It was a bloody awful winter's night. Rain thrashed against the windows and there was nothing on the telly. Lightning flashed, the house lights flickered, followed immediately by a huge crack of thunder
The phone rang.
It was Lord Elpus of Lord Elpus Hall.
Al, I've been thinking...
This is never a good start to any conversation with Phil. The man is an evil genius. Okay, let's be honest here: an incomparably lazy bastard of an evil genius. Christ only knows what has brought on this sudden bout of mental gymnastics as it's usually Miss Whiplash who does all the thinking over at Lord Elpus Hall. Oh God, surely not! He can't have done away with the old girl? My mind is in a turmoil. I feel dizzy and sit back heavily in my office chair, which careers backwards into the wall.
Al, Are you there?
I hear Tini in the background berating Phil for not taking her for afternoon tea in town as he had promised, and threatening dire retribution. All is well.
Al, I was thinking about our route. I've done the most northerly start (Torridon) to the most southerly finish (Arbroath) so I was pondering a dead straight line from the most southerly start to the most northerly finish. Whadya think?
Even with the flashing pain brought about by the impact of my head against the wall I immediately see the lunacy of this plan.
Are you out of your tiny mind? That must be four hundred bloody miles!
Yeah, actually it's quite a bit over... But surely we can get up at sparrow's fart and walk until, well, it gets dark really late up in the Highla... I cut him off abruptly, mid sentence
I was right. You are totally out of your bloody tiny mind!
The line goes quiet. The tension is palpable. A bolt of lightening explodes in the trees behind the house. All the lights go out.
Phil?... Phil?... Let me think about this... Are you there, Phil? Phil?...
*****
And that, Dear Reader, was the start of our own version of the Brexit negotiations. A week later we had reached a compromise. I don't take to compromises very well. If Phil wanted a direct route, I'll bloomin' well give him one! Ardnamurchan Point hosts the most westerly cafe in Mainland Britain. To the west, there is absolutely nothing at all apart from sea and fish for two thousand miles, all the way to Newfoundland. We shall walk directly in an easterly direction until we hit the most easterly cafe within the given parameters - *my* parameters, I might add - of a ten kilometre corridor, between northings 60 and 70, to the Charleton Fruit Farm Cafe and thence Kinnaber Links.
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| CLICK TO ENLARGE: WEST TO EAST, DIRECTISSIMA |
24 March 2019
Private Secret Diary, TGO Challenger 2018: Ardnamurchan Point to Kinnaber Links - Direct! The Prologue
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All I can say at this point is that they are both good cafes.
ReplyDeleteThe cafe at Ardnamurchan Point is absolutely brilliant! Lovely friendly staff, and very reasonable prices for good quality food & drink. Highly recommended, Sir!
DeleteGood stuff, I look forward to the next bits..
ReplyDeleteOooh. I do too...
DeleteI shall have to get the lad to crack on - he's a right lazy sod at times.
What date do you call this Mr Slow Man? I expect to be reading the account of your (and I hope that will also be 'our') crossing by 1 June 2019 at the latest.
ReplyDeleteNormal service has been interrupted by this 'work' thing. It also takes a very long time examining the internet, byte by byte, to find the sort of stuff a chap needs to ramble across Scotland in the sluicing rain and screaming gales.And then, once you press the 'Order' button, you have to be in to receive the parcel - which I rarely am - and this then necessitates a trip to the Sorting Office or a redelivery. All is wonderful and happiness abounds, until you realise that you cannot understand the instructions for this near gear, and so more time is spent on the internet, examining more bytes, so that the new gear can be useful. This is all time consuming stuff, and exhausting. Then a chap needs to repeat the whole process to but the next piece of gear, which is even more important to get right, as the thing it replaces was a f*cking nightmare and you don't ever want to go there again.This is stressful. Happiness, by this time has leaked away until the new piece of gear arrives to refill the happiness bottle. This process has been repeated a dozen or so more times in the last few months, and so there has been precious little time to eat, let alone write things on the forgotten Blogosphere. I'll do my best, David, but it has never been good enough in the past, and I see no reason why this should change. I admit it. I have failed. Utterly. Mines a pint of something beery, please.
DeleteYou are excused, largely thanks to the quality of your writing, the efforts you put into planning a route across Scotland for your team mates and for all the niceness that you sometimes hide under the facade of not suffering fools. Indeed, Andy, Phil and I are lucky that you do.
DeleteAh. Planning the route cannot be viewed as a selfless act... When Phil last took charge of the route, we walked north for five and a half days, never getting closer to the east coast. There was almost a mutiny. The first murder actually on the Challenge...
DeleteOh God! Just when the flashbacks had subsided. ��
ReplyDeleteHow odd... It's now so far om the past that I'm starting to remember it all. It's last week I struggle with.
DeleteI’m the same, great memory for trivia from decades back, no memory for more recent important stuff. I’m waiting for tech that will allow me to delete files from my brain to create space. Pretty sure I can use the space currently allocated to trivia (like knowing who the bloke was in the Schweppes ads in the 70’s) for better things
Delete