Welcome to the Oxford Brookes Mountaineering Society

Chapter 1 - Day 1 - Monday

Monday started fairly well, we were leaving a lot later than originally planned so most people had chance for a nice lay in, it was a nice idea, but I didn't get to benefit as I was on the road at 6 to get down to Oxford from cabbage country. The shopping was done that morning as Al had been woken up early by some inconsiderate bastard; he told me when I rang him. Al and Dan got the shopping done while I scared Al's female housemate (she seemed shocked when she walked downstairs and found me doing a reverse burglary, that's when you gain access to a premises and put stuff into it). I also topped up on the near essential kit (Strongbow being the essential kit, I'd got one can just to keep with tradition), I got a camp shower and a new bivvy bag as the last one split as me and Al were carrying a dead body through Morrell Halls, to eat by candle light with silver cutlery.
Most people met at Al's house at mid-day, I tried meeting them at the sports centre at mid-day as Dan had told me the wrong place. I arrived at Al's house to find Phil apologising for breaking my brand new, hardly used, very expensive rocket. We got off soon after mid-day and went to the filling station near Dan's house to pick him up. We found him, but he chose that moment to decide he needed an E111 before he could go, so we ended up waiting in the filling station for ages while Dan filled in his E111 and had an argument with the women behind the counter.
We eventually got off and had a good trip down to Dover via the service station for dinner. There were 6 of us plus Minty (Club Mascot) at this point, Al (El Presidente), Dan (Deputy President/Caesar), Maddy (Women's Officer), Adders (Me) (Trip Reporter), Phil (The Kaiser), Rachel (The Deserter). We got chance to do a bit of PGL coach spotting on route as we were heading to Dover as all the coaches had just arrived back from the Southern French centres. We got to Dover with several hours to spare, so we filled the minibus up for the last time in Britain, sorted out Dan's E111, bought a Frisbee, played Frisbee on the sea front and on the subway, had a near paddle in the sea and then found a very nice pub to have a drink. When we got back to the minibus we discussed the possibility of buying the pub that was up for sale next to the car park, me and Al worked out that if BP bought it for us, we could then charge it to the BP card and we'd have our own pub, courtesy of the sports centre, the name would have to change to "The Fellwalker" though. There was time for a little dancing on the roof rack of the bus, as has become traditional. We headed to the port with plenty of time to spare, we were cleared to miss out a customs search, but Phil decided he wanted to fill the spare time somehow so he drove straight into the customs search area, where they were taking vehicles apart to check them. Dan was obviously worried that they might object to us taking the extra, extra strong instant coffee across because as we drove in he was learnt out the window telling the customs officers that we'd come in by accident. The customs officer asked the usual questions, do we have any immigrants, drugs or knives, me and Dan declared our Swiss army knives, but everyone forgot to declare the very sharp and dangerous ice axes that we had in the back and the extra, extra strong coffee. We were allowed through without any type of search anyway. We got booked in on an earlier ferry and made our way to the queuing area for a long wait as the ferry was late; I said we should have held out for the Rodin.
On the ferry we headed straight for the bar, but it weren't open so in a very surprise move we went up on deck to see us cast off, had I taken my union jack with me, we'd had switched flags on the ferry as well, how dare they fly a French flag, even if they are Sea France. We then let our homing instinct lead us to the bar for a pint and a sandwich, before heading back up on deck to see us dock.
We started the long journey down France and drove quite late into the night. I kept another fell walking tradition alive by enjoying a nice can of Strongbow as we were driving down. I'm starting to worry that I'm getting too predictable though as when I opened the can Al could tell what was in the can without even looking, it could have quite easily been coke. We pulled up at a lay-by at about 2am French time to have some sleep. Everyone claimed their spots for sleeping, Al had the 3 front seats, with the gear stick between them, I had the next 3 seats back, Dan (being slightly smaller squeezed onto 2 seats and then Rachel and Maddy had the back 2 rows. Phil had taken his sleeping bag up to the roof to sleep, which seemed a great idea, unfortunately I couldn't find my sleeping bag to join him. There was of course a quick smoke on the roof before most people went to sleep. We'd had a successful day, but Phil was soon to regret a comment he'd made about modern engines never breaking down, read on to find out why, all will be revealed in Chapter 2.

Al, Phil and Adders set sail for France

Chapter 2 - Day 2 - Tuesday

The day started fairly slowly, but things were not to stay that way, though we didn't know it at this point, the events of this day were to change the whole trip, not to mention causing no end of hassle and uncertainty for the following two and a half months.
I woke up at 6 and unfortunately had to go outside for relief, I won't go into too much detail. After that I ended up staying up, despite Rachel telling me to "FOR FUCKS SAKE, GO TO SLEEP!!!" I entertained myself for the next 3 or so hours however I could. This involved walking round the lay-by a few times, this wasn't that interesting or exciting as the lay-by was in the middle of no-where, the only thing nearby was the motorway, and people usually complain when I play with traffic. I ended up playing with my Diablo, eating and just watching what was going on. I got to see Dan rise half asleep still and walk out the minibus with his sleeping bag and climb onto the roof to be with Phil. Amazingly no one on the minibus stirred when the big artic Lorries next to the minibus struck up, or when they revved the engine and drove off. Eventually everyone rose and we set off to find somewhere to have breakfast.

Dan & Phil asleep on the roof rack

We found a nice service station to have a traditional French breakfast, or at least most of us had a French breakfast, Maddy had a peanut butter sandwich, which she made with stuff she'd brought with her, there's always 1. After breakfast we filled up at a BP filling station, but we weren't awfully impressed as they didn't have BP Ultimate Diesel, More Performance, Less Pollution, and, even worse, they didn't accept our BP card, we had to pay for fuel. While Al, Phil and Dan were trying to convince the bloke at the filling station to accept the BP card, Maddy was out at the minibus offering everyone dates, she didn't think Al would mind her offering dates with her out, no one accepted any as we think it was the dates that were making her fart.
We set off and were cruising along very nicely with Phil in the driving seat. All good things must come to an end though, in our case the nice cruising came to an end at about midday (French Time), near Dijon. Suddenly, without any warning, the engine started making a really loud noise and the whole dashboard started vibrating violently, then after about 30 seconds the noise and vibrating stopped completely, just as suddenly as it had started, everyone on the minibus breathed a sigh of relief except Phil who was trying to pull onto the hard shoulder. When asked why he was pulling onto the hard shoulder he told us the engine had died, which explains why the noise stopped. For anyone who knows nothing about vehicles, when the engine doesn't work it isn't good, it kind of makes moving a bit of a problem, take it from me, I do some work for a lorry garage.

Maddy knitting by the auto route

We pulled onto the hard shoulder to have a look at the engine, we couldn't see a problem, after all, it was still there, why wasn't it working? We eventually deciding that yelling and kicking the engine wasn't going to help, and the RAC couldn't do oat so we sent a party off to walk down the motorway till they found an SOS call box. In the meantime we all settled down and waited, Maddy got her Knitting out, yes you read right, she spends that much time with old people that she's slowly turning into one, the knitting is only the start, soon she'll be demanding all music be turned down to a near whisper and be going to the hair dressers every week for a blue rinse and perm, she already lives near the bingo hall. Al took this opportunity to ring the sports centre and tell them the bad news, they didn't take it as bad as they could have done, we only had to tell them in detail what had happened about 3 times and tell them we were being serious, and this wasn't a wind up.
When the recovery vehicle arrived we sent Rachel to use her excellent French and describe the problem and convince him that we hadn't put petrol in. I would have spoken to the bloke myself, but my French doesn't go very far past ordering drinks, asking where the loo or the bar is and pulling sickies, not that I needed to speak French to pull sickies or that I pulled sickies while I was working in France last year as everyone spoke English (all but a small handful were British). The minibus was loaded on the back of the recovery truck and taken to a garage in Is-Sur-Tille, where we had to wait for the end of lunch and then try to sort out how the hell we were going to get us and a load of kit to the Alps. We set our newly elected negotiator on the job of sorting out all this (actually, he elected himself; we just couldn't be bothered to stand up to him in case we ended up doing that job). Maddy, me and Rachel disappeared to have a look around during all this intense negation and came back with supplies and details of a local campsite (you could tell we were optimistic).

The mini bus is loaded on to the recovery vehicle

We got back to find that we'd made no real progress, except being presented with a bill for the recovery (we didn't wander off again, in case another bill found its way to us). Phil had made another great quote (not as good as his one the previous day "Modern engines don't break down", yeah right Phil, pull the other one, its got bells on it), apparently putting low quality fuel into the minibus shouldn't have caused the break down as Transit engines would run on butter, thank god we have Dan to fill the vehicles up, else Phil would be filling the vehicles up from the dairy isle of Tesco's.
Eventually we negotiated a hire car from the RAC and a taxi to come and collect it, but unfortunately some of the stuff would have to be left on the minibus, and be collected on the way back up (Ha, Ha, we believed them). Dan wasted no time in getting the disposal of kit sorted, Al's guitar was the first thing to go, followed by all the chairs and other furniture, then clothes were cut down, Dan used this as an excuse to get rid of all his trousers, except a pair of near skin tight Ron Hill's. Dan's kit sorting was thorough, I had to hide Minty really well to get him through, but unfortunately the inflatable dolphin paid the price and had to be left on the minibus. Unfortunately among the items that were left were the compass, map, marmet trap and marmet hunting gear. Phil was happily willing to dispose of the extra, extra-strong coffee there and then, but it was decided that that could stay; just the normal strength coffee would be disposed of.

Adders and Maddy waiting with all the kit

Once the stuff was sorted Al, Phil and Dan went by taxi to collect the hire vehicle, we were meant to be getting a Ford Galaxy. Me, Maddy and Rachel were left by the side of the road with a big pile of kit, as by this time the garage had closed for the day. We looked like a family of gipsies. We took it in turns to go off for a walk to relieve the boredom. We found out that we were sat at a bus stop, as a bus pulled up to collect, we declined the lift and text Dan to tell him, we got a rather panicky phone call from Dan to tell us not to get on the bus (like we were ever going to). Al, Phil and Dan seemed gone that long that we started to get worried that something had happened to them, it wasn't helped that Dan wouldn't give us any information when we text him. We came up with 3 very possible scenarios that could have happened. The first was that they had been abducted by Aliens; Dan was being anally probed while the other aliens, with Al helping were smoking Phil. The next was that they had been attacked by dinosaurs (very common in Dijon, France), Dan was being arse raped by one dinosaur while Al and Phil were being eaten. The third and final scenario was that the police had stopped them, Phil had seen them coming and swallowed all the extra, extra-strong coffee. The police had suspicions what Phil had done so impounded the car, but hadn't arrested them. Al and Dan had got Phil into a shopping trolley which he thought was an aeroplane that he was piloting and were walking back with this trolley, hoping Phil would soon stop trying to look for the duty free fags in his aeroplane. We were sure 1 of these would be correct, we thought for Dan's sake that it ort to be the third one.
The vehicles (yes vehicles) (our 1 Ford Galaxy had turned into a Mercedes A class and a Ford Focus Estate) arrived at about 8pm, we got loaded up and decided to drive as far as Lyon that night, where Al had found a nice cheap (yeah, right) campsite to spend the night at. We had to re-assure Kia though that we were coming and were ok as we should have been at the campsite by now. We made good time getting down there and found the campsite ok. We just managed to get booked in before they closed, but only just. We got our tents up and then decided to go for a drink, unfortunately by this time it was 11pm and everywhere was closed. We just headed back to our tents to the realisation that we would go to bed sober for the 1st night ever on a fell walking trip. We did manage a quick go on the play ground, which was some consolation.

Chapter 3 - Day 3 - Wednesday

This was a late start for most people, except me (as usual); I entertained myself by checking out the facilities. We got underway late morning time, after reviving Al; his heart had nearly given up when he discovered the price of the campsite. We drove straight to Grenobal and decided to find the train station ready for when the deserter deserted us. We then had the great idea to just pop to a supermarket for supplies, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but after a good 20 minutes of getting lost we started to regret it. We did find the supermarket in the end and stocked up on essentials, and got a bit of food too. We then had to get out of Grenobal, which is harder than it sounds; they seem to be demolishing the town and roads. Al's suspicions were that they were building a motorway, as he kept telling us and the workmen. When we finally got out of Grenobal we headed to Briançon, which is the highest town in Europe. Unfortunately on the climb up to it we got stuck behind a very slow lorry which slowed us down no end, it did give me chance to tell Al, Maddy and Rachel about a comment a Brookes girl had made on the Christmas ski trip, she must have been drunk still to say "It must take them ages to build a ski resort, they got all these mountains to build", I suppose she could have been on to something, the Alps could be a huge man-made hollow structure. As we approached Briançon Al got that fed up of seeing the signs for Briançon that he started screaming at every sign mentioning Briançon. We went for a hunt to find the train station in Briançon for the deserter. From Briançon the next stop was the train station in L'Argentiere, followed by the campsite at Aile Froide in the Parc Naturel Des Ecrins. We got to the campsite at about 7pm and were greeted by Kia. We found a nice place to set up camp and started to prepare the curry for tea, after fixing the gas burner and opening the first bottle of wine (the first bottle was rank, so we added Crème De Super Cassis to it to make Kia, which I used to live on last year in France). Me and Phil decided that we needed to claim the area as British so we erected a flag pole and hoisted the Union Jack. The response was a bit worse than expected from Rachel, as she asked what the flag was. After tea, as the cold air drew into the valley we headed into my tent to continue drinking and then have a bit of a mass massage session.

Al and Dan start preparing the curry

The Union Jack flying high and proud over our camp (Fell Walking Close)

Chapter 4 - Day 4 - Thursday

This was the first full day in the Alps and as usual wasn't a very early start, o well, we're on holiday. People would have probably stayed in bed even longer had a bloke not come round and asked us to move our tents. There was the shock discovery that the Focus battery was flat, that'll be the radio and lights last night that's done that, We got this problem sorted though by pushing the car down a hill, then driving it to the next village when it did start, unfortunately while it was away we wanted breakfast, which was in the back of the focus. When people did get some breakfast we were approached by a woman from the pitch next to us, offering us a barbeque and fuel for it. We got chatting to them and convinced them that we weren't Welsh Scouts; she thought we were French the night before, or at least she'd spoken to me in French. We let them have a bottle of wine as a thank you. Dan decided to try and convince them that we were climbers; he's probably embarrassed to admit he's a fell walker.
We finally started the days walk after dinner; it was just a hike up the mountain on the edge of the valley we were camping in. The walk seemed hard going for everyone except Kia (we're come to the conclusion that she has some mountain goat in her), possibly because of the altitude. The weather didn't help as it kept raining whenever you took your waterproof off and stopped as soon as you put it on, several of us just gave up with waterproofs and got wet, it was easier. On the way up Dan found a friend, it may have been a caterpillar, but he didn't seem to mind. The friendship didn't last that long though as he was soon insulting it and left it on a rock soon after. On 1 of the many breaks on the way up Al came out with what he thought was an amazing fact, "Did you know that in America you can go to restaurants that let you choose your own cow to have for your meal, and they'll kill it there and then and serve it to you", He seemed horrified to find out that just because it was on The Simpsons, that doesn't make it true and that The Simpsons isn't real, it's only a cartoon. We found a really nice area on the way up so we thought we'd grab a group photo, I ended up taking it, but just as I was about to push the button to take it, something hit me in the neck. Dan showed great concern, his reaction was "WOW", apparently he thought I'd been shot, It's great to know that should I ever be shot Dan will be amused. We got to what was going to be our summit (as the actual summit would have taken several more hours) just as the heavens really opened. Once it had stopped though we made a fairly quick descent back to camp.

Having a rest break on the way up

That night we decided to celebrate Rachel's last night by going out for a meal, unfortunately by the time we got sorted out the restaurant was only serving omelettes. Only having Omelettes was OK, but the worst news was still to come, they didn't do any cider, Al had promised me that they did cider. I let the fact that they didn't serve any cider go as the omelettes were fantastic. After the food was finished while we were waiting for the bill, we got bored and started doing origami with the napkins. It was all tasteful stuff until Al lowered the tone by making a pair of tits out of his napkin.
After the meal we retired to Dan and Phil's tent to organise how we were going to get rid of Rachel the following morning, that was the plan but somehow we got talking about downing a pint with an aspirin and driving to Grenobal, how random is that? It was decided that Kia would take Rachel to the train station in the morning and Phil would 3 times not drink a pint with an aspirin and drive to Grenobal, even with Dan trying to convince him to do it.

Looking down over the campsite

Looking over the edge

Chapter 5 - Day 5 - Friday

This was the day Rachel left us to join her parents elsewhere in France. The rest of us rose during the morning and we were ready to start walking by early afternoon. Maddy had risen and grabbed a bag of mangky Tesco's value cheese and gone to the shower block, only discovering that the bag she'd pick up wasn't her wash bag when she reached in for her shampoo and pulled out cheese, apparently she did notice the difference before she started lathering it all over herself. We started by walking up the valley a little way and then started up the side of the valley to try to find some snow. After all the talk about it, and to out do Phil, Dan took the beer and aspirin dare, this involved drinking a pint of beer and then taking an aspirin before the hike. We had a lunch stop half way up where we got discussing the French PGL activity centre that I worked in last year before coming to uni. Arr, the memories (If anyone is interested in this, the pictures are on the web on the PGL Hameau-Les-Ages Staff site at http://groups.msn.com/hla-staff2003 or for a visiting kids point of view http://groups.msn.com/hla2002).

From the lunch spot we split into 2 groups for the final ascent to snow. Phil and Kia took the harder route up and me, Al, Dan and Maddy took the easier route up. We met up just before the snow and made a dash up, everyone trying to be the first on the snow (its funny, I don't remember anyone having this sort of enthusiasm when we found snow on Ben Nevis, in fact I think a lot of people wanted to be carried up at the top, unfortunately I was one of them). We climbed up to a ledge just above the snow where we had a rest, well; all of us had a rest except Kia, who just kept climbing. We had a discussion on whether the animal in the distance was a goat or a deer, even with my binoculars it was un clear. I said deer, Dan said goat, we've since found out that it is a cross between the 2 which is only found in the Alps, so I was half right and those who said it was a goat were half wrong.
We started to make our way down by the side of a nice mountain stream; it was tempting to just go for a quick paddle. Dan decided that just a little paddle would be too mincy and insisted on making it a bit gnarlier. He insisted that we paddled naked (as you do), he went first. He stripped down to his boxers and then paddled out into the ice cold waters of this mountain stream which is fed by glaciers. Once in the middle of the stream he took his boxers off, dropped them in the water by accident and nearly fell into the icy waters, he then insisted his picture was taken. Not to be out done I went next, the water really was freezing cold and the stones on the bottom were sharp, you couldn't feel the stones after a while though as your feet lost all feeling. After my picture had been taken it was the turn of Al, he was reluctant, but thanks to Dan's bully boy tactics he gave in and did it with help from Maddy. As of yet I've only seen the picture of Al that I took, The rest were on Dan's camera, so he's probably in negotiations at the moment to try to sell them to porn mags or even worse The Sun. Once we'd all got feeling back in our feet we started heading down the mountain by an un-official path beside the mountain stream that we'd just posed naked in. The route down was a bit dull after the excitement in the stream, but that didn't stop us heading the rest of the way down. Al managed to inspire us to head down faster using the words "Hey, let's go to the pub tonight", had the pub served cider everyone would have been able to follow the Adders shaped blur down.

Al and Maddy posing for the mountaineering calendar

Phil watches, but won't join in

Even Adders joins in

We had a nice tea of pasta and very char grilled garlic bread (some idiot went and burnt them on the barbeque, no names mentioned). After tea me, Al, Dan and Maddy headed to the pub for a very expensive beer, we got to the bar and had to decide whether to have a beer each or buy a villa in the Med. We tried to make the beers last since they had cost us a fortune. We got to see the dog that had humped Lewis's leg on the last trip down to the Alps, which I know very little about as it was way before my time, I've just heard some of the drunken stories from Al who is the only one old enough to remember it. After our pint (as that was all we could afford without selling a kidney) we headed back to camp to find Kia and Phil with a lovely roaring fire in the fantastic fire circle (built by me). It was a really cold night so the fire was much appreciated, but even with the fire we soon called it a night and went to our warm(ish) sleeping bags; well, all except Phil who never moved from the fire side all night. Maybe he couldn't be bothered, maybe he thought someone would steal the fire, maybe there was something going on in his tent that he didn't want to be part of or maybe he just fancied a night out under the stars, who knows? I can understand wanting a night out under the stars though, I spent a night out when I took a group out biviwacking last year at PGL Hameau-Les-Ages and it's amazing.

Chapter 6 - Day 6 - Saturday

This was going to be a rest day so obviously it was a late start for most. We had decided to go white water rafting which we finally got organised just after lunch. We got to the start place in St. Clement Sur Durance (not St. Clements in Oxford) a bit late but thankfully the instructor waited. We all got our safety briefing, the majority of which was given to us in French. Then we had to launch the raft which involved carrying it into the water and then leaping on, easier said than done. Once we'd stated down the river the instructor decided to do a crash test, which as the name suggests involves crashing the raft into a cliff. As we crashed though Maddy fell backwards, thankfully the instructor had great reactions and caught her before we lost her out the boat.

A few bends later and we'd found some nice meaty rapids and were getting some nice speed up, but you have to take the rough with the smooth and though we had more speed, we were heading towards a cliff. Al took this moment to mince to the other side of the boat, where he thought he would be safer. This put a lot of strain on the people on our side of the raft as we were one man short, you just can't get the staff, they'll mince at anything. I might consider letting you forget about this eventually mincer Al. Anyway, we survived, no thanks to the mincer (no offence Al, hope you're not going to stop including me in your drinks round, mines a Strongbow, just for a change).
On a fairly calm section of the river we had a little game, we all knelt on the floor of the raft with paddles up in the air and each of us had to climb round the edge of the raft in the shortest possible time. Then we got onto some gnarlier rapids and even better, the instructor let us each have a turn at steering the raft, even me. I did, of course wish everyone the best of luck; they'd need it with me controlling the raft. It turns out they did need luck, as I managed to crash the raft and nearly fall out, people should learn, put me in charge and you might as well just bend down, stick your head between your legs and with a little muscular pressure you can kiss your arse good bye. I managed to guild the raft well otherwise and so did everyone, though it would have been a bit better if Dan and Maddy had let us have a bit of a rest during their turns in control.
Before we landed to dis-embark we were told we could go for a swim, and barely before he'd finished saying this, there was a splash and I was in (well I used to be a swimmer, and still am a lifeguard, what do you expect). We dis-embarked near Embrum (home of PGL Embrun) and loaded the raft and ourselves up to get back to St. Clement Sur Durance.
On our way back to camp we stopped off at the supermarket for supplies, mainly barbeque stuff and cider. We had a pizza from the van outside the supermarket, which proved to be harder that we'd originally thought as the guys ordering the pizza fancied a pizza with 2 halves of toppings on, try telling that to a French man. I managed to make a euro at the supermarket as I offered to take Maddy's trolley back and then collected the 1 euro in it (I don't think she even knows, no dought she does now).
We returned back to camp for a barbeque and another nice big roaring fire.

Chapter 7 - Day 7 - Sunday

Today was to be the highlight of our trip, a hike up to Glassier Blanc, the largest glassier (ice cube) in Europe. We were intending to get underway early that day, and kind of managed it, we were under way by half one. We drove to the car park and had a look round the museum after finding Maddy and Phil who had disappeared together just after we arrived (if we can loose people in the car park, what chance did we stand on the mountains). The museum wasn't that big, in fact it was a display in the corner of the gift shop.

Looking up at Glassier Blanc, with Phil

We started up the hour and a half trek up to the Glassier and made the 1st half hour in really good time, it took about half an hour (strange that). From there on we started to slow down, but not by much, we had several little stops. The first was to look at a marmet (little creature which is like a beaver without the tail, very common in the Alps and I saw several in Kenya too), which was begging for people to give it food. The next stop was to for a bit of a rest (and Dan was a little way in front so we wanted to see how long it took him to notice, he noticed and stopped just above us), There was a nice little slope between us and Dan which we didn't think Dan could see so the Kaiser decided he had to try a stealth attack on Dan, unfortunately Dan noticed this big bright yellow thing heading up the slope and work out what was happening, just to set the record straight the bright yellow thing was the Kaisers bag, not the Kaiser, he isn't bright yellow.
We got to a bit of a valley where the bottom of the Glassier was and decided to have lunch there as it was as good a place as any and we could find a nice un-crowded spot. We had lunch, during which the dares started; Dan dared the Kaiser to touch the glassier with his dick, so the Kaiser dared Dan to touch the Glassier with his tongue, possibly not in the same place at the same time. I bagsy shotgunned making the call to the emergency services as the call would be hilarious, "Hello, one of my party has got his tongue frozen to Glassier Blanc, another one of my party leant over to try and help him when he got his dick frozen to the glassier. Please come and free them."

Lunch, just below Glassier Blanc

After lunch we started making our way up the mountain at the side of the Glassier, we raced up the mountain to the hostel a.k.a. Al's house, we had a little tour on the way up of Al's garden which was situated on a little plateau just below the hostel. Al showed us his garage where he parked his helicopter (a hut on the edge of the plateau) and his garden that he was seriously dis-satisfied with, apparently he'd asked the landscape gardener to create a rockery, well there were certainly a lot of rocks around, plus a pond, unfortunately the planting left quite a bit to be desired (blink and you missed it, in fact you didn't even need to blink, you just missed it full stop, there was hardly a lawn even).

Smith the Marmet

The Hostel, just beside Glassier Blanc

When we got to the hostel we hardly stopped, even though Kia had been asked to take a photo for someone, Dan, the Kaiser and Maddy had got a goal of reaching the glassier in their minds and nothing was going to stand in their way. The trek up to the glassier was done at a very fast pace, with 2 definite groups emerging, the fit group (Maddy, the Kaiser and Dan) and the sensible Sunday hikers (Me, Al and Kia). The fit group raced ahead with just 1 goal in mind, walking on the glassier, the sensible Sunday hikers on the other hand made our way up at a reasonable pace and then decided to stop about half way as we didn't believe it was do able in the sun light that we had left.

Al, deep in thought

Apparently the fit group made it to the glassier, they even claim that they have photographic proof on the website, but people can soon be added to photo's can't they Al (for anyone who doesn't know, Al had to be added to the photo on the top of Ben Nevis that was on the notice board, he did make it to the top though, he was just too shy to ask the other group of hikers to take the photo for him). Us sensible Sunday hikers sat on the mountainside and chatted for about 40 minutes about our first hiking experiences, living arrangements for the coming year and a host of other topics before heading back down to the hostel to wait for the others. We had a bright idea to avoid climbing down the waterfall that we'd climbed up by taking an alterative easy path that was right next to the waterfall. This path unfortunately lead us to a sheer drop (as I said earlier in the report, we had to sacrifice items such as the maps and compasses to make room for Minty), we did manage to find a path over to the hostel, unfortunately at the end of the path was a 10 foot climb down to the hostel on a vertical bit of rock. Al and Kia both started to try and climb down, I on the other hand saw the easy path down and took that, I managed to make it to the hostel to see them just slightly off the top of this climb down. Kia seemed to make the climb down fairly easily once she'd found a decent footing, Al wasn't quite as graceful, but at the end of the day climbing downwards is a bitch, if we were meant to climb downwards, absailing wouldn't have been invented.

Dan (supposedly) on Glassier Blanc

Kia and Al try Climbing Down

I got to the refuge and started a long wait for Dan, the Kaiser and Maddy, in that time we had several photos taken and had some snacks. We kept looking up the mountainside every so often though with my binoculars to try and see any sign of our lost fell walkers, we saw several groups that looked like ours, but ours never emerged. The worry was steadily increasing and we were all feeling the sense of worry that something had happened, the determination to reach the glassier had quite possibly seen them take a risk that had caused them to run into serious difficulties. By 6:30pm Al, me and Kia were really getting worried, all mobiles were on, but we had no signal to try and call our lost party, but there were also no messages coming in from them. We took a very hard decision and decided that we had better start heading down without the others as we might run out of daylight otherwise and that may put our lives at risks as well. We left a message at the hostel that "If a German with a dodgy moustache who is intent on bringing down the west, a woman in a knitted jumper and a small guy who won't shut up appear here off the mountain looking for 2 guys and a girl, tell them that we have started to head down", the staff quickly relayed this message to everyone in the hostel.

We claim this land for Great Britain

We started to head down, always keeping an eye on the mountain behind us for any signs of our lost party, but here was none. We made sure we touched some of the snow on the way down so that we were able to claim that we'd touched snow at Glassier Blanc. We made it down in about an hour and a half, which included the time we took looking up at the mountain, hoping that soon Dan, Maddy and the Kaiser would appear, but no such luck. On the way down me and Kia tried our hand at a spot of Marmet catching, as it was curry for tea and if we didn't provide any meat it would just be vegetable curry. Unfortunately we had had to leave the marmet hunting gear in the minibus in order to make room to bring Dan (We all make mistakes), so our trapping methods were a bit primitive, basically it involved me and Kia trying to persuade a French marmet to get in a bag in English, shave itself, remove its head and stick a spit up it's arse, strangely enough it didn't work. We got down to the car park to find Dan sat on a rock by the stream at the bottom (given a fishing rod, he'd have made a good gnome); apparently they'd been there about an hour and a half.
We drove home and cooked our vegetable curry, while the Kaiser stood in the unisex toilets with his laptop, he was in fact charging it up from the shaver socket, but others may not have seen it that way. It wouldn't have surprised me if some little kid had gone back to their parents saying "Daddy, Daddy, there's a strange man hanging around in the toilets with a computer". No one reported him, thank god and in the time it took to cook tea, the laptop was charged up enough for an episode or 2 of Black Adder. After the curry we all retired to my tent (sounds like I'm about to say something like "for a mass orgy", if you think that, you've been reading too many playboy magazines Dan) to watch an episode or 2 of the legend that is Black Adder. After which we retired to our own tents to go to bed.

Chapter 8 - Day 8 - Monday

The second Monday was never intended to be a hiking day as it was the day all the results were released for the last terms modules. For Al and Dan these modules marked the end of their degrees and were all that stood between them and their graduation. We made a fairly early start, early meaning most people were up by about 10am, I'd woken up to the hair of the dog (that's a morning drink as soon as you wake up, in my case a bottle of Desperados (beer and tequila mix)). We all got in the Merc, except Maddy who stayed to do hers and Al's washing because she'd already got her results, she'd had them for quite a while. We drove down to Briançon to find a shopping centre that would have an internet café in it. We found a shop with internet access and checked our e-mail, first of all as the pressure was building, then we checked our results. Al and Dan had both passed their degrees, me and Kia had passed our first year with just 1 failed non compulsory module each, if I remember rightly, Phil had passed his second year and Maddy we already knew had passed her degree, Celebrations all round I think. We then went shopping at the supermarket for celebration kit, mainly booze but with some food. We got 3 bottles of champagne, several bottles of wine, several bottles of cider, a big crate of beer and Bob the bony chicken (a whole chicken for us to cook on the rotisserie of the barbeque). I showed Al how to save money in French supermarkets, they let you weigh your own fruit and veg. so you simply weigh them incorrectly, I managed to save the fell walking funds about a euro in all.
With supplies bought we loaded up the Merc and headed to McDonalds for lunch. McDonalds wasn't very crowded and we were served pretty much instantly by the 2 nice fit girls behind the counter (makes a change from England). French McDonalds even sell beer in them, so obviously I had a McBeer with my meal. Dan had spotted a bottle of what looked like champagne in a display case in McDonalds which had inspired him to open one of our bottles of champagne as he couldn't actually see McChampagne on the McMenu. We got our McFood and sat down outside on the McPatio. Dan cracked open the first bottle of Champers and we all had a bit, we looked very refined, drinking Champagne straight out of a bottle, at least me and Al used glasses at my 21st, even if they were pint glasses. We let Dan have the majority of the champers. Dan had a great idea, he leapt up and ran into Ronald Land kiddies soft play area and went round that, with shoes on and parents of the little kids watching him. This random drunken act has given us an idea, next summer trip we do, we have to stop at every Ronald Land on route and everyone has to do one lap of it. We were at McDonalds for about an hour, during which time I'd had 2 McMeals and shared a McFlurry with Dan, McDonalds can only serve McBeer with McMeals so I'd had to have 2 McMeals to get 2 McPints of McBeer, o well, like I said earlier the McGirls behind the McCounter were fit enough to see again.
We left McDonalds and piled into the Merc to go and find a cash point. The Kaiser was driving as he hadn't been drinking. Driving round Briançon was great, we were all singing loudly to the radio, especially to Top Gun, we couldn't sing to CD's as the CD player as well as the navigation system didn't work. We all went to the cash point and then to a filling station to fill the Merc up with fuel. At the filling station Dan tried insisting that he had to pump the diesel but for some reason we wouldn't allow him, Phil pumped the diesel, we did make sure it was diesel and not butter and we got on our way back to the camp, now known as 'Fell Walking Close'. On the way back Dan showed us the bangers that he'd bought (that's bangers as in explosives, not bangers as in sausages, we'd bought them). He wanted a lighter so he could play with them while we were driving along. The Kaiser wouldn't let him but Al handed him his lighter. The Kaiser saw he'd got a lighter and said very concerningly "What the hell is HE doing with a lighter". Dan lit one of the explosives and thankfully threw it out the window when he burnt himself on it, had he just dropped it in the back we'd have been very concerned, especially me as I was sat next to him in the back.

Al and Dan playing frisbee with beers in their hands

There was a little bang from the banger but nothing too spectacular from the distance we were at.
We got back to Fell Walking Close at about 5pm. Me, Dan and the Kaiser started playing with Dan's explosives, trying to make bigger and bigger explosions. We need a chemistry student in the club really who can get us dry ice to make dry ice bombs, we're made them with the Oxford Stunt Factory and they are great fun, we get to play with Napalm substitute for some of the stunts too. We then moved on to have a game of ultimate Frisbee with beers in our hands, great fun, if only the coordination was there.

Bob the Boney chicken on the spit

We started barbequing fairly soon after the Frisbee game and got Bob the chicken on the spit rotating automatically thanks to the rotisserie motor that we'd got with the barbeque. The chicken took over 2 and a half hours to cook, and we had to use up all the charcoal and lighter fluid to cook it. Once it was cooked I had a small slice to check it and it was good, so Al had a slice, we then let Dan have it. He sat trying to find some meat on Bob the bony chicken but gave up after 25 minutes and bollocked me and Al for eating all the meat on Bob. To be fair though, there was no meat on him in the first place, Bob was a French chicken, he may be disease free but he was also meat free, I think I'll stick to our possibly diseased British chickens; they have some meat on them. We managed to get the barbeque going with sticks so that we could cook the other stuff, we got a nice fire going as by this time it was getting dark and cold. We eventually got some food at about 10pm. It had been suggested that instead of having Bob the bony chicken, we should have had Sidney the duck, Dave the goose or send Dan up the road marmet hunting (which in his state he'd possibly do) for Smith the marmet. We retired to my tent for an episode of Black Adder before retiring to our own tents.

Chapter 9 - Day 9 - Tuesday

This was to be our last full day in the Alps and as usual it was a slow start. We sent most of the morning and early afternoon sorting out things with the RAC. We finally had breakfast at 2:30pm and started the days hike not long after that. We hiked up the valley towards another glassier. On the way up we decided that Phil needs to enter the Le Mans 24 hour race in the safety bus, imagine it all the competitors are there in their sports cars and then Phil is there in a ford Transit minibus with Maxwell's plastered all over it. All he'd need would be a huge tank of coke connected directly to a drip in his arm and a fag dispenser. We all thought he'd do really well in it, and it would be sheer comedy for the spectators. We've all volunteered to be on his pit crew.

We didn't go too far as we found another stream to play in (with cloths on this time). I managed to divert part of the stream by digging out a new channel, while Al tried damming parts off by chucking rocks into the stream. We didn't stay out that long as we were intending to go to the restaurant for a meal. We saw a recent avalanche on the way back, it had possibly happened while we'd been in the Alps.

Phil and Al explore the river

That evening Me, Dan, the Kaiser, Al and Maddy went out for a meal, while Kia went to see a friend in Grenobal. At the restaurant Dan had a set 3 course meal for 13€ while the rest of us had a fondue. I had a starter of snails. There was plenty of wine drunk, 2 bottles of red and half a bottle of white for me. Phil had an aperitif of Pastice (a strong spirit that comes back to haunt you the morning after when you drink anything, believe me, been there, done it). Unfortunately the conversation wasn't as good as it could be, in fact at 1 point I was very tempted to batter myself to death with me wine bottle. We had Dan and Maddy arguing about freedom and the Kaiser and Al having a conversation about war, great.
We finished the meal and headed back to Fell Walking Close and Dan and Maddy were still arguing so the Kaiser disappeared to start rolling and me and Al started some serious drinking, as I remember we had a bottle of wine each. Our discussion was a lot more pleasant and very random, due to the alcohol intake, I think part of it was about Al getting that pissed on their last Alps trip that he started stopping every car going up the road and asking for passports, whilst wearing a Union Jack Flag, then there was a discussion on how commonwealth countries are still part of Britain and how glad we are that we have a queen, and then I think we had a bit of a discussion about how Al's brother was a famous golfer (or was it gopher, I can't quite remember) and had won an American competition, how I'd qualified to attend the National biathlon championships a few years ago and how the Kaiser had been to the nationals for some sport, I think Al had been to the National championships as well for some sport, I can't remember fully, I was drinking heavily.
We finally stopped Dan and Maddy arguing and retired to my tent to watch some Black Adder, unfortunately some berk (no names mentioned but chances are he's drinking Strongbow at this moment) had only put the laptop on standby the previous night instead of shutting it down fully and now the battery was dead. Not put off by this we got the book of all the Black Adder scripts out and read the episode "Beer", it started off that we all had our own characters to play, but we soon decided to just read a page each and change accents. There were more drinks consumed as my tent had all the alcohol in my back porch (beer store). We just read the one episode as it took quite a while and we had a lot of travelling to do the next day.

Fell Walking Close

Chapter 10 - Day 10 - Wednesday

This was to be the day we transferred down to the beach, it was also Basteal day, Frances biggest National Holiday, when the Revolutionaries stormed the Basteal. We were all up in decent time and started packing everything into cars. Kia had arrived back in the early hours of the morning after driving at high speed from Grenobal and nicking a traffic cone from Grenobal. We dumped the barbeque as it was looking in a really sorry state now, I'd tripped over it in the night and then kicked it, and Al said he'd done the same so it wasn't in the best of conditions. We had our last flag down and then just had to sort out who had left their stuff on the railing. Al held the first garment up and asked who's it was, from the crowd a voice shouted "That is mine" in a German accent, it was the Kaiser. Al held up the next garment and asked the same question, and the Kaiser gave him the same answer, this repeated until Al got to the last item. Al just asked the Kaiser if they were his and out of habit the Kaiser said yes, he'd have taken them as well had Maddy not butted in and told the Kaiser that they weren't his as they were in fact her panties.

The Flag is lowered for the last time at Fellwalking Close

We split ourselves up between the cars, I went in the Merc with Al, Dan went in the Focus with the Kaiser and Maddy went in Kia's car with Kia and Batty the bat, who was hanging from the mirror in Maddy's panties. We were going to stop at the shops on the way down and then at the creperie for lunch. This simple plan wasn't as simple as it sounds, as Kia and Maddy went to 1 shop and then found me and Al at the other shop, Dan and Phil on the other hand decided to go to the shop in the next village over, and then drove back when they couldn't find us there. We went to the creperie but this was equally as confusing as only 5 of us ordered and no one would admit to not ordering, we confused ourselves, no wonder the poor young French girl taking the order was confused. In the end we got the problem sorted and the creps were really good, the waitress seemed to find it funny that she'd served my crep upside down so it looked like it was just a plain crep.

Batty the Bat, hanging in Maddy's panties

We set off eventually with Kia leading the way; we intended to go down on back country roads to avoid paying tolls, as it was getting very costly with 3 vehicles to pay tolls for. We got to Gap without any problem. We went via Embrun and actually went past PGL Embrun, they had one of the PGL coaches there, and you could even see the PGL water sports taking place on the lake next to the campsite. At Gap we found a restaurant that was open on Basteal day, and guess who it was, McDonalds. Kia decided to have a game of follow my leader with us all in the car park, before finally parking up to go in. We had some food and a trip round Ronald Land. When we set off we had to take a de-tour into Gap and pretty much every town after that to try and find a tabac for Phil and Al. Kia had also started to go round every roundabout at least once before turning off. Unfortunately from Gap onwards we started getting lost, we had to keep pulling over to get our bearings. By this time I'd got the Union Jack put up in the Merc as all the French were flying the Tri-Colour (the French flag), we deserved to fly ours. After a while Dan decided to take over the job of navigator, as an anonymous Guinness drinker did say "Maddy can't navigate to save her life". With Dan navigating we still kept pulling over just as often, but now we got a progress report every time we stopped which made the trip even slower. We eventually got down to near Hyeres, where me and Al took over the job of navigating. We drove straight past the campsite once to get onto a main road, which we drove back and forth on once or twice before turning back off onto the road where the campsite had suddenly appeared on. We finally got to the campsite at about 9pm. We'd rung ahead to let the woman on reception know that we were going to be late, so she was waiting for us. The woman took us on a tour of the campsite looking for a spare pitch before deciding that we could pitch next to reception. We had a quick beer and headed over to the bar where we had a sandwich and a nice well deserved pint by the pool. After our sandwich and pint we headed back to our pitch where we sorted out camping arrangements. I pitched my tent, but very quickly got forced out of it by squatters, so I had to lay my sleeping bag out outside with Kia and Phil. Dan was going to sleep in the Merc, but as we were all settling down and watching an episode of, you guessed it, Black Adder we saw he was not alone in there. He started by waving at the mosquito that was in there with him, then he tried hitting it. At this point Black Adder was paused because the entertainment of Dan trying to kill this mosquito was much better. He was diving all over the back seat of the Merc.

Our sleeping arrangement

Eventually he gave in and joined us outside, the mosquito had won. We carried on with the Black adder episode; we watched the episode "Beer" which we'd read the night before. After 2 episodes of Black Adder we called it night and went to sleep.

Chapter 11 - Day 11 - Thursday

This was to be our beach day, and the final day for Kia and Phil who were leaving to go home to their home countries. We were up in fairly good time, mainly because with over half the group sleeping outside we got woken up. We got a shock when all us gnarly outdoor sleepers got up, it looked like we were going through puberty again, our faces were covered in bites, which looked like spots. Dan who obviously has the tastiest flesh (haven't actually tried his flesh myself, so I can't back up this claim) as he was covered from head to toe in thousands of mosquito bites. We had a bit of breakfast, including fresh bread from the shop next door to our pitch. We then unloaded everything out of the cars and into my tent. Phil was taking the Merc back to Germany and we were keeping the Focus to take back to Blighty. We loaded into the cars and headed off down towards the beach.

Dan prepares for the beach

Down at the beach me, Dan, Maddy and Kia chose a spot and settled down while Al and the Kaiser went to Sixt to sort some admin bits out for the cars. On the beach we got lathered up in sun tan lotion, we rubbed it all over each other, it was hot and steamy, sorry, I'm dreaming again. Dan settled down to lay down all day listening to music, I went to try and find something to eat and Kia and Maddy went for a paddle. While at the shop I bought an inflatable duck as my inflatable dolphin was stuck on the minibus in Dijon, I would have got a dinghy but Dan would never let me take it home. I spent most of the day from then on playing with my duck in the sea. Kia and the Kaiser left to go home mid afternoon time. By this time I'd got bored of Sidney the inflatable Duck (named after Sid Sprout, maintenance man at PGL Hameau Les Ages) and had decided to dig a big hole which I got buried in later on.

Adders and his duck

Adders buried in the sand

Everyone on the beach

We left the beach at about 5pm and headed back to the campsite, via the super market. Back at camp Me, Al and Maddy decided to make use of the facilities and went for a quick swim before preparing tea. Tea was to be vegetable curry, we was just pushing everything we had left in a pot to use it up. We got through at least 2 bottles of wine during the preparation, pretty much all the red went into the curry, plus some of my rose. It worked out really well, even though about half the veg had been eaten before we started cooking (again, no names mentioned who sat there eating it, he got out of most of the work for that meal as well by claiming he had to ring his parents, it's unusual for them to ever hear from me). After the curry we decided to follow our natural instinct and go to the pub, well actually Dan (the capitalist) and Maddy (the communist) were having an argument about capitalism so me and Al decided we were going to get pissed and Dan and Maddy followed.
I got the first round in, Desperados all round, Dan apparently already knew what Desperados were and let me have his. Several rounds followed this, I think I bought several. That night in the bar there was a fantastic cheesy disco, we were dancing for most of the night with some French lads who I think were taking the piss at one point, but who cares, we didn't, we were pissed. We had several more drinks, Al even started drinking other peoples drinks, which he seems to be getting very good at, don't even try denying it, I saw you drinking Maddy's vodka and orange. One of the songs that was always being played was a song by O Zone, which is now 1 of our favourite songs of all time (I do have a copy which my brother will be bringing down when he comes down at the end of October), Ady a he, ady a who, ady a he, ady a who who. God knows what time we left the bar, I don't actually remember leaving, or going on the random stagger round the site to find our campsite which was right next to the bar. I do remember getting back to camp with a random poster that I'd acquired from somewhere and sharing a fag with Al (I don't usually smoke before anyone tries telling me off, I've already been told off once this year for having a fag, and that was by the Kaiser). I slept outside that night, Al and Maddy claimed my tent and Dan had the car.

Chapter 12 - Day 12 - Friday

This was to be a travel day; we were going to travel up as far as we could, via Dijon to switch vehicles. We got up and packed in fairly good time and then squeezed into the focus, 4 of us and loads of gear. Al was going to use motorways now as we only had 1 vehicle to pay for and because we wanted to save time. We made fairly good time; unfortunately most of us were hung over, one being the driver. We drove pretty much straight to Dijon, only stopping a handful of times for refreshment. The journey wasn't too comfy, especially when Dan fell asleep onto me. We made it to the Sixt garage in Dijon at just after 6pm, just after closing time, BUGGER. Not to be too disheartened at the thought that it looked like we'd be stuck in Dijon over night (daychavou) we found a local campsite to stay at, I found this particular campsite while I was exploring the town where the minibus had been recovered to.
We got there and tried finding the reception to book in at. There was no sign of a reception, or any kind of warden, so we asked one of the campers in our best French "Where is the office" or "Ou est le bureau", his reply was simple "sorry, I don't speak French". It turns out that a bloke from the council comes round every morning to collect the money off campers, no booking is required. We set up my tent and I actually made sure that I had a space in it this evening; I'm not going to let squatters chuck me out of my own tent, again. I tried persuading Al that we should get up really early to avoid paying but he reckoned that as it was so cheap it wasn't worth it, secretly he just wanted a lay in.
We got sorted out who was going to sleep where, me, Al and Maddy were to be in my tent (well someone's got to make sure they behave themselves), and Dan would be in the car. We then decided to go out for a meal, we got the name of a place which was still serving and headed into the town. We dined at an Italian restaurant, where everyone except me had pizza, I had steak and obviously there was plenty of wine to wash it all down with. We left after our main course and desert and plenty of wine and made our way back to camp before the storm hit.
Just as us tent dwellers were settling down in the tent the storm hit. The thunder and lighting were seriously spectacular; unfortunately there was rain too which was a bit wet. We lay there together inside the tent watching all the lightning. Unfortunately Al and Maddy never though that if the door was open at night with us inside that the mosquitoes might come in, nice one master minds. The storm didn't last that long (it wasn't as good as some of the ones we had at Hameau Les Ages last year) and we soon settled down and drifted off.

Chapter 13 - Day 13 - Saturday

We got a rather early awakening this morning. A man had come to collect the money for the campsite. He called into the tent where me, Al and Maddy were sleeping. He woke me up, as I'm the lightest sleeper, I thought it was Dan so I looked at the time and was about to tell him to F**K OFF when he called again and I realised it wasn't Dan. I greeted the bloke and told him that there were 4 of us for one night, I realised the mistake immediately, I should have said that there were 2 of us and that the guy in the car was separate. I would have said one, but since I had to speak to Al to get some money the bloke might have become suspicious of something.
After this wakeup call I couldn't get back to sleep, strangely enough I don't think Al even woke up properly, he just gave me money in his sleep (I will test out my suspicions in the Lake District, see if he'll hand me money if I ask for it while he's asleep). I got up and was going to have a wash, but my wash stuff was in the car and it was locked and Dan had the keys, inside the car with him. I ended up going for a wander round the town; I went back to the garage that we'd spent so long at for a bit, it hadn't changed a bit. Everyone else finally rose at about 10am; we got washed, got packed and headed back to Sixt at Dijon.
We arrived at Sixt to find them open this time (always a good start). The bloke at Sixt was happy with the state of the car and we got organised with the RAC for them to send a taxi to take us to Europcar to collect the next hire car. We got to Europcar to find them closed for their 2 hour lunch break, so we took the hint and found a nice bar to have our lunch. Dan had pizza again (not really a French dish), can't remember what Maddy and Al had but I had a nice bit of horse (I'm getting revenge for all the hassle the horses at the activity centre caused me last year and for my cousins horse that landed on me and meant that I had to be rushed into Accident and Emergency). We took a step closer in bringing Maddy back to the ways of the carnivore, she actually asked to have some of my horse steak (we'll have you eating meat in no time, say good bye to your green salad meals).
We got over to Europcar, just as it opened, and had got a car within half an hour; thankfully they had a water cooler to play with. We got the car and headed back to Sixt to get our stuff out of the Focus. To our horror, when we got to Sixt they had closed for the weekend. Thankfully they'd left the Focus unlocked so we make an attempt at moving all the stuff over to the new, smaller hire car. We managed it, but only just. This new hire car was more feature packed than the Focus, we opened and started it with a card, it had sun blinds in the back and a middle seat belt that you had to assemble yourself. We had a second driver for this vehicle though, Dan had been allowed to drive, it could be worse, it could be me driving.
The plan from here was to head up to Disney Land Paris and spend the evening there. The excitement was immense, well it was for me anyway. We shot up to Disney Land, which proves that Al and Dan couldn't wait to get there either. Dan did have fun when he tried changing gear the first few times, the gear stick was on the other side as it was a French car, Dan kept reaching for the gear stick and finding his hand in the glove box.

Dan, Maddy and Al outside the Walt Disney Studios

We arrived at Disney Land at about 6pm. The Disney studios were already closed, but that didn't matter as our plan was to get an evening ticket for the Main Park. Unfortunately they don't do evening tickets and to go in would cost 40€, we decided to go to the Disney Village instead, or rather, the others decided and they dragged me away, kicking and screaming all the way.
We got into the Disney Village and headed to look round Planet Hollywood, hoping that Dan or Maddy (as she works full time) would treat us to a slap up meal there, we live in hope. They had apparently left there money in the minibus so we ended up just looking at the film memorabilia. Outside Planet Hollywood we tried our hands in the hand prints of the stars outside, several actually fitted. Since we hadn't got any food from Planet Hollywood we hunted round for somewhere fairly cheap to have some food. Maddy found McDonalds, which I refused to go in as it's near enough the same menu as Britain, the food isn't that good and I wanted somewhere that was themed. In the end we settled for Billy Bobs Western Saloon, though Maddy reckoned it looked like the Isis pub in Oxford. The menu was good, the performer was good and the surroundings were great, what more could I ask for, o yeah Strongbow, and guess what, they had it. Speaking of the performer, while we were eating, he was performing an act that included juggling and even better than that, Diabalowing, only trouble was it reminded me that I'd had to leave mine on the minibus to make room for the bag of mangky Tesco Value cheese (WHY? Other than for Maddy to take to the shower to get washed with). Dan had a moment of real embarrassment during the meal as him and Maddy were having another argument as to whose home county makes the best cider, Maddy's from Somerset and Dan's from Herefordshire. Dan reckoned he could win the argument by asking me to read the address of the manufacturer off my bottle of Strongbow, and the bottle I was drinking was made in Belgium, he stopped arguing at that point. If ever the argument should raise its head again, as I'm sure it will, Strongbow is made by H. P. Bulmer Ltd. Of Hereford, UK, HR4 0LE, I'm reading it straight off my can, I haven't quite memorised all the writing on the can yet. Maddy was going to save herself for McDonalds, some people have no taste. After finishing our meal we headed outside where I found a bucking bronco to have a go on (possibly not the best idea straight after a meal, but, I never have been that intelligent). We then headed towards McDonalds, I got distracted yet again on route though, there were a load of Disney characters on a balcony, including Mickey. Several photos later I joined Al and Dan outside McDonalds where they were waiting for Maddy, it wasn't long before she joined us though, she couldn't be bothered to queue for food.

Al trys his hand in the hand prints of the stars at Planet Hollywood

Pluto and Goofy

Cowboy Adders

We started to wander round Lake Disney. We got round to the Disney New Port Bay Hotel where Al had stayed for his 18th. There were a lot of very stern questions asked to Mr. Scot at this point, mainly why didn't you invite us to this birthday holiday for your 18th, and the excuse "I didn't even know you or this club existed at that point" or "You'd have only been 14 Adders, which is younger than my brother" won't wash, we're still waiting for a decent answer, in your own time Mr. Scot, we'll be waiting. Al took us into the Hotel and showed us the main lobby, the gift shop then took us down to a seating area downstairs where there were some posh toilets, just to claim we used the facilities at a posh Disney Hotel. We sat down for a while and discussed whether we should use all the funds available for 2004/2005 to book into a stateroom here for the night, we came to the conclusion that it would be morally wrong (Please Note, this decision has nothing to do with the fact that the hotel was fully booked). We headed out, but before we got to the door we stopped, we couldn't believe our luck, there in front of us was the world famous super star, Minnie Mouse. We just had to get a photo of us with such a star, else the people back home would never believe us, plus we wanted to make Kia, Phil and Rachel jealous for deserting us before the end.

We got a new recruit "MINNIE MOUSE", How cool is that?

We left the hotel and had a look at the hotel's pool. What happened next is not the most pleasant of stories; I'd recommend that any small children stop reading now. I hope you small kids have stopped reading now. HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU, STOP READING KIDS, START ON THE NEXT CHAPTER. On leaving the outside of the pool Dan started sharing his new sexual fantasies with us, we tried stopping him, but apparently he feels so relaxed around us that he can tell us anything, even if we don't want to know it. Dan had started having in our opinion seriously disturbed fantasies about Minnie Mouse. He told us how he was imagining her in kinky underwear, then how he'd like to bend her over and take her from behind while kids and Mickey Mouse are watching, then bury her in a shallow grave. Then how he'd like to handcuff her up and fuck her, then he carried on telling us more things he'd like to do to her, but by now me, Al and Maddy were legging it as fast as possible away from him. I did warn you it wasn't the most pleasant of stories, don't worry we are trying to keep Dan away from the Disney store for fear of what he might do. We're also trying to get him professional help; after all, we've all had to have it after hearing about his fantasies.

The mouse himself

Anyway, on to a more pleasant part of the story, we arrived at Disney's New York Hotel where Mr. Scot pointed out which room he'd stayed in on his second trip there. Again Mr. Scot we want a decent excuse as to why we weren't invited on this Disneyland holiday. We carried on meandering round the lake till we got back to the Disney Village where we had a look at the Gift shop. Don't worry; we kept a close eye on Dan. Eventually the rest of the group managed to drag me out the shop before I'd bankrupted myself, I seem to remember the question "Adders, fancy a cider?" helping. We went outside to watch the band performing on the outdoor stage. From there I managed to persuade everyone to go into the sports bar (not the one at Brookes for once) for a drink, I admit, I just wanted to stay at Disney Land longer. I finished my drink and we went to get Maddy an ice cream from the place next door, but as I remember she couldn't be bothered to queue. We was just heading towards the gate to head back to the car and find somewhere to stay the night (we probably should have sorted that out earlier really, I was still up for Disney's Davy Crocket Ranch camp site) when Dan dived into Billy Bob's again. He came out (meaning, he came out of Billy Bob's, not that he came out of the closet and started coming on to me and Al) and told us that we had to watch this band, they had a bloke with a big guitar thing that he kept spinning. We went in and stood at the back, I fought my way to the bar to get a drink for everyone who wanted one, it wasn't a big order, in fact it was just 2 bottles of Strongbow, both of which were for me. After watching this band for a while we decided to head out, by now it must have been about 11pm. Unfortunately the thought of leaving Disney Land had a bad affect on me, I had to get a photo or two of the place with all the lights glowing. Unfortunately Dan thought they'd lost me and was very concerned. He went to look for me while I headed back to the car to wait for them. After about 5 minutes I got bored at the car so headed back to the village where Al and Maddy were waiting, just where I'd left them. Dan appeared about 5 minutes after that and told me off for disappearing. They'll learn eventually, you can't loose me, thousands have tried, but no one has succeeded, sorry guys, your stuck with me!!!
We got squeezed in the car again and started driving, Dan was having a bit of trouble gauging the ramps on the multi-storey car park, he'll be no good in the car parks at the Queensgate Shopping Centre in Peterborough as they have multi-storeys with ramps just the same as these, me and Al both go shopping there occasionally, but not together. We started driving north; Dan just kept driving until he had the great idea to stop at a cheap motel instead of spending the whole night trying to find a camp site that was open and then pitching the tents in the early hours, not that pitching a tent was any problem for me as my tent pops up in 20 seconds. We found a formule 1 motel which was cheaper than a lot of camp sites. We booked a three person family room, Dan was going to sleep in the car, but then decided that we could have 3 in the bed (no we did not have, or ever thought of a threesome). Maddy had other ideas though, she didn't like the idea of me, Dan and Al in a bed together (or she probably just didn't trust us 3 together, she'd have had no need to worry!). In the end me and Dan had the double bed; Al claimed presidential privileges and claimed the single bed, leaving his girlfriend on the floor. We wasted no time in going to sleep; we didn't even try the TV.

Chapter 14 - Day 14 - Sunday

As usual I woke up in reasonable time and went out for a wander, assess the area and of course, grab some food. Dan was the next to rise. Together we united our powers and went to buy breakfast from the shop next door. We then took the plunge and tried waking Al and Maddy up. Maddy was fairly lucky she was still asleep, I'd nearly tripped over her several times. We sat on the bed and had breakfast before packing our stuff and heading off, Calais bound. It didn't actually take long to get to Calais and I was allowed to sit in the front, room at last. When we got to Calais we had to find the On Time depot where another car would be there for us to swap ours with. We found Calais alright, the On Time depot was to be more of a problem, but apparently it is really easy to find for skilled navigators, we were lost completely, we ended up in the ferry terminal at one point, then too far the other side of the depot. Eventually after a lot of phoning the depot we eventually found it, while they were closed for lunch, so we headed to find somewhere to have some food. We found McDonalds, home of the McBeer. We all had a McMeal, 2 for me so as to get 2 large McBeers. Dan discussed threatening the McGirl behind the McCounter with McMurder if she didn't satisfy his McDemands. After our McMeal, we piled back in the McCar and headed from the McCar Park. There was then a very simple job to complete before heading back to On Time; we had to fill up the car with fuel. You could tell this was going to be a problem job when Al and Dan spent 5 minutes hunting round for the button to open the fuel cap cover, they popped the bonnet twice before I pointed out that the fuel cap cover just pushed open (you just can't get the staff these days). The next problem was working the pumps as they wouldn't take Dan and Al's credit cards or my Switch card. We gave up at that filling station in the end and went to a truck stop filling station.
We got to the On Time depot with plenty of time to spare, we had bad news when we got in the office though, they hadn't got the final details through from the RAC, so couldn't supply us with a car. We set our negotiator on the job again and with the help of the people in On Time we got the problem sorted in a few hours. We'd had to change our ferry booking as we were going to be late, but On Time was good enough to sort that. We spent most of the time looking at a big map of Europe that they had on their wall and chatting to the people in On Time. There was a bloke and a girl about our age who wasn't too bad at all. Their co operation was great, they sorted out any problems we had, let Dan use the internet and made the time pass much easier. We finally got details through of a car, but it was a small car so the guy at On Time rang the RAC and told them that this wasn't acceptable and they agreed to let us have the Vauxhall Estate, thanks On Time guy.

Al and Maddy in the bar on the ferry

We got to the ferry port, again, in good time and ended up having to wait around for a while, we amused ourselves by playing with the automatic windows, they have sensors so that you can never trap anything in them. We were some of the first on the ferry, and obviously, first in the bar. We managed 2 pints in the bar and a trip to duty free before pulling into Dover harbour. We did stay in the bar until the last minute. When we were due to be driving off the ferry, we were only heading out the bar.

Adders and Maddy celebrate a successful trip in the bar on the ferry

This was where I left the others to drive back to Oxford on their own, I was meeting my dad at the terminal to go back home to cabbage country (Lincolnshire). So this is where I end this report and let you get back to the more important things in life, the pub. Speaking of the pub, time for a pint I think.
If you should enjoy this report, you can show your appreciation with a pint, mines a Cider.

Adders

Written under the influence of Strongbow, apart from Chapter 14 which was written under the influence of some rather deadly (isn't it Al) French Calvados, when you read chapter 13, you'll know why I'd had to turn to the strong stuff during writing.

Created by Adders