After a long day of everyone going to lectures, 3 MPVs set off at 1-hour intervals, with 1 personal vehicle leading the way. After a few hearty renditions of the MPV classics, and a stop at the motorway services where a member claimed to have seen Eddie Hall, we arrived at the Horton In Ribblesdale Village Hall.
Upon arrival, we came to the realisation that one of the reasons that the accommodation had been so cheap to book was that energy had to be paid separately… in pound coins directly into the energy meter. So, after we had a good look in between the seats of the MPVs that had arrived, we managed to get enough change to get the heaters powered on. Everyone wrapped up in their sleeping bags to watch Penguins of Madagascar while we waited for the last MPV to arrive, after which we went to sleep in our sardine formations, readying for the next day.
After a (good?) night’s sleep listening to an “orchestra of snoring”, the chorus of alarms followed by the traditional BUMC bagpipes to wake everyone, was very welcome. We fumbled around in the dark for a few minutes and came to the realisation that we had run out of credit and needed to put in another pound coin to be able to switch the lights on. This led us to have a quick breakfast and head out towards the Horton In Ribblesdale railway station.
Having navigated through the town and encountered some distinguishably northern landmarks, all 30 hikers quickly overwhelmed the small station with “the most people I have ever seen at this station”, according to the ticket master, who later established that verbal confirmation of tickets would be “good enough”. We exited the train one stop down, at Ribblehead, where the civil engineers of the group immediately led us towards the Ribblehead viaduct to admire the architecture and watch a train pass over.
We quickly split off into two groups: a “fast” group, which existed solely to see all the sights, so as not to miss a minute of the England vs Wales Six Nations game, and then the “slow” group, who aimed to actually enjoy their hike. Interestingly enough, we both reached the summit of Ingleborough at roughly the same time, where the first group had a stop and break for lunch, but not before a snow fight had ensued. The second group made the wiser decision to have lunch before the summit, out of the unforgiving wind and rain.
Splitting off again, the groups decided to try some map navigation. With our chair in charge of the first group, his navigation immediately led us off the edge of a cliff, at which point we decided to bin off the navigation, and rejoin the path to get to the pub in the most efficient manner. The second group’s navigation also led to the same cliff, but instead of turning around, they pushed ahead and clung to the mountain’s edge on what can only be described as a mountain goat path.
On the way, we stopped by Gaping Gill, which is a 100m deep shaft, containing the largest unbroken waterfall in the UK (whether this counts or not is up to interpretation, due to the entire waterfall being underground), where we found some students from the Durham caving society heading into the chasm through a different entrance.
Returning to the “world’s smallest pub”, we happened to coincide our arrival with a private bus full of people dressed up, doing a pub crawl for a 21st birthday. As some of our members discovered, this made queueing for a pint quite difficult.
Having spent a few hours warming up with hot chocolates, watching Wales get battered by England, the committee headed home to get started on cooking the chilli con lentils, while some members played cards. When it was time to head home, a few members got distracted by another pub only 20 yards from the village hall, where they had found a framed photo of Nigel Farage on the wall.
The group once again split, with most going back to the pub to play a few games of werewolves, some staying behind to watch Lego Batman, and two particularly brave members venturing out in the storm to complete the trip’s only trail run.
After another night of questionable sleep (with one particular member being awoken with a recording of his own snoring), we quickly packed up the MPVs, and drove to our next hike, which was the scene of one of the Harry Potter films!
Naturally, as this was a walking trip, one of our walking secs had brought his entire trad rack (of one large cam) and had set about getting it in any crack in the rocks that seemed a suitable size along the route.
We hiked towards a waterfall, which according to another of our walking secs’ Mum, would be an easy scramble, however, she must have severely overestimated our climbing skills, as we evaluated it to be impassable at this time of year, so we turned around, and headed onwards towards Malham Tarn for lunch, with an opportunity for a few of the members to cool off and/or test the waterproofness of their new kit.
After this, we paid a visit to the Malham Limestone pavement, the famous Harry Potter spot, where we slipped and slid across the very wet stones and then ran into some other mountaineers trad climbing up the cliff face!
Finally, we overran another coffee shop and a pub in Malham for more hot chocolate and pints and made our way back in convoy, with the personal car reported to have stopped over at the worst services possible, just outside Birmingham. The tunes carried us home, and we all arrived back safely after another successful Mountaineering weekend.