Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Having both taken the day off work, A&I headed out to Dartmoor to go walking with the dogs. We'd originally planned to go to Meldon Reservoir and set out, diligently following the instruction in the guidebook. This took us as far as Sourton Cross and then told us to follow the signs to Okehampton and Meldon. Somewhat baffled, we went one junction too far on the A30, came back, concluded we couldn't find what we were looking for and started off along the A386 until we saw a sign for Lydford and decided to do the walk along the gorge.

We arrived in the village and parked opposite the Castle Inn — a favourite from the days when E & I used to go to The Barn a lot. We harnessed up the hounds and walked up the road to the National Trust tea rooms at the start of the gorge walk, only to discover that the paths were closed until 10th February. Not willing to accept defeat, we walked a couple of miles along the road to the second NT entrance to the gorge and, finding the slow and steady path path open — the quick and steep path was closed for work — we made our way down to the bottom to walk to the waterfall.

A wooden mushroom with coins pushed into it. There were a few bits of shapped wood along the path, mostly animals, including snakes, boars, and even a small deer.

Martha enjoyed her walk, even if she did end up towing a whole load of branches and twigs after her at one point, following a dive through the undergrowth. As usual, she ended up seriously filthy and it took several rounds of washing in the bath to get the worst of the mud out of her coat...

A in front of Whitelady Waterfall, currently in full flood with the all the recent rain.

Whitelady Waterfall in all its winter glory!

From the waterfall, we discovered that the path back along the gorge was indeed closed — the gate across the river was padlocked, making the situation pretty clear — so we retraced our steps and reluctantly walked back along the road, keeping our eyes open for a path that would let us bypass as much of the main road as possible. In the end, we didn't really find anything and retraced our steps, only going off-road to avoid the narrow bridge on a blind bend on the outskirts of the village.

Back in Lydford, we jumped in the car and drove back to town, where we put the hounds straight in the bath. Flo was only superficially muddy, although when we washed the feathery hair on her tail, it ran completely black for a couple of minutes while we flushed the filth off. Poor Martha was very grubby and it took a few lather-rinse-repeat cycles to get her close to clean, and she looked pretty miserable by the time we were finished. We then gave them a quick towel dry and put Martha under the hair dryer — yes, she really needs it, otherwise she stays damp forever.

Once the others got home, we scrubbed up, and, after A got packed ready for the hospital tomorrow, we went out to dinner. A had decided she wanted pizza so we went to On The Waterfront, where I had a Nutty Goat pizza, A had a You've Pulled, J had a Crabster burger, and C had a gluten-free Cluck 'n' Moo. We had a lovely time and the couple on the next table down were endlessly amusing — every so often we'd catch an odd and extremely questionable snatch of conversation, including one of about dubious sexual practices of rugby players!

We finished up the evening with a quiet drink in Samuel Jones before heading home to prepare ourselves for tomorrow...

It's slightly strange to feel quite so upset by the death of someone you've never met, only admired from a distance. But when that person is Ursula Le Guin, and when she helped shape your childhood and the childhoods of many of your generation, perhaps it's makes a bit more sense...

Having comprehensively failed to make it to the cinema on Saturday, we decided to make a real effort to go and see The Post this evening. We had supper — a rather good asparagus and lemon risotto, of which there was enough left over for lunch tomorrow — before walking the short distance to the Odeon for the movie.

The Post tells the story of the Washington Post's battle to publish the Pentagon Papers after the New York Times was served with an injunction by the Nixon adminstration. The fight takes place at a sensitive time, just as Katherine Graham is attempting to take the paper's owning company public. Much of the film's tension comes from the interplay between Graham and Ben Bradlee, the Post's tough editor, who is determined to publish when a second copy of the papers falls into his lap. Eventually, in a pivotal moment, Graham, under pressure from other members of the board who are worried that publication will spook the company's new investors, has to decide whether to side with Bradlee or whether to play it safe. In a nice final moment, the film concludes with a security guard discovering a break-in at the Watergate Building.

Needless to say, with a starry cast and a big name director, the film was always going to be good, but it does an excellent job of conveying the broad brush history of the Pentagon Papers — about which I have to admit a profound ignorance! I think it would be interesting to go back and watch All the President's Men, which features some of the same historical figures...

Mixed session of bouldering and routes today, with the opportunity to take first crack at a set of new climbs on the slab. Three of them were reasonably straightforward, but the fourth was very difficult indeed and I didn't make much of a dent in it on my initial attempt: it was essentially a series of hard moves on truly terrible holds. When, after we'd finished and packed up for the evening, they put up the grade cards, I was surprised to find it was only 6c+ largely because it was a decent amount harder than a similar 6c+ that had been on the slab up until the reset a week or two ago.

Apparently, my vague memory that there had been a big thunderstorm overnight was correct: there had been a power dip in the middle of the night that was sufficient to knock a few things over. Luckily, by the time I arrived on the scene, everything had been sorted out and was on its way back up. After a fairly quiet day, I met up with A and we headed to Macro to pick up some crockery. After crawling through Marsh Barton, we discovered that Macro closed at 5pm on Wednesdays, and ended up back in the traffic on our way home.

Giving up on our mission, we went climbing. The evening was a success, although we didn't do anything that was either difficult or particularly new, but A powered up a nemesis route - a fluro orange 6a+ on a slight overhang which featured less than lovely holds. It was a nice send, not least because she'd had a minor meltdown on it a couple of weeks ago, and when she came down, she vowed never to do it again - we've all climbed routes like that!

Woke up to a wet start to 2018, with our plans to go up to dartmoor looking doubtful thanks both to the weather and to one of the group going down with the bad cold that has been doing the rounds. After a quick review of the walking guides over breakfast, we decided to go up to Drewsteignton and Fingle Bridge, to walk the paths around the river up to Castle Drogo.

The river was extremely high with the recent rain and as we pulled up in the car park, we saw saw people getting kayaks off the roof of their van ready to try out the white water. Fortunately, the tiny hounds weren't tempted by the raging torrent but we soon saw another family who hadn't been quite so lucky: they'd started just before us and their springer had immediately taken to one of the pools and had jumped back just as quickly as he could manage. As we passed, the father said, "Probably best to keep them out of the water today. [The dog] just jumped in and you should of seen the look on his face when he realised what the water was like!"

The path was very muddy, with big streams of water running down the sides of valley and across it into the river proper. In a couple of places, we found teeming waterfalls, which, inevitably, proved too much of a temptation to A, and climbed up to pose in front of the torrent. After about an hour, we reached the second bridge and climbed up towards Castle Drogo, just visible on the crag above.

Walking the long way round, we reached the visitor's centre — admirably warm — and settled at a table in dog-friendly reception area. We refreshed ourselves with coffee, hot chocolate, and cheese scones, ready for the journey back. Despite the grubbiness of our dogs, we released that things could've been far worse: we a spaniel who was was so wet underneath that they were dripping thick, black mud on the floor! As we were getting ready to leave, a couple of kids came over to play to M&F — they introduced us to their Darcy, their 18 month-old black lab — and as we walked down, we found ourselves walking just in ahead of them.

In the afternoon, we returned to Exeter in time for A&I to fit in some climbing before the centre closed. We lead everything, moving from easy 4s to easy 6a+s, going for mileage rather than difficulty. On our return, A made supper — pea and lemon risotto — and we settled down to watch festive Bake Off, followed by Pitch Perfect 2 — which, somewhat contrary to my expectations, I very much enjoyed.

After a gentle day, I met up with A for an evening of climbing. We'd been there for about half an hour, warming up and trying A's project, before A's father joined us. After signing him in and picking up a load of stuff, I fished out my grigri and we worked our way through some easy routes, with the two of us taking it in turns to belay C. As might be expected, he was rather good and extremely determined and we all had a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

Towards the end, A retried her project. Having put together all the moves yesterday, she'd managed to get climb the route in two sections at the start of today's session. The move that was defeating her was probably the true crux — for anyone with decent flexibility and reach, that is! — which involved moved up over an overhang on a pair of less than brilliant open handed crimps. The move didn't bother me at all — a couple of weeks ago, I'd sat and rested on them for a few minutes to allow room for the person on the neighbouring route to finish a section that overlapped slightly — but, objectively, it's actually reasonably tough.

After cruising the first section with the spanning moves, A got to first tenuous spot and got her hands in the right position and bridged out wide before going for the first of the crimps — my beta is very different: I lean back into a shoulder move to get my feet up, get both hands on the crimps and reset my feet on a hold directly below and put in a knee drop against the wall. This time, she got her feet solid, held both the crimps and moved up to next hold, which she'd dropped in the past, and, after a slightly nervous moment, stuck it and pulled through to send the route. Amazing stuff!

She then persuaded C to give it a try. Despite being able to bridge the first move, he found all the weight shifting and footwork a bit tough — wearing hire shoes can't have helped! — and didn't make it past the move I'd struggled with, albeit for different reasons. If the intention was to convince him of the route's difficulty, I think A succeeded in her goal!

Once we were done climbing, I was able to talk the others into doing a spot of bouldering — A is not a fan and I'm far more focused on route climbing at the moment — partly to work on power and technique, and because, whenever you've got someone who hasn't climbed before, you're pretty much obliged to show them the whole range of activities from strength to endurance. After that, we dropped into the training room where C powered up the drainpipe campus ladder — something that is solidly beyond me — while A tucked her knee into a resistance band worked on Project Pull-Up (her goal is to do five unassisted pull-ups by the end of the year)

A slow parkrun — I've yet to get back into a regular running regime after Turkey — which we started from so far back that we were still talking when people started moving and C said, "Oh, looks like we're off..." I caught up with L, who'd been out training the night before, and we made it round in a reasonably time. As per last week, I ran the last klick as an interval — not fun, given that it was straight into the wind — and finished 48th.

I stopped off for tea and hung out with A while C got ready to go to a football match before going to watch the rugby in the afternoon. Martha Dog had an appointment at the groomers around mid-morning, so A got changed and dropped me off on her way to Cranford. With the car only having two seats and no boot, Martha tucked herself up around my feet and made herself comfortable; and when I got out, she spent the rest of the journey looking sad and then cried when she realised she was on her way for a haircut!

I spent the rest of the day lazing around at home. I'd vaguly planned to go out in the afternoon, but the weather wasn't great, and I decided not to bother. Determined to make good on a recent pledge to improve my flexibility — the others were astonished to find that not only could I not bend far enough to touch my toes, but I could barely bend far enough to touch my knees! — I located a stretching regime I remembered from a Lifehacker article and got started.

For the record, my initial attempts to touch my toes were very poor: the farthest point I was able to reach was a dismal 35cm off the ground. After running through the recommend exercises and repeating the process I was able to get down to 24cm. Progress, for sure, but there's still plenty of room for improvement...

Walking down to the climbing centre to meet A, I bumped into P&D and Dasher and Blitzen. Blitz was his usual dignified self but Dash was so hyper and excited to see me she ran over to me like a crazy thing and was doing little jumps of delight. I'm not entirely sure why she was so pleased, given that I'd seen her on Sunday, but still. As we were chatting, A arrived and we headed in to do a bit of climbing. We started by finishing the only two routes from the quarry we hadn't climbed on while we were doing mileage on Saturday, and then crushed some of the routes on the slab. Once we'd got some climbs under out belts, I fished out my rope and we had a go at pseudo-leading with a safety top rope. Rather to my surprise, I was still able to remember how to butterfly coil a rope and I managed to get A home in time to watch the final of Bake Off. I walked home through town, but it wasn't that busy considering it was Halloween — although, in a consession to date, one of the buskers was wearing a little witch's hat...

Not particularly surprised to discover today's quiz had a strong Halloween theme, but I was surprised to discover quite how much I knew about horror films and novels. After a mixed bag warm-up round, we were dropped into a series of questions about zombies — which, thanks to Mira Grant's Newsflesh novels, was a walk in the park.

Towards the end of the second round A, exhausted by lack of sleep and frustrated at the questions, asked Yorkshire Nick whether the entire quiz was about zombies. There was a pause while he consulted the questions before answering, "Yes, there's a round on vampires and one about Harry Potter..." A's groan could be heard clear across the pub!

The round on vampires was pretty straight-forward, and the round on Harry Potter involved identifying famous British actors who'd starred in the films based on other facts about their lives. Partway through the round, Yorkshire — clearly a serious HP buff — came up with a cunning plan to try to hold us back and bring the other teams on: he made us name the role each of the actors had played in the films.

At the end of the round, we swapped score sheets as usual and marked each other. We swapped back with one of the other regulars — a couple who are there most weeks — and Yorkshire went round asking people for their scores. He worked his way around towards us, going to the team we'd swapped with first. They told him they'd got 14. He told them they'd done well and he was very impressed. They said, "It's not enough... We know what's coming!" Sure enough, when he asked us for our score, we told him we'd got twenty out of twenty. His response? "Bugger! And I can say that this week, because it's my last week as quizmaster..."