Day 0:
Attempted to fit all my belongings into car. Failed. Decided to only try to fit *necessary* belongings into car. Moderate success. Car still moves. Went to sleep.

Day 1:
Rushed around finding all those things i had forgotten. Still forgot a blanket. Departed Grantham about midday and stopped for some snacks and booze shopping at Morrisons in Nottingham. Realised there was no room in the car to put newly acquired goods and spent about half an hour rearranging things in the carpark to get them to fit.

Headed off again, discovered that the real world looks a lot different to my small, printed map. When I am king of the world I shall make all roads be coloured exactly like they are on the internet, for ease of navigation. Finally found the campsite and began unloading car, only to discover I had gone to the wrong one. Pheonix arrived shortly afterwards and turns out he had, too, so we reversed back up the small road and went on to the correct site. Arrived about 2:30 to find a couple of others there and pitched tent without any major injury or loss of life. Success!

Broke out the chair and sat back for a bit, watching the rest of our group trickle in. Some time later Erythro arrived and I, along with several others, was roped into helping with his Enormous Erection. By evening it was up, and we all marvelled at its cavernous interior and pretty twinkling lights. Thanks to Red Dragon's technical genius and a large stack of batteries salvaged from people’s cars it even had a 230v mains supply. It was like we had never even left home.

The Frisbee was thrown around, and spent most of its time in the neighbouring fields. Awkore has a spectacularly good throwing arm, and, allegedly, is equally talented with both.

Day 2:
Rain overnight left my tent damp. Was introduced to the shower block where a 20p coin gets you a minute of warm water, timed from the moment you put the coin in. By the time you have got in the shower cubical on the other side of the block, stripped off and squeezed your body down into the tiny gap afforded by the knee-high showerhead it’s already beeping at you that it’s about to run out.

Tried to encourage some furs to join me on a “short” hike over Kinder Scout. All was going well until I mentioned it was going to take most of the day, at which point only Bleddyn, Patter and Jasper remained cautiously enthusiastic. Unfortunately that left only me with a car, and a two-seater at that. Sayre very kindly leant me his Mondeo and we avoided crashing it into anything on the drive over to Edale. By lunchtime we were at the start of The Bog that spreads out over the top. While we ate Jasper took to asking passing ramblers if they had any duct tape to repair the impressive tear in his shorts. Amazingly, one old fellow said “Yes” and after five minutes of digging through his rucksack produced the required materials for a new fashion statement that would preserve the unfortunate fennec's modesty once more.

We squelched through the bog, and despite telling the others that it’s easy to get lost and to just follow the compass I somehow managed to convince myself that it was somehow not working right and we ignored it. Naturally, its sense of direction turned out to be considerably better than mine and we emerged from the bog in completely the wrong place. Also of interest was the helicopter that was dropping off bags of stone for the workers who were making a pathway through the desolate landscape. We jumped like newborn lambs down Jacob’s Ladder and soothed our aching paws in the river at the bottom. Somehow, despite the near constant cloud cover, this was when I started to feel the sunburn. As i write this my nose has largely peeled off and i suspect i look like an extremely unlucky coke addict.

Returned to campsite to find I had left my towel hanging over my tent and the rain had thoroughly soaked it. Red and I did our best to wring it over, then I hung it over the cooling barbeque in an attempt to dry it. The effect was something like an mutant, overgrown version of the hot hand towels you get at an Indian restaurant and several people were spotted cuddling it as it gently steamed in the cool night air.

Day 3:
Unfortunately, towel did not dry out completely, despite being barbequed. My shower ended in a very unpleasant and cold manner.

Tried to galvanise some more furs into action to go and see the Blue John caverns but progress was slow. Eventually got about 8 of us together only a communications failure and my pent-up desire to drive around like a lunatic meant that the others were left far behind and Bleddyn and I waited around at Blue John for quite some time before wondering if perhaps the others had gone on to Castleton instead. Drove around it slowly, looking for tails, did not see any. Finally found some recognisable cars in a carpark so we parked up and want to the pub to wait. Spotted the others walking by a few hours later and played Go Fish for a while (turned into GoCat by the end). This has highlighted the need to make sure people have swapped a few phone numbers next year.

Most left for the campsite but Bleddyn, Grease and I decided to go up Mam Tor and look at the spectacular view. Rather than do the conventional thing and walk up the well surfaced path we took a “straight line” approach and ran up a near 45degree incline for the top. Once up we struggled to make any more progress against the hurricane-like winds that tore at our fur. Bleddyn even had to go so far as to don a hairband! Views were, indeed, spectacular with a 360 panorama of Castleton on one side and Hope Valley on the other. The easiest way down seemed to be a reverse of the way we got up and we discovered the joys of hill-sliding. Seat of trousers now very grass-stained.

Back at camp it was Erythro's birthday and I think we all drank far too much, I can barely remember some of the events. I recall balloons. And Netto. And the world’s nastiest alcoholic drink. The amount of random things in there leaves me surprised that nobody died, or at the very least threw up. At about 3am I finally crawled wearily into my sleeping bag and was woken two hours later by a group of sheep going for an attempt at the Unsynchronised Discordant Bleating world record.

Day 4:
Feeling rather delicate I emerged from my tent at 10 and stumbled to the showers. My only consolation was that this time my towel was actually dry. After a large bowl of MessyPops (Recipe: 1. Buy a variety pack, 2. Mix it all together, 3. Add milk, 4. Ingest) I was feeling much better and was able to join in with poking fun at Zhin who was trying his very hardest to remain in the darkness of Erythro’s tent before Icey carried him bodily away.

Sunday was lovely and sunny and we decided to go back to Castleton and play on the extremely steep hills along Winnets Pass. For those not aware of it then it is a road that cuts down sharply through a valley towards the village of Castleton and it is, in my opinion, one of the most breathtakingly beautiful sights in the UK. We discovered a small cave that, remarkably, wasn’t fenced off or fronted by a payment kiosk and enjoyed twenty minutes of clambering around in the dark with two small torches between six of us. Despite our lack of experience and being grossly unprepared nobody died, so that was a definite bonus.

We slogged it up to the top of the hill, stopping frequently for breaks and pictures, then played amongst some of the rocky outcrops and terrifyingly dangerous looking precipices. Hopefully some good photos will result, or all that arse-clenching terror will have been for nothing. Once at the top it seemed fitting to introduce the uninitiated to the ancient art of hill-sliding and we began our descent. Turns out Red is particularly slippery as he went hurtling by, almost running Grease over in the process and clearly completely out of control. We all held our breath nervously as he vanished over a ledge beneath us and we could no longer see him. Ten seconds later two ramblers at the bottom gave us a hesitant thumbs up, and then Red appeared, still sporting the correct number of limbs. Phew!

Not deterred by the first side we made a scramble up the other slope and wandered around amongst the nettles at the top. Bleddyn was, at this point, no doubt extremely pleased that he was the only one wearing shorts, in such hot weather and all. The descent down this side was even more fun as the grass was slightly damp from being in shadow and the hill was higher. Two more ramblers watched us in disbelief. Muddy and tired we returned to camp where we presented our impressive skid-marks for inspection.

As it got dark I struck my tent, said my goodbyes and drove off into the darkness. Driving at midnight on a Sunday is awesome, there’s hardly a single car on the roads. Spent the first few minutes of the journey following a rabbit at walking pace. Stupid thing would not get out of the way. Just as it darted off to one side and I felt sure it was going to go and hide in the long grass by the side of the road it would change its mind and dart back across the other way. This continued for what felt like miles. It probably got squashed by the next car along anyhow :(

Roll on next year, I hope it will be even bigger and even better!