Wierdos of Telemark and other stories

It's Thursday night, there may or may not be skiing conditions at that arse end of the Cairngorms otherwise known as the Lecht this weekend so in the spirit of winding up tomwards some snowy adventures... here's one from the archives...Braemar Telemark Festival 99 - about 6 months after coming back from norway and about 1 week before moving to Scotland
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Drooper......last tango in Glenshee
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......the word Last is the main one here......

yes after years of coming spectacularly last in variuos Norwegian skiing comps, the habit seemed to have stuck in scotland......
but the skiing was ace and I'd do it all again...

The course was the not too steep racing piste above the cairnwell restaurant (the round building if ewe've been there before)...they gave us practice
runs during which I didn't even fall over on although the jump halfway doon was
looking even more unobtainable than Stoke City automatic promotion, the gates were evenly spaced (say like a super g) and the rounabout and the
uphill x-country bit at the end was relatively short........piste of piss, thought I, unusually confident after a fine nights drive up from sunny
Staffs, and I spent the pre race time looking for my cowbell and heiaheia gang (a la ski sunday)....a few former Lymington Ventures were up for the
infamous Nobby's 21st (whose claimm to fame in the whole day was domino-ing a whole line of snowboarders on the beginner slope)....... they were hard to find in the worsening blizzard as was the start house at the top of the race......it was colder than Anglo-American relations post Banana War....
I watched all the various Scots and visting Norskies shoot out of the start hut and speed telemark downslope into the snowstorm "Ah" I thought "they're all quite good"
and when it came to start nr. 9 and the 3-2-1 countdown there was a rather loud echoey "shiiiiiit" resounding in my head as I carefully made my way doon the course....I hadn't actually fallen by the time i got to the jump
but was turning far too much and not turning too much...my lard encrusted thigh ex-muscles were burning like a morning after balti and the sudden
appearence of a dose of workmans trooser syndrome meant that that my fat arse was getting a tad chilli...
suddnly the rup up to the jump loomed out of the whiteness....
"ah fuck it!" I thought, as i Eddy the Eagled my way into Scottish telemark
history and......
........
.
.
.
.
.
....fell rather mightily with crunch on my belly and slid down the next gate.....

2 minutes later I was down...the finish marshall said,
"you'd have been better off without a heavy rucksac on your back"
"just habit I suppose" I said as I sauntered off for an afternoon of yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-ha!ing through the blizzard in the company of
Vicky's housemate Loo

It was jaevla bra as they say in Hallingdal and other parts frequented by crap Telemark skiers

ps I wasn't actually that far behind the 2nd to last so maybe next year
MJ
lycra clad workman trooser sufferers anonymous

featuring:

Cap'n Greenbeard - a portly legendary scourge of the Spannish main and his crew: LusciousLindsaybeard the figurehead, Fionabeard with her enourmous canon and the hulking brutish figure of Brownbeard the First Mate

Cap'n Yellowbeard - sculduggerous scoundrel of the seven seas and his unwilling followers: Looperbeard the Lookout and Edbeard the drunken helmsman and navigator

Cap'n Redbeard - the fairest piratess of them all and her crew; HunkyDunkybeard the first mate, Silverbeard St Clair the shipsmaid, and Richbeard the poor pirate with the purple helmet

The first skirmishes took place in the village, in fact the pesky locals stole the cunningly placed message bottle from its hiding place - the phone box and placed it in a nearbt wastebin. The rotters!

The next thing to go wrong for Admiral Chisholm (a not so distant relation of Seaman Staines) was the airfield preventing the placing of a message bottle within its borders. Like all good pirates, the good Admiral Chisholm ran off.

After an uneasy truce lasting exactly 1 hour, Captain Yellowbeard and his crew snuck up on Greenbeard who had their thoughts upon the upcoming moorland top ale house. After a short waving of cutlasses and firing of cannons, Captain Yellowbeard stabbed Greenbeard through the beard with his favourite rapier but Greenbeard got a shot off with his trusty dueling pistol which he had hidden within the cavernous depths of his pirate attire. A draw was decalred. At this point, the two crews merged by means of a 2:3 rights issue and public listing on the Aleutian stock exchange. They went to the pub.

Meanwhile, Redbeard forged onwards and nearer to the treasure.

Exiting the pub days later, the Green/Yellowbeard crews were accosted by a acouple of the local lawmen. However these were soon bribed and threatened into servitude and sent onwards to waylay Redbeard's crew who at this point were forging ahead, partly due to HunkyDunkybeards navigating and partly due to the tyranical leadership of the infamous Redbeard herself. This ploy failed as the beaters were soon keelhauled and flayed alive by Redbeard's cat o nine tails.

The Admiral, during this point was staggering around Eyam Moor looking for a stone circle. He was desperately lost and staggering through enormous swathes of razor sharp heather, cursing his navigator for having eloped the previous year with a Herdwick from Swaledale whilst stealing the compass . After an hour, it occured to the Admiral that the stone circle was quite possibly not of the size of Stonehenge and he began to despair. However, a cunningly placed and very smelly sheep carcass eventually pinpointed the position where he was able to hide another messagebottle before swashbuckling down to the plague village where he was to bury the treasure...

The treasure, aaargh!

Treasure, you see, is best never left in daylight and Eyam the plague vilage has one of the best treasure-leaving spots between Baslow and Bakewell. The Admiral arrived in his untrustworthy white chariot and just about managed to squeeze his portly frame into the murky depths of Carlswark the Wonder Cavern just as the merry sounds of pirating filtered through the surrounding woods...

The three crews arrived at Carlwark the Wonder Cavern's Gin entrance at the same time and there was much "aaaargh"ing, waving of cutlasses and glinting of eyes. A stand off in other words. Redbeard took the lead and sent her trusty HunkyDunkybeard down the cave. Greenbeard followed, making sure that the Green/Yellowbeards crew were not to be cheated. The Admiral went down there too - wearing a convenient viking helmet which was possibly not the best choice as the horns kept getting stuck in the cave roof.

It was dark down there. Muddy. And slightly cold. The Admiral even pinged a button on his navy great coat as he forced his belly through a tight bit. HDbeard was first looking in all the wrong passages and so it was Greenbeard who found the tresure first, screaming with pirate joy as the chest was openened exposing the gold and silver coins and gold bars inside. At this point, HDbeard said the secret pirate word and showed himself to be the hidden crewman of Yellowbeard. He offered to carry the treasure out of the cave himself. A task which Greenbeard was only happy to leave, as carrying the heavy treasure chest up a 20ft cave entrance would impinge on his natural good looks and beer thirst. Redbeard was waiting at the entrance, overjoyed that her crewman was the finder of the treasure, dismayed when he handed over the box to Yellowbeard who in turn was dismayed to find that his trusted Lopperbeard the Lookout was in fact Lt. Looper of His Majesty's Customes and Excise...

It never pays to be a pirate!

As they say in salty, foggy coastal villages the world over...

"Aaargh"

Pub, anyone?

AHOI ME HEARTIES!

You are the crew and comrades of the legendary pirate, buccanner and salty dog of the sea....Redbeard/Yellowbeard/Greenbeard

There's Treasure in them there hills and you have to find it...

You and the crew have to search the swampy swamps of death to find your very own pirate map...together with a list of coordinates which will lead you to the secret...

Each coordinate will have a message in a bottle containing a letter. All the letters lead to a spelling of the rough area where the treasure may or may not be...

Your crew may or may not contain agents of His Majesty's Navy under the command of the slippery Cap'n Chisholm...

Your crew may contain traitorous secret crew of teh other cap's so beware of sculduggery or you may get impaled by an ovine rapier

HERE BY RULES!
1. The crews can be attacked by another crew and if defeated will be pressganged into the victorious crew
2. the crew must compose and perform a sea shanty or other aquatic ditty to be performed in the most embarassing manner possible
3. attacks on crews can only happen in open country
4. you must have some safety equipment (bivibag, head torch, anchor, shark repellent, peg leg varnish, parrot feed, plank lengthener etc)
5. alehouses are an attack free zone of pirate tolerance and goodwill...maybe

Do you remember the very memorable and dodgy Channel 4 documentary about the New York S+M scene? The one where some loon nailed his foreskin to a table and another got his nob rigourously chafed by a blonde in a pvc minidress using a cheese grater... well the real nutters were into stuff too extreme to be deemed worthy of a late night documentary even with an adult and disturbing material warning... The out-takes have some sad old perv breaking down in front of the camera, his face blacked out, his voice creaking with emotion and self loathing...

"...er I go skiing in Scotland!"

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Just as I get myself a months work in ITland it starts to snow and Nobby calls up with "there's some awesome conditions at Glenshee - it's on the web, deep powder snow everywhere...best start to a season for years...!"

That was Wednesday. In true Scottish style, by the weekend the thaw has set in, on Friday night Nobby arrives by train from Durham and I sponge a few beers off him down the Argyle before late night toast and tea made with milk 5 days out of date...

Saturday morning, the 6am alarm aounds for ages just as I'm dreaming about Elin Tvedt the famous Norwegian weathergirl. Ha det Elin. Hello rainy Edinburgh, a long drive and a day on the slopes. We have to decide which centre to go to. Glencoe and Nevis Range are rainy swamps with perfect conditions for mudboarding, Glenshee has had an overnight thaw, The Lecht looks OK but takes ages to get to. Aviemore it is then.

2 hours and one Swedish folk music tape later, we're in Aviemore looking for an open ski hire shop trying to avoid the tumbleweed and the rusty shop signs blowing in the wind. We eventualy find somewhere near Glenmore Lodge for Nobby to get some skis from...they sell bacon rolls too so we load up on the lard for the rigours ahead.

Nobby has a heart attack when the nice aussie bird tells him that the price of a linited area ticket up the funicular for the two of us isnt £24 but each. Considerably poorer, we shuffle into the Piccadilly Line at Covent Garden and ten minutes later are expelled at Cockfosters into a total whiteout. The conditions are pretty much better than average for Aviemore as it isnt windy and there's no rain or gale force ice bits in your face. We both ski like unfit fat bastards down the easy traverse leading to the zig zags. In fact, I'm not sure it would be called a piste in a proper ski resort. It seems more like the access road except that this time there's nutter snowboarders looming in and out of the fog...

We do the easy stuff for a couple of hours until Nobby gets bored. He suggests we have a go at the White Lady run (a red run of some fame) It's got about a meter of deep powder snow (about 1 meter long and about 34 cms wide by the side of an enourmous open patch of damp bog) - on the upper slopes, the snow is actually quite good and by the time we're doing our last run down, Nobby has perfected some awesome wipeout in muddy holes manouvers and I have even managed about ten telemark turns in a row without falling over. Then it all goes a bit wrong. Where the White Lady steepens into a proper gully and the skiing gets harder, I run into a particular unpleasant type of slush and lose my left ski. After accidentally waking a couple of sleeping ptarmigans and extracting some unwanted snow from my arsecrack, I reach for the lost ski and dislodge it downhill. It goes on for ages. Bear in mind that telemark skis dont have brakes and will slide on downhill forever and that I've forgotten to make up some leashes out of the shoelaces in my pocket because I'm too tight to buy some froma ski shop. Soon I'm plodding on downhill looking for a ski which has long since diseappeared into the gloom.

Half an hour later, I'm trying to think of some story to tell the piste crew to keep a look out for a left telemark ski somewhere on the White Lady, when I spot a bit of hideous yellow colouring half burried under a snow bridge in the burn...

just in time for an awesome session of avoiding gravel whilst skiing on down to the carpark and the end of a fantastic first foray for the season..

Nobby on the car park run black run (black gravel in places)