This was to be yet another weekend of 'firsts' for me.....and, I know what you're thinking.....how many 'firsts' can you have in the space of a few months! Well, I can tell you for sure, you can have quite a few :-)
This weekends 'firsts':
First WalkingForum Group Meet
First Group Walk
First two-day-in-a-row walking
First weekend away from home on my own (usually I would drag a daughter along lol!)
Hmmm....not a bad list of 'firsts' so far this year - can't wait to get to the 'seconds' lol :-)
Anyway, back to day zero of the weekend ahead and, suffice to say that if anything else was to go wrong, it would have been that I would have had a fatal accident on the way to Settle! Made the mistake of checking my work emails at the early stages of the day (approx 7.40am) thinking that everything would be fine. Haha - 3 hours later, I had sorted out all of the work problems but then thought it would be a good idea to check out my bank account status. OMG - that was the shock of the day! The funds I had expected to receive to cover the cost of my weekend away, hadn't arrived yet. What sort of an idiot was I going to look like at the B&B come the point where I had to pay the bill??....Luckily, youngest daughter came to the rescue and transferred the funds I needed to my account. Good job that I have one daughter out of three that is sensible and has some savings - doing a better job than her mother I might add lol :-)
OK so, work problems sorted out, funding situation sorted out....the last thing to sort out were the bloomin' nerves! The original plan had been for my eldest daughter and I to go and spend a long weekend in Clapham with the planned walking routes being a circular route taking in an ascent of Inglebrough on the Saturday and then possibly completing a route on the Sunday which I'd found on Walkingenglishman.com which would give us an opportunity to see a few caves and waterfalls in the Attermire Scar area. However, I asked OneF for advice on the planned routes and... the next thing I knew a meet was posted on the Forum! (Well, we did confer a bit beforehand, and I said it was a good idea. Little did I know how many people would express an interest in the meet!)
All of the above is probably far too much information for anyone else but, the purpose behind this blog is that I have a personal reminder of things that I may well forget in the future. I hope that I'll be able to look back on this and remember how I felt at the time, and re-live the whole thing again :-)
Well, I eventually set off from home at about 12.45pm, filled the fuel tank of the car (£36 for less than half a tank!) and set out for Settle. Still feeling ill at the thought of meeting so many new people but feeling that - if I made it without anything else going wrong then, at least that would be a better start than I had today! :-)
OK - I know I'm rambling on so, I'll try to be a bit more succinct from my now on. However, I should tell you now that I didn't take any photos today - the way things had gone for me made me suspect that if I got the camera out, then that would go wrong too!
Please don't think that anything got easier from this point onwards! Most of the drive wasn't too bad but I passed an accident on the A1 (luckily going northbound!), then I had to go through a couple of heavy rain showers - and when I say heavy I mean it - wipers on the fastest speed and still very little visibility. However, I made it to Settle in one piece. Woohoo!
I parked up and met with Sprout to have a mooch around Settle and a cup of tea. This made me feel better as we'd already met 2 weekends previously in Ambleside. At least I knew one face on the group meet :-)
Left Settle and headed towards Clapham to find to my B&B. I can recommend this one but can't say that it's cheap:
Following the usual preparations for a night out - shower, hair wash, etc - I headed back to Settle to meet up with Sprout. We headed for the Royal Oak, which was the designated meet up point for this evening, Met several members of WF this evening. Totally enoyed the company :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment