So I did it, I went away for a weekend in the middle of the woods and I didn't die once. That's something to celebrate!!
In fact I'll even go as far as to say that we didn't even bump into any mass murderers... there was no hiding from people with axes, no zombies that climbed out of the ground, no weird noises in the middle of the night... basically, everything that I thought would happen from watching Cabin in the Woods didn't happen... I guess they picked another group of friends to be the sacrifice for the world instead of us... is it wrong that I'm a little insulted we weren't classed as good enough? Nah, it's good.
Anywho, for those who missed it last week, I disappeared off to the middle of the countryside with One-And-Only-Daniela and No-Nickname-Yet-Tshepiso for the weekend. We stayed in a yurt and basically just spent three days playing with fire and drinking wine... somehow none of that resulted in us burning the yurt down which I definitely think means we deserve some kind of prize... it could have been so much worse.
I think it's safe to say that all three of us enjoyed ourselves, although we were all incredibly aware of being the 'City Girls' in the middle of a small village where everyone knew everyone else. We didn't exactly help the situation. Our one trip into their village high street involved the following things:
1. Arriving at the first pub we saw with a crazed look on our faces and a desperate plea for plug sockets as we needed to charge our phones.
2. Getting out One-And-Only-Daniela's SLR anytime we saw anything slightly country like, like a horse or a tractor, whilst commenting to each other about "how quaint" it all looked.
3. Arriving at their only food shop and inquiring over whether they had a butchers as we wanted meat. This was met by a very perplexed guy behind the till in his late teens looking at us as if we were mad.
When we explained that we were camping and wanted to do a barbeque, he shook his head and said, "We don't really have anything like that here. There's a bigger village about 15 miles out that has one." We weren't about to walk that, so bought the only meat there was in the shop (gammon steak and sausages, which actually turned out be really nice). When we went to pay for them the guy was still looking at us completely baffled.
"You guys are from the city aren't you?" He said.
"Yeah," we answered. "We live in London."
His face fell. "Why the hell would you leave a place like that to come and stay here?"
"What?" We said. "It's nice!"
"But you're from London!"
"It's nice to get out every now and then," I explained. "We've been walking a lot, which is also nice."
"Although we've got all this food on us now, I can't be arsed to carry it all back with us." One-And-Only-Daniela commented.
A woman waiting behind us found this hilarious as apparently the three mile walk back to our farm was absolutely nothing to complain about when you live in a place like this. Of course, as we were girls who can grab a bus, tube, train or taxi from pretty much wherever we are in London, this felt a lot more of feat for us, especially as we had all this food, and we had already walked it once on our way down to the village. One-And-Only-Daniela began explaining this to the woman with a tone that suggested she didn't appreciate what the woman had to say. As such, No-Nickname-Tshepiso jumped in before an argument started in.
"We're looking for a taxi company." She said. "Do you have a number?"
By this point, there wasn't a single person in the shop who wasn't looking at us like we were aliens. The guy behind the counter spoke up.
"We don't really get many taxis around here. Everyone just sort of walks to where they want to go or has a car."
Someone from behind us chirped in at this point. "You can try and get a taxi from one of the villages next to us and ask them to come here, but they'll charge you extra for it."
We agreed to this, and left the shop. We had to ask a man in the street for help on locating a taxi company as the internet wasn't being very helpful. He sort of shrugged and said that they don't have many taxis coming this way, but they did have a curry house just down the road... We thanked the man, not really wanting to bring up our confusion on how the existence of a curry house in their village helps up with our plight to get back to our yurt. Obviously it is the only restaurant (outside of the pubs) that they had, so it was something they were all very proud of. It did look nice from the outside, I have to say.
As amused as the people in the village were by us, they were also really friendly so we had an overall good experience of our little walk into the high street. It was very much a village of people who all knew each other, so we must have stood out to them all from the moment we walked into a room. We also managed to get a taxi back to the yurt, thanks to google coming through for us.
We had a good time, but considering not one of us were particularly outdoorsy we were making it up as we went along. There was a couple in another yurt not far from us and we bothered that man far too many times with advice on how to get our grill to work or for use of his axe. I think he really began to regret his offer when we all arrived of helping us should we need it...
Having said that, One-And-Only-Daniela soon caught the Fire Bug and took over all heat related activities. She built our outdoors fire and took over the furnace in the yurt. I tried to help a few times but she kept on telling me I was doing it wrong so I just left her to it after a while. As fun as it was, the moment we hit London again, and I saw a sign for a proper plumbed toilet, I wanted to cry with happiness. I love my electricity, I love my internet. I love my creature comforts, and I fully appreciate the fact that I live in this day and age instead of even just 100 years ago.
But it was good and I didn't end up in hospital with hypothermia this time, which is definitely a plus in my books. Also... Ug, I made fire!
Peace out my lovelies.
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