Bucket List Item #48: Climb Scafell Pike

Once upon a time, I went on a little road trip around England. One of the things I was wanting to do was to climb Scafell Pike. I ended up not doing so. For a few reasons. 

1. It is really big and I am generally quite lazy.

2. I was on my own and thought I might navigate myself to certain doom.

3. The weather was supposed to be bad for climbing mountains.

So instead I did other things. However, climbing the mountain got put on my bucket list as a result of not climbing it. I resolved to do so when I wasn't so lazy, had someone to navigate me away from doom and when it wasn't so windy.

Therefore, I gathered a band of intrepid adventures and we made our way to the Lake District on holiday (having previously done a similar thing in Snowdonia at the same time last year) to complete this feat. Due to amazing planning, we were there the week that the wettest place in the country had its summer and all managed to get a little bit of a sunburn.

The mountain is 980 metres high. This doesn't sound like much until you try to go that high. Then it sounds a lot harder. When you have been climbing an hour and still can't see the summit, it appears infinite. 

Compared to Snowdon, it is actually smaller, however as a climb it is a lot more intense. Snowdown has more scrambly bits (I learnt that the technical term is scree) but also more flat bits. Scafell Pike is basically a 980 metre staircase. With big rocky stairs. I thought I knew what to expect having done Snowdon but this was a lot more intense. But we all managed it, see! Go team!

Several years ago, I always got confused by people who went up mountains because they were there. Now I am that kind of person, and I can recommend it. You get a great sense of achievement, and you feel like you are on top of the world (both literally and metaphorically) and that you can achieve anything.  I would definitely recommend it, as long as you have some idea what you are letting yourself in for and prepare adequately in advance.

There has already been talk about doing Ben Nevis next year to complete what is one of the slowest Three Peaks challenges, I am just giving my body a little time to recover before telling it about this.

We are sailing…

 Last week I went on holiday to Scandanavia with my girlfriend and did possibly the coolest thing I will ever do in my life. We were part of the crew on a Viking ship.

Other people sailing far at sea

When I say crew, I might be exaggerating slightly. It’s not as if we were hired and paid in plunder. We weren’t recruited by a fearsome leader for our brute strength and ruthlessness. What happened was a little more mundane.

We got to the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde (pronounced Rosh-kill and more commonly known for the music festival which I had previously thought was called RockSlide) after a circuitous route through the town. Getting to the ticket desk, the enthusiastic Danish man asked us if we wanted to go on the Viking sail boat for 95 krone. He was so enthusiastic about it that I instantly thought “Of course I do!” but I looked at Jo to see if she wanted to spend that much money on it. She looked at me to see if I would be comfortable doing it despite being unable to swim and being terrified of drowning. After a while we concluded that yes, we both definitely wanted to do it and we booked our time slot.

Check out the glee on my little face

So we joined around 15 other tourists at the appointed time for a safety briefing with the captain of our ship. I don’t think that was her official term but I’ve forgotten her name. She told us that we’d all be wearing life jackets but they probably weren’t needed as no one had fallen in during the 25 years they’d been open which reassured me. It’s quite odd – I’ve got a fear of water that I’m able to give over after about 10 minutes on a boat. I’ve been on narrowboat holidays where I’ve been clambering around the outside of the boat, jumping assure and pushing off and jumping onto a boat, yet I still have an initial fear that I’m going to fall in and drown.

The captain also told us that we would need to do some rowing which excited me because it felt like a more authentic experience, and it excited Jo as she is a rower and it was a chance to try out rowing in a different boat.

As we were excited, we were the first ones onto the ship and we got to sit at the back of the boat which has a technical term that I forgot in my excitement. This meant that we were rowing what Jo has told me is called stroke, meaning that all the other rowers should follow our pace.

Having never rowed before, it took me a little while to get the hang of what I was supposed to be doing. During this learning phase, we went slightly off course and almost crashed into some moored boats at the side of the harbour. Reading this and knowing that the other rowers should be following my pace would suggest that it was my fault that we nearly crashed. I would like to submit my case to the jury thusly:

The woman behind me was rubbish. I had to repeatedly stop rowing as our oars would hit eat other. She was clearly not following my lead as she should have been. The only time my side of the ship were in time was when I looked back to see what she was doing and to follow her although this synchronisation was brief with her soon falling out of time again. It frustrated me a bit. She never would have made it as a Viking. She didn’t even have the beard for it.

Jo with the win through her hair and a sail in front of her

After a while we were out at sea and go to hoist the sail. As we were in the prime position, at different times myself and Jo both got to do important rope holding tasks. I was excited by this. Even though it mostly consisted of just holding a rope for about 10 minutes, there was a period at the start of pulling on the rope and at the end of slowly letting it out. As you can tell, I am easily pleased.

I was also selected by the captain (it may have just been that I was the nearest but I like to think that I was selected) to lower the sail. I got a bit confused by this as I thought if I lowered it, that it would fall straight into the sea or onto people. I had forgotten that this probably wasn’t the first time that they had lowered a sail on a Viking ship and they probably had a tried and tested method for doing so as I marvelled as the sail lowered itself perfectly between where the crew was sat.

Whilst we were sailing, the captain was warning us that we might have to row back in. I was really hoping we would get to do so as, whilst sailing was neat, we wouldn’t get the full Viking experience if we sailed straight back into port as they were doing later in the day.

As I have mentioned, this is perhaps the coolest thing I will ever do in my life and if you ever get the chance to visit Roskilde (just half an hour from Copenhagen on train), I urge you to do so. The rest of the museum is fun too – you can care your name in runes, paint a shield or sword and many other activities that are probably aimed at children as well as see the ruins from 5 Viking boats that were recovered last century.

Bucket List Item 38: Watch Matilda the Musical

I love Roald Dahl. I may have mentioned it once or twice in passing.

I also love Tim Minchin. He shares a similar world view to me, is an amazing musician and makes me chuckle. Sometimes I think he is far too intelligent. For example, I saw him once do a philosophical joke. I studied philosophy at uni for three years (admittedly I've forgotten most of it now) and the joke went over my head.

When I heard that he'd written a musical based on Matilda I got excited. It was a bit like that time when Ben Folds and Nick Hornby collaborated. A mixture of a musician I like and an author I like gets me excited. These two art forms don't generally cross over much.

I suggested to my girlfriend Jo that instead of getting each other a physical present, we arrange a day out for each other. Shortly after I suggested that, I started hoping that she remembered watching Matilda was on my bucket list. When we told each other what we had planned, and she revealed she'd got us tickets, I had a big grin on my face!

In fact, last week, I actually watched two musicals based on Dahl's work. Our staff conference at work involved us going to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at Drury Lane which was extremely enjoyable.

Whilst the Hornby/Folds album is good, and Charlie is great, the mixture of Minchin and Dahl blows both of them out of the water.

I'd heard lots of good things about Matilda from people who had been but I was still not prepared for how great it was and how the songs would be stuck in my head for the next few days.

The characters - especially the grown ups - are brilliant characatures that match the Quintin Blake illustrations from the book. I hadn't seen the posters outside the Cambridge Theatre so I didn't realise that Miss Trunchbull was played by a man and definitely let out a giggle when the reveal happened. Although to be honest, I was giggling throughout.

It was also very faithful to the source material and the parts where it diverged fitted in so well that you almost forget that they've been added.

I'm struggling to go on without adding any more spoilers. However, I urge you to go see it if you have any interest in Dahl, Minchin, musicals, theatre or laughing as it is quite simply the best show I've seen.