A day in the life of... a disgruntled summer-lover
Like most Brits over the age of one, I was looking forward to what should have been a glorious summer of beer gardens, sunburn and hay fever. This is what the summer of ‘12 should have been. Not what it was.
In reality, what we got was a summer of canoes, news reports and Legionnaire’s disease. Not an ideal way for anybody to spend spend their last ever summer holiday, but even more disappointing when you had planned on doing an 86 mile walk through the British countryside.
Being a man of poverty, I decided to waive my holiday in order to save up for a trip to Japan next year. This obviously left me in a very boring situation, and as such I organised a cheaper option to keep me and my friends occupied: we were going to walk the entire length of Hadrian’s Wall.
That was, until the powers that be dropped the pacific ocean on the North-East. I’m not certain about the conditions of the rest of the country (though I believe Dorset got it pretty bad too) but up here, the months of June and July were like living in a washing machine. We weren’t on a gentle woollen wash either, it was more like the fast spin in which the machine goes mental and vibrates its way to the living room.
In short, a week-long walk would have turned into an episode of Total Wipeout, and we had to call it off.
However, stubborn as we are, my friends and I went camping anyway. We migrated to the slightly less sordid weather of North Yorkshire (I know, you read right) for a couple of days of camping in the middle of nowhere, within driving distance of two breweries and an ice cream factory.
So, we rocked up to the site after a far longer journey than anticipated as the sat nav tried to tell us to turn off the edge of a road and fall to our deaths on the motorway.
Off we trekked to the bottom of the field to pitch our tents before returning straight up to the pub to get some leaflets. Within minutes we had found that there was but one walk nearby, and set off to find it.
It was unpleasant to say the least. It was only about two hours long, but those two hours felt like I was dragging myself through Death Valley (ironically, the first day there was scorching) except with more flesh-eating insects. More than once I looked down to find some form of creature tucking into my flesh like a hungover student at a carvery.
In hindsight though, I shouldn’t complain. This was the only time on the entire trip that we were outside for any substantial amount of time. Over the next two days, the British climate flipped back to the darker side of its bipolar personality, and we resorted to sitting in a two-man tent playing cards between the four of us as the heavens crashed down on the thankfully waterproof covering.
It’s amazing how resourceful the student mind can be, in times of extreme boredom. Having about a fiver between us, the betting resorted to being forced to eat a four-pack of Belvita biscuits and not drinking for at least five minutes afterwards if you lost.
So there you have it, a dull summer summed up in a likely equally dull article. I shall try to provide you with some more entertainment next summer, if the Gulf Stream decides to get its act together. I hope you all had a better time than I did! Though it has to be said, the company was alright.
