Hiking at Bradgate Park

Well, I guess I'll start off by saying I should probably buy some hiking shoes and a waterproof jacket. What I have as of now was sufficient for a pleasant experience yesterday, but I could imagine how horrible it would have been if there had been a torrential downpour. Mud all the way up to my knees... soaked through my winter coat to the skin... fortunately this was not the case, and Bradgate Park was a great adventure.

Oh, you would like to know about the Hiking Society's first outing, would you? Well, let me go into a few descriptives. We met at the university at 10am; quite late in the morning, but there was frost in the shady areas of the grass, nevertheless. It took us a good hour to assemble, pass some cakes around that the club president had so thoughtfully baked for us, and trek down to the Haymarket Bus Station in the city center. On the way to our ride, I met a conglomerate of British and international students.

There was a shy Spanish couple who I bonded with over our shared love for sushi. There was a trio of English freshers who had all done their A-levels at the same place (that's advanced high school after the age of 16, yanks), and the dominant female among them was a talkative, camera-happy tae-kwon-do expert with an American father and plenty of stories about her exciting summer in Minnesota. On the bus, I discovered that the token man of the trio was an astrophysics major, and I might have become overly excited by this fact, but he seemed to have a Brian Poston-esque zen that never wavered throughout our travels.

We arrived on the outskirts of the park, a typical English suburban sprawl which consisted of spacious brick housing, well-groomed yards, and hilly neighborhood roads speckled with bus stops and quiet pubs. Hopped a couple of fences and zigzagged across cow fields to arrive at the boundless landscape of the 'park.'

Yes, let me tell you the definition of an English park; it is miles of rolling, mossy hills, spotted with trees and livestock, usually situated around some central landmark. The landmark at this park happened to be a mysterious tower (nobody seemed to know its significance, not even the club officers), and it was simply labeled 'Old John Tower' on the map. It looked like a single stone castle tower, flanked by an archway and the disintegrating peices of a crumbling wall. It was really cool though, and it was located on the highest point of the park, so you could look out on the surrounding farmland in all directions.

On the way to the tower I met a friendly couple of Chinese students; the girl was a freshman who had arrived in England 8 months previously to improve her English, which was not impeccable, but modestly good. Her family is moving to Canada soon, because she said it is important to the success of the Chinese to learn English, and she already has some family over there. The other Chinese student was a guy, a Masters student, but quite a bit older than your typical MS because he had been a teacher in China for a few years after he did his undergrad. The subject he'd taught was English, which explained his absolute fluency even though he had never been to an English-speaking country before this. For most of the rest of the journey I accompanied these two, along with a Pakistani 2nd year who did not understand the concept of pie.

Yes, you read correctly. For some reason I got on the subject of pie, and said something along the lines of, 'I love pie,' to which he responded, 'What is pie? What do you put in pie? When Jerry hits Tom in the face with pie, what is that colorful stuff in the middle?'

I was in absolute shock, so of course I had to promise him that I would introduce him to berry pie one day. It should be easy to follow through on that, since he added me as a friend on facebook, and now we will be able to chat. About pie. All the time.

On the way back from the park, we stopped at a cozy pub and I chatted it up with the Brits about alcohol abuse, hangovers, and thus it came to the inevitable story of the effects of consuming nutmeg tea, to the astonishment and amusement of them all. One of the officers of the club asked me how many nutmegs it took me to poison myself, after which he said he would use that information and try his luck. I warned him it would not be good. I informed him that it would be a good way to induce untimely death. He insisted he would double the quantity I used and see for himself. I don't know whether he was joking or not.

This guy was called Amish-- not horse-and-buggy Amish, but the Indian name Amish, the 'a' pronounced like the 'a' in 'ham', rhymes with... ham-ish. He is originally from London, a third-year student in the school of management; most importantly, a hobby-runner who lives practically next-door to me and who has agreed to be my running partner at the ridiculously-early hour of 7AM, at Victoria Park, tomorrow. I'll tell you how it goes.

All-in-all, I got a few numbers (to contact various people about pie, authentic Chinese food, and running), and had a very good time with the Hiking Society yesterday.

Our next hike will be the day before Halloween, and we are encouraged to dress up.

...And on Halloween day, Jana and I will go to Oxford in costume and perhaps take some Harry Potter tours... it's going to be great!