Saturday, February 27, 2010

Ow. Ow.

Went on a walk today - which was supposed to be 7 miles. The leader had no sense of direction and kept getting lost even though he was supposed to have walked the route before (for example, if you are heading round a south-facing piece of coastline and want to get back to your car which is east of you, you DO need to have the sea on your RIGHT. Not your left) and it ended up being 9 1/2 miles. But when we checked the route on the map at home, even the original route was 8 1/2 miles.

Mr Spouse suggests that we go on our own private walks, rather than inefficiently led walks, in the future. While I am a fan of the Ramblers, I have to agree. Problems have included our local group that hardly ever does weekend walks (because most of its members are retired - a somewhat self-fulfilling prophecy) but had laid one on, which I was told when I rang up to enquire should have been booked in advance (no indication in the programme of the pub meal afterwards that needed booking); another group with the wrong date on some walks and a website that's impossible to navigate; and our local Young People's group which, when I was in my 30s, told me Mr Spouse, then in his 40s, could not come along to. Funnily now the leaders of that group have discovered that in fact they are not immune to aging and now they have passed 40, I went along to one walk only to discover I was probably the 2nd youngest there.

I like the Ramblers in principle but boy, are they strange in practice. Still, we got a good chunk of exercise. I'm supposed to be climbing a Munro in June so I definitely need it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Ramblers Association are exceedingly strange. John tends to twitch in the direction of his shotgun whenever he sees a bright kagool!

DrSpouse said...

If they are walking off the footpaths they probably aren't RA - they are anal about footpaths - it was the footpath sign that got our useless leader in trouble as he'd already walked the route and decided to go along the road instead but got seduced by the footpath sign when he was with us!

If they are on the footpaths you have no sympathy from me, that's what you get for living on a beautiful hill in the countryside!