May 2006

Well what ended up being a rather eventful day, nearly didn't happen at all thanks to my sudden phone drowning the day before and know idea what Dave's phone number is. Thankfully I managed to quite ingeniously get hold of his number about 15 minutes before the train left and scrambled to the train station just in time.

Now I should introduce Dave, he seems to be the only mate that actually wants to leave the smog of London whenever possible and to do something. We met at my old flat share and although a Kiwi he doesn't seem too bad of a bloke, although he does have a weird eye thing doing on when traversing by train.

So off we chugged for the two hour trip towards Gloucester and through the paddocks of ugly sheep until we arrived at out destination and jumped into a cab...destination..."The Cliff"
It has to be said the majority of Brit's actually don't know about this event, when mentioning this activity to fellow work mates, I’d receive a blank stare followed quickly by "Your doing what? Nevea heard of that!, What ya wanna do that for?" So to actually to in a cab with a Englishman actually knowing something about this thing was a first quite informative, until he commented that we'd be better off hang gliding of this hill than rolling down the bloody thing. Ekk!!

Having not actually thought about the whole thing too much, but passionate about doing it, I didn't think the hill would be that steep at all, the pictures are quite deceptive though (as are mine) to the gradient. Upon seeing the hill for the first time, I was quite blown away with the shear drop and the thought of rolling off the side of a mountain was, well starting to disappear quite rapidly as where those ove my fellow cab mates.

Well fuck it I thought, I'd hadn't come all this way for nothing and wake up at some ungodly hour to get here.

Now being only 4 races, each with only 15 people racing and one race for the ladies, that left me with a 1 in 45 chance of actually racing!!, so the plan was to scramble with the side of the hill as fast as possible and placing ourselves in a prime position in the starting pack before the races started.
Needless to say, I hadn’t really thought that getting to the top would be such a challenge and discovered that I’m not as athletic I once was. In the end we blitzed past the families clambering to the dirt trying not to lost there grip and made it to the top in time for the festivities absolutely buggered. Turns out there is practically a paved road on the other side of the hill!

Well there we were standing high and sucking in the fresh country air as we contemplate what the hell we were about to do. "Will I survive? "Maybe I'll just break a leg or something?" "Oh god, I can't afford to be broken!" I thought, until being quickly brought back to reality by the surge of 200 odd blokes all pushing towards the point of no return, no turning back now, where in it for good.

With only 4 races you would think it was a relatively fast affair, besides the fact that there is a race every 20 minutes, the master of ceremonies was having quite a lot of difficulty keeping us contained behind the fences and when the races were delayed even more by the waiting of the only ambulance to return after a 1st race incident, people where starting to get a bit "eager", and Dave managed to be in a prime position to get wedged between the coveted cheese box and the surging pack and nearly breaking his leg. Nice one mate! break your leg BEFORE even racing

To solve all the commotion the master of ceremonies and security stepped back and just let a group of whoever wanted to roll, roll!
Must have being at least 30 or more people all rolling at one and you could fell the vibration from the thumps of bodies into the ground. This led us to being right on the edge and ready for the next race. By this time all the nerves where gone and I just wanted to roll already, hell we’ve being up there for 2 hours now, just roll the cheese mate!

Well the time had come, its now or never. Dave has managed to roll in the race before I as three extra races where put on without cheese to meet the demand. So I’m in the second line, nearly there, off they go and I’m looking down watching them tumble and flail about and thought fuck it, I’m going now!
So off I went behind the rest of the pack, about three other have gone just after me and where having our own little race in which we have managed to catch up to the back of the group before us.

For about the first half of the run I was doing quite well after a short run at the start I adopted the bum slide tactic which was all working well until I decided I was not going as fast as i wanted and stood up and started running again. It was at this point that things didn't go as well as I planned, I did manage to pick up speed though until tripping and smashing my left shoulder into the hill where I starting to roll on my side at quite considerable speed. I've somehow managed to be rolled upright again and have started running and the same bloody thing happened again, I’ve tripped and landed on my left shoulder again, only this time I heard quite a distinct "CRUNCH!!" and then rolled to the bottom on the hill in a muddy painful mess.

Turns out I didn’t break anything, just tore a few ligaments in which I can't move my arm about my head. All is on the mend now and I’m good as new.

Would I do it again?
Bloody oath I would. I recommend it to everyone, how many chances to you get in life to roll down a step hill with a crowd "ooooo"ing and "arghhhh"ing while chasing some of Gloucester finest cheese?

Check out the pics here >>> http://redmonkey.smugmug.com/gallery/1518513

Well it started with my very first organised tour that I have ever willingly being on as only having 3 hours sleep I couldn’t really be arsed to work the whole thing out.
After a bit of confusion with our tickets (as we are the only ones actually going to LegoLand) we board the bus with the average age of about 60 years olds. Just when I thought I was about to have a relaxing journey out of London, I hear this mindless chatter over the speakers to which it’s our tour guide, who we have dubbed Marry Poppins, rambling on about all sorts of mindless facts about London. I can’t even tell you what she was talking about as after about the first sentence I was asleep to the tunes of my MP3 player.

After a rather peaceful sleep we awoke in the royal city of Windsor to check out the Queen’s house. Not only is Winsor know for it’s royal connections but it also has the shortest street in the UK and a leaning tea house!!, who woulda thought.
I really couldn’t think of a worse thing to do when your sleep deprived, that of tramping round a overly lavish house. Luckily that’s where our leg of being with the tour group finished, we where free to go where we wanted and where handed bus tickets to get back to London.
Now don’t get me wrong, the Queen seems like an alright bird, god knows what she actually does or why she needs such a big house, but is it really necessary to have gold plated ceilings and walls? Although the gun collection was quite impressive the rest was just pretty much so-so . Suell seemed to enjoy it though, all I wanted was to get a picture with the fluffy hated guard and get the hell to LegoLand.

We where the on the bus to LegoLand, this was what I had being waiting for. Being a self confessed Lego freak back in the day I couldn’t wait to go to a theme park where everything is built from Lego. Well turns out it aint, that the legoLand in Denmark but still was a well wicked times. I was running round like a little school boy, so much to do so little time, only got there around 2pm and had to do the lot by 5pm, arhhhhhh
So on the Lego train to the bottom of the hill where our first ride awaited us…the Crazy Spider. Looking at it, it doesn’t look like much at all really, just your typical spinning ride and being no ques as it was pissing down rain, why the hell not.
Well it might of being the most innocent ride, but fuck me it was intense. Your basically in one of many spider eggs that spin round on a big platform and your spin your own egg to your desired speed…harmless right? So off we go, spinning nice and gracefully until the ride operator stars announcing that “Number 3 egg is in the lead, ohhhh now it’s number 5”, not even realizing that it was a racing ride I’m not one to back down from a race, so there I am heaving the wheel of our egg sack round and round, asking for some support from Suell, well wasn’t going to happen as she was holding on for dear life and looking like she was about to throw up over me. But ignoring her crys for me to slow down we reached the number one spot…top egg if you will. There we are spinning round at break neck speed, my body getting slammed against the seat as the gravitational pulls took over. Now not having being an astronaut, I would liking it to being in your space capsule whilst re-entering earth atmosphere, why its linked to spiders is rather baffling. Well after a couple of minutes of heaving the wheel and clearly not getting any help Suell I became exhausted and we came third. Took me a while for my eyes to stop wobbling and get my feet together again whilst the kids are buckled in for another go, hardcore little fuckers.

Well LegoLand has it all, water rides, roller coasters, mechanical diggers, rock walls but by far the impressive is the miniature cities made out of Lego. I would have pictures of these marvellous creations but my camera was a little damp after being submerged in the “Team Challenge” water ride where clearly we were too heavy for the ride and ended up slamming into the wall at the end where my bag contents proceeded to empty into the pool. Turns out my phone was sucked into the pump room never to be seen again.

I have to say I was a bit dejected to say the least but life goes on and after the mini doughnuts I was feeling better already.

Check out the pics here >>> http://redmonkey.smugmug.com/gallery/1518518