On Friday I enjoyed chicken bakes and cupcakes with Germa and we took a short walk on the path that leads into town, and then I suddenly realized that it was 4 already and rushed back to pack up my things before getting the mini-bus at 4:40. (My room is still in a post-tornado state, and I need to wash all of my clothes, but I don't have any extra pants to wear, which always makes for an interesting challenge, and I don't know what happened to my teaspoon, so I can't make myself lapsang souchong tea...but I find it is much more convenient to simply ignore all of these things and just push around the mountains of stuff on my desk.) I rushed to meet the mini bus, only to have it not show up until maybe 5, and then we packed up and embarked on the 6.5 hour journey to Roy Bridge. We stopped along the way at a place called Rollo's that deep fries EVERYTHING. I asked for "tomato sauce" (ketchup) on my chips (fries) and was at first disappointed to find that it actually did taste more like tomato sauce than ketchup, but I got over that quickly and decided that it was sufficiently tasty. The chicken in my chicken curry was made up of perfect cubes of chicken. Maybe in Scotland when you shred a roast chicken, it comes apart in rectangular cubes. I won't ask questions. Many people enjoyed deep fried Mars or Toffee Crisp bars. Later on I heard from Amy that they taste like pancakes with melted chocolate inside. Apparently actual chocolate chip pancakes have not yet been invented in the UK. Sometime while I am here I am going to organize a wonderful Sunday brunch of chocolate chip pancakes, stuffed croissant French toast, scrambled eggs, and thin crispy smoky bacon. These Brits don't know what they're missing.
When at last we arrived in Roy Bridge at 11:30, we went straight to the pub to enjoy drinks before the bar closed at 12. I tried some pear cider, which was very good. Then we went back to the campsite to set up the tents and go to bed. I wasn't very much help putting the tents together because I couldn't figure out how to put the batteries in my headtorch (here they do not say flashlights, they say torches, which is so much cooler) but there were plenty of other knowledgeable adept campers around so this was fine. At last at 2 I climbed into my sleeping bag, wrapped up in my pink fleece blanket and several layers of clothing and a hat, and...did not go to sleep. I think I did eventually sleep for no less than two and no more than five hours.
Now you get to enjoy pretty pictures instead of just reading. Yay! This is what I got to see when I woke up.
By the way this is the tent I slept in, which everyone took to referring to as the "palace."
I enjoyed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast and got ready to go hiking. This took me maybe 45 minutes but we didn't actually leave until another 45 minutes after that.
I have probably 100-150 beautiful pictures of the mountains. I adamantly refuse to upload these one by one. (If you are curious, just imagine whatever sort of land the Fellowship of the Ring trekked through in the first Lord of the Rings book.) Later today, I will put them all up on photobucket and make a slideshow so that you can actually see them. For now I'm just going to put up pictures with people in them so that anyone in them can put them on Facebook.
The mini bus!
We kept going through gates like these...only one person can walk through at a time, at that part on the left...I have no idea why they are designed this way.
Around here we split up into two groups - the insane people went off to stride across some mountain ridges and potentially cause avalanches, and the rest of us - me, Amy, Daphne, Mark, Darren, and Andy (at least I am 80% sure that was his name) - went on an "easy" walk.
IS IT REALLY SNOW?!?!?! Yes, it probably is. Time for a snow angel.
(Brits get very excited about small patches of snow, which I find slightly amusing, because in Colorado it takes at least 2 feet for us to get this excited about something to play in.)
What the hell, Darren will go ahead and make one as well. Time to rest after a snow angel well done.
A snowball fight could be merited as well.
We ate lunch in the "bothy." You can also apparently sleep here and leave empty bottles of alcohol sitting on the shelf.
"I hate river crossings." "Did that really count as a river?"
See that grass on the left? This resulted from hopping off of that grass into the snow.
Time for more snow angels!
More snowbank-hopping :-)
Amy takes a picture as the snow shines in the sunlight
But little does she know a snowball is heading straight for her
At this point Andy, Amy, Daphne, and Darren decided to climb this hill. You can see them if you look really closely.
Or if you employ the zoom on your camera.
Why didn't I go? BECAUSE FROM FAR AWAY, IT LOOKED LIKE THIS.
Mark and I frolicked in the snow instead.
"I've always wanted to make a snow hole."
Maybe it is actually a haggis burrow. (A haggis is a mysterious animal that scampers over the hillsides of Scotland. Very hard to spot, very easy to find deep-fried at fish and chips shops. Hmmmmm.)
See the haggis prints?
How deep does this @#$%ing snow go?
Quite comfy actually.
The snow hole grew deeper, and I could fit all the way inside it, and everyone else came back and had their picture taken in the snow hole. However, while everyone had climbed the mountain of Mordor, my toes had not been moving very much, and since my boots and socks were wet, my toes were FREEZING cold and I was in a very grumpy mood and refused to be bothered by taking any more pictures. I ended up changing my socks, and between doing that and starting to hike again, I started to feel much better and was cheerful again by the time we reached the mini bus.
Our group got back to the bus about an hour before the other group, so we sat and enjoyed various dried fruits as snacks. We tried to communicate with the other group using the walkie talkie things. It went something like this:
Mark and Andy: "Where are you?"
-----------------static-----------------
"We can't hear anything except static!"
-------sta-----------STATICSTATICSTATIC-------staaaaaatic-------------
"We're sending you text messages! Look at your damn cell phones!"
--STATIC!!!!--
It sounded kind of like something being censored...with static...instead of beeps...but anyway, we began to see a few head torches in the dark, so we waited around, and at last they appeared.
We went back and changed our clothes, and most people made their own food, but a few of us were feeling lazier so we went straight to the pub to enjoy dinner there. I had pork & leek bangers & mash. They were quite amazing.
After a Bailey's and hot chocolate (which was not nearly chocolatey enough), I purchased a pint of something or other. See it right in the middle?
See that fireplace? I put my boots in front of it so that they might actually dry out. But then they turned off the heat for some reason so they didn't fully dry.
Mark claimed the chocolate fudge cake wasn't fudgy enough. It did, however, appear to have chocolate ganache.
Darren tried the haddock and chips. He left one tiny bite of haddock on his plate, because it had some of the salad dressing touching it, and the salad dressing was a bit fishy...pun maybe intended.
Getting closer!
Almost there.
Hooray! I finished my first pint of beer. It wasn't that terribly bad.
After some Bailey's and a pint of beer, I was quite sleepy enough to go right to sleep when I got into my sleeping bag, which had, after all, been the goal.
More pictures of the next day (which was not very exciting in terms of photos) to come soon - I must go somewhere in a few minutes.
Much love!
-Julia
I think I know the kid in the middle of the "After a Bailey's and hot chocolate" picture. Or at least somebody who looks exactly like him.
ReplyDeleteDid you organize the trip yourselves? Did you bring a sleeping back to the UK with you? Because if you did you're a camping-geek. Which is okay, being from Colorado.
The only mountain in Israel where you can go skiing at certain of the year is currently completely dry. I'm going to stay with you and we will go camping. Tov.
Wow, awesome photos! Mind if I save them and use them to advertise what the Club gets up to in future?
ReplyDeleteThe huge gates are to stop deer getting through. Maybe it wasn't a river, but it was deep enough to be a risk of getting water in boots, which I know to be unpleasant, as you found!
Was that really your first British pint? There are so many better ones to try than were on offer there. Did you try their McEwans 80/-? That was lovely.
Glad you seemed to have a good weekend anyway,
Darren.