Once upon a time
in the olden days when kids could do things without being wrapped in cotton wool, I went to Germany with the guides. One of the activities was going off in groups and hiking for a couple of days, no adults, vague directions and half the party not speaking the other half's language.

For sleeping arrangements we could sleep under the stars or (as we did) ask a farmer nicely if you could sleep in their barn, which is what we did. After witnessing a car crash and something involving helicopters (I genuinely only have hazy memories of this) 6 of us clambered up an enormous pile of hay and had a snooze.

As it was such an enormous haystack and I wasn't very good at climbing, I stopped part way up on a kind of hay ledge and slept very nicely there (after one of the german guys spent a while freaking out that the farmer was going to kill us in our sleep and there was some kind of conspiracy going on)

In the night, though, I had moved and hay had slipped away to reveal that my lovely sleeping spot had in fact been a very large, rusty (and I'm sure full of sharp bits) piece of farm yard machinery. I climbed down much more carefully.
( Citizen Cavy Admires your passion for conformity, Thu 24 May 2012, 15:32, 1 reply)

Times have changed.
I tried to take a group of Guides to Germany, and now I'm on some sort of register. :-(
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Thu 24 May 2012, 15:39, closed)