Spylaw
Not only is this an entry publicizing a day of events in my life but it’s also a personal reminder that I should avoid this abode of the dammed at all cost. The dingy domicile you see in the picture is better knows as Spylaw Cottage, a place expected to sustain anything but mortal life.
For yet another blisteringly hot weekend, I set off with my scout group from the Lordenshaw car park near the simonside hills to begin our walking weekend. We knew it was going to be hot and we knew we had a long way to walk, experience in this situation occurs often and always provides an important lesson to someone new to the scenario; the importance of water. In this sort of situation, the need to drink is second only to the importance of breathing. During high activity in hot conditions, the body sweats buckets. When you sweat buckets, you need to drink buckets and never begrudge the weight of water in a rucksack. These are simple and easy rules to follow but for some reason, our scouts thought it would be more fitting to full their rucksacks with monster munch and jolly ranchers, thus lacking in sufficient water.
Once having arrived at the cottage, the sense of impending doom is overwhelming as the big steel door swings open and the window boards are dropped to let a glimmer of sunlight touch upon the dank, feted walls. Revealing what was to provide a supposedly pleasant night’s sleep, Ben and I decided to erect a make-shift camp in the woods, each made up of a hammock and an improvised tarp.
