole in the Wall and found a decent place to eat. Lunch was fairly long and leisurely, too long and leisurely for Petter as he walked off to carry on before the rest of us had finished. The next part of the hike was flat for a while before going along Striding Edge, which is a narrowish path along sticking up rock (Very Gnarly). During the hike over Striding Edge Al and Maddy got to hear my philosophy of death: “Death ain’t so bad, you get a long lie down, no stress, cheap rent, you are guaranteed to lose weight without trying and you get flowers brought to you”. The last part of the hike to the top is a scramble up a hundred or so feet to the plateau at the summit. This was fairly nackering on the legs, but the thought of Bacon Butties kept us going. Once at the top we got our priorities right, Al had a fag and me and Viola had a bacon butty each. We then made our way to the trig point for a photo and then started our decent down Swirral Edge, truly breathtaking. We had time to quickly hike up to a nearby summit. On the way down Phil had the sudden erge to try fell rolling down the slope. Not to be out done, me and Maddy started fell running down the slope, this was great fun running down, gaining speed, dodging the rocks on the way down until you find you need to stop because there’s a steep slope ahead, we did manage to stop in time, but only just. The rest of the hike down was fairly easy, gently sloping paths near a stream, we took this opportunity to have a game of Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Concept or product. The 2 extra categories were added to accommodate the extra things Kaiser Phil thought of and to accommodate us describing our favourite things in the world. My favourite thing was cider, Kaiser Phil’s was <word censored>. Al didn’t do his favourite thing though as he chose beer, everyone knows Al prefers Guinness to beer, and of course Maddy will be on top of his list of favourite things. We got to the bottom of the path where we found a half empty camp site who wouldn’t accept us for the night so we made our way back to the minibus.
We headed up to Keswick to get some pizza for tea as we would be wild camping again. While the pizzas were cooking we had enough time for a quick look round the town. Once we’d got our pizza’s we found a nice piece of grass to eat them, unfortunately it wasn’t a very peaceful meal as the local youth lads were riding up and down on their bikes and wanted to know exactly what was on our pizza’s. We got the chance to try persuading Maddy to eat meat. Al had the first attempt by handing Maddy the chicken pizza, claiming it was vegetable pizza; she didn’t fall for it though. Dan then tried talking her into eating meat and succeeded in getting Maddy to admit that if she could keep the animals and kill them herself, she would eat them. We then got told how Dan had come home from school 1 day to his parents farm to find all his pets in the fridge, don’t worry, his pets were farm animals, his parents hadn’t actually killed and refrigerated Fluffy the cat, Rover the dog and Killer his favourite goldfish. After the pizza we headed to a local forest where we were planning to wild camp for the night. To our horror the forestry commission had done some logging in the area and the spot where we were gonna camp was now very exposed and obvious from the road, thankfully we were able to release our secret weapon Petter, who with the help of his army training was able to find a nice spot to camp. The spot was lovely and shaded, but didn’t have any water to skinny dip in. We set up camp before it got dark and settled down for a nice relaxing evening. Kaiser Phil (Slug Man) had decided to kip in a tent tonight so he moved in with me. We did very little during the evening other than sit and talk with a little drink and a snout for those who wanted 1. There was also a lot of staring at Rim‘s magical egg which changes colour, it’s so cool. Most of us were in bed early tonight, except Kaiser Phil and President Al, who had decided to launch an attack on the enemy’s (forest ranger’s) headquarters so that they were able to claim the forest as part of the Oxford Brookes Fell Walker’s Empire.
The following morning was a later start than expected as people didn’t get up too early, obviously. Dan broke with the norm and invented a new morning greeting, where as most of us say “Good Morning”, Dan’s first words to us as he stepped out of his tent were “The Norwegian was cold”, bear in mind that Norway is home to Lapland where they are near enough guaranteed snow when you travel on a reindeer pulled sleigh to see Santa Claus. Me and Petter managed to get up and moving in good time and even made a trip to the minibus before some of the group were even awake. We got up and away before we were noticed, but there were people using the forest when we took the stuff back to the minibus, which made things more difficult. We headed off to the Mickelden Valley where we had breakfast, when Al eventually found the car park. From the car park we split up into 2 groups, Aiden in 1 and the rest of us in the other. Aiden was going on a really gnarly hike, while we were taking a more leisurely route. We started off with Al navigating our party, and before we’d even got out of sight of the car park he was trying to tell us that we were meant to walk straight through some blokes yard, rather than follow the public footpath sign right next to it (we really ort to start worrying about Al’s navigation skills, especially as he’s taking us up the Alps, put the St. Bernard’s on stand by, fill the barrels with Cider though, instead of whisky). We were making a fairly good pace on the hike until we found a gorgeous little water fall and pool in the river, which was just calling out “Come on in you gorgeous hunky men”, so obviously Maddy, me, Al, Rim and Kaiser Phil had to go for a swim, we kept our vital’s covered though. That took up at least a quarter of an hour, and then we had to get dried off. The rest of the accent to the dinner spot half way up was fairly easy going, and interesting for others as those of us who went swimming now looked like we’d pissed ourselves (Sorry, we left our incontinence pants at home). There were a few steep steps up to the lunch spot but nothing too challenging for us gnarly fell walkers. At the lunch point Dan had a surprise for us; he’d bought us all a lolly pop, int that nice of him. From here we split up even more, Petter and Kaiser Phil went steaming off ahead to try to get all the way round the hill, then Dan took Viola, they were closely followed by Rim and Amy, then Maddy left us and finally 5 minutes later once me and Al had realised that everyone had left us and we were all alone in the big scary picnic spot we headed up. We didn’t get that far up though before we stopped for a rest and a photo before turning round and heading down. On the way down there were several random conversations, like my idea that each hill and mountain should have a zip wire coming from the top to the base, how cool would that be? There was great interest in my conversation with the nurse, sorry I mean doctor in the hospital after my accident. If you ever want to upset a doctor, call her a fit nurse, I do have the excuse that I had been drinking, I’d had a rather bad blow to the head and I’d lost about 2 pints of blood though my head injury. Anyway, the doctor had insulted me and the guy bringing me in when she said she though we were gay, can’t 2 guys walk into an accident and emergency department together dressed all in pink without being gay. There was 1 worrying comment from Al, when he said we should all have little mini versions of the fell walkers, thankfully he was taking about models, he wasn’t expecting us to have little sprogs, else we’d have to change the name of the club to the fell pram pushing group. It wouldn’t be so bad though, we’d have some meat for meals, as long as we ate them by candle light, with silver cutlery, and Maddy would be able to join in as she’d have raised 1 of them and she could kill them herself, therefore she could eat their meat. We managed to decide on the models for several of the fell walkers, Petter would be an egg with a face on it wearing an grey top with army on it, Helene would be a daffodil, Himhe and Akime would be a glaciated rock, Kaiser Phil would be <word censored>, I’d be a can of Strongbow and as for Dan, well we just couldn’t decide. We got nearly to the waterfall and pool when we saw 2 figures coming over the hill top, it was Petter and Kaiser Phil near enough running round. At the pool we had more swimming but this time there was only Viola, Amy and Rim in, under the watchful eye of Kaiser Phil. Petter had gone ahead to re-pack the minibus. Al was told soon after to head back to the minibus and help Petter and he could take this fit lad, pointing at me (I really worry about Dan sometimes).
We got back to the minibus to find Petter coping perfectly fine, he’d even found Aiden. We got packed fairly quickly and started the long journey home. Kaiser Phil took the first turn of driving and managed to get told off by Daddy Petter for driving erratically. We made it home with the minimum of stops and then started the tour of Oxford dropping everyone off. This was a fantastic trip and 1 which has broken no end of fell walking records, including the least spent on accommodation, the least cider drunk (I kinda, overdid it at the sports awards just previous), the first time lager has been the most consumed drink while I’ve been on the trips, the earliest nights, the earliest mornings, the most late comers at the departure, the most un fit to drive drivers (Saturday morning) and last but not least the least cooking. And especially for Al, the most snow ever on a trip in England, no one else hiked through it, but apparently it was a lot like the summit of Ben Nevis, I reckon he just spent the day walking round the local ice skating rink. We even managed to keep up the tradition of 1 person sleeping in a strange place, in north Yorkshire it was Petter sleeping on the sofa under the cushions with a heater, in Wales it was Al sleeping in the minibus after discovering his sleeping bag was wet inside, in Scotland it was me on the sofa, in Wales the second time it was Al on the bench in the communal room and in the Lake District it was Kaiser Phil kipping outside by the waters edge. Who will it be in France, place your bets now. I feel it only right to finish with some famous words of hope: GO ENGLAND!!!
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