Wierdos of Telemark and other stories

Ahoi there! me hearties, put down ye jugs o' ale and come an listen to me tale...or ye'll be 'avin a cat o' nine tails flayin' ye skin from ye bones!

How Long John Silver Lost His Parrot....aaaargh!
For many a year after Long John came back from them south seas, missin' 'is leg and gainin' 'is parrot, he tooks tae wanderin' the taverns an' alehouses of tamworth shore. 'e could tell a good tale, could old Long John, what with that demented parrot and that peg leg bangin' on alehouse floor an' that gleam in 'is good eye looking at the servin' wenches. Aaaargh!

Sometimes, loike when the hoo-erhouse was busy, Old Mate Cap'n Hook would come in and get Long John's parrot tae pick 'is nose, loike, Cap'n hook not being inclined tae such manouvres loike and it was one of thse times when Long John's parrot was helping the Cap'n with his nasal excavations that the evil man from the ministry came and took the bird away, siting failure to comply with import of exotic birds act 1977.

Blackbeard, Bluebeard an' Redbeard grabbed their cutlasses an' chased the snivellin' scumbag down tae canal an' keelhauled 'im but alas the bird wasne'er ta'be see in these parts again. Aaaargh!

Long John was scuttled with sadness and foundered on the wretched reef of despair. Well shiver me timbers! He even took tae long bouts of sobriety and sexual abstinence.

Many years past an' Old Long John was destitute loike, 'im being an old one legged pirate without a parrot and only one good eye and he took to standing outside IKEA looking lustfully at flatpack tables and daydreaming of south sea islands and the luscious smell of melons on the wind...aaargh!

Just when it looked loike Ol' Long John would end his sorry days in a shopping mall tavern, he was picked up by Stoke City and put to work as 1st Team Striker. He spent his waning days, hobblin' around the penalty area and was known to bellow (upon the very prescious and rare near scoring chance) "Thre'll be treasure in them there hills... and You'll better be on the Drooper Xmas Pirate Party to find it....aaaaargh

Managed to get down to the Howgills despite having received a Friday night work shocker and having to leg it up North on Saturday...
Another well attended trip - gorgeous place the Howgills, shame that I didnt somehow manage to get up the hills or lay my eyes on Cautley Spout, the highest waterfall in England. Maybe it was the drinking or the humiliation of spending 45 minutes trying to do "Convoy" at charades...

However, I did manage a run from the front door on Sunday morning complete with arseplant at aforementioned front door and getting completely covered in shite...

After an enternity of faffing, we did manage a bit of a wendy ramble... 12km of traipsing around muddy fields of guwno (Polski for cowshit) and getting moaned at by landowners, we all mangaged a bit of a pig out in the Sadborough cafe... I could get used to being a lazy wendywalking fat bstrd (NEWSFLASH! you already are!)

Compared to last year's debacle on the A class, we were better prepared, better trained (at least this time we had done some), better kitted out (I had even bought myself some supposed hill running shoes from Tiso's) but...
we dropped out (again!)

The rain was an absolute monsoon... we didn't help ourselves by pitching our base camp tent on the Friday night in the muddiest spot in Cumbria but we sort of managed. Being only 111 meters from the beer tent helped. We thought we had an advantage having a late tsrt time (10.15), allowing us a relaxed start to the day and plenty of time for Mike to wet himself after his platypus bag leaked. Having exchanged a few pleasantries with monsieur Baguette (remember Waterloo, Agincourt, the usual stuff!), the almost dry Dr Mike and I set off into a howling gale...just in time for me to realise that the compass I had was broken...

We staggered along for the next few hours, managing to run some sections, although most of the flat bits seemed to be into a headwind. On the steep downhill sections, it soon became apparent that the shoes sold to me by Tiso's were definitely not suitable... I was much to cautious much to Dr downhill-runner-Simpson's consternation. We didnt get lost this year though which was a good thing...just that the kilometers didnt seem to to be eaten up fast enough.

After finding out that we had reached base five 15 minutes later than the cut-off time, it started to dawn on us that we would be having problems getting to the overnight camp on time.
By 3pm, this sad fact was pretty obvious especially as a stream of defeated B classers limped, staggered and rolled down the hill in the opposite direction. So after being blown off our feet a few hundred times, we decided to call it a day and for the second year running, Mike and I camped out and had to make our way back to the finish on the Sunday morning - after spending the night in the tent eating boil in the bag msg with added sauerkraut and alleged bacon bits.

Heading back over High Street, we were faced with hail, a severe gale and glimpses of other KIMM runners staggering around. It was more useful to use the map as a face mask than as a orientation guide so when we found the lee of a stonewall, it took a few moments of sheepish map reading to work out that we were about to run down the wrong hill.

Back into the gale and hail, it was another hour or so that we yomped back to the finish, which Mike passed in a slightly drier state than 26 hours previously, having slipped 100m from the end and landed in a small pond having deposited a couple of fellow runners there on the way.

Ace weekend! Ace event! C class next year?

Most of clan McDrooper piled down to Edale with monsieur Eglise in September...one of the best attended trips for ages. It was a cold on Friday night although the nitrogen content of the air was still in a gaseous form so it wasn't that cold. Nothing that a few beers, mindless campsite-distrurbing chatter and a few rounds of burping and farting couldn't handle.

Dr Simpson turned up Saturday morning, we headed off for more KIMM training...managing the heroic distance of 21km in 4 hours.... otherwise known as walking pace so it wasn't that promissing. DM ran back to the campsite but I bailed out at Lawrenfiled crag so I could attempt to get my lardarse up a few VDiffs and amuse Eglise et Al in the process.

The pub session at Edale on Saturday night was most excellent, Droopers managing to drink the pub out of ales...probably due to shoddy stock taking more than superhuman liver stress by us but it still left us resorting to alco-pops!

Sunday was much of the same, DM and I managing a sweaty jog over Mam Tor, Eglise, Al, Mo and Jenny bailing the day's climbs due to sudden shower syndrome and Roystar improving his cunning polish language skills in the start of Pennine way cafe

The Northhumberland Drooper trip at the August Bank Holiday was notable for a few reasons:
1. small turn out (Anna, Cath, Claire, Steve, DM, MJ)
2. Steve and the girlies getting lost in the Cheviots despite having a GPS
3. DM and MJ starting training for the KIMM race
4. MJ's lardy man boob injury

The Scottish freeheel skiing season is yet to start though hopefully the onset of global warming will abate a while and leave us with a few awesome days in the hills in the months to come...
Meanwhile, there's some Drooper trips to do!