SUMC club trip: Yorkshire! PART 1

Wow! What a weekend. Seeing as we've only been gone for 2 days it feels like 3 weeks. This is probably something to do with the fact I managed a grade total of 4 hours sleep over the whole weekend! As you can imagine there was a little alcohol! I don't know to start (at the beginning) which is probably Thursday night. I'm technically not a member of SUMC (Staffordshire University Mountaineering Club). I used to be, but I got every week to Stoke and go away on club trips with them. I probably hold the mantle of somewhere between "we don't ask him to leave because he's occasionally useful and he won't leave the club, but we're too polite to ask him to leave". I end up on the "black OPs" list for club trips. This means we turn up in the dead of night and arn't covered under uni insurance!

So Thursday then, well normal night of climb down the uni's indoor wall. A good evening by all accounts. Me and Chris Prescott practised aid climbing on some bat holes drilling into the wall (on top rope) with skyhooks. Speedy steep aid climbing in actually quite hard work, especially if your trying to top step each time. Then a little climb, tomfoolery and planning the cars, drivers and kit for the weekend. Then the pub. I normally have just the 1 (or two) and retreat to bed early as I have work in the morning in B'ham. Tonight however was an awesome night as everyone was psyched for the club trip. I ended up definatly having more than one and suffering for it at work the next day.

Friday I left work and drove to the florist for mother's day floweres. Getting home I promptly passed out and was thankfully woken up by my brother. After a hurried stint of packing involving basically sweeping the contents of my floor into a couple of IKEA bags I was off back on the road, dog tired but smiling. I only had 3 hours driving ahead of me! Into Stoke to see my friend and drink way to much tea while I waited for Andy's train to get in. It was late of course so me, Laura, Toaf and Andy and all our kit piled into my little car and set off for 2200. Yorkshire here we come!

The drive was pretty quick, probably due to the fact we sang most of the way there and I was buzzing on tiredness and redbull. I'd texted ahead to let them know we'd be quite late and they kindly saved some food for us. On arrival I thought we'd be joining the party but entered a quiet room of trivia pursuit and book reading. This didn't stay like this for long as we'd arrived with a car full of beer and speakers for the ipod. We managed to plan a day at Ilkley for the Saturday somewhere along the line and I crawled into a bed at sometime close to 5am...