Alternative weekend pursuits

Part 2

In the pursuit of alternative cultural pleasure Morag, Bruce, Tony and I headed up the M1 one murky Saturday morning for a weekend of culture and mayhem. As we headed north through lashing rain we wondered if we were really ready for a day festival in the wet and mud. Adopting the boy-scout approach we fuelled up on a substantial pub lunch before heading for Donnington Park. As luck would have it the rain clouds lifted and the sun appeared. Bruce, ever the optimist, had taken sunnies which proved to be useful for more than pose-factor as the rest of us squinted in the unexpected sun. We browsed the inevitable shops taking in the delights of pink rubber skirts, handcuffs and odd herbal substances (Morag and I were to return later, unaccompanied, to study the garments in more detail!!!). We secured a good position, not too near the stage for fear of 'overexcited young things' but close enough to actually see what was going-on!

The first band were good, and although the drums said 'Proud Mary', as we were expecting, Morag's research with neighbouring programme holders suggested the band was called 'Gates', odd we thought. It was not until later we realised she'd been reading 'gates open 1pm'!!! Next we were treated to the delights of 'Crockett' a thrash punk bloke with a dodgy tank-top and one word vocabulary, who frequently thrust himself into the crowd much to the dismay of his band and roadies who had to rescue him. He managed to sustain an injury on his forehead from his wildly waved guitar and ended up gasping for breath flat on his back on the stage. Luckily Ash and Stereophonics made up for the punk fiasco and our waterproofs proved useful in saving us from a drenching from bottles thrown around the audience – these youngsters, it's shocking. Bruce was suitably dismayed to find we'd missed last orders at our pub B&B, but the landlord declared it was his own principality so we enjoyed some after hours hospitality and pizza with the staff.

On Sunday we headed for the Peak District to round off the weekend with some cream tea (whoops walking) pursuits. We walked from Baslow along the edge and cunningly stumbled across a hostelry around lunchtime, an ice-cream mid afternoon and refreshed ourselves in a Balslow tea-shop at the end, well planned indeed. The journey home was long, probably due to a clash with people leaving Silverstone after the Grand Prix, so we had to take pleasure in overtaking a Williams trailer and Morag's attempts at 'eye-spy'. Unfortunately we become so engrossed in 'h' – "you can see it all the time, it's natural, but sometimes obscured by trees" that we were nearly at Harrow before we realised we should have been looking for 'm' as in M25.

Former climber - Mary

P.S For those still guessing Morag's answer was 'horizon'.