On day 2 normality was restored as James prepared a large pot of suffering-free porridge. This effort was in some vain, however, as he does not understand ratios, and proceeded to make merely oaty water. Today, the hangers left on time, but their plan to get a headstart was roundly stymied by a pair of sheep, who in the most Welsh event to ever occur, had temporarily blocked the single-track road while engaging in an act of the most amorous congress. Some time later, severely disquieted by these events, the hangers arrived, and began to hang.
It was soon discovered that today's area - Cefn Bryn (pronounced "Kevin grim", or not really pronounced at all, if you ask Aidan) was likely to be this year's Llyn Elsi. For those unfamiliar, Llyn Elsi was day 3 of Training Tour 2017, and the worst orienteering experience of everyone's life. As a gauge of the horrors endured, imagine its Friday morning, you've dropped your toast butter-side down and the Brexit party have formed a majority government. Then multiply that sadness by a lot. Once rehydrated with vowels, Cefn Bryn translates to "back of the hill", which is a weird name for a whole hill, but this turns out to be one of the less bad things about it. The area was teeming with vicious horses, spurious contour detail, and gorse. Spiky, knee-deep, horrible gorse. The guide to staying in St Madoc's includes a safety section on gorse, which we mocked on day one, but which will now be added to the club constitution. It was that much gorse. On top of this, as forecast, it was Walesing very heavily, which compromised vision, speech, and enjoyment in equal measure. Nonetheless, being hardened CUOCers, we bravely set out on the courses, for which controls had been hung for the many, but were attended by the few (in one notable instance the noble hangers had endeavoured - fruitlessly - to maximise control-site recognition by hanging two flags on the same feature). Aidan called it "really fucking wet", which everyone thought was a bit hypocritical, but okay. Tom called it "rubbish". Paul called it "not". Training was going badly.
Upon this realisation, Paul, followed by James, followed by one of the St. Madoc's Centre's tablespoons, were successively yeeted off the hill. Not much later, everyone else followed. Fortunately, the remaining control collection in the most horrible bit of the area was eagerly attended to by Aidan, whose text-induced nausea had miraculously subsided since yesterday. Safely back in the car, we used radio-o to guide the last stragglers to a forgotten control, before Jeremy inexplicably tried to introduce his afternoon train exercise (named 'HS2'). Much like its namesake, this consisted of a minority of Southerners* leading astray a larger number of unsuspecting, innocent Northerners and persuading them to buy into a fundamentally unviable development project. No evidence of the three foolish participants' existence has been recorded since the project's onset, and their return is expected in 2031, though nobody realistically believes that is going to happen.
Ages later, dinner preparation started, and 2* hours later than that, the veg was chopped. After a round of Mapominoes, a game in which participants bastardise a map of Europe, cooking began. Aidan served up some rice, chicken, and tunes (in increasing order of spiciness), while James focused his attention on the veg. This resulted in the creation of 24 fajitas, of which only 4.2% were adequately folded, with a further two being initially used to create a quesadilla (a word which, in a truly shocking turn of events, Aidan actually knows how to pronounce), before this attempted deviance from the menu was punished by a lack of boulangeric structural integrity. To round off the meal, Jeremy made an apple crumble, which was suspiciously devoid of his trademark Paul-enraging custard, half-truths, and crushed proletarian dreams.
in between dinner and pudding, Tom successfully got his computer connected to the projector, meaning that we could all look at a large, blurry image instead of a small, clear one. It now being almost midway into December, we decided to use this facility to help find a route to Christmas. Eventually, however, the blurriness outweighed the bigness, so we went back to small, clear screens for the rest of the evening.
*Jeremy's lies know no bounds
Update from the late Capt. F. Bunn MCSP: "Paul tells me you're feeling unloved"
Sitemap