ToP reccy,rocky,boggy,hilly

If JtE is going to get witty when we take him on an outing away from his natural habitat, then I suggest we leave him at home in future. "Matt Finished Bronze" takes the gloss off it and "Witch Bird" puts a different spell on things. His captions are nearly spot on but I didn't realise it was a medal quite as early as he infers.

JtE, TF, Nico, myself and an unwell EtU met YJ at Barley. Etu was the only one not in longs and at times he looked as though he were not in shorts either. "Who wears short shorts" was written for him. We had the unusual sight of Nico in full apparel, an harbinger of doom if ever there was one, which made me think, " Should we be doing this?".

We missed out checkpoints 1,2 and 3 and headed straight for, you've guessed it, checkpoint 4. From there we headed to the main track from where we located the turn-off for checkpoint 2 before finding the turn-off for checkpoint 5. This checkpoint was further on than most of us thought, and our arrival was due to the wisdom of TF. Is it because she works with teeth? After the steepish but manageable climb to 6 we dropped down to 7 to start the dreaded climb up to 8 This was made more difficult with the buffeting wind making for one step forwards then two to the side. A bit like Old Time dancing for those who can rember that far back. After that we tried to find the difficult turn-off for checkpoint 9 which was one of our main objectives. TF succeeded in great style whilst YJ and I failed with no style whatsoever.

Everyone wimped out of the long, steep climb to 10, and having bagged it the easy way we located one of my other objectives, the turn-off from the main track to checkpoint 11. On the way back in, Nico had a painfull fall running down a steep grassy embankment. She said it wasn't as bad as child-birth.

Back at Barley, TF served us cake, and Nico served us coffee. It's all becoming a bit too cosy. We'll be taking our chairs and rugs next. Then I was presented with a medal for being very slow. I've got quite a lot of those. Mainly from school.

Thanks to TF & Nico for the food and drink and to JtE for doing the driving. Though if he's going to misbehave on the blog after we've taken him out, his future participation should be questioned.