Well this has been a lengthy Bank Holiday Weekend and no mistake. Thursday 28th April: Witney for my sister's husband's birthday and to collect some Easter beer gifts (Wychwood, naturally). We played Pass The Parcel - the parcel soon bifurcated into two parcels which travelled in opposite directions, which I maintain should have happened multiple times, like Asteroids. There was Portal 2 on the giant projector, some tree-climbing and Rock Band. Apparently playing a musical instrument requires coordination. Amazing.
My sister and her husband were hosting a - I'll be honest - impractical number of people in their house. I ended up wedged down the side of some bed somewhere. I then spent the following day reading a little bit more of their copy of I Shall Wear Midnight which unexpectedly features the return of Eskarina Smith, last seen about 25 years ago in Equal Rites. Don't spoil the end, I'm not going to get there until I visit them at least a few more times.
After that and for the next few days was Chris' stag weekend. This was a lot more promising to approach than Ching's. I drove to Mike's house in Northwood - got lost a few times, no big deal. "Hey, that looks like Ruislip High Street, that's a good direction to go." Towards the end of this leg of the journey the oil warning light began to flicker and then light up when the car was at certain angles, although I was able to get to Mike's with no real problems. I caught him in the act of working on his project, a 1940s military Jeep which he is restoring. The vehicle is old, entertainingly simple and mechanical, made of harsh bare metal and with very little harmony or attention to safety. Something like 15 miles per gallon?
So I parked my car, and since I had surprised him by arriving an hour or two (two) early, I had time to look inside my car and find that it was leaking oil, although I still had plenty. We put a tray under it and I called for a mechanic who arrived about half an hour later and observed that the oil pressure switch - a relatively inexpensive component which I had never previously heard of - had begun leaking, although only when the engine was running. Most likely, the movement of the car had caused oil to spray over some of the rest of the interior. Of course, this was the day that Prince William and Kate Middleton got married, which meant it was a Bank Holiday, and almost nobody in the country was on the streets and almost nothing was open. So the plan became: leave my car where it was (which had been the plan to begin with), wait until we got back on Monday and handle the problem then. Crisis Deferred!
Mike packed and I moved my belongings into his car and then Chris and Julian arrived on foot from Northwood station. That made all four of us. We set out to the astoundingly large Watford Tesco to get groceries. On the way we passed a Halford's which looked like it was open so I left them to purchase provisions and walked back to see if they had the component I needed. They didn't, but the extremely helpful manager (who was one of only about three people actually present at the place, due to the Bank Holiday) ordered it for me. It would arrive either on Saturday (when we would be away in the Peak District), or on Tuesday, which would be about 36 hours after we got back, requiring me to make a nuisance of myself by staying at Mike's for a full two nights. Still, he put a note on the order to expedite it and so we would have to wait and see.
I got back to Tesco to discover that a monstrous quantity of breakfast and lunch had been purchased, as planned, including a whopping three dozen eggs. We crammed all of this on top of the existing belongings, bought diesel and drove north. We discussed matters arising from our various mathematical and engineering interests, fought with Mike's satnav and spent altogether too much time on the slow, slow A52.
The plan was hill walking in the Peak District and we were staying at the Old Post Office in Earl Sterndale near Buxton. I had been expecting something rustic similar to my last hill walking expedition many years ago when I was still attending secondary school, but it turned out to be a huge, impeccably decorated and furnished modern house with a beautiful garden and kitchen and so on. Obviously a lot of money had gone into the place. We arrived very shortly after the other car, driven by Chris' mathematical colleague Jack and also Rob, both of whom had come up from Cambridge. After some nominal unpacking we departed for central Buxton where we collected the seventh and final member of the party, Koki, who had arrived by train and who had, heroically, also brought beer.
We left the cars at the station (which was utterly deserted and whose Pay and Display machines were out of order due to renovations) and toddled off on foot for a curry at one of the Indian restaurants which we had spotted on the way up, namely the Indian Palace on the roundabout. Buxton is a beautiful town and I regret not being able to spend more time nearby. But I dislike curry - a character flaw which I have tried and failed to rectify - so I went for something embarrassingly English. Whichever way you look at it, we were served very slowly and our mains courses didn't turn up until an hour after we'd sat down. On the other hand, we did arrive quite late. And then we went home and made only a relatively small dent in the rather ambitious quantity of beer that we had brought with us.
*
The following day Mike - a Scout leader, among other things - and Koki cooked 15 of our 36 eggs along with an insane amount of sausages, beans, toast, tomatoes, beans and mushrooms, all of which (all of which) disappeared. Stuff was edible, yo. Maybe I've simply never had a full cooked breakfast done properly before now, I don't know. The process was military.
We drove south to Wetton. One of the first things that happened once we started walking was that I received a voicemail explaining that my oil switch had arrived. That would make life easier. Then, for starters, climbed a reasonably large hill and took a look around, passing through sheep pastures containing confused sheep whose noises sounded like a regular person pretending to be a sheep. I swear, these things can make a decent "m" sound when they go "mehhhhhhhh". We then went back and dropped down a little way and worked our way into Thor's Cave, a pretty impressive cave located inside the hill we had just climbed. The cave is tall and goes back and up a long way. It also stinks of charcoal; evidently people light fires up there on a regular basis. There's a secondary, narrower exit from the cave, but it drops off frighteningly precipitously and doesn't seem like a practical way out.
We have reason to believe that Thor himself never actually took physical possession of the cave in question. It was probably acquired by a subsidiary corporation operating on his behalf in the United Kingdom. In addition, we think "Thor's Cave" actually refers to a small divot in the rock just at the mouth of the larger cave. The rest is unnamed.
We descended into the valley of the mathematically-named Manifold River. We had seen the Manifold on the way in, but that was a different portion of it. Except in very wet circumstances, it seems that most of the river flows underground somehow, leaving dried-up rocks and plants above. We walked alongside the river for a mile or two, following the path of a historic narrow-gauge railway which had run along the same route between 1904 and 1934 (yes, a time-travelling train, delivering milk from 1904 to places of shortage in 1934, or something, make up your own joke). The railway was gone, replaced with a simple minor road and some really uninteresting bridges when it crossed the river bed from time to time.
After nabbing some ice cream on the way and passing a small tea shop, we veered left and climbed out of the valley again, a ruinous, knee-breaking climb which highlighted the lack of fitness present among the party (i.e. on my part). Once we cleared the treeline we wound up in a field which inexplicably had only one sheep in it, presumably for a good reason, and not be cause it had just escaped somehow. We sat at the top, overlooking the valley, and ate lunch.
We walked back in the direction we had come, staying at a reasonable altitude this time, thereby exposing ourselves to more wind (and substantial amounts of cattle) and losing track of the public trail we were supposed to be following. We had to hop a fence (cough) to get back onto it. Then we crossed another branch of the river again and made the even steeper and more exhausting climb up Beeston Tor, which is frankly nowhere near Beeston. There was a man climbing the cliff face. He did have a rope and a fellow at the top was holding the rope for him. I can only assume that he didn't fall and die during his ascent. At the top we had a more or less straight, flat walk back to Wetton, crossing relatively uninhabited pastures with rolling green fields reminiscent of (I'm a humongous geek) the final scenes of The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask, mercifully unspoilt by cow pats and/or sheep droppings.
Here's a question: what's it like to spend your entire life surrounded by food?
Back at the Old Post Office we formed a brisk line for much-needed showers and changed into formal clothes. This was the most inspired part of the trip: to go to a hotel in Buxton, and have the equivalent of a Corpus Formal Hall in one of their function rooms. Hence, bringing suits and shoes with us. We played boules on a gravel area at the rear of the house, and sipped gin and tonic while waiting for the designated time when taxis would arrive. Apparently one taxi hit 90mph in a 60mph zone on the way up from Earl Sterndale to Buxton. That's "Allied Taxis": 90mph in a 60mph zone. Just for your information.
The table in the function room was a lot larger than we were used to (it could have comfortably sat 14 people rather than the 7 that we numbered). That provided us with leg room and elbow room and made pennying a difficult and skillful proposition. Also, the food was substantially nicer than Corpus Formal has traditionally been. We were tempted to send the menus back and simply ask for "lousy brown onion water". Three courses, plus a decent amount of wine. And the wine itself was thoroughly decent. The quality of wine at one's formal dinner makes a makes a very important distinction between a mere booze-up and a decent night out. It makes a difference to your hangover.
We taxied back home. Having had so much wine earlier, it was not possible to drink any further beer. So Rob, Julian, Koki and possibly others used a frankly monstrous plastic vat to mix up some patented Compsci Punch, whose recipe is classified, but which certainly involves at least four boxes of cranberry juice, an entire bottle of vodka, some port and enough limes to assault the Houses of Parliament. It was not, in actuality, as potent and alcoholic as it sounds on paper. Nevertheless, you would not drink a vat of it. We had a glass each lined up, and then we played Mao.
Blissfully, we played with the "no talking" rule temporarily not in place. New rules introduced for this game included "When you play a 3, you have to make a move in Jenga as well", "When you play a 5, take the Sceptre of Power [a Tetley's Bitter beer pump handle that Chris had had to carry all weekend]", "When you play a 2, direction of play reverses and jumps forward by two", "All new rules are now null and void", "When you play a heart, you have to say 'Malkovich' the same number of times as there are hearts at the top of the pile" and "When you play an even-numbered card, you have to drink and also tell somebody else to drink". The latter rule was introduced by Julian quite late in the game. When it was introduced, plenty of people forgot to invoke it (in fact most of us couldn't even figure out when it was supposed to be invoked). So, invariably, when Julian said "Failure to drink and allocate" to someone, the "allocation" would be assigned to Julian. Backfire!
This game went on for quite some time, long enough for us to realise that one thing that Mao does lack is a victory condition or termination point of any kind.
I called it quits and went to bed at three. I was first to do so.
Now here's the great thing about good wine and questionable-shading-to-drinkable Compsci Punch: no hangover.
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Breakfast was pretty much the same as last time. We got through another 15 eggs and out of embarrassment I attempted to help cook but I was worthless so I settled for drying up like usual. We had a quick mid-morning (note: this is code for "early afternoon") walk in which we just started in Earl Sterndale and climbed up the side of the nearest tall ridge and took a look around. This was the steepest and most exhausting climb yet and the weather was seriously windy even at ground level so a good portion of the climb was spent sitting still on the side of the ridge complaining that we couldn't see. We got to the top but there was so much wind I felt unstable just standing up.
The irony of climbing to the top of the most impressive feature of the nearby landscape is that once you are at the top, nothing you can see looks impressive by comparison. You can either take photos of the amazing hill/ridge/whatever, or stand on top of it and take photos of boring things from an elevated angle. The choice is yours.
We spent some time dithering as to how we would get down again and eventually plumped for more or less sliding down the grassiest side of the ridge. On the whole journey (which took place almost entirely in sheep pastures) we encountered numerous buckets, and we hypothesised that the buckets were man traps, or alien invaders, or even that the buckets were the same each time, and that they were following us. We saw a farmer buzzing around looking after sheep and chasing away a fox on a quad bike. It must be entertaining to have a legitimate working use for quad bikes. Well, for the first few weeks, maybe.
After all that we went back home and Jack successfully started up the barbecue that he had brought with him. We cooked sausages and chicken kebabs. I think there might have been some sort of vegetable going around, but honestly that was kind of secondary. Burgers were consumed. No beer. Rob deemed that this weekend had constituted a kind of "retoxification" regime. I characterised it as "dehab". Rob and Chris played a loathsome version of Jenga whereby each player is more or less free to leave the tower as unstable as humanly possible for the next player. In this version, a turn can take upwards of ten minutes and result in some really terrifyingly precarious structures. It's so watchable you could televise it. Steady hands and creativity are a must.
We packed and then drove home again, dropping Chris off at Oxford and Julian at Northwood station. We got home around 9pm on the Sunday (the Sun was still up if I remember rightly) so I crashed at Mike's for one night, sipping iced grapefruit squash and yammering about Saudi Arabia until it was bedtime.
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The following morning we zipped up to Halford's again and collected my new oil pressure switch. Installing it was trivially straightforward and I drove home with no issues. And then it was now, and then I don't know what happened.
This was a great outing and my only serious regret is that we didn't get to spend more time out. It is a beautiful part of the world, Buxton particularly, and the number of really attractive pubs that we drove past and never stopped to drink at is really shameful. Perhaps next year. Perhaps we will make a thing of it. All positive marks, anyway.
