With the help of Google Maps, I’d chosen the location. I remember Ste, from Employment Palace, telling me there was a nice walk in Guisborough, which isn’t too far away. Despite being out the night before, I awoke, fresh as a slightly decaying daisy, reeking of alcohol and vindaloo, complete with an occasional burp which tasted of Jagerbomb. Joy.

Anyway, prior to Gary picking me up, I headed of to Lidl, to pick up some water for the trip. Let me just say that I got as far as the petrol station… in fact I’ll let my Facebook status tell the story…

Andrew D isn’t far wrong – I took a stash of bog roll in the camera bag, just in case!

Gary picked me up, and along with his dog Boris, we headed along the A19, A174, A172, A171, and just a smidgeon of the A173, we arrived. Once thing that was instantly noticeable compared to our other walks, is that spring had definitely sprung. The trees were starting to grow leaves, and the whole area had a much greener hue to it compared to the rest of the walks. The first photos were taken, when Gary discovered a small tunnel. Unfortunately, we didn’t get chance to emulate Jamie S’s epic troll photo as the tunnel was full of flies.

Immediately after this photo was taken, disaster happened. As I was putting the camera back in its bag, it left my grasp a little too soon, and went hurtling to the uneven, gravel-stone ground. Fucking hell. The crunch it made was enough to make me bring a little bit of sick up. “Oh well, the lens could do with an upgrade” was my instant thought. Imagine my surprise when I picked up the camera to find absolutely no damage to the lens glass, or the camera mechanics. Upon closer inspection, there’s a small chunk removed from the lens body, and a small scratch near the shutter button. That’s all. My luck for the month has now been used up.

The walk continued. It was all uphill, but it wasn’t as uphill as the challenge we were about to set ourselves. We reached a junction in the forest paths. While I took photos of daffodils again (oh, come on! they’re only out for a few weeks every year!), Gary looked through the trees, and noticed how close Roseberry Topping was. It was literally half a mile away.

Roseberry Topping is a place I will always hold dear. I’m going to ramble on here, and for that, I don’t apologize. It’s one of my favourite places on this planet. It was always visible when we went to places for days out such as Whitby. It’s the prominent focal point for the whole of Teesside. I seem to remember Cleveland County Council using it in their logo for a years, even though it’s technically in North Yorkshire. Anyway, as a child, being 11 years old, I always remember having a dream about it. being visible from Hartlepool. A few days later, on a walk home from school, I stopped dead in my tracks on the coast road. There it was. Roseberry Topping was indeed visible from Hartlepool. I couldn’t quite believe it.

In January 1992, Daddykins took me and him to climb it. This was 20 years ago, there was no path at the time. There’s a photo somewhere of me, climbing up the side of it, grabbing onto frost-covered ferns for dear life, as we attempted what seemed like the impossible.

Again, there are photos of me and Daddykins at the top of the hill – we made it up there without further incident or injury. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a clear day, so Hartlepool wasn’t visible. On the way home, to give you an idea of how long it was ago, I heard “Twilight Zone” by 2 Unlimited for the first time, and went home to play Bubble Bobble on my Commodore 64.

The next time I climbed it, was with Wayne, and his dad. By this time, it was the summer of 1995, and the pathway to the top had been laid. It was still a bitch to climb. Unfortunately, there’s no photographical document of this walk, but after we’d came back down, we went to see Judge Dredd at the Showcase… my one and only trip to this particular cinema.

Back to the present day, and I left you with me and Gary, stood in the middle of a forest, wondering which way to go. I’d already had a few miles in my legs by then, and I was reluctant to do the Roseberry Topping bit. Gary convinced me it was a good idea. I don’t know how he managed that.

At the bottom, I took a video. It’s pretty clear just how uncertain I was!

Oddly, I arrived at the top, and my exact thoughts were “Woah… was that it?” I think, the only difference between my previous trips up Roseberry Topping and this one, was the fact I’d notuched up 55 miles of walking in the previous month, and I had a bottle of water. I’d hazard a guess that they both helped.

I almost lost the contents of a testicle when I noticed I could see Hartlepool, and could easily make out Steetley Chimney with the naked eye. The image below is a cropped image, but the original can be found here

It would have been more prominent if the buildings attached to it weren’t demolished several years ago.

We reached the top, and made contact with an elderly couple who had also made it to the top. Apparently, they make the trip to Roseberry Topping every hear for his birthday. He was 83, and she was 80. Bloody hell. If I look a day older than them when I’m their age, then these walks have done their job. They walk all over the local area, and even gave me a couple of ideas for future walks. As they were about to leave, they asked me to take a photo for them on their camera. They were even apologetic over it. I hope I convinced them that I really, really didn’t mind at all!

OK, so there needs to be some evidence that we made it up there, hence the title of this posting. Glen posted the “pics or it didn’t happen” comment, on my previous posting, as he knows for a fact, I don’t go anywhere these days without some type of digital picture recording device

So, there’s me cared for… as for Gary and Boris… You’d think they were waiting from a lift from a nearby plane…

Something visible from the top of Roseberry Topping is a structure. I have no idea what it is, or what its purpose is…

It was enough of a mystery for me to want to go down and investigate it. Thankfully, Roseberry Topping has several paths leading from its top to its base, and one of them leads you along this path. In fact, it’s the main path to continue if you don’t fancy attempting the big hill. Along the way, we found, of all things, a discarded lightbulb. Gary suggested that it would be a good idea to move it from the beaten path, to somewhere a little more safer. Although a perfectly acceptable idea, it meant that I ended up carrying it for about half a mile before dispensing it in the afore-mentioned little buildong…

Neither the walk over there, nor the photos clear up the mystery of this strange little building in the middle of nowhere. It’s either a folly, or some type of hunter’s refuge from years ago, if things suddenly turned shite.

The three of us (including the dog) didn’t fancy going back the way we came, as we’d have to complete the bottom third of Roseberry topping again, therefore we took a chance, and headed through what we think was private land. There were no signposts, and the gates were opened by hand, so if the landowner happens to view the endomondo link at the end of this post, and notices we trespassed, I’m sure the lord’s prayer has something about forgiving trespassing ‘n’ shit. I didn’t eat any of your crops, though if you get a ladybird infestation, this could be the reason why…

It’s rare enough in 2011, to see ladybirds. It’s even rarer to actually see them “doing it”. Therefore, this video should be considered ultra rare I would have considered doing a voiceover / soundtrack featuring 70′s porno music, but as we were probably on private land, I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.

We rejoined a path. Thankfully, it was the correct one. It led us back through the forest, and after a detour following an obstacle course which we both avoided, we arrived back at the car park.

It seems a perfect opportunity to post the Endomondo link, therefore…

Does the link work?

If it doesn’t, I’m not going to apologise, it’s not my fault. I can’t change the privacy on my walks at the moment, because whatever scripting they’re using to show the buttons, has died, so I can’t change my default view. Whoops. Gary’s calculation also left something be be desired. I’m not sure why, but it showed us in several fields. My link is much more accurate, yet I have no idea why. There’s an obvious alien invasion about to take place.

The last paragraph in this post saw me ripped off, and it was entirely my own fault. On the way home from the walk, we pulled into a Tesco service station. I was already feeling the pain from the walk, and after noticing it sold beer, picked some up. After all, it would have saved me walking down to the offy in agony. I’d headed to the till with the following:-

4x Stella, 568ml @ 4.39
4x Stella, 440ml @ 4.99

There was other stuff I’d purchased, but that was the fucker. How did I not notice I’d picked up two different sets of volume, and prices? The receipt will forever be a testament of what a cock I really am…

It all started when I left work a little late. There was no reason for me to, as I was already signed out, I’m just used to hanging around for a couple of minutes. On my way to the bus stop, I bumped into Dan, who I’ve worked with on and off for a few years. Dan doesn’t like moths, but that’s a tale for another day. He mentioned that he’d just seen the bus whizz past. Oh well, I’m sure I won’t have to wait long for the next one. After all, they’re only supposed to be 10 minutes apart. 20 minutes later, I’m still waiting.

[2010-10-19 08:28:17] Here it is…

I see the bus in the distance. Hurrah! Now, what is hard to describe is the position of a bus stop. It’s on a slip road leading out of an industrial estate. As part of my “Take a picture of absolutely everything” non-project, I oddly have a picture of it to describe what I mean.

It is quite clear from that image, that a slow moving vehicle could come out of the slip-road, and block the view of any approaching mode of public transport, meaning that the driver will go past and not even know you are there. This is the nightmare situation that caused me to miss my bus. A street cleaner came trundling along the red cycle path, just as the Number 1 approached, meaning that the drivers view of the stop was totally blocked, he’d have never knew I was there…

As the song goes, “my hands were clenched in fists of rage”. I screamed some obscenities at the street cleaner, and begin to storm off on the long walk, knowing that there wouldn’t be a bus there any time soon. Yes, you guessed it. I’d been waiting 20 minutes, which means the bus that was due at that time sailed past me when I was about 100 yards away from the bus stop. I can still feel my foot throbbing from where I kicked the lamp post.

I continued to walk to the junction of Oxford Road / Stockton Road. At least, I could get the number 6… or so I thought.

The number 6 came hurtling around the corner, I stick my grubby little paw out, aaaand it sails past, to the next bus stop 50 yards away. I could have ran for it, but knowing my already terrible luck, he would have headed off on his merry little way just as I got to the door. There was only one thing for it, wait for the next Number 1. I was at the bus stop 10 minutes. It seemed like a fortnight. Even listening to “My Old Piano” by Diana Ross, and “The Look” by Roxette didn’t lift my horribly sour mood. Eventually, the sticky, horrible, overheated bus arrives, and I climb on, giving my money to the driver who looked like he’d lost a fiver and found a tumour. I don’t like public transport.

The bus journey was awful, as it normally is. I pass the boredom by tweeting things going on out of the window. These were both boring and unpleasant.

The final stop was Lidl. In fact, that was the whole point of me getting the bus – I’d have normally got a taxi back to Mercuryvapour Towers, but I didn’t have any food in. I was also surprised to see the sign above the door that stated they had an alcohol license from 7:30AM to 11:30PM

My basket contained 4 cans of Stella, 2 almost-out-of-date curries (30% off!) and a bottle of 39p coke. The journey back to Mercuryvapour Towers ended up with my phone playing “Dignity” by Deacon Blue. Ironically, the one thing I don’t have this morning.

The past few months at work have been OK, but it’s now the silly period, and it’s even sillier than usual. I could go into details, but as the Facebook Grass (the “person” who grasses up lowly employees to the higher management should they even breathe a word of truth about our place of employment) is doing his/her thing again, I’ll just say one thing. “LOL”.

Mind you, I don’t think many people at work actually read this site any more, so I could sit here and blurt the whole thing out. It’s pure pantomime stuff, it really is.

Tonight, however, I’m going to hopefully forget about the whole fucking place, and let my hair down, for I shall be attening The Studio tonight, to watch a few local bands play, including Accidents By Design and the almighty Infernus. Should be a good night.

Back to the subject of blogging, I have completed blogging about that stupid sodding hard drive. It works, that’s the end of it. Therefore, the other morning, after another shocking 12-hour shift, I came home and decided to write a blog about music. I’d been listening to one of my favourite tracks, and decided I’d write an indepth blog about what I liked about it. Only thing was, I’d written an identical blog 18 months ago, and didn’t realise until I’d just about finished it.

ironically, that previous post also gives details about hard drive upgrade problems I’d been having around that time.

Anyway, because I’m not going to waste an hour’s worth of typing, here’s the post in its entirety..

I’ve had a shit day at work today, so you’ll have to forgive me for having one of my “ooooh, a song I like, and how I came about it” blogs.

It turned out that for the purpose of using it as a TV theme, it was sped up by approximately 10%. I think I prefer the original, slower version.

I’ve just noticed that this post contains more swearies than any I’ve written for a long time. Ah well, never mind, eh?

EDIT: Ooooh, I do like these edits. Missed out a quote mark which meant that the first section of text was missing. Quickly fixed, so sorry if the post didn;t make much sense originally.

For the past two nights, there has been one of these little shits in the office. I happened to be the first one to spot it the other night, as it happened to land on my “umbilical cord” (the wire from my headset leading to my phone). I froze, slowly backing up, unplugging my headset, and then legging it. As I reversed it headed towards me. I think everyone thought I was mad.

It turned out that 4 of the 5 people who were in the office with me also severely disliked the little stripy buggers. The only person to not admit to disliking them was Dick Brown, webmaster of short-lived shitfest

So, you’re probably all gasping to hear what type of exciting shenannegans I’ve gotten up to within that time? The answer? None. Definitely nothing worth blogging about anyway. I’ve not even been motivated enough to type up any “filler” posts. And, as for going out photographing stuff, well, the camera hasn’t been past the front gates of Mercuryvapour Towers in sebveral weeks. I took loads of photos of the daffodils that managed to grow in the front garden this year (we got six!), but once you’ve seen one photo of them, you’ve seen them all. I’ll just let them sit there until the memory card starts to lose its data, or (much, much) more likely, that I accidentally format it (or delete all of the photos from it) while drunk.

Hmm, I appear to be having a bit of a bracket thing going on today. ((((((((Hnnnnngh, that’s better)))))))).

The only thing remotely exciting that’s happened is that we have a new initiate to the family. No, I’m not pregnant, but over the last few weeks, there’s been (what I assume) a blackbird roosting in the wash house. Now, you may be remember, for those who watched my vlogs, what I once filmed an entire episode in the wash house. Behind the camera is a large book case fastened to the wall. I was originally planning to use it for parts of my streetlighting collection, but before I had to have chance to move all of the tat that had accumulated on there, I found this…

Yes, that was the begining of a birds nest. Over the coming days, I kept sticking my head around the door to see if the nest had gotten any bigger. Indeed it had, and imagine my surprise when I stuck my head around the door on Saturday night, to see the bird sat on the nest keeping the eggs warm, totally unphased by my prescence.

Unfortunately, the friendliness between ourselves and the bird came to an abrupt end, when she got locked out of the wash house on Sunday night, as the wash house door became shut while the bird was absent. Obviously, it has to be left slightly open so it can go out and feed. Daddykins tried to blame me, until I pointed out that I’d been at work for most of Sunday, and certainly won’t have been anywhere in the vicinity. The cheek!

Either way, once the door was eventually reopened, the bird frantically flew in, and ended up in the house. Daddykins had to grab it and take it out of the house. I don’t think it’d have enjoyed it much.

He said that since he’d done that, the bird hadn’t been back to the nest, but when I went out of the back, it was there, though it flew out as soon as I went anywhere in the vacinity. At least it returned to the nest.

I’ll keep you updated on this, but you never know, there may be the… er, clattering of tiny beaks shortly.

You’ll all be glad to know that work has been one of the things, once again interfering with my life, and causing no end of chew. New systems that are infinitely less usable than the old ones, were at the forefront of my mind when I wrote “I have not felt this low for a long time.” on my twitter.

Narrowly avoiding a 13-page rant about work at the minute, I shall change the subject back to why I haven’t blogged. I think it finally hit home how pointless this blog really is a week or two back.

Chris had came round for the first time in what seemed like ages, which was always a welcome bonus. Mucky beer was consumed as always. He said he hasn’t read my website in months. Charming! He actually asked if I’d won on the Grand National! Taken aback, I pressed his face against the monitor and forced him to read the entire post until he knew it BETTER THAN THE BACK OF HIS HAND.

OK, I wasn’t quite as extreme as that. Actually, I hate telling someone to read my blog, especially when I could have just told him, but I was tired, and couldn’t be arsed to explain what was already stored on my site.

It made me realise the futility of it all, and it made me realise that if it isn’t interesting to my mates, then who is it interesting to? That one thought alone made me take blogging into stock, and whether it’s something I want to take any further, and just typing that previous sentence has filled my mind full of conflicting arguments.

(edit) This post became a bit of an extended rant about blogging in general, and isn’t really relevant, so has been removed for now. Instead, I shall use it another day when I’m less tired than what I am now.

I think I was mainly upset about the fact that JT, someone who I have worked with, and got to know as a good friend since I started at Employment Palace back in 2001, has moved onto the “other rotation”, which means he will work the days I’m off, and vice versa, and I will never work with him again.

Over the years, he has introduced me to some songs which have became my favourites. Songs which I will never have heard, if it wasn’t for his MP3 CD player being brought in every day, and the collection of obscure Finnish Gypsy Punk stuff he used to bring in. I’m thinking stuff such as the truly awesome “Pellonpekko” by Korpklaani I never thought I’d like a song that even subtly makes use of one of those twangy mouth-harp things.

And if it wasn’t for him, I would have never heard of the Dropkick Murphy’s, and I certainly wouldn’t have learned every single word to The Spicy McHaggis Jig

Um. Anyway, that’s what drove me to writing that depressing post.

Moving on, I’ve been keeping myself busy. You should all know that I’m a really anal bastard when it comes to backing up data. I can’t sleep at night if I know there’s a partition of my hard drive not backed up in some way. Lots of sleep has been lost due to the fact that I have NOT been able to do a backup of my C drive in full. That was, until I found Clonezilla.

On Friday morning, I did a blog post about it while I backed up my hard drive, but I never finished it it. So, in order to make this particular post look bigger than it really is, here it is. Beware of the sudden ending though… If backing up your hard drive isn’t really important, or you’re not interested, then just scroll past the italic. I know it’s badly written, I just don’t like to see big blocks of my text be discarded.

Hello. You join me at the beginning of another one of my “live” experiments, where I do something computery and then blog about it, in the vain hope that it sparks the interest of someone reading it, though that is of course, unlikely.

Now, in my situation, I know the disk was bad. The old power supply murdered it, so it was no surprise when I got bright-red errors from

Yes, folks.

That’s where it ended, but WHY did it end so abruptly?

It’s because I’d successfully backed up my C drive AND restored it to a new hard drive without ANY trouble at all, and all I wanted to do was play with it. Therefore, I shall have to give Clonezilla the highest possible “Meh, it worked for me” seal of approval. And for those of you who (wisely) skipped the text, welcome back to today.

If you live in the UK, you can’t have failed to notice that we actually received some snow. The slightest hint at the white stuff, and the whole bloody country goes into turmoil, even to the point where some memory sticks I’d ordered had been delayed. No, seriously.

[quote]
As a valued customer we are e-mailing you today to notify you that your recently placed order may be delayed due to the adverse weather conditions that are being experienced in most parts of the UK.
[/quote]

It did, however, allow me to take some purdy pictures…

In other news, the bathroom scales are fixed. I weighed less than the last time I checked, which is a bonus I suppose.

My “disks” database has grown in size since I last mentioned it. It has expanded onto its 8th folder, and currently contains information on 1,191 disks. I am shocked, that me, the master of mess, has been able to organize something something that just simply WORKS. It would be nice to get a simple search option for it, but that’s not a high priority, as it currently works perfectly.

Well , as I’ve typed this after coming off a nightshift, it’s safe to assume I’ll be in bed shortly.