I’ve just had yet another lovely weekend All my weekends seem to be lovely recently; a combination of it being summer and my boyfriend now having a car! This particular weekend was an event which I had been looking forward to and organising for some time – the second annual JEB summer meet-up. We had a summer get-together last year which was very enjoyable but, erm, kind of wet. We were a little unlucky with the weather, having chosen the Saturday after the Friday on which half the Midlands flooded and a location (Stratford-upon-Avon) which was uncomfortably close to a river. We made the best of it last year, but I think a recurrence of the problem would have been a signal from the Big Man in the Sky that JEB really shouldn’t be holding summer meet-ups, and so I spent much of the latter part of the week anxiously watching the sky and frowning at any dark clouds.

My boyfriend came to pick me up on Saturday morning, and he was actually only 25 minutes late which was rather good by his standards of punctuality I was actually relieved he hadn’t been on time, as I realised 5 minutes before he was due that I still had wet hair and hadn’t packed my bag yet This lack of organsiation on my part soon led to the first disaster of the day We set off from my suburb in the direction of Birmingham city centre, with the aim of getting on the M6 via the Aston Expressway. We were nearly there, when the incessant vibration of my phone signalled to me that I was getting a phone call. I removed the device from my pocket, and saw to my surprise that it was my mother. She was rather flustered, and informed me that she thought I had accidentally taken her walking boots instead of my own.

Eek My entire family have the same brand of walking boots (Brasher), and it thus isn’t easy to tell them apart in a hurry. This particular confusion arose because my mother and I both wear a size seven. The difference, which I really should have spotted, is that whilst mine are a ladies size seven, my mother’s are a mens size seven. Each boot does have a little symbol on the tongue pad which indicates whether the style is male or female, but until Saturday I could never actually remember which symbol was which. More on that later!

Suffice it to say that my boyfriend was a little bit annoyed when I told him that we needed to go all the way back to my house Luckily I managed to direct us via some back streets so that we missed the busiest parts of the High Street, but even so it was rather tedious and by the time we got back to the environs of the city centre again, it was pretty much an hour after we had left my house for the first time

I don’t, however, with hindsight regret having made the error terribly much, as it gave rise to one of the most shocking comments of the weekend. Having explained to my mother my confusion as to the male/female symbols, she calmly said to me, “The way to remember it is that the male symbol is pointing upwards. Or at least, hopefully it will be tonight!”.

I didn’t know what to say, and scurried from the house as fast as my little legs would carry me! It’s a very good way to remember it though – I won’t forget it again

As if that wasn’t enough of a delay, we then contrived to get lost. Oh, I should explain at this point that we were trying to get to Buxton, and we were trying to get there via the M6 and Stoke, which was not a route I had ever taken before. My boyfriend had helpfully printed some directions off the internet, and all I technically had to do was read them aloud at appropriate intervals. You wouldn’t think it would actually be that difficult.

But…erm…it was! I’m not very good at navigating anyway, because of my slight confusion between left and right, and I’m especially bad at it on motorways and fast roads. Though to be fair, I don’t think the standard of the directions was very high No, seriously, I don’t! We managed to get as far as Spaghetti Junction, and were instructed to stay in the lane headed “M6/M1″, so we did. It then instructed us to veer left, which I interpreted as a need to keep to the left in the lane it had just instructed us to get into, not to veer left into an entirely different lane which was headed “M5″. At first it seemed all was fine as we were most definitely on the M6. It was only when the roadsigns started saying ominous things such as Coventry and London, that it became evident that we’d inadvertantly got onto the M6 South :cry:

The atmosphere in the car became a little fraught. My boyfriend managed to get off the motorway and back on it in the correct direction, and we had the good luck not to accidentally end up on the Toll Road again, but even so by the time we got back to where we started, it was 2pm – the time which we had allegedly been going to arrive in Buxton itself.

I’m sorry

After that, I’m happy to report that the journey went significantly better, and I’m fairly sure that we arrived in Buxton well before four. Having parked the car, we managed to meet up with the others without too much trouble, and headed to a pub for a much needed drink. That was a brief respite before my navigating skills were in question once again. I’d been a bit stressed at work last week and for whatever reason, it hadn’t occurred to me that I needed to print off a town plan of Buxton which would enable us to identify the location of our guesthouse. I knew the road, but as we soon discovered, trying to find a guesthouse in Buxton is like trying to find a needle in a haystack In the end I had to phone the proprietor, who fortunately was home and able to give very good directions, although even so we managed to drive past it once because I failed to spot the sign from the window

The Bed and Breakfast we were staying at was called Hawthorn Farm, and I really can’t recommend it highly enough. We each paid just thirty quid a night, but still had rooms which were spacious and en suite. Everything was clean and tidy, and the coffee making facilities were far more generous than in many a hotel I’ve stayed in, as you got an entire pot of coffee granules as opposed to a couple of measly sachets The beds were very comfortable, there was no noise during the night which I noticed, and the curtains were thick enough for me not to have been woken up at the crack of dawn… had my boyfriend not decided to set his alarm for six am

A rather exciting surprise awaited me once we had unloaded the car. My boyfriend very unexpectedly presented me with a tonne of presents, apparently to say thank you to me for organising the event. I hadn’t really organised very much at all – all I’d done was get people to agree a date and suggest some accommodation, and given that we arrived two hours late and I only managed to get three other people to show up, you could argue that it wasn’t very good accommodation at all Nevertheless, it’s always rather cool to get presents and these were especially nice ones First of all I got a book of World War One Poetry, which was very welcome indeed. I studied those poems for two years at school but have never owned a really good anthology which has all my favorites in. The second book was a History of Maths, which seems very apt given that I seemed to be in a Maths sort of mood last week. And on top of both of those, I got an AA Learner Driver kit which includes a book of theory test questions, as well as a book of advice on the practical test and a voucher for a free lesson! So, thank you Babel for being so generous

Before I had quite gotten over the shock, we headed off out into the town again to get some food. This being a JEB get-together, it was inevitable that we were going to end up in Wetherspoons. I actually think Wetherspoons food is fairly crap, and this transpired to be no exception. My lasagne, which I specifically ordered without salad, arrived on a plate which gave the impression that I’d ordered Salad with a side helping of Lasagne

We moved on after one drink, in order to see what else Buxton had to offer. Now, Buxton is a lovely town with some beautiful architecture and some incredibly good restaurants. We managed, however, to successfully avoid all of that, and instead went for a drink in an establishment which probably ranks within the top three of my list of Unsalubrious Places in which I have had the Misfortune to drink a Lemonade. A few hostile looking locals were sitting in the main bar as we entered, so we decided to go and sit in the adjacent pool room. This was empty apart from a few members of a hen party, who were destined to play a significant role in the night’s proceedings.

Two of our number were playing pool, when the bride to be walked past the table and said in passing to one guy that she thought he was going to win. His somewhat hot-headed opponent took this none too well, and chased after her demanding to know what she had said. From this initially unpromising beginning, an unlikely friendship appeared to blossom, and for reasons which the rest of us failed to understand, he spent the rest of the evening (quite literally!) pursuing her.

A disinclination to stay in that particular pub, combined with an inclination to follow the hen party, meant that we only remained for one drink and then headed out once again. The bride had said she was going to the Marketplace, but we had no idea where that would be and it was news to me that Buxton even had one! After a bit of aimless wandering, we nevertheless stumbled across not only the Marketplace but the very pub the hen party were in. Erm, great.

Luckily this pub really was rather pleasant and did a nice line in crisps, so all was well. It wasn’t so noisy that we couldn’t talk which was especially cool, and I took the opportunity to learn how to ask people if they speak German in Slovakian, which could come in very handy next weekend The saga of the hen party continued, however, with their next destination being a club called Mood. A certain person was very keen to follow them, and so the rest of us dutifully accompanied him as far as the door. Having seen the club in question however, we decided that it didn’t look like our sort of thing, and thus we decided to abandon him and go back to the nice pub for another drink. I am pleased to report, by the way, that I managed to drink two small glasses of wine over the course of the evening and suffered no ill effects whatsoever Three of us decided we had had enough at that point and went home to bed. The other two opted to stay with the hen party and goodness knows what they got up to, but they certainly seemed rather the worse for wear the next morning

The next morning dawned rather doubtfully, seemingly unsure as to whether it intended to be rainy or sunny. Our breakfast was ordered for half nine, so as agreed my boyfriend went to knock on the others’ door fifteen minutes in advance. No very positive responses were forthcoming, so my boyfriend and I decided to start our breakfast on our own and wow, what a breakfast it was We not only had bacon and egg, but fried bread and sausage too, and more toast than you could shake a stick at!

The owners of the guesthouse were obviously a bit perplexed by what language we were speaking in, because at one point when she was filling up our coffee or some such, the lady asked if by any chance we were speaking German. Curiously, she seemed somewhat disappointed when we confessed that we were not. It transpired that she had a group of Germans staying this week, and because none of them had very good English, she had no way of knowing if everything was alright for them or if they had any queries. My boyfriend volunteered my services as a translator, and she hastily ran off to find one of them!

A few minutes later she ushered in a whole gaggle of elderly and bemused looking Germans. They seemed to think their rooms and breakfasts were absolutely fine, but expressed an urge to eat dinner at the guesthouse that evening. The proprietor was more than happy to oblige, but caused a bit of a commotion when he suggested that they all eat the same thing to make the preparation easier. One lady piped up saying that she wanted to eat fresh fish, which was a bit problematic on account of it being a Sunday, but in the end they settled on meat with a lot of vegetables They seemed like nice people and in fact we coincidentally saw them in a pub later in the day, an incident which was a trifle embarrassing as my boyfriend was in the process of stealing one of their umbrellas

The aim of the Sunday was to go for a hike, and to this end I had brought with me my map of the White Peak. Our numbers, however, were somewhat diminished. One person wasn’t able to stay for the Sunday due to other commitments, and we encountered substantial problems trying to remove he of the hen party from his bed. When we eventually succeeded, a good 45 minutes after the time we were supposed to check out, he appeared in a slightly delicate state which was not conducive to climbing up hills. That is to say, he expressed an immediate desire to go home, although whether this was due to his hangover or the fact that he didn’t want to run the risk of getting mud on his Lacostes, I wouldn’t like to speculate

And then there were three! Two of us who actually wanted to go on a walk, and Babel I’d chosen a walk which I’d done before once (about five years ago) and so which I knew was short and straightforward, yet with nice views. A rough calculation with my fingers on the map had suggested to me that it might be about 10 km, but if I remember correctly, at the end of the day Babel’s pedometer indicated that it was more like 13. It was only about three hours anyway, and a third of that was just walking along a lane, so it was nothing too energetic after such a hearty breakfast

The walk started from the famous Cat and Fiddle pub, which I believe to be the second highest pub in England. The highest pub, I think, is in the Lake District, but I don’t know it’s name and have never been there. The altitude is just over the 500m mark, and it’s a rather random place to have built a pub; for miles around there is pretty much nothing except barren heath, and then just this one, solitary building. The road is, however, very busy and particularly so on Saturdays because it’s a big favourite with bikers. It’s an entirely beautiful road, despite the fact that it leads to Macclesfield, but Wikipedia informs me that according to Government statistics it is the most dangerous stretch of road in the UK. Having seen the twists and turns, and also the speeds at which people were taking them, it’s not hard to see why. A multitude of signs proclaim the need to drive safely, and there seemed to be a permanent police presence within the vicinity of the pub just in case.

Anyway, the great thing about the Cat and Fiddle is that you can park there for free, and there are numerous pleasant and not too taxing circular walks which you can do on the moor. We took a little path down to Errwood Reservoir, which is quite a pretty lake despite being artificial, and the others livened up the experience with an enthusiastic rendering of “Verdaj la junkoj, ho!”. We strolled alongside the water for a bit, then headed up towards Pym Chair, which marks the start of the little ridge by which you can ascend to Shining Tor. Shining Tor is the highest point in Cheshire and was the aim of the day’s excursion

We were lucky that the weather held up for most of the three hours we were on the hillside. At one point it became so hot that I had to apply suncream and my boyfriend removed his shirt At other points, however, rain coats were definitely in order, and for a few minutes on the ridge it actually turned quite cold and nasty. The view was spectacular though throughout. At least, I thought it was, my boyfriend was slightly less enthusiastic but cheered up somewhat when he remembered he had his MP3 in his bag and was thus able to finish the walk listening to Megadeath…

We made it to Shining Tor in one piece, but the wind was too strong for us to loiter long on the top. There was just time for a couple of photos at the trig point and me narrowly avoiding losing my hat, before we completed the brief stroll back to the pub. One drawback of the Cat and Fiddle is that it is rather small, so we went elsewhere for a drink and a meal before starting the long journey home. Our journey home shouldn’t actually have been long, but we got lost in Leek with the result that we ended up going to Birmingham via Derby and Leicester. Not the most direct route, but it was worth it for a reason I shan’t share

So, an excellent weekend and an official version will follow at the JEBsite fairly soon. I unfortunately returned home to some very distressing news about a family member, who had had an accident sufficiently terrible for me to feel nauseous at the mere threat of being told the details. In brighter news, however, Tim and I have now been together for officially 18 months – how exciting!

Tags: Buxton, Esperanto, JEB

This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Esperanto, Holidays and outings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.