THE FOREST
Today is a beautiful day! The sun has decided to make an appearance, and I got to come home from work early! I was on a course - 'in the forest', and it finished at 2 which was fantastic (and I feel I deserve it - I worked out the other day that I average a 9-10 hour day at school!! Craziness! What do I do all day?!)
But going 'into the forest' was definitely an experience! It's part of the Forest of Dean which boarders Gloucestershire and Wales. It's very hilly, village-y and farm-y. Apparently everyone in the Forest is related to each other because (apparently) when you're born in the Forest, you stay in the Forest. I'm sure that's not true, but it is definitely another example of the different cultures that there are within the English culture! I had to find some random school to go on my course (a dance one, very exciting, got to pretend to be an umbrella and rain!), so of course I "multimapped it"! I got the directions and the roads looked pretty normal, and off I went.
All was fine until I had to turn off the main road. From there the road just got narrower and narrower and steeper and steeper. I had to turn into a road called 'High Street' which in my naivete (how DO you spell that?!), I thought would be a fairly main road, and when I came to it, I actually drove past it twice because I couldn't believe that this farm track was the high street! It was SO narrow, and seemed to go straight up, I couldn't believe that my car didn't slide back down again! I was so scared thinking, what if I meet another car?! I haven't been in 'the country' long enough to fully understand the etiquette behind meeting another vehicle in a country lane, let alone one that seemed to be leading me up the side of Everest! To top it all, it was really foggy and I couldn't see very far!
By the time I got to the top of it, I was SO relieved and shaking! I couldn't believe it had affected me that much!
Then I get to the school, signed in and told to go to another entrance to a kind of youth club thing for the course, so off I went. It was about 8:45 by this point, most of the kids were in school (it was a high school), apart from quite a large group hanging around the door I needed who seemingly had no intention of actually going IN to the school! But I thought, this is cool, I will go round them, which I did. Then, just as I'm going into the door, they bundle themselves (and me) inside and start screeching 'they're coming, they're coming'. Whoopee, had just stumbled across what seemed to be a Forest Turf War!!!!! Inside the club were two rather nervous looking teachers and the course leader! Thankfully it got sorted out. When I finally got to sit down, I was completely shell shocked!!
Welcome to the Forest!
But going 'into the forest' was definitely an experience! It's part of the Forest of Dean which boarders Gloucestershire and Wales. It's very hilly, village-y and farm-y. Apparently everyone in the Forest is related to each other because (apparently) when you're born in the Forest, you stay in the Forest. I'm sure that's not true, but it is definitely another example of the different cultures that there are within the English culture! I had to find some random school to go on my course (a dance one, very exciting, got to pretend to be an umbrella and rain!), so of course I "multimapped it"! I got the directions and the roads looked pretty normal, and off I went.
All was fine until I had to turn off the main road. From there the road just got narrower and narrower and steeper and steeper. I had to turn into a road called 'High Street' which in my naivete (how DO you spell that?!), I thought would be a fairly main road, and when I came to it, I actually drove past it twice because I couldn't believe that this farm track was the high street! It was SO narrow, and seemed to go straight up, I couldn't believe that my car didn't slide back down again! I was so scared thinking, what if I meet another car?! I haven't been in 'the country' long enough to fully understand the etiquette behind meeting another vehicle in a country lane, let alone one that seemed to be leading me up the side of Everest! To top it all, it was really foggy and I couldn't see very far!
By the time I got to the top of it, I was SO relieved and shaking! I couldn't believe it had affected me that much!
Then I get to the school, signed in and told to go to another entrance to a kind of youth club thing for the course, so off I went. It was about 8:45 by this point, most of the kids were in school (it was a high school), apart from quite a large group hanging around the door I needed who seemingly had no intention of actually going IN to the school! But I thought, this is cool, I will go round them, which I did. Then, just as I'm going into the door, they bundle themselves (and me) inside and start screeching 'they're coming, they're coming'. Whoopee, had just stumbled across what seemed to be a Forest Turf War!!!!! Inside the club were two rather nervous looking teachers and the course leader! Thankfully it got sorted out. When I finally got to sit down, I was completely shell shocked!!
Welcome to the Forest!
posted by RuthyD at 4:47 pm
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