Monday, October 3, 2011

3/10/11 - Ramsoc

The morning after Ramsoc walk number 1 - I always forget how much you ache the next day!

I was up nice and early yesterday, excited by the promise of a walk in the sunshine; it turned out ti be cloudier than we were initially hoping but we were thankful for that as we were still roasting on the ascents!

Ramsoc offers a choice of 5 (or 6) walk, with 1 being the easiest - I picked 3 as it looked scenic but not too strenuous. It didn't take long for us all to be huffing and puffing our way up the first hill (Lose Hill), glad to see I'm not the only one who lost a lot of fitness of the summer! Thankfully most of the walk was along the ridge, so once we'd got the "big" climb out of the way it was just gentle ups and downs.

This provided a great opportunity to catch up with some old Ramsoc friends as well as make some new ones (never ceases to amaze me how many chemists there are in Ramsoc - 4 of us out of about 14 on the walk were!); also provided so very nice views! Some of which I managed to take a half decent photo of:





Next was supposed to be a nice gentle descent into Castleton, via the castle - but the leaders missed a turn and we were confronted by a "chasm" instead! The first bit wasn't too bad, just required some balance and bum sliding!
It's steeper than it looks:

We came down the right hand side...


The next bit was much trickier (particularly with only one arm available for holding on!), I didn't get any pictures as I thought it might be a good idea to put the camera safely away, but it was steeper, narrower and with a path of loose rocks and earth! Thankfully we all made it down safely and it wasn't too long before we were in the pub. Just as we got there it started raining (good timing!), felt very civilised having a cream tea!

Saw lots of very happy mountain bikers out and about too, made me a bit jealous but then I saw how many of them had Orange Fives so thought the better of it! ;-)

Next week is another walk; I might even be doing my first assessed walk for grade 2 leading (or I might wimp out...), something tells me the weather won't be quite as friendly though!

In the meantime - first proper week of uni (yay!), a lab talk thing this afternoon, and then lectures start for real tomorrow!

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