PL/ APL Camp 6-8th October. |
Firstly, thanks to Mr Thorpe for this. It's nice to see some more articles coming from people other than the Editors!! Hopefully you will all feel inspired enough to write us a nice bonfire article? A paragraph each. Anyway, here's his version of the Pl/APL Walking weekend. |
This account of the weekend by a 'parent' needs to begin with a salute to the fortitude of Pie and Andy who appeared to cope and retain a sense of humour even though it rained for almost the entire weekend. I joined the group at Rydal water and was attached to a team consisting of the Williams twins (John and David), 'Ducky' (Paul Duckworth), Tom Ridgway and Andrew Thorpe. Given that these individuals spend more time at my house than I do, the only person I didn't know was 'Ginger Togs' (Andrew Tognarelli). [I think one of them is your son.] Andrew Tog and I were overseeing the group; the rules clearly stated that the PL/APL's were to look after themselves generally taking turns to navigate and sort out the pace. However, my recollection is that Andrew and I did a fair amount of sorting out route choice decisions and navigating in the mist, finding it rather difficult to raise the level of interest in technical details like walking on a bearing. The only progress check was for all three groups to rendezvous for lunch on the top of Harrison Stickle; somehow Pie got there before us without, it seems, overtaking us - strange that. So to my observations on the day. Some years ago I used to make specialist gear: anoraks, tents, that sort of thing. I hadn't realised that people didn't wear waterproofs in teaming rain anymore - if they had behaved like that in my day I would have gone out of business. I suppose it's the fact that today's generation are so much tougher, but I might venture to speculate that if there had been a wind it would have been a different story. What did I hear apart from the squelch of feet all day? On the way up I heard Ducky constantly wondering why people walked up hills or even anywhere at all. On the way down I listened to Ginger Togs and Ducky being tortured with what Aunt Belinda likes and doesn't like : Aunt Belinda likes 'committee meetings in a green room with coffee in a glass sitting cross legged on the floor' - she doesn't like 'going to the scout hut on a Monday night to play cards and have a cup of Bovril before going home.' [And so back to Uni for Ginger Togs] What was there to see all day? There was low cloud over the Langdales all day so not a lot apart from Tom's spectacular slow motion fall into a bog. [© Togmedia cartoons] Earlier on we saw a fell runner (a super veteran - over 50) warming up for the Langdale fell race; that was all we saw of the race but the runners could have passed just yards in front of us. Was it worthwhile? The lads certainly gained some hopefully useful experience learning about the mountain environment, and I like the veteran just enjoyed being out in the hills whatever the weather. Richard Thorpe - Ace Reporter |