We trekked over hill and dale
for several hours
in the baking August Sun
our destination turned out to be
a pretty hefty high-level gorge
none o’ yer kiddies stuff here
this was go hard or go home
character building, apparently
and I was having
the time of my life
a good distraction from having
to stay at the homeless hostel
after running away from home
again
Bedecked in wellies
and not-so-waterproofs
our gorge walk was precarious
and actually dangerous
if you weren’t concentrating intently
on where you placed your feet
and wet fingers on the
often slippy, algae covered sandstone
Eventually, our instructor
stopped us at a point where
there was a waterfall with
a very deep peaty pool beneath
and announced that we were to
jump in
Considering
the other activities we’d done
over the past two weeks
I wasn’t surprised
Each of us took our turn to jump in
many losing one or both wellies
in the process
a couple of the guys tried to
dive down to retrieve them
but to no avail
each time they resurfaced
with the wrong size
I wasn’t hopeful of my chances of
keeping mine, when it was my turn
sure enough
I lost one on the first jump
losing the second one whilst
trying to retrieve it
It was a welly graveyard down there
the remains from many others’
previous expeditions
The Depths, Baltic with a capital B
despite the Summer heat
After several attempts at
diving down, only to resurface
with the wrong size each time
eventually resolving myself to
the fact I couldn’t retrieve a size 7
so, had to squelch all the way
back to the centre
with two different sized wellies on
heartened only by the fact
that everyone else
including the instructor
was doing the same