Fair Verona

During our may trip to Lake Garda in Italy, we made a day getaway to the infamous city of Verona full of visions of glorious balconies. Verona itself is beautiful, full of some fantastic architecture - not to mention the best pizzeria I have ever been to.

The balcony itself was a bit confusing for me. I admit I am not an expert in Shakespearean literature, however I was under the impression that that the play was a fiction, and not in fact, a fact. 

Not the way these guys were selling it - the tour guides and the placards were there preaching to the amassed throng of tourists about the various comings and goings of the descendants of the Capulet family over the centuries?! You mean the Capulets - that made up family? I mused.

I was further confused over the logistics of the whole scenario, in that in order to climb into the courtyard, one would have to climb onto the roof of one of the smaller buildings. Not a problem in itself - but on surmounting said roof, surely it would be far more simple to just climb onto the balcony (around 4 ft higher than the roof) rather than down into the courtyard where young Romeo would have to make a 20ft ascent up a sheer wall to Juliets arms. It just didn't make sense to me.

On our trip we visited some stately gardens which we walked through with our friends. Lucy and I took a walk up one of the steep banks at the rear of the garden, and I spotted The Nurse and his girlfriend in such a situation as I thought would make a nice photograph. I probably took 10 photos of this type from various angles. I was quietly smug because I thought I had a good shot.

It was only afterwards, that I realised that I had invaded one of the most private moments a person could have. For this shot was taken at almost the precise moment that the Nurse offered a proposal to his girlfriend - and she had accepted!

So belated congratulations and as my engagement present have this photo of your engagement to keep.

I have also landed myself the duty of joint best man, so stag-do here I come!

Snakes and Ladders

This time we took our friend The City Worker up into the mountains. And instead of climbing rocks we were climbing iron ladders. Great big massive iron ladders, one of which was 50 metres in length.

These are the the kind of ladders which you don't tackle without any equipment for clipping in, for a fall from the ladder itself could be fatal, even not considering the fact that the adder is high up on a rock face.

We began the climb with a steep uphill walk with good views of Lake Garda:

The Nurse and I led the climbs, up ladders with hundreds of rungs which ascended up into the mist, seemingly never ending.

Climb four rungs, clip. Climb four rungs, clip. The guide book said it would take 30 mins to climb one of the ladders alone - and it was right!

The City Worker was the only non climber among us, and he did a pretty good job! He tried to change the subject every time I spoke about how much it would hurt if we fell, and he complained a lot  but to be honest he always complains a lot.

Here he is completing the daddy of all the ladders:

And leaning back on my harness I managed to get a little video of him looking up for the first time:

I have the Internet Again!

Finally, after having moved house around a month ago, and after having confirmed that BT are indeed the most dis-organised organisation on the planet - I have the internet at home!

After clearing out the links to dodgy sites which had accumulated in my comments section, the first thing I did was to upload my photographs for Team Bandicoot on the Hadrians Walk. Rather than bore you with them all, you can go to see them here on my Flickr page.

I thought I ought to post up the picture from the start of the walk (incidentally, only one of our party started in the sea, having been the only one who could be bothered to wade through the mud):

Bowness on Solway

Left to right: The Sergrant Major, The Tank, Me, Lucy, The Nurse, The City Worker, Katie, Will, Mike (who incidentally never looks at the camera), Alex, Mark (Buff creator), and the Artist (in distance).

I think probably my most favourite shot from the walk has to be this one, taken on the way into Houghton North Farm:

Fields of Gold (ish)

And here we are at the end, substantially more sweaty, and with a fair few more blisters:

Wallsend

Left to right: The Artist, The City Worker, Me, Mark, Alex, Will, Lucy, Katie, The Nurse, Mike, the Sergeant Major, the Tank (Front - DNF).

Thanks to everyone who took part, it was a great week and I think we may be able to turn it into a annual event. Particular thanks goes to our mobile Podiatrist who followed us the who breadth of the country - keeping the team going with foam padding, strapping and cans of Carlsberg.

Julia - Our Mobile Podiatrist

Of Iron Roads

As we got higher up the mountain, we nervously ploughed into thigh deep snow, putting into practice some of the winter skills we learnt during our course, but this time without the comfort of having an experienced guide directing our every step. We weren't quite sure what to expect and whether the going would get tougher, the snow drifts deeper and the danger or falling down the mountainside on our left, even greater as we wound our way upwards.

The guide book gave directions based upon landmarks, but we must have gone past several, a signpost here, a memorial plaque there, a fork in the road. They were supposed to be ten minutes apart, but it was hard to know what ten minutes should be, being as our progress was much slowed by the snow. Round the corner to fantastic views down the Lake Garda, the guide book said. We could just see grey sky.

The cloud began to lift as we were closing in on our first bit of Via Ferrata. Descend 200m into a large bowl, but be warned, this may contain some snow early in the season. Some snow! It contained massive bloody sheets of ice! It was only on the good advice of the chap in our local outdoors shop, that we even took ice axes. It would have been very difficult without.

The Nurse followed as I chopped steps down the mountainside to the first wired section. 

Via Ferrata routes are essentially long sections of wire attached to steep bits of rock, to which the quick fix climber can attach himself using a specifically designed lanyard. They were initially built in the Italian Dolomites to assist soldiers in the first world war by helping them climb quickly to great height without the use of ropes. This route was considerably newer than this (or at least I hoped so), and I am presuming just set up for sport.

When we got to the bottom of the bowl, we put on our harnesses and lanyards and began our ascent. The first section was a fairly easy chimney, up which the Nurse led the way. 

We then hit a massive patch of snow which was concealing all of the cables into which we needed to clip. The next clipping in point was visible about 10 feet away from us - the only problem being the traverse unprotected accross an icy slope with a massive drop on one side. We decided a much better idea was to spend 20 minutes furiously chopping through the snow to get to the submerged cable. Neither of us was prepared to stand on a slide away to nothing, without at least being clipped on somewhere.

The next pitch up a large crack was a little more challenging. It wasn't quite hard enough for me to think I was going to fall off, but still hard enough for me to spend my climbing time thinking about what the concequences would be, if I did fall off. 

Place hands, place feet, haul self up, look down, remind self never to look down again ... and repeat. It was a fair distance to the top crawling over the edge and making that final clip with no small sense of relief.

'The final pitch climbs at an easier angle', said the guide book. It didnt seem much easier to me with tired arms. The water cascading down the rock didn't assist slow progress, but did add to the adventure.

Wearily we drew ourselves over and walked the short distance to the top of the 2,200m peak. We opened the metal box which contained a climbers log. The last entry - October 2009, meaning we were the first climbers of the season. Something to be proud of I feel, and perhaps this explains why we were wading through virgin snow  the whole way up the mountainside. One thing was for sure, the second group of climbers of the season would have a much easier job digging those blasted cables out. 

We thought to rest until thwarted by an act of nature. 

We looked each other tentatively up and down. Two lonely souls on the highest peak on the range, caught in a thunderstorm! Luckily we had long metal sticks in our hands to ward off the bad weather. 

It was back down for us through hail and snow to sun-burnt girlfriends, cheap red wine and pizza.

We had a number of good little adventures on the trip. But I will save something for future posts!

On Doing Shots with Super Mario

So this is the end result of a weeks worth of toil on my Panthro suit. It involved a lot of parcel tape, selotape, insulation tape, PVA and garden wire. All together I was pretty happy with it! 

Liono's efforts were a little less impressive I have to say. Especially given as he is supposed to be the leader of the group (I never could understand why that was).

It was an awesome night! 

Apart from getting accosted by a rather camp He-Man for quite some time, I spent a lot of the night talking to various members of the Motley Crue as well as Tom Cruise from Top Gun. The goblin king from Laberynth kept trying to pull my spikes off, but I am pleased to say that they held firm (that'll be the £1 poundland insulation tape then).

However alcohol is not so abundant on the planet Thundera, and after a while - us cats got a little tipsy and tired. In the absence of the Thundertank (I thought it best not to drink and drive), we got a taxi back home to the Thundercats Lair (well, actually it was my mums house - 

she had to put blue sheets on the bed so that my face paint didn't stain them).

Tigra, Liono and Panthro - just chillin'

How to Make Your Own Panthro Suit

When I was a child I was very much obsessed with a children's cartoon series called The Thundercats.

The Thundercats was basically based around a group of cat like humanoids who had been exiled from their home planet Thundara (I believe) and were on a lifelong quest to sell plastic figurines to small kids. Their leader was Liono (who looked a little bit like a lion unsurprisingly), but there was also Cheetarah, Tigra, and by far the coolest Thundercat of them all ... Panthro.

Panthro was the older, cool headed Thundercat who made stuff out of other stuff. He even made the Thundertank (which he drove), which was awesome. It ate rocks for christs sake (though my mate has a plastic one and that definately did not eat rocks)!

Panthro was my favourite by a country mile.

On Saturday we are going to a fancy dress party, my friend's 30th in Huddersfield. The theme is 80's but rather than going in shell suits, we opted to dress up as the Thundercats.

The Nurse will be Tigra, the city worker is going as Liono and I (being in possession of one of his natural traites - no hair) will go as 'Panthro the Deadly'. Incidentally I am not sure where he got that name as, if I recall correctly - no-one ever died in a Thundercats episode.

Panthro the Deadly

My recipe for the perfect Panthero costume is as follows:

• 1 pair of tight blue leggings;
• 1 pair of blue speedos;
• Blue card;
• Red card;
• Black card;
• Silver card;
• Lots and lots of PVA glue;
• Part of the box that the TV came in (this is going to make shifting the TV next month when we move house that little bit more difficult);
• 1 pair blue football socks;
• 1 tight blue t-shirt;
• Lots of blue face paint; and
• 1 pair of nunchucks (available from any good weapons dealer)

Mix together for one mean looking Panthro!

I havent quite figured out whether this will work yet, but will keep you (the general internet) posted...

Oh, and also whilst researching all of this, I figured out that they are supposed to be releasing new Thundercats movie! Awesome!

Fear

On the fourth day of the mountaineering course, our guide thought we were doing pretty well (as we all have a bit of experience in rock climbing) and agreed to let us try one of the most famous winter climbing routes on Ben Nevis, called Tower Ridge. Andy, one of the guys on the course with me had been keen to do it right from the start.

We were joined by a second guide on the day, and being as Graham had retired on day two (due to a sprained ankle on the walk-out), we had three of us to two instructors.

We started early and ascended the side of Ben Nevis towards the start of the route where we roped up. I was on the end of a rope of three (our guide, The Nurse and myself) with Andy and the other instructor following behind. We donned crampons, harnesses, helmets, extra layers and armed ourselves with our ice axes. The weather was good and it was 9am, leaving us plenty of time to tackle the route.

The climbing was not too hard, though I wasn't fully used to jamming axes into cracks and putting my full weight on them and there were a couple of hard bits of climbing near the beginning. All in all we made pretty good ground up until about midday or so.

The View from the Bottom of the Second Climbing Pitch

The difficulty then came that we got stuck behind a really slow moving group of four and as there was no option to overtake on the route - we had to queue to climb the different sections behind them. We must have waited nearly two hours to complete a traverse and a climb up to the top of the 'little tower'. 

The traverse was scary - I had previously thought that I wasn't at all scared of heights up until that point. But with just a few crampon points separating me from a couple of hundred feet of drop below me - I was more than a little nervous. Here is a photo of the traverse courtesy of a photo stolen from the internet (spot the footprints):

Then it all started to get a little worse. The party in front of us held us up so much that our guides told us that we would have to walk down in the dark ... then they told us we would have to finish the climb in the dark. All in all - we climbed for over 3 hours in the dark!

Just Before We Crossed Tower Gap - The Nurse, and above that - our guide

The hardest point of the tower ridge route comes near the end. Basically you have to cross an extremely narrow, extremely exposed walkway into a hole known as the 'Tower Gap', before climbing out up to the top.

The issue here is that I was roped to the back of a group of three, so I couldn't move forwards until The Nurse in front of me was able to move up enough to pull the rope tight. The Nurse spent a total of 10 minutes navigating the Tower Gap whilst I stood with my feet together and my knees shaking on the narrow walkway ... in the dark. Here is a picture of the walkway in the light that I managed to steal:

Although I was roped in and safe - the fear was pretty much building in me from here. Next I had to climb down into the gap and back out of the other side. It would have been a tricky climb in the summer with a pair of climbing boots and the sun-shining. In the dark - it was much worse. Especially seeing as just as I was climbing into the hole - my head torch broke! 

I kept having to take my gloves off (which were essentially ice-balls by this point) to press the button to get the torch to work again and as soon as I put them back on again, the torch would switch off.

I swore ... lots. At one point the head torch went off as I was straddling the gap with one foot either side and one glove half on trying to hook my axe onto a piece of rock quite far above my head. I can honestly say thats the most scared I have ever been. I cacked myself.

I finished the climb short roped to the nurse (about 1m behind him) so that I could make use of his head-torch light) and we walked 2 hours bac down to the car - to get there for about ten o'clock.

It was a brilliant experience though. While I was climbing, all I was thinking was 'mountaineering is crap!', but afterwards - the feeling was pretty great.

4 Boasts

What an absolutely crappy week this has been. I have been sinking beneath an ever growing mountain of work with a constant stream of people hassling me for things I haven't managed to do yet.

On Tuesday morning I came down stairs to find a magpie on my living room. Bloody big thing it was! The cat was chasing it around to no avail (being as it was bigger than the cat). It must have got in through the cat flap. I finally managed to get the thing out of the patio door (but not before it shat down our curtains) after about 10 minutes of struggle - and get myself off to work.

Lucy informed me that it is bad luck to see a lone magpie (something I was not aware of) and this rang true the next day when I crashed my car on a roundabout I have crossed a thousand times (incidentally, for the last 18 months I had been referring to it as 'the roundabout of death'). Then I spent the whole morning trying to figure out (via about 10 phone calls) who the bloody insurers were for my company car (even our finance director didn't know) as it had just changed the previous week.

But hey, I have managed to line up quite a few interesting bits of time off in the next six months. Each and every one of which I am excited about for different reasons.

In February I will be undertaking a 5 day winter mountaineering course. I recently sold my kidney on eBay to pay for boots, crampons and goretex jackets and am very excited about putting them to good use! I got the following email through from the course instructor today:

"Tower Ridge is a route that I would choose for the course but its a long route, so you will need to still be fit enough by day 4-5 of the course in order to go for it. Try to do as much airobic training bettween now and your arrival." I was hoping to get through it on strength of mind alone. I didnt realise I needed fitness!!

I was seconds from posting up a picture of Tower Ridge and then realised that both my mum and Lucy read this blog and after viewing the pictures - If I post them up I may not be allowed to go!

In May I am heading to Lake Garda and the Dolomite in Italy with Lucy, my friend The Nurse and his other half. He is my regular climbing buddy and we are going to tackle some via ferratta routes before retiring to the lake for some relaxation (and maybe a visit or two to Milan / Verona / Venica)

The best way I can describe Via Ferrata is that its like mountaineering or climbing but with fixed wires and ladders. We did some of it in a past visit to the Tatras in 2007.

In July we do the Hadrians Walk in aid of the Joseph Salmon Trust. I have been enstrusted with preparations and leadership of Team Bandicoot. We are going to be a small team (I am hoping for between 12 and 15 people), but we should get on great and there is nothing I love more than romping through the countryside in the sunshine. Conversely to the Pennine Way last year - we will also get some good nights sleep in hostels rather than tents which will be welcome for most (though secretly I would rather camp).

In late July / August, Lucy and I will be heading to Lebannon for a week - for a wedding in Beirut! This is somewhere we would probably not have chosen to visit (as there are so many places in the world we want to go), but I am really looking forward to it and it will be really interesting to get an inside view of such a different culture.

Apparently we will be spending some of our time in a small border village where we have to get signed in and out. The hills are supposed to be amazing here too, but the warnings about land-mines have kind of put me off somewhat.

So really I cant complain.

Also I just spent half an hour blogging when I was supposed to be working.

How to Bypass NHS Waiting Lists

Last night I was down at the Foundry climbing wall with The Nurse. We've just started doing a bit of lead climbing being beginners and were attempting to tackle some of the overhangs.

For me, lead climbing is a bit more exciting down at the wall that you traditional top roping. Basically rather than being suspended all of the way up, you clip in as you go. The excitement comes with the fact that is you fall off - you fall down the distance to your last clip in point, and then that same distance again below the clip. And then you fall a little bit more if the guy who is belaying you is not really paying attention and has left a little bit too much slack in the rope.

The slight apprehension about what will happen when you eventually fall and smack into the wall makes you fear just that little bit more. And the fear makes you grip a little bit harder. It all adds to the rush!

At one particularly memorable point in the night I was belaying for The Nurse who was attempting a relatively easy climb, but on a relatively difficult overhang. He had already made significant progress and had fallen a couple of times. I was trying to maintain attention, but have to admit, was getting bored with slow progress and was probably diverting a little too much attention to climbers on the other walls.

The Nurse was about half way up the wall when he managed to get both his feet onto a rather large oval shaped hold. At this point he decided to make a relatively straightforward move and reach up for the next one. He extended his foot to get a little more height ... when ... POP! Not usually a good sign. The Nurse fell off and I lowered him down.

He seemed to be in a fair bit of pain. To be honest, the Nurse has a little bit of a history of injury. I used to play roller-hockey with him a number of years ago and he got injured so many times that he ended up acquiring a (very un PC, I am ashamed to say) nickname of 'Cripple' by which he was known in my mobile phone for many years. Most of the time he was just being a big wus in my experience. But something made me believe that it wasn't so this time.

It could have been something to do with the fact that he nearly puked in the middle of the climbing hall, or the masses of sweat, or the rather horrible swollen blue colour his left ankle had gone - but I sensed something might really be wrong.

So we went to the local minor injuries unit at A&E and something quite remarkable happened. We walked up to the desk and the receptionist took a few details. Name, age, etc. What surprised me was that when she got to 'occupation' - 'Staff Nurse', the ballgame changed.

Anyone familiar with NHS A&E department, will probably be familiar with that little board you often get. The one which shows waiting time. This usually flashes by at around 1.5 hours, sometimes 3 on a Saturday night. If you have a minor injury, you may be lucky to get to the front of the queue at all! OK, so its maybe not that bad, but I was certainly expecting a long night.

But apparently if you are a staff nurse, it seems you can completely bypass the queue, nevermind the heart attacks of the broken necks, get seen to immediately - and whats more bypass the x-ray queue as well and be back out of the hospital within about 35 minutes!

Bonus was that we managed to get out just before the kick off to the England - Germany game, and get a few beers (which the Nurse was adamant, increased the effect of his pain killers).

Only downside is that now I dont have anyone to climb with.

(oh -yeah and The Nurse has to have an operation which I guess is a downside too).

An Admission of Guilt

On Thursday night a couple of weeks ago I was shamed.

Lucy came back from her boxing class early and caught the Nurse and I in the cellar together.

Why we didn't lock the door I have no idea.

How we failed to hear her descending down the cellar steps I don't know.

We were deeply engrossed in our embarassing, self indulgent act.

We thought we were safe. We thought no-one would catch us.

As she burst in, surprising us - we were red faced. Downcast. Speechless.

There was nothing we could say.

Since that moment Lucy has told me that she is a little less in love with me. A little less attracted to me.

For on Thursday night a couple of weeks ago, Lucy came back from her boxing class and caught the Nurse (Paul) and I playing war games with our old citadel miniatures.

In Which I Make My Mum Proud

Its retrospective Wednesday here at RCWR (Ok, it was supposed to be Monday but who is keeping track?)

You've probably heard me go on a bit about a place called the Old Court Brewhouse (or the Courthouse) in Huddersfield. A place I used to work during the holidays when I were a wee youngster at University (for about 3 years I think). It was a cool kind of place, I have many fond memories of working and drinking and generally having some of the best times of my life in there. 

Now the Courthouse used to have all kinds of customers. From alcoholics who would prop up the bar all day to Ralph Lauren wearing chavs. There were those who loved the variety of real ales, and those who loved the "Triple Spirits and Mixers for £1.99" all drinking together.

Triple Spirits and Mixers for £1.99 caused a lot of hangovers for  lot of people in those days. The spirits were made up of sub standard cheap versions of other more reputable brands. I forget most of their names apart the 'Napoleon Brandy' which was solely consumed by one of my supposed supervisors: Mushy of 'The Dales Walk' fame. In fact come to think of it, most of the Dales Walk crew are recovering Courthouse alcoholics!

Anyway, thats aside from the point - there were a total of four disgusting cheap spirit knock offs for sale under this most fabulous deal in those days: the aforementioned Napoleon brandy; vodka; white rum; and whisky. It didn't really matter which one you ordered because they were all equally as foul, and anyhow it just tasted like pure industrial cleaner.

I may have mentioned that this stuff is pure hangover juice - well on the day I am about to tell you about (or to be precise the day after) sometime in 2000 I think I had the worst hangover of my entire life!

I was out in Huddersfield unusually during term time and therefore was not working at the Courthouse (during term time I worked at the Faversham in Leeds which some locals may know), so was on a regular night out to which I had brought my unfathomably large (and unfathomably idiotic) rugby playing housemate from Leeds Uni. 

We went for a few beers (I think we hit up the College Arms, which as far as I am aware is the only place in Huddersfield that you can still get a pint for less than 2 quid), then moved on to a few places and were in the Courthouse by 11 o'clock or so, meeting up with The Nurse and his Mrs. We were  little tipsy, we met up with some old members of staff an things were going fine. that is until...

Now one thing you probably have to understand about me at this point is that I find it very hard to refuse a dare. In fact I am not very good with peer pressure at all. Thats why when The Nurse put a drink of what looked like a long vodka and coke or something similar, and dared me to down it in one - I did it.

Unfortunately, the drink did not contain a vodka and coke. Oh no - The Nurse had rather kindly gone around all of the tables (which were emptying at this point) and collected up the dregs of all of the glasses that were left unfinished (as you can imagine, on '£1.99 for  triple and mixer night' there were a lot of these!). It was one large cocktail of four extremely lethal knock off cheap spirits. I drank the lot, and I am proud to say - held it down. Thats when it started to go wrong.

Well, it didn't exactly go wrong at that point for me. The next thing I knew, I woke up in my bedroom at my parents house, full clothed (well thats a blessing at least) and with a headache which was something akin to the aftermath of a small nuclear explosion inside my skull.

I looked around. No housemate. He was supposed to be staying the night and I had no idea where he was. I noticed his mobile phone on the floor. And his housekeys for our place in Leeds. Whoops.

Meanwhile back in Leeds. The Housemate was awaking from a pretty terrible nights sleep. the last he had seen of the guy whose house he was meant to be staying at, was glimpses of him dancing away on his own in The Camel Club in Huddersfield before a fire alarm had gone off. Everyone had poured outside and he had lost sight of his companion. It was cold and he needed to get back. He had no idea where he lived, so the only way out of the cold winters night was to stump up the £50 taxi fee all of the way to Leeds. He looked around for an hour or so, but ended up getting the taxi.

Then came his next problem. He discovered he didn't have his keys. This was a problem for the house had fairly sturdy doors. He spent some time throwing an old tennis ball he found in the garden at the front windows in an attempt to rouse other sleeping housemates but to no avail. It turns out they thought it was drunks or burglars and got scared. Only one option - break down the back door! He got inside. Whoops he forgot that there was a locked internal door. He spent the night sleeping in the cold next to the chest freezer. We told the landlord somebody had tried to burgle us.

Later I made my way back to Leeds and made my apologies to my housemate, he was really mad. It had really been my fault that he had had to spend the night in the cold. I was ashamed but thought nothing of it.

A few days later I tried to withdraw some cash from the bank. I was shocked to find that there was £500 missing from my bank account, as a poor student that was a massive amount! I did some detective work and discovered that the £500 had gone missing at around 3am on the night in question. What happen there! 

I still had my bank card so it hadn't been used by anyone else. The only thing I could think of is that somebody had forced me to take money out of my account and give it to them. A taxi driver or something!? I always hated taxi drivers! I had thoughts of trawling the Huddersfield ranks trying to find the guy that had done this to me.

I went to the police and had them looking at CCTV around the suspected ATMs. So far as I am aware they spent days looking through the tape (though it is just as likely that they didn't bother). They came back with nothing! I was distraught!

There was nothing else for it, I was a poor student and couldn't afford to live without that £500 so I had to take drastic action! I had to do what all students have to do sometimes. I had to call my Mum and admit what I had done and try to borrow some money...

Me: "Hi Mum, I've got a problem"

Mum: "Whats that?"

Me: "err... I've lost £500 out of my bank account ... I was a little drunk and I think that somebody stole it... sorry...  could I borrow some money?"

Mum: "It good you called, I have been meaning to talk to you"

Me: "Why's that?"

Mum: "I found £480 on your bedside table the other day. I thought you were dealing in drugs"

Me: "!?"

I never did find out what really happened that night. All I know is that bastard of a taxi driver charged me £20 for a £12 fare!"