test cc19

CC19 Cold Citrus #19

cc19

Cold Citrus #19

Cold Citrus #18

This is a test post for Cold Citrus #18.

Moor Rambling

Expecting and deserving to find myself bleary eyed I was pleasantly surprised to wake with the mental clarity that sometimes follows a heavy night. As we finished the full English that Mike and Helen had russled up other members of the hiking club began to materialise from the mist and it was soon time to head to the station to meet everyone else. It was clear that come of those already assembled were quite agiated about something and it quickly emerged that one of the party, famed for being 30 minutes late had, erm, called to say she was going to be 30 minutes late. In fact her timekeeping was the stuff of legend among the ranks of the Young Walkers. Frustration had recently reached boiling point and they had actually set off without her the previous week. When she finally arrived and apologetically emerged from her Yaris I couldn't help thinking that some of our number were only thinly disguising their open hostility with witty banter.

I've known Mike, who was leading the walk, since I was 13, and I know two or three of the others from expeditions going back over 10 years. The remainder were relative strangers but as we got started I moved amongst them and made small talk. Mike's brother, Andy, who had also made the trip up north, confided in me later that none of the others had struck up any conversation with him. You have to instigate the chat I told him, you're a guest like me.

The walk was to be the reverse of the one undertaken a exactly a year ago to the day, over and along, Cowen Edge, a stop at the New Mill Inn, and then back over the ridge to Broadbottom (or 'Broady' as Mike calls it).

I found the going a lot easier than last year. I was not stopping to catch my breath on the ascents and my calfs remained blissfully ache free throughout. At several points I was in the leading pack and once even had a call from Mike, somewhere behind us in the mist, ordering us to wait at the next stile. This is quite an achievement since I've recently slipped back into smoking heavily, a temporary lapse and one that that I'm not happy about. Last year I was only smoking occassionally, or rather smoking very heavily but only about one night a month. Also, recent events at home, stress at work, and, I have to concede, the full time resumption of tobacco consumption, have meant that I've shed about two stone since October. It must be the weight loss that's put the spring back in my step. As we picked our way along the route a Yaris would occasionally deposit or collect someone, and a small fleet of of the aforementioned cars and their occupants were waiting to meet us at the pub. These were the recently sprogged members of the club who had turned up to show their solidarity.

I was surprised to a see recently retired Routemaster parked up next to the waterwheel alongside the pub. It had 159 displayed in the blind box so I guess it was in service as late as December last year, and one of the last to be taken out of regular service. I learned that it now performed a new kind of 'regular' service. The landlord had bought the bus to ferry his customers home.

After two pints, one of them tap water, we were off again. We were again joined by Jasper who had emerged from the fog about three miles into the walk, and who had brought his two year son, Johan, along, perched on his back. Further along the way I forced an unscheduled coffee stop, just before Jasper and son set off back home on a different path. It was not popular with Mike, time was tight apparently, but I stuck to my guns and one by one other dissenting voices joined me and defiantly brandished their flasks. My argument was simple - if we had time for over an hour in the pub an unscripted take five was not going to cause the world to spin off its axis.

A liitle later someone shouted that they had spotted something. We retraced our steps. A ewe was lying helplessy by a dry stone wall, unable to move, half her body in covered in thick cold mud. She didn't struggle as I tried in vain to move her with the help of one of the others. She wasn't just stuck, she was shivvering manically with advanced hypothermia, her eyes were beyond expression and didn't acknowledge us. She was resigned to her predicament, a slow, cold and lonely death. If we had been made of stronger stuff we could have put her out of misery, there was plenty of the raw material needed to do this in the wall. The others finally started to drift away, muttering that the farmer wouldn't do anything, even if we knew which one to phone.

I eventually left her too and was quite affected, I'd seen dead stock before, but had never had witnessed, or been forced to leave, an animal that was so distressed and close to death. We did pass a farmer a little way on but when we explained where the animal was he explained she was the wrong side of the boundary wall and therefore not one of his. He confirmed that the farmer responsible would do nothing anyway. I guess she died that night.

At the end of the walk I was pleased to make the final ascent back to the station without jellied muscles and, apart from seeing the sheep, it had been a good day.

Looking back I'd summise that the hiking club people are a nice bunch, their car of choice is the Yaris, and only one of them was CORGI registered.

Rambling Man(chester)

The weekend saw me traipsing across the moors with my friend Mike and his merry band of hiking friends. Mike is 38, one week younger than me, and Sunday was his birthday. Having joined them last year I thought, what the hell, and drove up to Broadbottom for the anniversary hike. Walking is one of the those activities I always list more than actually practice so it would have been churlish to turn down the invite. The one night stopover came with the added incentive of the preceding night out in Manchester. It's not my favourite place for going out, but that's partly down to the fact that its the only place I've ever been mugged. Given the choice of provincial cities I'd choose Nottingham or Leeds every time but this wasn't my gig so Manchester it was. This was, after all, a weekend for following and not leading.

As Mike is a real ale aficionado I knew we'd be frequenting pubs rather
than bars, this is definitely my thing too. There are far too many bars these days, I see their neon or polished steel signs but I read them all as Bar Fleece. Lots of good beer was consumed. We started at Sinclairs Oyster bar, which is over 286 years old and has been moved, lock stock and barrel twice, the last time being after the IRA bombed the city in 1996. Sinclairs was also the first city centre pub to go smoke free, something that didn't bother me as much as I thought it would. Apparently, when I arrived, I'd just missed the embarrassed silence that followed Mike's mother announcing at full volume that the IRA bomb was the best thing that had happened to Manchester at the top of her voice. Bless her.

After a meal and two more pubs I think we ended up in the City Arms in Kennedy Street, a back street boozer in the city centre with a spit and sawdust floor and no smoking restrictions. Mike and I stayed on after the others had left to squeeze one last pint out of the evening and then he shepherded me back to Piccadilly just in time for the last train.

Katie Died

The eldest of my mum's two cats died early this morning. She'd been quite frail for some time, but aged 22, was still as loving as ever right to the end. I think it's the affection we gave her that kept her going so long. We knew it was imminent, we'd had a fright on Christmas Day when she had collapsed after jumping onto my mum's bed. She was hyperventilating badly but soon recovered. She was the last pet that my dad would have known and this initially affected my mum quite badly.

She will be buried in the garden tomorrow but not forgotten. I think she takes the longevity record from any pet I or my family have ever had. RIP

First Snow

Following the demise of the banana plant that was doing so well in November we've had our first snow. It's not much to write home about yet but we are promised up to 10cm by the end of tomorrow. A promise from the east, which this is, will usually come to pass in these parts. I'm watching the intermittent snow falling outside, occasionally being bluffed by the dust dancing in the glow of my desk lamp, and praying that tomorrow's travel plans are not thwarted by too much arduousness.