Christmas Pot
Saturday, 19 December 2015
After a boring week of dissertation in Leeds I felt the need to escape. After an enjoyable evening at Richmond I got up at disgustingly early 7 o’clock to get the train out the dales. Unfortunately I was running late and didn’t have time to have a poo at my house; ‘I’ll just go on the train’ I thought. Mistake.
I arrived at the station after several near misses and sat down to clench and wait for my train. The train arrived and I got on it, all was well. I waited the obligatory 5 minutes for the train to start moving and went to the toilet. Bollocks. There was no toilet roll. Further investigations revealed that the conductor didn’t have any and there was no newspaper either. Fuck… I did not have any tissues (when does anyone NEED tissues…) despite having considered picking some up when I left the house.
The choice was clear; Northern caves (2) or clothing. Fortunately there are several advert pages in NC2 (towards the back), unfortunately these are on very thick, high quality (smearey) paper. Fortunately the tap did work and there was soap to thoroughly wash my hands with.
After this the journey was uneventful, the walk from the station to Clapham was fantastic, it was great to be out of the house; in the beautiful dales! As I had an hour to spare I sat by the river and ate breakfast, making friends with a small dog and amazing several families with my legs. “Look at him…he’s wearing shorts” (oh really…).
People arrived and after the annoyingly long walk up we arrived, rigging was faffy with dubious rope lengths; more time to sit on the surface and contemplate chips. After a while we got to head down but didn’t do the final part of grange rigg due to not having the right ropes and (some peoples) worries over water. This did lead to a rather interesting interrogation; ‘what have you ever done for the human race’; I’m still not sure why I was asked this, I think it had something to do with rope lengths and climbing pitchs. In the section we did get to though there were some rather nice pretties, with the way on being down a pitch that was not particularly free climbable.
After a quick exit we all headed down via the scenic route along the ridge (East of trow gill?) for a drink in Clapham bunk barn.
Cheers to red rose people for letting me come and to Becka for giving me a lift.