Harrogate Trail

Sorry once again about the lack of blogging. It's Formative essay week here in the Archaeology department, so everyone is furiously writing papers and haunting the Key Texts section of the library, waiting to pounce on the books as they come back in four hour shifts.

I had the majority of my papers done before the weekend, but I'm stuck on the conclusion for one, and wrestling with a new and unfamiliar referencing style which is wreaking havoc with my word count. Alas. These papers don't even count toward our final grades, but they do give us a chance to see what our professors are expecting of us, and I really want to do well on them.

The reason I was such a 'swot' (as one fellow hiker termed me), was because there was yet another hike that I went on this weekend, and I wanted to get my papers done before hand. This was my third such hike, so I had to formally become a member of the Ramblers Society. Isn't that great?? I'm a bona fide Rambler now!

We did the first half of the Harrogate trail this weekend. It was 11 miles, through mud and grass, and I loved it.so.much. It was absolutely pouring when we started, and it wasn't until after lunch that it stopped raining. I was wearing waterproof-ish stuff, so I started reasonably dry, but my bag got pretty wet. And of course, we were hiking through fields and stuff, so I had mud up to my knees by the end of the day. I'm pretty sure that, had I attempted to go to the pub with the rest of the group instead of catching the train, I would have had to sit outside. We were all that muddy, though, and only one person fell! Talk about impressive.

The highlight of the day was definitely lunch time. We went to a ruined castle, and because it was still raining, we all huddled in the window alcoves lining the great hall, or camped in the fireplace. It was pretty great. The surrounding area had lots of exposed rock features, and some ambitious aristocrat decided it would be a great idea to use one of the larger rocks as one of the walls of this castle. I mean, why not? It saves you the trouble of moving a bunch of stones and mortaring them together into a structurally sound wall, right? And then, to get even more ambitious, he added a second level to his hall, using this large rock as the base of that. Pretty impressive, I think.

So Saturday was Guy Fawkes night, but I was pretty exhausted. At first we had planned on going out, but come nine o'clock, I was knackered so I...listened to the fireworks instead of going out to see them. Lame, I know.

And next weekend is the second half of this trail. I'll get a badge for completing both parts! I'm really excited about that!

(But now I have to return to my paper writing. Tonight, I swear I'll upload some photos. Cross my heart.)