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Adric Warth Pictures can be found here We met at 6:30pm on Friday 21st November at the Centre for Sport and loaded our luxury minibus. There were 8 of us, Al (Club President), Maddy (Women’s Officer), Richard, Adric, Phil, Petter, Viola and Ingo. Dan the Vice President had decided to stay at home, supposedly to watch the rugby, but we have our suspicions that the evil chickens from the last trip scared him too much. We got off by 7, and soon made the very alarming discovery that the radio doesn’t work in the minibus, we nearly turned back there and then, but we decided to persevere. We made reasonable time getting to the camping barn at Pickering; though much to Petters disgust we didn’t go miles in the wrong direction. We got to the camping barn at about 12:30, too late to go to the pub. The camping barn was luxury. We had heating, electricity, mattresses, loos, a shower, full kitchen and cows in the barn next door, who could ask for more. The following morning while virtually everyone else in the country was watching the rugby we were just getting up and getting ready for the day. We started with a trip to Whitby, followed by the main walk up to Beacon Hill from Scale Dam. This walk started on really easy to find tracks, some on the walk was even along wooden decks. The path soon got a lot harder to find though, as we were faced with a field with no clear path, no fear though we had great navigators. Despite having no clear path to follow we found the summit with out any problems. We had a bit of lunch at the summit of Beacon hill and then started on the track down again which was even more overgrown but luckily for us the track seemed to be marked out with dead sheep (photo to follow) and rabbits, it could had been a bad sign, it could had been a nice meal if they were so decomposed. We got back to the minibus just before dark and started on what was about to be the scariest part of the day, the drive back to the camping barn with hardly any diesel in the minibus. The fuel level was below the red area on the dial and we had about half an hours drive, up and down hills. For the whole journey there were at least 3 people in the back watching the fuel gauge, with fingers crossed. Phil did everything he could to conserve the fuel; every time we came downhill he took the minibus out of gear and let it roll down. We made it to Pickering, but by this time everyone was very tense, and cold as the heating had stopped working. We saw the healthy green sign of the BP filling station and headed straight in what we thought was the direction of it, but found out we’d gone the wrong way and used up more diesel than we had to. We turned round, and went the opposite direction over the roundabout, but just as we turned into the road, guess what happened, no the minibus didn’t run out of fuel, Richard, who had been looking out for the BP filling station like a hawk so we didn’t miss it and run out of fuel told us we’d missed the filling station. Phil had the great idea that we could take one of the roads on the left which would hopefully take us to the filling station, but it led us into a housing estate. We got out of the housing estate (maze) eventually and made it to the filling station to bask in the goodness of the healthy green BP sign. By the time we got back to the camping barn we were all starving and ready for a nice hot filling meal, and we weren’t disappointed. After deciding not to do the washing up we started another walk, this one lead us to the local pub for a drink or two, or in most cases a few. I seemed to get some funny looks from the locals. We left the pub at about 10:30 after sampling the whiskies, but Petter decided to stay and take in some local culture. I’m sure the real reason was because his homing instinct was telling him that this pub had lock-ins. The rest of us walked back had a few beers and watched Al try to communicate and tame the cows. Petter eventually staggered into the camping barn at about one and staggered out soon after to sleep in the downstairs living area. He’d managed to construct what looked like a little hut but was in fact a method of getting all the heat from the heater to warm him up. We had a fairly late start on Sunday morning, we didn’t get up till eleven when Petter came up and woke us up. Within just over an hour we’d nearly acquired the farmer’s dog and had got everything packed. We did the second walk round Robin Hoods Bay, this walk proved to be very nice as we walked past horse fields, but also extremely challenging as it had several steep ups and downs, well technically they were downs and ups, but who cares. These steep uphills did serve a very good purpose though, Petter managed to clear most of his hangover. We turned back after what looked like a pathetic distance on the map, but it was really hard work. We could have gone a bit further I think, but it was starting to darken and Phil had promised the horses we’d come back to see them. We got back to the town of Robin Hoods Bay to discover that there were no pubs serving food at that time, we were about to give up hope when we found a hotel that served Sunday lunch all day for a mere five pounds. This proved a very nice discovery and filled all of us except Richard up nicely. We then headed back to the minibus where we found two Sheffield community transport minibuses parked either side of ours, probably to hide it. We were all jealous of these two nice minibuses that seemed so much nicer than ours, but they wouldn’t do a swap, how inconsiderate is that? We had a fairly good run back, especially when the heating started working again. We had to make a short stop at Scarborough to get some more food. The time was used wisely though as half of us when to the loo (in a multi-storey car park), we seem to park in the red light district though as there were several scantily dressed women stood on the street corners. We got back to Brookes at half ten, just as the sports bar was shutting, that’ll teach us to stop for loo breaks. It was a really good trip and everyone enjoyed themselves. |
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