Feeling Peaky

Tommorow sees the rather complicatedly named Operations Branch D Division Roads Policing Section combined Incident Resolution Team Walking and Beer Drinking Club (OBDDRPSCIRTWBDC) making a return visit to conquer the Three Yorkshire Peaks. We probably need to work on a snappier acronym.

I would suggest PRATS. (Policng Roads and Tactical Support) Certainly we must be a bunch of prats to think about going up that evil brooding bastard (Pen-Y-Ghent) in December, particularly after the aborted assault on Whernside in a blizzard last year. But try we will.

The itinery goes something like this;

Thursday; wake at stupid o'clock in the morning and head to the Cave to pick up the rest of the crew. This year we have the old stalwarts of Paul "Nelson" Kitson, (PK) and Dave "Greendale" Selby, but will be joined by Mike Barratt aka The Judge. (Note this is not the Mike Barratt of 1980's Shakin' Stevens Pop fame, although he does play guitar. He also abseils and eats squirrels and rats and could track a Vegan Snow Lizzard through an Arcturan Mega Blizzard, so he;'s a welcome addition to the crew.

It will be a quickish blast up the motorway in whichever direction mad SatNav woman sends us. Until we are hungry and need a bacon buttie, when as usual we will start to ignore her and rely on the sun/stars/mos on the side of trees/intuition/directional sense and if all else faisl a road atlas. SatNav woman is the sexy sounding woman with no previous experience of driving in the UK. This is not surprising, as she lives in a small blue and grey box in my glove box most of the year, and only comes out for these expeditions. Some might say that a software update might improve her sense of direction , but I disagree - she was always like this. Faced with a city centre she will drive you round and round in circles visiting every shoe shop, before takling you back to the first one you saw, presumable to buy the first pair of shoes she tried on. This trait disappears completely if you change to the mans voice, but as he sounds like a constipated Dalek, I'd rather be driven to distraction than driven to boredom.

Anyhow, after a while we should arrive at the bunkhouse to park the car and tackle the toughest of the Peaks, Pen-Y-Ghent before dark. Then it will be a return to the bunkhouse to change before heading to the pub for dinner (that is tea of course for thsoe of us in Yorkshire) Dinner will doubtless be mostly liquid.

With regards to the bunkhouse, last year we let Greendale organise the accomodation - hence we ended up with no central heating and a dodgy cold water shower, and a pub where anything you ordered was out of stock, out of season or out of a tin. We did have an Ingrid though, a barmaid with huge ........ enthusiasm for her job, who sold us watered down beer until we couldn't stand ....

it any more and went to bed.

This year I have to say I have found a much better bunkhouse with a sauna and a free pool table. Sadly this is only available for the Thursday night. We have to move on the Friday to other equally pleasant accomodation but without those luxuries.

Friday mornign we=ill see the catering manager (that's me as well) cooking up a full English to steady us for the longer assault of Whernside and Ingleborough. The Judge is hopefully going to accompany us but then has to leave early to head back hoem for duty on Saturday morning - PK, Greendale and I will be staying another night to attempt to drink dry the local boozer before returning at a more leisurely pace on the Saturday.

So that's the plan. Now watch it all go wrong. Photo's and a full write up of our misadventures to follow soon.

This will be our second annual December walk outing, whcih now makes it officially a tradition. Planning will begin for next years event just as soon as we sober up.