I got up at 6am on the Saturday, I had a shower and read a copy of MCN for 30 minutes or so while I waited for someone else to get up.
When Katie and Wendy got up I put the kettle on and made us all a cup of tea.
When everyone else got up, we headed over to Hayfield to climb up Kinder Scout, it was cloudy for most of the day but it never really rained so the walking conditions were good. The hike was about 11 miles long with some great views when the clouds lifted. It was Wendy's first hilly walk and she was suffering from a cold so she did really well. We still completed the walk quick than we did when the ramblers did the walk as an official group walk a few months ago.
In the evening we went to The Plough in Hathersage for food, the meals were all very nice and the pub staff did everything they could to fit us in considering how busy they were, but I think the general feeling was for the price of each meal, the portions were a little stingy.
Sunday morning, I was awake at 6 am again but it was raining hard so rather than read in the tent I had a shower and then tried to make a cup of tea, unfortunately this time the stove didn't light. I gave it a few more bumps and got a tiny flame in the burner but I noticed a white vapor escaping from where the fuel lines meets the fuel tank - thats not good I thought so went to turn it off but unfortunately the vapour reached the flame before I could shut it down and the whole stove burst into flames.
Luckily I saw a tent catch fire when I was a scout and so I never cook anyway near my tent, I switched the fuel off but that didn't really help because the leak was closer to the tank than the fuel switch, I had hoped that the pressure would drop off but since the petrol was escaping and then running down the sides of the tank before burning, it was just heating the fuel tank up more and more and so the tank was pressurising, I tried water from my kettle but could get enough water on the stove fast enough to smother the flames, I then got a fire extinguisher but they were all water based and none were carbon dioxide and no fire blankets.
In the end I carried the still burning stove by the burner ring (the only part of the stove which was cool enough to handle with bear hands) over to some long wet grass which I hoped would be wet enough to smother the flames without catching alight - it was. The flames went out almost as soon as I had pulled the grass over the top - yay me, I saved the day.
I handed the stove over to the campsite warden, explained that it wasn't safe and asked him to dispose of it. I've already started eyeing up a replacement stove.
On the sunday was the Curbar Edge walk that I was leading, I met the rest of the ramblers in the car park at 10:25 and we set off on the walk at 10:50 when it became clear that no one else was going to arrive late.
I had some sweets in my pockets for the first person to find a picture of a sun carved into a rock which although situated in a Neolithic Farm site was actually made by a WWII Morter shell because the army used the Rock outcrop for target practice when training with live ammonition.
The rest of the walk went very well but in the afternoon it rained really really heavily and spoilt the views I was hoping to get on the way home which in sunny weather were spectacular.
After the walk everyone went home seperately and it chucked it down on me for most of the way :(
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