Wednesday 14 July 2010

The trek

When you're young, you think that all the fun really starts once you hit 18. Sadly, you couldn't be further from the truth. Aside from the whole boring mortgage and job stuff, the only entertainments adults have to choose from are to go to the pub, a cafe, the cinema or shopping (for cardigans and other boring grown-up clothes). This is quite sad because what I actually love doing is going to those indoor climbing places. You know the ones with slides, rubber floors and ball pools? Love them! Adults, they don't have any of that stuff. I have to drag my kids along just to get to play in places like that without looking like a weirdo.

Anyway so, united in this despair of fun adult things to do, my friend Maz and I decided to go trekking in the hills outside our smog-draped bustling city.

It was not entirely successful.

For a start, it was supposed to be a 45 minute hill-walk... But it was 3 and a half hours later, bedgraggled, scratched and exhausted, before we found our way back to the car. I took these photos in the hope that if we never made it home, then someone would find them and realise what horrible fate had befallen us.





My buddy, Maz





















Maz trying - and failing - to read the map.
It was like trying to solve the Kryptos puzzle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos

We couldn't figure out where we were going, or even where we were when we started.

Note to children: this is what happens when you stop taking Geography at school. We were lucky we didn't starve to death, wandering aimlessly around the countryside. (Although, to be fair, there were tons of sheep around and I have a GCSE in Food Technology.)










So we threw the map away and started on lunch. The sausages look like dried up fingers, and yes they tasted like that too - but when faced with impending starvation the human body will cope with anything in order to survive.









We found a lake. We dipped our weary feet in it.

Sadly, only moments later we saw the sign that read, 'Danger: Blue and green algae present in this lake. Toxic scum. Keep away.'










But by then, Maz had already rubbed the toxic water into the scratches she'd picked up on the walk...










So there we have it. Our grand day out, complete with toxic scum bacteria. Maz was admitted to hospital with gangrene shortly afterwards, but as I told her, at least she brought home a souvenir...

(N.B. Some aspects of that last sentence may or may not be false. I will let you work out which.)

All photos processed with my new actions - from memory, I think I used Bleak World, Copperfield, Hendrix and Woodstock (not all on the same photo!), overlaid on top of the original at reduced opacities.