It's a mini adVenture
Howdy. I'm back from the Peak District, very tired and very muddy.
Twas a lot of fun. I almost didn't get there though after forgetting my Young Person's Railcard and getting my mum to bring it to the station for me! (and then the ticket inspectors decided collectively that they didn't want to see it anyway)
The hostel we stayed at was very nice with really good food as they had a 5 star chef! Friday evening was interesting with lots of ice breaker thingies, OUTSIDE at like 9pm, v cold but thankfully no weird Chinese Whispers.
Saturday we had to carry one of the VentureCo leaders (male, quite big) out of a field on a stretcher we had to fashion out of a bivvy bag and poles. As the Venture I'm going on consists of 8 girls and 2 guys, thst was interesting!
Then we had a trek up onto the hills which was ok except the top was basically made of peat bogs so there was much hilarity to be had with everyone falling over and getting completely covered in mud. I personally lost a boot (only temporarily thankfully)
After a lot of seminars on various parts of the Venture including what kit to get (the leaders were also saying how much things were likely to cost and I couldn't help muttering the cheaper Trespass prices to people around me. Shameless advertising I know, which I'm surprised I'm capable of after the um, staffing issues of the last 2 weeks but whatever).
Then we went to the pub in the evening which was a proper locals' pub so the bar staff insisted on IDing everyone who isn't local no matter how old they look!
Sunday morning was spent on bits of rope many metres up in the air. Obviously. They had this high wire rope thingy which was really high up so we had to clamber up poles and then edge along wobbly planks and swinging ropes and other such quite scary shenanigans and it was soooo cold, my fingers have never been so freezing. Apart from the cold it was actually quite fun.
So it was a pretty active weekend so I was so tired and looking forward to sleeping on the way home in between my 4 changes between buses and trains (damn Sundays). Worked out slightly differently though. I and some other people decided to get the train to Sheffield which left 2 hours earlier than we were originally going to as we were only going to miss lunch so we got a lift to the station and then waited there for ages. And ages. The station in question was Edale which is so tiny it doesn't even have any electronic boards so we had no idea what had happened to our train. Then someone from our group appeared who'd left an hour earlier to get to Cambridge for an interview tomorrow, saying that all trains from Edale had been cancelled. Just great. Thankfully a nice minibus turned up to take us so we got on that and had to swap to a coach a the next tiny station. This took us to Sheffield where we idly wondered into the station to find out when the next train to Birmingham was (my ticket said it was a train part way, then bus, then change at Brum to Chelters). Turned out there was a train to Birmingham just leaving so one of the guys legged it to that and managed to get them to wait for the rest fo us. So I got on this train with no seconds to spare (very efficient time keeping) and later discovered it was going straight to Cheltenham so I didn't have to change woooh! So the trains actually worked out better than expected after the start, I was so impressed!
Well that train anecdote was doubtless very boring, didn't think it would take so much space! I'm going to stop writing and go to bed, sooo tired. And I'm really not sure what's/who's going to be awaiting me at work tomorrow, it could be interesting. Into the abyss I go...
Night xxx