So the flight back to the UK last night was delayed. That meant Helen had to stay an extra night in temporary accommodation with all her bags already loaded on to the plane. Not great. It also meant getting up at 5am to catch the re-scheduled flight. To save another guy from having to get up at 5.30 to take her and another to the airport I suggested they just drive the car and leave it there then I would run up and get it this morning.
I woke up at around 8am shocked (and a little let down) to see that it was dry and sunny. Yesterday I had issued a heavy rain and low cloud warning for this morning. Only a weather forecaster can be upset about it being sunny... I rang the office who said the rain had just slowed down, but that it was coming. I took the met window and started jogging. It took me 40 minutes to get to the air terminal, which isn't so shocking. I started driving back to Traveller's Hill and the heavens burst. Luckily it wasn't so bad that it ruined anyone's day, but was bad enough to not have to come under fire from military met banter round the dinner table later.
We went for lunch at 12, then set out to do one of the letter box walks. We drove to the start point, and i looked on in fear at the "level 3" mountain that stood in front of us. We had had a gust of 38 earlier that morning, the rain was coming down hard and we couldn't see the top of the hill due to cloud. Thankfully the guys decided on a different walk, so we drove to the start of the bird cave, which is a level 2 walk.
We set off and to be fair most of it was flat. Compared to the view of all the various hills and mountains I mean anyway. It was moderately drizzling for a good proportion of the walk too. Ugh!
At this point I thought I would explain to the group what a "Further" is. I announced that I had invented a new unit of distance, that varies depending on how far you have travelled. Chris stopped in his tracks, turned round and gave me a "oh god, here we go... Another gem from Emma..." It's really quite clever and has revolutionized my "are we there yet" dilemmas. One further is precisely equal to however far you have already travelled. So you would say "two more furthers" and you would know exactly how much further you have to go. Genius. I don't think the people who create SII units will necessarily agree, but I still keen campaigning for it to be a thing.
With about three furthers to go we came face to face with a field filled will black stones/rocks/boulders/sharp pointy bits. These are called clinker and are not to be confused with lava. Clinker is horrible to walk on, especially in the rain with blisters and a bleedy foot (D list injuries, not worthy of blog status). It looks heavy and that it would weigh the same as a rock, but it's mostly air so it's as light as a fly. Very tricksy. It makes a sound like you're breaking plates if you step on it quite right. Saying that it still hurts when you stub your foot on it. A lot of it was stealthing between the grass too, sneaky.
There are all these types of land surface that I am learning about for the first time. Another is scree, and on one of the walks you have to scree run down a mountain...! Surely that's not a difficultly level 2 walk?!
We scrabbled over the clinker and after about an hours walk in total we arrived at the bird cave. You had to almost slide down on your bum to get to the opening, which was just a hollowed out little cave thing, obviously. The birds had relocated years ago apparently, and all that was left there now was a few bones, skulls and animal carcasses from critters that fell in to the hollow and couldn't get out.
In the hollow there was another small tunnel, which the letter box book said you could go down, "provided your waistline is not too expansive". We had heard rumors that a sheep had wondered in, and obviously couldn't make it out. Chris stuck his head in and said the stench confirmed this was probably true. Also the amount of flies backed this up.
Guess these guys didn't make it out...
The letter box with inside the main cave, so we each took our stamp and had our selfie.
The walk back seemed quicker and less craggy. Maybe I've progressed from beginner already, who knows.
We arrived home with just enough time to shower before dinner.
After dinner we had a group insanity session in the gym.
Redders.
That's a pretty successful day off I think. Triple phys and a letter box walk. I'm now sat in the ponda about to watch a film with everyone. Nice :)
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