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At first a brief introduction as to how this trip came about, while we were in the Yorkshire Dales we met up with Southampton University Walking Club and came up with the idea to do a joint walk, and after several e-mails the weekend and destination was set, mainly by Southampton, who planned all the routes and everything. This is an idea that myself and Phil think could really catch on with the society. If the committee can outsource all the organising we will have a lot easier job.
We got the numbers sorted out very close to the trip and transport organised, this was not the easiest job as that weekend me, Phil and Hugh were meant to be going to Ipswich to an ex-committee members house warming, so my car wasn't returning to Oxford after the walk.
On the day of the walk, numbers dropped to the point that we only needed my car for the Ipswich guys ad Jon's car for the others. The pick ups didn't go to plan as my car got blocked in where it was parked overnight in Cowley, and then Hugh wasn't very fast getting ready. Jon had a few more minor issues but we met up at Avrils. In all there were eight of us, Me (Adders, Chairman), Jon Parmee (President), Gwen James (Vice President), Philipp Schmidinger (Minister of Happiness, First Aid Officer), Hugh Prior, Avril Anson, Sagan Friant and Lauren Beard.
We eventually got set off after me and Hugh had got the Satellite navigation system set to English rather than having it giving us all the directions in German, and then Jon took a wrong turning just outside Oxford, but it all adds to the experience.
We got down to Dorset fairly easily, with just a stop for pack lunches (as we all know, Phil won't make his own packed lunch, he just buys something) and fuel for Jon's car. When we got to Dorset, there was a little confusion about starting places, but these things happen. We got parked up at Corfe Castle and started the walk.
At first there was a definite divide between the two clubs. Southampton Walking Club were striding off ahead, while the not quite so fit OBSU Mountaineering Society were about twenty metres behind, with Jon, Phil and Hugh somewhere behind that. As we started the footpath walking we all met up and started walking together. This lead to both clubs starting to mingle(with a hint of Bendix). The path that Southampton had chosen was nice and well planned, although the one thing that cannot be planned is the weather and the weather had not been brilliant the days running up to the trip and this meant that some of the paths were a little muddy and in some cases slippery, I managed to nearly slip into a bramble bush early on, which working on the basis that everyone nearly falls over once on a walk, I was glad I got the fall over and done with before we got to the cliffs, though that could have been entertaining and the ultimate rush (Yes, I'm into extreme sports and regularly throw myself off a crane, attached to a piece of bungee rope, also known as bungee jumping). We weren't lucky enough to have a full day without rain though as less that an hour into the walk it started spitting with rain, ten it started raining more, oh well, out with the coats and on with the walk. We stopped for everyone else to catch up, which given that the people that we were short were Hugh and Phil, we were waiting a while. I remember looking back and seeing Phil staring at a bush and Hugh couldn't be seen, he was probably in the bush, the next thing we knew Phil dropped in on the group from a bank to the side of us, and when I say he dropped in, he literally dropped in, what a way to show off and introduce yourself.
We carried on along the country paths till we reached the coast, this was to be our lunch break, a great place with a great view. We got a few photos, when Gwen found someone to get up and take the photos, she managed to get hold of a camera to take the photos really easily, thanks Lauren, but she was struggling to persuade anyone to take the photos, even though there was someone stood in the perfect position, so I ended up taking the photo. This obviously inspired Hugh to start taking plenty of photos, including one of me popping off for a bit of privacy. On my return we took the group photos, including some random point photos and one where you had to imagine that something was falling from the sky(as often happens on the Jurassic Coast of Dorset).

After lunch we started on the next stage of the walk, this took us along the coastal cliffs, but first, we had a small steep uphill section, which nearly killed us, but it was over quickly. We had to have another break at the top of the uphill section to recover, however this lead to a divide forming between the clubs again as we needed more time to recover than Southampton, and then when we started to walk again we explored some of the ledges, and looking at some of Hugh's photos we almost lost Phil. We continued along the cliff tops for a while, between open fields and the sea. This gave a chance for Phil to show us why his facebook profile says that his relationship status is complicated as Phil was trying to attract the sheep that were on the cliff top, well, every man to his own, sorry Phil, I may have just spoilt any opportunity for you to pull any society members that read this.

Further along, the path led us away from the cliff and into slightly wooded surroundings. Most people entered the woods by opening the gate and walking through it, Jon on the other hand climbed through the gap in the fence, I tried, but unfortunately I tried feet first and got as far as my arse, I blame my mum, I get the big arse from her. We found part of the forest sign posted “Private Property, No Trespassing”, as anyone who has known the club in the past few years, knows that we don't take much notice of rules. With this in mind, I decided to give in to my rebellious streak and cross the fence, it was nearly a very bad move as I slipped when I was climbing over and nearly did some serious damage for my later life.
We carried on and were soon back on the road, in a small village. This is the point where we learnt that Jon had just looked at Hugh's photos of the Lake District last year, where Hugh got some photos of Maddy stood at the bottom of the hill and put her hand on the top, its all done using perspective. In this case, we got photos of Jon and a member of Southampton University Walking Club leaning against a church.

From here we started along some paths behind the building, I nearly acquired a traffic cone on route, but decided that taking it would be wrong, or to put it more accurately, I couldn't be bothered to carry it. There was a little mistake made on these paths, Southampton had navigated us through all the woods and coast fine, but took a wrong turning in the town. We carried on into yet another wooded area, this one looked like being more fun though as just off the path there was a tree house. This was enough to excite me, as I ran to it, but as I got to the tree, there was a gun shot. Don't start celebrating yet, it neither hit me, or was aimed at me, it was enough to scare me away from the tree. The shooting was actually taking place in a nearby field, which was rather worrying, firstly because they seemed to start firing when we got into the area, and secondly because Phil seemed to know a lot about the type of shooting that was being done and even some details about the guns, just from the sound of the shots, always stay on the right side of Phil, its scary how much he knows about killing (that includes killing minibuses), and how little we all trust him. Phil showed us his powers of disguise by trying to blend in with the surroundings, however he's not particularly good at it though as he was trying to disguise himself as a sloth, which aren't that common in Dorset, plus Phil's disguise was just him hanging from a tree branch. A random fact about Sloth's that we were told on the trip, apparently, though they are possibly the laziest creatures in the world, after students, Sloth's will always go down the tree to go to the loo, see our trips are educational.
We continued back to Corfe Castle, after a few more photos, this time of Sagan walking through a gate and then Sagan picking up Corfe Castle. As we got close to the castle our luck roved that it couldn't quite hold out and it started to rain again, but we were nearly back at the start.
When we got back to Corfe Castle we followed our natural student instinct and went to the pub, well most of us went to the pub, Gwen decided she wanted to go to the model village, she didn't stay there though as they charged an admission fee, and as we all know, we students don't like paying for stuff, unless its alcoholic. The pub was half filled by all of us as we walked in, but it was just my luck that as I was driving after this, we'd gone to a pub with a wide range of ciders. There was Stowford Press (a very nice cider from the West Country), some Scrumpy Cider and a Cider punch on the brew. Everyone enjoyed a few drinks and some even took my recommendations on the range of Ciders. From here me, Phil and Hugh were heading off to near Ipswich to see an ex member. Before we left the pub we did try, and nearly persuaded Sagan to join us, even though she'd never met the ex-member we were gonna see. The pub in Corf Castle did not serve food, so the decision was taken to head to a pub in Wareham for some food. We were just going to run some people down there and then head off, but we ended up popping in for a quick pint, they had some nice Scrumpy cider there as well, but I still couldn't drink. Me, Phil and Hugh headed off after a pint, while the rest of the group found out that this pub didn't serve food either, so they headed off to a pub near Winchester, where Jon is from. They called Jon's parents to join them at the pub, but then found out that the pub in Winchester didn't do food, you may be starting to see a theme appearing here. As there was no food available, Jon's parents invited everyone round for a meal as apparently they'd cooked enough food for all of them, even though they were only intending there to be the two of them. Quite a big day for Gwen, finally meeting the potential future in-laws.
Altogether it was a great day, and its great to get to know a fellow university walking club. Hopefully we'll get chance to repay them, by organising a walk near Oxford, possibly around the Cotswold's.

The Jolly to Ipswich

We started out on the journey to Ipswich a little bit later than originally planned, well two hours later, and nearly with an extra person, but Phil and Hugh didn't quite manage to persuade Sagan to come along in the end. We were hoping to have Rachel with us as well, but she decided to go to her sisters instead, poor show Rachel (that's ginger Rachel, not Social Secretary Rachel). We started out well, with a few stops on the way to the M25, mainly for toilet stops as both Phil and Hugh had had three pints at this point. We even had to make a special stop near Chessington World of Adventure Theme Park because Phil had to have a comfort break. This comfort break was not ideally timed as there were no service stations nearby, so we had to find a quiet place. In this case we found the end of a private road, which in mid flow we actually found out was a police dog training facility, we learnt this when all the security lights came on. Anyway we carried on around the M25, with Phil asleep in the back, he'd got all the sleeping bags and pillows and made a nice comfy bed/boudoir in the back, and Hugh was asleep in the passenger seat. I ended up driving through the Dartford tunnel, quite conveniently as there is a toll to pay, so they got out of paying that. Just after the Dartford tunnel we found a people carrier that had DVD screens in the back, they were showing “Robots”, which was great, we stayed alongside them for quite a while, I could have just done with them opening the window so that I could hear the film as well as watch it. This has given us the idea for a great entertainment in the minibus, Karaoke, how cool would that be, doing Karaoke in the minibus up to Scotland, though we usually have singing drivers when me and Al are driving anyway. We made good time for the rest of the journey, but found out when we got close to Ipswich that they had just found a dead body nearby (This was the start of a Jack the Ripper style Serial Killer, quite what he had against cereals I don't know, obviously preferred toast in a morning), this did actually really excite Phil, as if he'd just got a new hero to aspire to.
We arrived at Al's to be greeted by a fondue meal, it wasn't quite finished, it just needed a dash of gin to finish it, that's a student dash, also known as half a bottle. The kitchen was amazing, it had some light switches that were so cool, you just had to wave your hand near them and they dimmed the lights. The kitchen did have one problem, in that there wasn't enough chairs for the five of us so one of us was gonna have to either sit on someone's lap, or sit on the bin, I chose the bin. This was OK, except for being a bit too high, on the plus side every time anyone had to put anything in the bin, I got spanked by the bin lid. An alcoholic fondue and a good spanking, the makings of a great evening. After our fondue we had a quick tour round the garden before popping down the local pub for a few drinks.
On the way back to Al and Maddy's from the pub we spotted some roadworks, with signs and barriers. As all good students know, its a necessity to move or acquire these. I picked up a barrier that looked spare, but Maddy,who has obviously been away from student life too long, told me to put it down, and surprisingly I did. Phil however then decided to pick up a road sign and move it into the middle of the closed road, Phil then turned round to see a car just behind him, unfortunately the car was a police car with two coppers stepping out of it. They took Phil to one side and warned him that it is an offence to move signs and they could arrest him there and then for it. They didn't arrest him, they just gave him a warning. We have since found out that the police have circulated leaflets asking for information about the anti-social behaviour of that night. We got back to the house and had a few more drinks (that Al and Maddy bought for us) and watch some Black Adder, before bedding down for the night. Me and Hugh were in the lounge, while Phil was in the kitchen as we all know he snores and he didn't want to disturb us.

The following morning we didn't get started very early and when we did get up we were walking round Phil who was still lying on the kitchen floor. Our original plan was to pop to the pub for a fried breakfast, which we saw they were doing the night before, however after a bit of discussion we decided that we would pop to the Co-op and buy the stuff for a fry up and then fry it ourselves. As the breakfast at the pub was gonna cost us £3 each we decided that we could have a budget of £15 for the breakfast, though we ended up spending nearer £25 including drinks. The extra money was worth it as we all knuckled down and cooked a huge breakfast of bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, eggy bread (something that we need to have more of on trips), beans, mushrooms, fried bread and hash browns. During breakfast Phil brought up the subject that if un-cooked eggs were eaten, would the chick still develop inside the persons stomach. If this is the case Phil could have eaten an un-cooked egg and then some weeks later he would be shitting out chicks, we decided that we could charge people to watch this. The problem with this plan could be if the eggs had a negative effect and caused Phil to get worms, then he'd be shitting tape worms, just a little bit less cute than chicks.
After breakfast Phil, Hugh and Al started on the washing up while me and Maddy had to go and collect Al and Maddy's bikes, which they had left at a random house in the area that was restricted due to the discovery of the murdered prostitute. When we gotto the house where the bikes had been left we found out that the evening before Al and Maddy had been really security concious and locked the bikes together, and then today Maddy had forgotten the key, so we had to fit two bikes in the back of my car that are locked together and need spanners to remove the wheels. We managed to get them in and back to the house, but by this time it was starting to get close to dusk so we left straight away for a small walk.
We walked past Al's workplace and then along the river, before coming back through the town centre. On the way through we found a great business opportunity for Maddy. There was a Threshers Wine shop franchise available. If Maddy took this she could be self employed and potentially this could a good money maker, not to mention, it could be very good for us as we could get “Mates Rate” discount. This is a new discount that we would introduce on Maddy's behalf.
We had a spot of food and watched some “Little Red Tractor” (a cartoon aimed at primary school children). We had the same problem with there not being enough chairs so Al had to sit on the bin, but he decided to sit in the fireplace (There was no fire there obviously), this lead to a challenge of “how many people can fit in the fireplace”, we had a similar challenge while I worked over in France, except this was “How many people we could fit in the old bread oven”, our record was twenty, which included staff and teachers that were visiting.
After our food we loaded up the car, Phil made his bed up in the back of the car again and we headed off back to Oxford. We had a good journey, with an essential stop at South Mimms Service Station, which as anyone from the East of England will tell you, is a regular stop when going to London or further South, in fact at one point it seemed to be a stop that was made, no matter where you were going. We got back to Oxford at about 10pm, in time for a drink at the bar, for those who wanted it.

Adders

Chairman and Alumni Officer
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OBSU Mountaineering Societ