6 Jan 2011

And Then There Was Extreme Sport….

I thought I'd try something exciting wot I haven't done any of for a long time. You do wonder if your getting too old for this sort of thing but what the hay, let's have a go! I even talked 'Her Indoors' into coming along as well, also. Yes I did do that. As well.

To do what? And well you may ask. And as you asked, it's only polite I should answer. It'd make the story pointless unless I let you know what it's all about anyway, right?

Potholing. We went potholing!!

These here potholes aren't the beasts people get stuck in at great depth with water cascading in, oh no siree, not at my age they aren’t. They be just what us in the sport would call beginners pots.

We also don't have the full kit and that's another reason for sticking to the easy jobbies.

So it was, at crack of cock crow, kitted up as best we could, we where heading for the first in a linked chain of potholes.

The first three or four hundred yards was pretty easy going with very little infill or water present and quite a bit of room to left and right. After this initial run you need to take a sharp left-hand turn and things got a tad more tricky with left and right movement becoming far more restricted and absolutely, true of the whole chain in fact, no way to move up.

This part of our adventure did pose a few problems but nothing of any great consequence. Other than a couple of squeals from 'Her Indoors'. Squeals being better than screams so no big deal there then.

After this stretch we needed to take a slight bend to the right, a sharp left and after a further hundred yards we needed to take what can only be described as a 'U' turn.

After this 'U' turn things got a little hairy with small caverns along the rout that we had to circumvent while still being totally restricted with left or right movement.

We progressed with minimal problems and I guess a little complacency probably crept into our progress and almost too late ‘Her Indoors’ spotted two small caverns just to our left.
“Look out to the left!!” she shouted.
”Wha..?” I started, then, with horror, I saw what she saw so we both saw what she saw which was what was to be seen.

Quickly, without thinking I moved, as best I could, to the right and fell into two more un-seen inter-linked bigger caverns. This did produce a scream from 'Her Indoors'. And me.
”Did you see those?”
”The others I saw. I didn’t see these.”
”So we both saw those but didn’t see these then. See? So It’s not as easy as it seems is it?”
“But the others I done did saw, see?”
”Say what? You be saucy?”
”Stupid man.” She says that a lot.

More by good luck than good planning we managed to extricate ourselves from these caverns and, with much more caution, crawled along the last couple of hundred yards 'till we stopped the car in the supermarket car park and disembarked.

I honestly don't think the car will take another winter of our gullibly warmed roads and my poor pothole avoiding driving.


Quote; Erma Bombeck.

“I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of a hill.”

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