During our stay Oop North, the International Northern Frisbee Association’s Annual International Northern Allstars Champeenship Contest was being held at Chatsworth. Being curious space monkeys with a healthy interest in disc related sports events we couldn’t resist toddling along.

A curious thing about these northern frisbee flingers is that many of them insist on competing in the altogether. It’s important to know which way the wind is blowing, apparently.

Anyway, I didn’t catch their names, but we had good seats so I was able to get some ace photos of the action.

This lady was one of the more restrained entrants. Flip flops and a flouncy dress were the extent of her eccentricities.

It’s a bit late to hide your shame now, lady! Honestly. She was bouncing about all over the place a few minutes earlier.

This chap’s technique left very little to the imagination.

Here you can see the winner of the mutiple frisbee freestyle event. His flammable stunt frisbees were a sight to behold and no mistaking.

And here we have the overall winner, taken during the award presentation. ‘I’M NUMBER ONE!’ And then he got so excited he did a number one too. Good job he wasn’t wearing his best knickers.

After the competition we took a little time to wander the round the house. It held many marvels.

The house is quite old and was built by primitives. The Professor mocked the diminutive size of their Slice-o-dice-matic 1532 TXP Mk4.

I could find nothing to criticise in their delightful artwork.

After the house, it was time to explore the garden. A soggy and mountainous land indeed.

Here you can see the effect of the northern floods on a once grand staircase. So sad.

The rocks were covered in running water, and strange things were growing in the murky depths.

This mysterious green water willy was the least of the horrors however.

Behold! It was so wet that even the trees were waterlogged.

It was awful. Health and Safety had to put up signs about the place to warn of nature gone bad.

Our day in the wet was not without its consequences.

When we’d squeezed the Professor as dry as he’d go, we climbed a garden mountain to dry out.

It was strange to be so many miles up, looking down on the people below as though they were ants. It didn’t take long to dry out, being so close to the sun, so we had one quick look around before leaving, and found what we believe to be the tallest tree in the universe.

BEHOLD!

This global warming lark is a terrifying thing.

Buxton reckons it’s a bit posh I reckon.

Even the duck pond fancies itself as something special. And the rivers run with chocolate!

Our accomodation was small but acceptable.

Unfortunately word got out that we were in the area and the autograph hunters arrived en masse. We had to hide in the bushes to avoid them. Anything you might hear about us not paying the bill and running away before the police arrived is a lie. A dirty rotten LIE!

In the north everyone is a great fan of frisbee and its variants. It’s because it reminds them of flat caps. Here we see a monument to the aerobie. Buxton is the home of Tyrone P. Aerobe, the inventor of the aerobie and winner of the 1834 Annual Trumpet Feasting contest.

Because northerners are so mad keen for flying discs they don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to more important science and clever stuff.

This is the central northern meteorological office where they make all the weather for the north. NOT VERY IMPRESSIVE! But it does explain why it’s so wet up there.

Not far from Buxton is a land of MOST AWESOME CONTENTS! It is a land of floppy ears and smelly turdies. A land of happiness and carrots. A LAND OF DONKEYS!

DONKEYS!

DONKEYS!

DONKEYS!

Not quite the elegant beasts of Planet Donkey! Monkey! and completely lacking in rocket pack hooves, but pretty rocking nonetheless.

I don’t have to tell you how popular I was with the Earth type donkeys. They were all over me. Nibbling at my cape and bashing into me with their bums.

We made a lot of new friends and had a lot of bumbashing fun, but all too soon it was time to say goodbye and wend our way to our next adventure.

Bye bye, our friend Donkey!

And where was our next adventure? WHERE INDEED!

WINGHAM!

No photos of me in action. The Professor tried to take some but I was moving so fast all he got was a blur. So you’ll have to be satisfied with a photo of my awesome booty. And of the stuff I bought. HA HA HA HA HA HA!

The rainbow shed is my idea of heaven. I has one big bag of single shades of merino what I will use for INTENSE CARDING EXPERIMENTS, three rainbow merino bags and three merino and silk rainbow mixes. I think. I got a bit confused. Then the purple and blue bags at the front are pure silk. YUM!

And so as not to finish on a bum note (HA HA HA HA HA HA!)

Separated at birth?

Bozzy’s nose.

A sheep’s bottom.

It was time to further explore our surroundings. Fed up with the lack of hammock, and fractious from lack of sleep we moved to more luxiurious accomodation.

The neighbours were delightful and we spent a lot of time just hanging out together, chatting about this and that.

Here’s a puzzle for you. One of these sheep is doing his own thing. One of these sheep just isn’t the same.

That’s right! Frank, third from the left, is doing a PhD in astrophysics. Go Frank!

In the distance you can probably just make out a strange rock formation. The locals call this The Debil’s Nipple and it was believed in olden times that demons would crawl out from the very rocks to suckle at this evil rocky teat. We climbed up to investigate but it turns out that it’s just another Starbucks.

Here you can see the entrance to the Devil’s Arse. Being familiar with Gethro’s hole I’m used to such horrors, so I wasn’t afraid. Not even a little bit.

Apparently it can get quite noisy when it’s stormy, but I’d had a large breakfast and was having quite a stormy time myself. I couldn’t hear anything over my usual background mojo.

This is where the debil makes rope. I’m not sure if that’s a euphemism or not. But they said it was made of hemp and that’s pretty scratchy stuff. If I had hemp rope coming out of my arse I’m pretty sure I’d be grumpy too. I wonder if Satan really is evil or just in pain and feeling a bit sorry for himself. It’s all too easy to judge someone based on hearsay. I really hope we didn’t get it wrong this time.

With my mind full of such heavy thoughts, it was a relief to emerge from the darkness into the full sun of the glorious day outside.

Some people have no respect for the sun and its awesome power. They hike like Icarus in the eye of the tiger.

I don’t envy them their sunburn. FOOLS!

This is Ralph.

Ralph has a mighty mojo.

I believe there is much I could learn from these locals.

Summer holibags have occurred! Holibag unpacking has not.

Super Monkey is only three inches tall and needs someone to unpack her bags for her, please send mummy.

This year’s great adventure was the Mighty Trek North. We had heard many curious tales of the north. Tales of whippets, coal and old men wearing flap jacks and driving bath tubs down hills. The Planet Donkey! Monkey! High Council needed tissue samples the truth.

The north is a bewildering land of hills and contradictions. They warn you of loose chippings when of loose chippings there are none. They warn you of speed cameras when of speed cameras there are none. They NEVER warn you about the old men wearing flap jacks and driving bath tubs down hills whizzing across the road at high speed when of old men wearing flap jacks and driving bath tubs down hills whizzing across the road at high speed there are many! Clearly a land whose beliefs and values are alien to we space monkeys. The north is also the world capital of beef and lamb, where the streets are paved with chops.

We began our holibags in the land of pudding and tarts. Bakewell. Not knowing my way around these foreign climes I thought it best to base our explorations in a town named after pudding. Surely such a sugary land of hope couldn’t breed too much evil?

The floral quilt and lack of hammock in my room told a different story.

We retired to the nearest watering hole to regroup.

Once filled with courage and woo woos we were ready to explore. I was eager to walk among the fields of roaming Bakeweldebeasts and the Professor was keen to try out his new laser.

The Bakeweldebeasts gather by the river each evening to fill their tums with refreshing water and fat tourists. We settled down to wait.

We searched upriver.

We searched down.

Just when we thought all hope was lost the Professor spotted them in the skies. Mighty quacky Bakeweldebeasts with flappy wings and bills of fury. Majestic. Feathery. Delicious. But how to lure them down?

I had an idea.

‘DUCK!’ yelled Super Monkey. Super Monkey being me.

We would tie a duck to a stout rope, swing it about our heads cowboy style and knock the elusive Bakeweldebeasts from the sky and into our tums bags hearts tums.

Lacking in a few of the necessary ingredients for my cunning plan, chiefly the stout rope, throwing arm, keen eye and sense of aim, we were temporarily thwarted in our efforts. I will post the photos as soon as I get them back from the police.

The food report of that first day is as follows. Ahem.

The Old Pudding Shop: Hearty portions but grumpy serving wenches. My pie was entirely filled with beef! A solid inch and a half of meat! It was too salty to finish, but I did have two different sorts of potato, one of which was mashed. Madness. The Professor reports that his scampi was acceptable, his chips quite goo, but the salad leaves were overly large. The caramel slices were bricklike in their magnificence.

The Prospect: They supply big jugs of booze, but the snooty clientele tend to walk out in a huff when they see you’re a monkey. The serving wench toook no issue with us, and there were no signs on the door to indicate we would be unwelcome within. Speciesism is an ugly thing but we didn’t let it spoil our evening. I mean, I could understand walking out if there were filthy chimps at the next table, but glossy and delightful space monkeys? It beggars belief.

I shall continue the report tomorrow for there is simply too much to include in this single entry. Take the time to prepare yourself for the marvels to come!