New York, Part 2

On New Year’s Day we hit up a local bagel shop, my first experience of a NY bagel. It was a bit stodgy, but hit the spot nicely! It was a good start to our lazy day of food, TV, films and mooching. It gave me a chance to catch up on some rest that I felt I needed, as for some reason I still hadn’t really gotten over the flight or the late nights!

The following day we had a second round of bagels before jumping in the car and heading upstate to Julia’s parents’ farm. En route we passed a turning off to Sleepy Hollow, a horrific amount of storm-damaged trees, a conveniently-placed Starbucks drive-through, and the occasional surreptitiously-parked copper. A couple of hours after leaving NY, we stopped off at a petrol station to fill up (right before getting to the farm). I was craving sugar, in the form of some delicious chocolate, so quickly grabbed a couple of bars off the shelves. An English accent heard in the middle of upstate New York clearly threw the locals! In my hurry to get back in the car, I’d unwittingly bought a peanut-based confectionary snack, which was a terrible, terrible mistake!

At the farm itself, I finally met Bean (Julia’s dog), and her parents and their three dogs. We had a quick walk round the immediate buildings before sitting down for dinner. We spent the evening watching TV with big mugs of vodka/rum, being drunk through silly “glasses” straws. In the morning we took a trip to the nearby town of Rhinebeck, which is a pleasant place. All the houses are very much in that American style of sideways slatted boards, all singly coloured with (often) white trim. Julia found her dream place on the corner of Mulberry and Chestnut (which sounds like a pleasant enough place to be!). We stopped for coffee and then went to the local bookshop, where Julia found herself in Kids’ Book Heaven...

Back at the farm, we took a walk round the farm with Julia’s father. It was blistering cold, a brisk -16°C, and by the time we’d finished our circuit my knuckles had frozen almost solid from their exposure whilst taking photos. After eventually defrosting our hands, I was treated to my first experience of s’mores by the fire, and we then lounged around chatting for a bit before grabbing some food. We all sat and watched a rented film that night, although I know for a fact I was in and out of sleep for the duration of it!

The following day, we had a play around on the ground-sunken trampoline, I fooled around in the tree house, and we packed up our stuff for the trip back to the city. We were originally going to drive back by ourselves, but Julia’s parents were planning to head back to their house as well, so we all went in the same car. We were dropped off back at Julia’s flat before going back to Stumptown to try and finally have some photobooth fun. We went back to the house to collect Bean, where we finally decided on my final dinner in NY: a rather nice pizza. We opted for a large base, at a reasonable cost, but by the time we’d added a multitude of toppings it became a $42 pizza! We had it delivered to the flat, so coincided our return there accordingly. It was delicious, but we could honestly only manage a couple of slices each. You almost had to roll the slice into a ball to pick it up, it was that loaded!

I had an early flight home in the morning, and needed to be at the airport even earlier, so I turned in for the night at a more reasonable hour than I had done the rest of my trip. And so ended a thoroughly enjoyable visit to New York, one that I hope to be able to repeat sometime soon.

New York, Part 1

A 17:15 flight out of Heathrow (sadly not bumped up to business class like Julia had somehow managed time and time again) meant I arrived in New York at 20:15, local time, and I was picked up not long after. I was treated to my first experience of Julia’s driving, which only scared me mildly (kidding...). Despite having already had a rather long day, what with being up early in the UK and the longer flight, we sat down and watched some episodes of Coupling. Before long it was 2am and bed became very, very welcome!

In the morning, after a particularly lazy start, we headed out to walk the High Line, a 1-mile long parkway built upon a now-disused NY railroad. We were originally going to meet one of Julia’s friends there, but she’d left by the time we arrived. After walking the length of the parkway and returning to the start, we had a quick search for a stall selling hanging mobiles (for hanging from the ceiling, not mobile phones!) then headed into Chelsea Market, where we had butternut squash soup from one of Julia’s favourite soup shops. We found Julia’s friend, Stephanie, was setting up residence in a coffee shop, “Joe’s” in Union Square, so made that our next port of call. It seemed as good a time as any on the way back to the flat to try a bison burger I’d heard so much about, so we stopped off at Bareburger back in Brooklyn, near to Julia’s parents’ house. I was hoping for a little more, to tell the truth. You could tell it wasn’t beef, but I wouldn’t have been able to identify it otherwise. I think that, in reality, my burger was spoiled by the amount of blue cheese in it, as the burger itself, and the bacon, onions etc were all pretty tasty.

The following morning, after another rather lazy start, we took a stroll down to the East River on the Brooklyn side, and wandered around for a bit, just generally having a nose around. We were basically underneath the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, and could see the Statue from the park itself. We grabbed smoothies and juices, donned silly glasses (as a New Years Eve treat) and walked the length of the Brooklyn Bridge. Unfortunately, it was undergoing some building works, so we could only see over and out to the river at a couple of points. It amused me that people obviously marked their visit to the bridge by clamping padlocks onto it whenever they could. You’d find big clumps of them hanging off railings and metalwork, and where that was no longer available, padlocks clamped to padlocks!

We headed over to Stumptown, another of Julia’s favourite coffee shops (she drinks a lot of fancy coffee...) for beverages and photo booth fun, but the booth was out of action! We’d taken silly glasses, Shrek ears and all, too! Time was getting away from us, and we needed to head back and get ready for New Years Eve, so we made a quick detour through the insanely crowded Rockerfeller Center (note the correct yet ridiculous spelling of “center”...) to see the Christmas tree before heading back on the MTA train. Arriving back at the flat, we set about preparing for the evening out. Julia was tarting herself up, making her curls as epic as possible, and I donned my suit. I feared I would be over-dressed, but hell, it was New Years Eve in New York, so why not?! Being a week of firsts, I had my first macaroni and cheese for dinner (classy, huh?) with a glass of champagne (told you it was classy).

Julia’s cousin had booked out the venue, Má Pêche, for a private party. We arrived just before midnight, and in enough time to get a beer and a glass of champagne. I found Bia Hoi, so there was no way I could pass that up! It didn’t travel well though, as it tasted much, much better in Vietnam! After ringing in midnight, we all moved downstairs to the dancing room, where people shook their stuff for the next few hours. Once again, I was struck with that nervous quality, of knowing full well that I can’t dance to anything other than some good old fashioned guitar music, so the majority of my evening was spent observing with a drink in hand. On the train back to Julia’s, we took a pair of available seats, next to a delightful blood splatter. Most people were sane enough not to sit on it, but one woman was clearly so tired or disinterested that she plonked herself straight down on it. Arriving back at the flat, we crashed for the night, safe in the knowledge that the following day was to be a right royal lazy one, filled with food and films.

Magaluf, Part 5

After lunch we headed out to the furthest beach from our hotel that was within reasonable walking distance, where we saw hundreds of small fish.  Steve highlighted how he wanted a speargun. All the snorkelling made us sleepy, so we once again had a siesta, then got fish and chips for dinner. For drinks, we were on numerous pints of vodka and Red Bull, which were particularly strong. We think there were about five shots per pint, but we didn’t seem to be getting drunk! We waited for the mob to come past from the hotel, and tagged onto the “neon night” bar crawl, complete with our glowsticks. Mine refused to work, so Steve gave me one of his (such the gentleman!). It was too much to resist putting the glowstick under my shirt and making some shoddy ET joke.

We went to the a few bars, then back to Boomerang (the club we gave up on trying to get into a few nights previously). We forked out for the unlimited drinks upgrade, managed to get a drink each, and had a wander around. I think we did one lap of the club, then tried to get another drink and barely succeeded because of the volume of people in there, and then decided that we were actually quite drunk. The multiple pints of vodka and the drinks that followed in the bar crawl had had their effect, so we upped and left.

In the morning, I had the most catastrophic hangover. I don’t think I surfaced until about 3pm, when we dragged ourselves out to the fancy dress shop to pick up our school shirts and ties for the evening’s “School Reunion” night. We grabbed KFC (although I could only manage some popcorn chicken and a drink, the thought of more food was a little unsettling). I don’t think Pepsi has ever tasted as good as it did that day. Instead of taking fins and snorkels, we decided to have just a day laying on the beach, which was very pleasant considering how wrecked we were.

Back at the hotel later that evening, the chavs were all partaking in some sort of school Olympics. We really weren’t interested, and food was much higher on the priority list, so we went to the “upside-down” restaurant, “Kathmandu.” The nachos, quesadillas and enchiladas were absolutely delicious, and I quite enjoyed the two-men-and-their-guitars musical accompaniment. We then went to the club, Carwash, dressed in our school uniforms. We were sent through past the “reception” into a completely empty room, save for the barmaid. She gave us a look of sheer delight at having someone to serve, and then I imagine a look of either hatred or dejection when we spun on our heels and walked out! Right outside the door, we skipped through the barrier and went into the part of the club that everyone else was in, had a wander around and then decided that, seeing as we weren’t drinking, it was probably going to be a bit nightmarish. We saw Rochelle and Suzi, but they walked straight past us, more than a little drunk, so we basically gave up and headed back to the hotel. We had to check out at 11am, so aimed for a good nights’ sleep and maybe even some packing before bed.

In the morning, we rose at 10am to shower and have a final pack, then headed to the beach sans snorkelling gear. They refused to give us our deposit until everyone had checked out, so we had no money until at least 1pm! By the time we returned to the hotel to pick up our room deposit, my stomach was eating itself out from the inside, so we hit up breakfast and washed it all down with milkshakes, Pepsi and pots of tea. We also got in a good amount of people-watching whilst playing Shithead.

We went back to the beach, not being picked up by the hotel transfer coach until early midnight, where I lounged in the sun and Steve knocked off another 100-or-so pages of his book. Back at the hotel, we changed, washed up and used what money we felt we could afford on more milkshakes. Dinner that night was steak and chips again, but I struggled to finish mine for some reason! We then realised it was only 9.30pm and we had bloody ages still to wait! Sitting in the hotel lobby, we played Shithead and 3 Card Brag just to pass the time, then we were on our way to the airport, therefore completing our trip to “Maga-, Maga-, Maga-fucking-luf!”

Magaluf, Part 4

After a late rising and decent breakfast at Tom Brown’s cafe, we made our way to the beach for some more snorkelling and sunbathing, complete with book-reading and random discussions, as is our wont now and then. Back at the apartment later that afternoon, we observed impressive tan/burn lines, devoured ice cream and then had a well-earned siesta. 

At 19:30, the Mallorca Rocks hotel kicked off their evening’s entertainment: The Streets, plus supporting acts. We really wouldn’t have needed to buy tickets for the event anyway, being able to hear everything perfectly from our balcony (and almost being able to see it all too!). Some girl was yearning to see the action so much, she climbed onto the balcony wall and started leaning out round the corner of her apartment...we both expected her to come crashing down to earth, but her roommate pulled her down. It was plenty loud enough, but we were in “chilled” mode so managed to gently snooze right through it all. A guy in a neighbouring apartment went running down to the courtyard in just his pants, most likely extremely drunk, then proceeded to have a bit of a run-in with the ticket staff and bouncers.

The evening’s meal was paella, and it was bloody delicious. The indie bar was our next port of call, where we sat happily drinking and chatting the night away until some random young girl, Sophie, from Halifax saw it fit to come and sit with us. She was attempting to get away from her cousin, Sarah, who quickly found her way over to us as well. How ill-fated this all turned out to be...

It turns out Sarah was the most sinfully boring person you’ll ever find on the face of this earth. She took delight in explaining her job, and the hours of work she’s contracted to do. She wipes arses for a living. And wanted to tell us all about it. Seriously. Occasionally Steve and I took it in turns to try and “offload” her onto the other; I believe we both wanted to top ourselves when she was jabbering on about shit, literally. Sophie seemed to have decent taste in music, which was refreshing, but unfortunately she was more than a little dim when it came to general knowledge. For example, she had no idea where the Vietnam War was held. This might seem a little harsh to you readers, thinking that we were being unfair etc etc, but in reality, it was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to her sheer ignorance of EVERYTHING. A random couple turned up and started chatting away too, and managed to persuade both the girls to go in and dance. This left Steve and I the perfect opportunity to down our drinks and make a dash for it, heading off into the night.

In the morning we headed to another beach, even further away from the resort but still not too far a walk. We saw a lot of fish, and I panicked somewhat when  the current started to drag me into a large batch of sea urchins (some of you may remember me standing on one in Agia Napa and having to have 70-odd spines dug out of my heel at the doctors upon my return). At 20:00, post-siesta and shower, we went for steak and chips. And wow, the size of the steak! Must have been a 20oz-er. We saw Suzi and Rochelle, who were off to some adult pirate show.

Our drinking that night started in the 90’s bar, which failed to play ANY 90’s tunes. They did have slushie machines full of Sex on the Beach though! Once again, the indie bar beckoned, and we sat in the corner watching the world go by. There was an older woman whose face had seen better days, dressed all in pink, who took a shine to Steve and tried to wrap her arms round him – he was NOT amused! The miserable-looking girls we had seen there the night before were looking cheerful (hooray!), and a newly-acquainted couple were basically giving the place a live sex show. She spent more time pulling her skirt down to cover her arse than anything else. Tramp. There were guys buying balloons filled with laughing gas. There was the guy clearing up glasses who commented on it being as busy in the bar as was riding round Hanoi on a motorbike...oh, the fond memories, as Gerard will attest to. This is just a taste of the indie bar and its clientele.

When we got back to the hotel, we were accosted by two young girls on the stairs, asking if we had a light. After explaining we didn’t smoke, and therefore were unlikely to have a lighter, Steve plodded off back to the apartment. I was, however, mildly curious about their request to see what they had done to their room whilst in search of said lighter. I followed them to the door, looked in and saw pure carnage. How the hell could two tiny-framed girls like that have literally DESTROYED their apartment? Their beds were in pieces, the sofa smashed to bits, duvets and sheets torn into strips. It was absolute chaos. When their backs were turned, I legged it back to the room and fell asleep, bemused by it all.

Magaluf, Part 3

And so it was that I woke up in the morning with a dirty great hangover. During the night I had gone out onto the balcony to cool down, and I remember laying down on the floor to lower my body temperature further. I also remember laying there, foetal, for quite some time, before deciding I was cold in the 20 degree plus weather and retiring to the sofa. There I laid until such time as I felt able to move. This had to be reasonably early, at least by midday, as we needed food before meeting back at in the hotel lobby for our excursion to the waterpark in El Arenal.

We sat near some boys from Norwich who couldn’t decide whether they wanted to call the coach driver Pedro or Manuel. Either way, they were quite entertaining and made the half-hour journey pass a bit quicker. On arrival, we were ushered towards the locker area, where we stashed our stuff before heading out into the park. Oh, the choice!

First we headed to the Kamikaze (being the closest ride you didn’t need an inflatable for), and somehow I managed to persuade Steve to join me in some fast downhill water-based action. It set things off to a good start, getting the old ticker racing a little. I then queued for the Black Hole, where you rode a single inflatable ring down an almost-pitch-black tunnel, unable to see the twists, turns and drops. It was an average ride, to be fair, nothing spectacular. The Anaconda was pretty damn busy, so I skipped that and continued round the park. We then had a wander around for a bit, noted the “No Shuffling” signs by the wave pool (actually, they were “No Running” signs, but they looked like the guys dancing from the recent LMFAO song video), and floated around the slightly disappointing Congo River. We also rode the Grand Canyon, on which a handful of people can sit in one larger ring and be launched down an undulating slide. A bit short, but good fun, and you pick up a surprising amount of speed. It’s also a little disconcerting when you are speeding down it backwards...

Our last two rides were the Multipistas, a 4-person race on these sort of slide things you lay on, and the Crazy Race (another 4-person race, but you can go down frontwards, backwards, however you want). Hunger kicked in, but the stalls were pretty expensive so we decided against it. We bumped into Rochelle and Suzi and sat chatting to them for a bit, until 5pm came and the general public was kicked out. Here is where our extra £15 on the entrance price came in: unlimited sangria and free reign of a few rides in the park. The reps forced a few drinking games upon the 400-strong crowd (the details of which I won’t go into, but suffice to say, they were hilarious and messy), before declaring the bar open for unlimited sangria (never before drunk dry) and opening a couple of the rides for us all, sans-lifeguards.

The first bunch of people ascended the ride, and started coming down it individually. Note that there are four lanes, separated by small ridged barriers, on this particular ride. Before long, the crowd had decided that a single rider was a bit tame, and pairs, trios and quartets started sliding down. At one point, I’d imagine there were 20 people sliding down, elbows and knees akimbo, splashing into the pool at the end. And from there, it was only a matter of time before some clothing came off. The occasional bikini top disappeared along the way, and then a few brave guys joined in. Now, it’s not very often that one will get the opportunity to fart about in a waterpark like that, let alone without any clothes on. So, despite the growing crowd of ladies at the foot of the slide, we scaled the slope to the top and queued (albeit briefly) for our go.  Standing behind me, Steve, Rochelle and Suzi only (I think...) saw my derrière as I whipped of my shorts and hurled myself down the ride. Liberating, yes. A little water-slapped by the bottom of the ride, yes. Hilarious, yes. One thing that wasn’t on the “Before 30” list that was added on the spot, and ticked off!

We re-congregated by the bar for the final drinking game, to decide the champion. Again, pretty sangria-heavy, and definitely not one to try at home in front of your family. By the end of this particular game, some random guy had collapsed on the grass in the “playing area”, and this was only ever going to end one way. The rep on the mic made comment about him laying there, a girl threw her drink over him, and from there on in chaos descended. A cry of “Sangria fight!!” came from the mic, dozens of glasses of sangria were thrown over the guy on the floor, and before anyone could say or do anything, mob mentality kicked in and it all kicked off (but in a joyful way). Sangria was being thrown everywhere, we all got completely soaked, and for the first time, the waterpark was drunk dry.

Back at the hotel, it was shower and siesta time. Our first planned bar crawl followed that night. We met the girls in the hotel bar, where I spent what felt like an eternity using my deftness to untangle a thin-chained silver necklace before heading out for some more drinking. In the first bar we watched some more drinking games put on by the reps, and went for some pints of vodka and Red Bull. These were drinkable, but you’d drunk too much of it before you realised how wrecked you’d become. Suzi called it a night, not feeling too good, but Rochelle wanted to continue the night out with us (because of our amazingness, I should imagine...). In the second bar, we continued on the vodka and Red Bull pints and followed the reps in some dance moves. The third bar followed, where Steve spotted a girl with quite possibly the scariest face ever. She was basically the female version of Red Dwarf’s Dwayne Dibley. Rochelle highlighted her lack of Red Dwarf knowledge, which didn’t go down too well...!

After the third bar, we were all frog-marched along the beach to the club, “Boomerang”. We were supposed to have fast-track, priority entry with our Magaluf Club Pass cards, but it was taking forever to get in and I was getting quite bored and impatient with it all. Our desire to find the fabled indie bar won over, and we headed off in search of “Alex’s Indie Bar”. This was a breath of fresh air for me and Steve, who can tolerate some dance music but need a regular fix of guitars and drums. My last drink was some apple-flavoured shot, which brought the following Scrubs quote to mind:

“Appletini please, easy on the tini”

A single cheeseburger apiece at McDonalds was in order (no doubles in Spain, apparently), then we all crashed for the night, quite drunk and pretty happy!

Magaluf, Part 2

After being unceremoniously roused by the annoying Scottish “2wentys” rep, Kenny, and being force-fed an introductory meeting attendance request, we got up, showered, and mooched on down to the bar for a 20-minute “Guide to Magaluf” session. 20 minutes my arse! After giving us some well needed information on what to do and what not to do (cheers guys, we couldn’t have figured out what to do without you...I mean, who knew it was advisable to avoid hookers?) we were asked by another rep what we were going to sign up for. Now, at this point, I fully appreciate that we probably seemed like miserable bastards, both to you, the reader, and to this particular rep. We stated, quite clearly, that only the waterpark excursion appealed to us, as it was something we were going to do anyway. She couldn’t understand how we wanted to go all that way and not join in their big club night outings or go and see The Streets at Mallorca Rocks, a neighbouring hotel putting on weekly gigs. I’m not a fan of The Streets, Steve doesn’t mind them, but still we didn’t fancy going. Her reaction, and I quote, was: “So what are you doing here if you don’t want to see The Streets?” Despite the urge to punch her in her rotund face, we politely declined and declined. In the end, however, we chose to go on three of their bar crawl nights, expecting cheaper drinks and free, fast-tracked entry into the clubs, as well as the waterpark tickets. Well, that proved to be a massive waste of money in the end!

We then went out for lunch, going to a nearby place for a fry-up. Post-lunch we threw on the board shorts and hit the nearest beach. There we had some choice discussions, including cellulite and the delightfulness of some mens’ choices in questionable trunks (that made them look a lot like Clarke Kent when combined with hilarious glasses). We had a bit of a swim, but being so close to the chavvy part of Magaluf, it had very little to offer. A decision was made to search out better beaches in the following days. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped off and got some milkshakes, ice creams, Oreos, water and a few packs of beer. The racks came out of the fridge and everything was wedged in as best we could do, including the “After Sun” cream (for that soothing effect). Then, feeling sleepy after a bit of sea air and salt water, the week’s first siesta made a showing.

Upon waking and freshening up, we hit the beers. Literally. In the absence of a bottle opener, Steve employed the age-old, tried and tested method of hitting the caps on the edge of the table. There were teeth marks from obvious attempts by previous occupants of the apartment, so we mimicked those. A couple of exploded beers later, a throwaway comment about there having to be an opener somewhere was made...lo behold, in the drawer. And so it was that a couple of beers turned into a couple of boxes of beers, and the precursor to a pretty bizarre, yet awesome, night.

The problem with this storytelling business herein lies in the fact that I don’t actually remember the rest of the night, save for a few snippets Steve and I managed to piece together the following days.  The one memory we do both hold though, is of a bar in the middle of nowhere. I mean, the middle of NOWHERE. How far from the resort it was, or where it was, or how long it in deliberately took to get there and back, I could not tell you. By this point it in the tale, it is certain we’d had a lot of vodka, beer, sambucca, el al, and not a bite to eat since lunchtime. I kid you not, the bar reminded us of the Titty Twister in From Duck Till Dawn, and we both expected to have blood drunk from our ripe necks at some point. The barmaid insisted we drink The Local Brew, the clientele was uninterested in conversation and I’m half-convinced I saw one guy lick his perhaps pointed teeth, and had we not been so drunk we might have met our beastly demise there!

Somehow and sometime, we made it back to the hotel, although I don’t actually remember any of it!

Magaluf, Part 1

And so it was, with a little excitement (about the beach holiday) and a little trepidation (about the massive amount of chavs there), that Steve and I embarked on a short excursion to Magaluf, Mallorca. Arriving at the airport later than either of us would really have hoped to be flying out at, we found some food and then proceeded down to the departure lounge. A quick and perhaps too vocal laugh at various hair-do’s and questionable outfits, and we were boarding. I was particularly happy with my window seat, which allowed me to take in the delights of the night sky: bugger all. We were sitting alongside two girls, Rochelle and Suzi (or Michelle and Jodi, as we interpreted for the first day or so) who turned out to be staying in the same hotel and some brief and random conversation preceded some intermittent napping in the “event of an incident, go ‘prone’” positions, which is highly uncomfortable. I think I still have the crick in my neck... At least the in-flight film was good this time round: Kung Fu Panda 2!

We got some form of Grammatical Nazi fun out of one young girl sat in front of us on the coach transfer, who couldn’t spell for toffee. Imagine the scenario: outside, it’s supposed to be hot and pleasant, instead it’s a little wet. Proper pouring down. Aforementioned lass apparently couldn’t spell, and wrote “turrensial” in a text message to some friend or other back home. It’s “torrential”. Ha, Moron! After the transfer to the hotel, which was mercifully one of the shortest I’ve had on a package holiday to date, we arrived at the hotel and had €30 each literally raped of us by the Management for a room deposit. Seriously? Little did we know at the time, but that deposit was going to make us go quite hungry on the last day! It would also tenuously amuse us later in the week, when I was accosted in the hallway at 4am by two girls, but I’ll go into that later.

Being 4am when we checked in at the hotel, we felt it was too late to go out properly, but decided to have a wander through the town and see what was happening. People were being physically hoisted down the street by friends (we assumed they were friends), rather skanky-looking girls (and ladies of the night) staggered all over the show, and drunken lads were trying it on with everything that moved. Although in some cases, if it didn’t, all the better. Boded well for the week!

A Death Burger and a random chat with some drunk Northern Irish chap, who had been invited out there by his mates and then been deserted by them, led to a night’s sleep in our basic but suitable room.

Alton Towers

The Sunday was Georgie's birthday, and we had booked tickets to go to Alton Towers. It would be the first time for both of us, so we had booked advance entry tickets, and this meant skipping breakfast at the hotel.

The drive to the theme park took us up, down, round and about through the countryside, much to Georgie's disdain. It certainly didn't do anything to help her illness...but nor would the theme park, I suspected!

On arrival at the park, we took the tram round form the car park to the ticket booths, waltzed in and headed straight for "Rita - Queen Of Speed". We got almost straight on it, and I was quite, quite impressed with the massive boost at the start of the ride! Georgie, however, wasn't...and it did nothing for her stomach. In light of this, we went on the Charlie & The Chocolate Factory ride, which was an entertaining romp through that particular world. Through the day we hit various rides, some big, some sedate, but overall a nice mixture. I was getting a bit of a headache towards the end of our day there, and no amount of water seemed to help.

I rode "Oblivion" a number of times, as as a solo rider I was able to skip the queue in its entirity. "Air" took a long time to queue for, and was novel, but not really worth the loooong wait. "Nemisis" was okay, a standard rollercoaster ride. Other rides we took included "Hex" (which made Georgie quite ill) the "Squirrell Nutty Ride", the "Runaway Mine Train" and a walk through the "Haunted Hollow". One particular favourite was the flume ride, complete with a huge rubber yellow duck hidden in one of the tunnels!

We might have stayed another half hour or so, but we'd already pushed back our dinner reservations once, and knew it was going to take some time to get out of the park, drive back to Buxton, shower and change, and get to the restaurant, so we headed out before the crowds started to flood the tram. Dinner that night was back at Lonestar, having booked it the previous night based on how good it was! I had exactly the same meal, showing testament to how impressed I was. On the way out I helped myself, liberally, to the mints on offer.

Castleton

The following morning, we had breakfast in the farm cafe on the camp site, and it was good as I remembered it. Then we packed up our tent and drove back to Castleton for a day of touristy things, starting with Peak Cavern, known locally as The Devil's Arse. We had an excellent tour guide, a woman who had clearly been doing the tours for quite some time and had built up a bit of material for the punters. She was very entertaining, and kept us amused as we descended further into the caves. At the entrance to the cave, they had set up a few of the old working tools from the time of the mining, and we watched her spin a new washing line out of cotton threads. It was pretty good! We got as far as we were allowed to go down the cave, and saw an old tramline snaking down into the darkness. This was apparently left on-site when some Hollywood production decided they couldn't be bothered to take away their sets, including a lot of the realistic-looking rocks strewn throughout the cave. We'd naively assumed these were real, so they must have been good. Further inspection showed them to be polystyrene though! This last area was known as the Devil's Cellar, where we could supposedly hear the River Styx. We were to find the source of the name, the Devil's Arse; the cave had become known as this because of the curious noises gurgling from inside the cave...

Next was Speedwell Cavern, linked by an underground and partially water-filled tunnel. We had to take a boat down the tunnel, with our guide sitting at the front, facing backwards, guiding us down the tunnel. He used an occasional bout of engine power to give us some more speed whilst we bumped and grinded our way to the cavern. Now, the tunnel could only take one boat at a time, so the original minors had built some blast holes as places to hide in as they detonated explosives, and we had to "hole up" in one while another boat came back from the cavern. The bottomless pit you find in the cavern is, in fact, not all that bottomless. I don't remember how deep it is now, but bottomless is definitely a bit more infinite than something like 140ft. Nevertheless, our guide was highly entertaining and deserved the small tips that everyone gave him.

After lunch, we nipped over to Bamford for a quick spot of bouldering. After hacking our way up the hillside, avoiding sheep and their effluence, I donned my climbing shoes and had a play on the gritstone. It was quite windy though, and I was made very aware of that fact by Georgie, who stood at the top of the routes telling me to get off and be more sensible. Put aside the fact that I was climbing Mod -> VDiff routes (1 to 3- in sport terms!), I was being told in no uncertain terms that I should be off the rock and in some proper shoes!

We drove to Buxton to book into our hotel for the next two days, and found the town to be very nice. Our hosts were excellent, they were there and available at any time but you wouldn't have known it; they were very discreet and helpful. Our room was very comfortable, which was especially important to my coughing and spluttering companion! Our evening meal was booked at Lonestar, a Texan-themed bar and cafe. This turned out to be a phenomenal choice, as the meals with fantastic! I had the Lonestar Spicy Tower ("crispy tortilla wraps towered with king prawns, chicken, chillies, coriander, gorgonzola and tomato"), and Georgie had the burritos. For dessert I had giant profiteroles, and concerned the waitress somewhat when I asked if the "giant" bit meant "football-sized". Apparently not, but I ordered them anyway, and it was definitely a good choice. There was a hen party in the restaurant too, but despite their rowdiness, they never really seemed to bother anyone.

That evening, we lay in the room watching television and relaxing, before hitting the sack ahead of the next day's plans.

Hope

We were going up to the Peak District for Georgie's birthday, so I picked her up from her house in the morning to find that she was feeling quite unwell. After an impromptu visit to the doctors, we were on our way. The plan was to make a beeline for our chosen camp site, Hardhurst Farm, and then go from there for the evening. The journey was enjoyable and, thankfully, uneventful on the roads.

We arrived at the camp site and signed in, then went to find our pitch. It turned out that the site was familiar to me: I had stayed there a number of years previous with the Ipswich Mountaineering Club on one of their Peak weekends for climbing beginners. Basically, we had pretty much the whole field to choose where to pitch up, so found a nice dry bit of grass and started putting up Georgie's new tent. As it was the first day of our weekend away, we didn't want to do too much, so sat in the tent with the door open, a nice breeze blowing in, and did some colouring. Yes, colouring.

Hunger drove us to Castleton, where we had a quick wander around before finding somewhere to eat. Very few places were open as it was past 6pm, but we were able to do a little window shopping. Georgie was particularly taken with the Blue John stone, a blue and yellow fluorspar found only in this area of Britain. Small pieces are still quite plentiful, hence there being a lot of jewellery, but few large pieces of the stone remain. Surprisingly, the jewellery wasn't all that expensive. A pub meal followed, but in quite a nice place with a curious entry hall: it felt like you were entering a tourist attraction with lots of leaflets for other attractions, before choosing which door to take, for either a beverage or a meal. Afterwards, it was back to the tent (and the by-now noisier camp site) for an early night ahead of the busy weekend we had planned.