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-<!-- from Cambridge Underground 1999 pp -->
<head>
<title>1996: Cambridge Underground report</title>
</head>
<body>
-<center><h1>Austria 1996</h1>
-<h3>by </h3></center>
+<table width=100% border="0" cellpadding="6" bgcolor="#eeeeee">
+<tr><th width="35%" align="left"><a href="./">Expo 96 index</a></th>
+<th width="30%" align="center"><a href="../../">Expo home</a></th>
+<th width="35%" align="right"><a href="../../../">CUCC home</a></th></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">CU 1999 previous:<br><a href="../../../jnl/1999/cars.htm">Joys of Car Ownership</a></td>
+<td align="center"><a href="../../../jnl/1999/">CU 1999 Contents</a></td>
+<td align="right">CU 1999 next:<br><a href="../../../jnl/1999/germangl.htm">Elementary Germanglic</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+<hr>
+<center>
+<font size=-1>Cambridge Underground 1999 pp 75-82</font>
+<h1>Expo '96</h1>
+<h3>by Unknown</h3></center>
-<p>Published in Cambridge Underground 1997-99 (not yet on website)
+<p><blockquote>"To jack, or not to jack. That is the question. Whether 'tis
+nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and bolts of outrageous rigging..."
+--- Steve B</blockquote>
+
+<p>Halfway through expo '95, it seemed that expo '96 would struggle to find
+ten members. The feeling that we were banging our heads against a brick wall
+was stronger than ever after an expo spent pushing fairly pointless leads in
+<p><span lang="de">Kaninchenhöhle</span>. Then Wookey, AndyA and JulianH
+went caving and accidentally found Triassic Park, and suddenly everyone who
+had been looking forward to a Summer doing something nicer in 1996 was
+forced to think again.
+
+<p>A year of relentless expo bullshit followed, meaning that by the time the
+Summer came round again there was a long list of people intending to go to
+Austria, attracted by the stories of train tunnel passageway and over 50 new
+leads with walking access from a new entrance, 161d or <b>Scarface.</b> This
+included some unlikely names who hadn't been seen on expo for some years.
+Almost all of them were going to bring their caving gear, and a clear
+majority had expressed the intention of using it. In the end, forty people
+turned up in Austria at one time or another, the largest ever CUCC Austrian
+expo. The guest list included AndyC and Juliet from Bristol, Rolf and Lumatt
+from York, Phil Underwood from London, and Brian.
+
+<p>Up until a week before departure, Brian was known only as "Phil
+Underwood's Mate", so we were half expecting a scruffy student who
+barely knew how to wipe his own arse. Up rolled a 43 year old bloke
+who five weeks later had won the TU tally having amassed 121 hours
+underground. This was largely achieved by being the only person who
+was prepared to accompany Nick on repeated trips down Interview
+Bastard, of which more anon.
+
+<p>Expo wouldn't be expo if everything was organised well in advance, so
+this year we changed the dates two weeks before departure. This was largely
+because nobody wanted to derig, so we waited until everyone had booked their
+holiday and then moved the whole expo forward a week, and turned the planned
+reconnaissance week into a reconnaissance two days. Steve and Anthony spent
+the day before departure buying bits for making temporary cave tags and
+making up the top camp food. This rush helps explain the generally low
+quality of this year's top camp fare, though the absence of any nice
+ingredients may also be significant. In the end most of the things that
+needed to be done got done, and late that evening a Lada and trailer
+combination trundled out of Harvey Court, and expo was underway.
+
+<h3>Week 1</h3>
+
+<p><blockquote>"Well, if some of the spits weren't kak, you wouldn't
+appreciate the good ones." -- PhilU</blockquote>
+
+<p>The trailer proved to be considerably sturdier than it's 1995
+predecessor, despite having ominously been found by Wookey in the same
+place, and was still in one piece on arrival at the Gasthof Staud'nwirt late
+the following evening. Anthony and Steve's run of good fortune continued as
+they managed to get enough pegs in to stop the beer tent being blown away by
+the first thunderstorm of expo, and re-found 161d at the first attempt
+(though it took a long time slogging round the Stogerweg in the rain.) Thus
+by the time Nick, Helen, Gunilla and Matthew arrived we had a base camp, a
+top camp and a cave. Not bad.
+
+<p>What we didn't have was a decent surface route to 161d, which is situated
+in the middle of a cliff on the far side of the Schwarzmooskogel ridge from
+top camp. Just as we were about to set off to try and find one, Hilda's
+phone rang: Helen, who had been in Austria 36 hours, had a job interview the
+following week, having failed to get any interviews at all during the
+preceding months. She and Nick thus had to go to Salzburg to change her
+flight ticket, and in the end she only managed one caving trip before
+returning home. The rest had surprising success in finding an adequate route
+to 161d from the col, and after a further afternoon practising plant
+husbandry with hacksaws and placing a couple of handlines, a passable route
+was created. The London team had now arrived, and everyone was ready to go
+caving. Everyone, that is, except Gunilla, whose failure to wear a sunhat
+caused her first to turn puce and then establish an unassailable lead in the
+chunder tally. So when the caving finally got underway, she was sitting at
+base camp eating baby food.
+
+<p>We first looked at some of the many good leads at the far end of Triassic
+Park. Under the watchful gaze of PhilU and Matthew, Steve attempted to scale
+Bugger, the star lead left from the end of 1995 comprising a 10m climb,
+beyond which it was hoped Triassic Park would continue in a similar vein.
+After some swearing and falling off, a retreat was called, and so they went
+to look at a horizontal lead near Ring Piece Junction. They found around 300m
+of cave with some moderate leads and went home happy. This later fell victim
+to a Gössered-up naming session, and the <b>Puerile Humour Series</b>
+was born.
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Brian and Anthony took the brand new length of 9mm to a big
+pitch off Minoan Surprise, with an estimated depth of 80m, whilst Nick and
+Helen went to the fourth way on at Trifurcation. They descended a 30m pitch,
+which led to a further pitch. This became the <b>Interview Blues Series</b>
+as Helen left to return to England the following morning. The other three
+went to carry on where they had left off the previous day. It started raining
+as they approached the col on the way to the cave. When they emerged, it was
+still raining...
+
+<h3>Week 2</h3>
+
+<p><blockquote>"We've got that bloody great useless thing." -- Rolf
+"What, Julian? He's coming out later this week." -- PhilB</blockquote>
+
+<p>It didn't stop raining for most of week two, bringing memories of 1993
+flooding (ho ho) back. When we finally got fed up of festering in the
+potato hut, four heroic individuals slithered up to top camp to find
+five inches of snow, Leck Fell type weather and some funny shaped
+tents, which they excavated before heading back to base camp to
+sulk. We amused ourselves by putting up the base camp radio aerial,
+despite knowing full well that we would be rhinoceroused at for doing
+it wrong.
+
+<p>When the weather cleared a little, a bit of surveying got done in the
+embryonic Puerile Humour Series and work continued on Brian and
+Anthony's big pitch. Scepticism abounds when people claim to have
+found 80m pitches, and this once more proved valid: The
+<b>Bottomless Pit of Eternal Chaos</b> is a mere 79m deep. As is the
+way with big pitches in KH, the way on is a grotty rift which opens
+out onto a 27m pitch (<b>Redemption</b>). This leads only to more
+grotty rift before becoming choked. The survey shows this lot to be
+some 60m below the 'floor' of Knossos.
+
+<p>Since it was obvious that a nutter was required to get to the top of
+Bugger, the arrival of AndyA and DaveF towards the end of the week was
+most welcome. DaveF duly thrashed his way to the top, and walked into
+miles of train tunnel passage, eventually popping out of the hill
+somewhere near Bad Ischl. Or not. In fact, <b>Fine Clean Rock</b>
+disappointingly closes down after about 100m, with only a few scrotty
+horizontal leads, but they did find a deep pitch (estimated at 80m)
+with an impressively large rock perched on the edge which wobbled
+alarmingly when smaller rocks were lobbed at it.
+
+<h3>Week 3</h3>
+
+<p><blockquote>"Can we go to Stairway to Hell now please?" -- ChrisD.
+More than once.</blockquote>
+
+<p>Base camp started to fill up at the start of week three, and the
+ranting level escalated, with the quality of the walk to the cave
+being the favourite subject, followed closely by the somewhat variable
+quality of top camp food. The path can't have been that bad, as a
+couple of Austrian walkers turned up at 161d one morning wondering
+where the line of cairns went next, but the food was pretty awful on a
+bad day. Our leader rhino'd his way across Europe with Gill, Lumatt
+and Sam, and with the arrival of Mike and Tina, seven vehicles had
+made it to Austria without having to call out the breakdown -- a
+remarkable achievement in many cases, and disappointing given how much
+money we'd collectively given to Green Flag. Cometh the hour, cometh
+the man: Julian Todd didn't let us down, and it's a shame that base
+camp was deserted when he and Wookey turned up on the back of a
+breakdown truck after ten hours sitting around in Germany. Other
+arrivals in midweek were Chris and Becka fresh from the Berger, who
+set about trying to instil a bit of Oxford enthusiasm into the languid
+Cambridge expo (it didn't work.) Chris seemed very disappointed that
+everyone was shying away from Stairway to Hell, a boulder choke
+leading to passage heading towards Stellerweg, and billed as the
+nastiest bit of cave in the world by those who had been there the
+previous year, and Becka set about making Nick and Brian look like a
+pair of slack festering slobs by going caving on eight consecutive
+days.
+
+<p>Luckily the weather cleared up so the cave got rather busy, as did the
+changing area, entertainingly situated on a landslip above a
+precipitous drop. JulianH set about the task of single handedly
+wiping out the question mark list. He and Gill found <b>Teapot Chamber</b>
+from Shortage of Walls, which leads to a couple of pitches into the
+Rich Tea area of France (tick). In a desperate attempt to avoid
+Stairway to Hell, every potential bypass was investigated. A good lead
+off Zombie Slime leads to a pitch which was smaller than MikeTA, so
+they left it alone only to find their rope hanging out of the roof
+back in Zombie Slime (tick) and a loose climb in the corner of
+Staud'nwirt Palace simply keeps going up until it chokes (tick.)
+
+<p><a href="../../smkridge/161/l/dh3-06.htm"><img alt="" width=188 height=125 align="left" hspace=10 vspace=10 src="../../smkridge/161/t/dh3-06.jpg"></a>
+<b>Andrew Ketley at Penguin Falls, Puerile Humour Series,
+<span lang="de">Kaninchenhöhle</span>.</b> (Dave Horsley)<br clear="all">
+
+<p>This QM extermination effort was being comprehensively undone
+elsewhere in the cave, chiefly by Sam in the Puerile Humour Series. He
+and Lummat set off with instructions to complete the survey ("It'll
+only take a couple of legs") and returned with another half dozen
+leads. Sam and Brian made a major breakthrough the day after, finding
+<b>Dead Bats Chamber</b> (which contains two dead bats.) The main way
+on, a 3m round horizontal tube heading north, divides at <b>Gotham City
+Junction</b>. Sam and Brian gave up at a tricky climb in the left hand
+branch, and headed the other way to find a pretty mud river (note that
+this is KH and mud is regarded as pretty) and <b>Five Ways Chamber</b>
+(which has five ways out). Heading north they found <b>Shaft Mine
+Passage</b> (which has a number of undescended shafts), ending at the 6m
+deep <b>Bounce Rift</b> running perpendicular to the passage with a way on
+visible across the top. East from Five Ways they found <b>Completely
+Loopy</b>, a rabbit warren of interconnecting passages littered with
+leads. In one trip they found enough leads to keep a medium sized expo
+happy.
+
+<p>Later trips surveyed this lot, and Sam and Becka returned to the left
+hand branch from Gotham City Junction and scaled the climb at the
+pushing front to find <b>Where the Wind Blows</b>, a dead straight
+passage which leads into <b>Bloody Hairfire Passage</b> after a carbide
+error on the surveying trip. Leads at the northern end of this passage
+are of particular interest since it is only 100m away from the Far
+End.
+
+<p>Meanwhile, lots of other caving was going on. Gunilla was now back on
+solids, so she, Duncan, and a selection of others headed off to find
+<b>Dr Snuggles</b> from a lead heading west from Triassic Park. This
+passage ends at a booming pitch, leading them to think it was at least
+25m deep. This was pretty much true, the only complication being that
+the pitch is upside-down: A chossy 5m pitch cum climb lands at the
+foot of an enormous aven (35+m). Both ways on end in difficult or
+tight QM's, so they moved on to a lead at Ring Piece Junction. The
+rumoured horizontal passage failed to materialise, so they descended a
+27m pitch instead, named <b>Tapeworm</b> after the tape measure snapped
+whilst surveying it, followed immediately by the 45m <b>Hammeroids</b>
+pitch, so called after the first descent was made by the head of a
+bolting hammer. These pitches drop down the same huge rift,
+potentially 90m deep, so the way on is inevitably a tight rift which
+quickly chokes. Mike and Tina checked out a hole in the wall of
+Triassic Park next to the gear dump, and stumbled across 250m of
+passage (<b>Alternative Universe</b>) which parallels Triassic Park ending
+in a short pitch with a rift exiting, which is too narrow to follow
+but is very close to the larger Tapeworm/Hammeroids rift.
+
+<p>The cave was still going strong at the Trifurcation end of Triassic
+Park: Someone eventually got round to descending the pitch at the end
+of Minoan Surprise, and the surveyors gave a sigh of relief as it
+dropped into Knossos more or less where expected. The big pitch in
+Fine Clean Rock became <b>Henri's Cat</b> and was indeed found to be
+80m deep, followed by further pitches of 55m, 10m and 65m. This
+prompted DaveF to take the 200m rope to the bottom in anticipation of
+greater depth. It inevitably ended in a pile of rocks, close to the
+bottom of the Flat Battery Series but with no connection, leaving
+JulianT, hater of surveying and excessively deep holes, to survey it.
+
+<p>Interview Blues was also going strong, much to the surprise of those
+brought up on a diet of similar rift pitch series which always become
+too tight fairly quickly. Four consecutive pitches led to extensive
+horizontal development (well, about 50m anyway) with two possible ways
+on, the main one of which is yet another pitch which took two attempts
+to descend after Anthony grossly underestimated its length. Nick and
+Brian finally made it to the bottom of this fine 55m pitch and happily
+stomped off down a massive clean washed canyon littered with stals and
+flowing with warm tea, until reality kicked in and they found
+themselves in a gloop coated, foot wide rift culminating in yet
+another pitch. Surely it wouldn't go much further.
+
+<p>To maintain this expo's record of finding big pitches, PhilU returned
+with tales of a four second drop near the start of the Puerile Humour series
+giving an estimated depth of 80m. Alarm bells started ringing when he and
+AndyC descended it and declared that maybe it was only 50m deep after all.
+When we returned with a tape measure, the pitch had shrunk to a more
+manageable 30m.
+
+<h3>Week 4</h3>
+
+<p><blockquote>"Which bastard filled this water container right up to the top?" -- Rolf</blockquote>
+
+<p>As week four approached some people went home, but even more people
+arrived meaning that there were 36 people present for most of the
+week, including most of the festerers. Waddington had turned up
+complete with computer and Imax monitor (the laser printer was deemed
+excessive and thus lived in the shed), and Helen returned still no
+nearer getting a job. All of our early leads were going strong,
+somewhat irritatingly in one case, but nobody had yet had the pleasure
+of visiting Stairway to Hell. This was not to remain the case for
+long.
+
+<p>JulianH and Chris made the first attempt to survey through Stairway to
+Hell and into the Forbidden Land as the passage beyond had nominally
+been christened, but managed only four legs before fleeing in horror
+at the appalling wall of choss apparently held up by a single perched
+rock, so it was left to Wookey and AndyA to complete the job. They
+found that the 'rift' beyond the choke was really an enormous chamber
+(90m x 30m) -- <b>Hall of the Mounting Choss</b> -- with a pile of
+boulders in the middle passing for a floor beneath which they were
+wandering around. They eventually found a south going strongly
+draughting phreatic tube -- <b>Pump House</b> -- which they followed
+as far as a large cross rift which they couldn't climb into before
+calling it a day. The survey shows this passage to be of similar
+dimensions and orientation to Mississippi in Flat France, but some 40m
+higher up lending credence to the idea that the breakdown at Stairway
+to Hell was produced by a fault. A further trip extended the Forbidden
+Land by 200m to the southwest via passages given the exotic titles of
+<b>Elin Algor</b> and <b>Tirolia Werke</b>, which arise from a total
+lack of inspiration on the part of AndyA when it came to writing names
+on the survey, so he pinched the titles of the fridge and cooker in
+the potato hut. Within four hours of the survey being completed, there
+was a picture of the plateau revolving on Waddington's monitor showing
+that this end of the cave was very close indeed to
+<b>Steinschlagschacht</b> (136), explored by CUCC in 1983 and
+'84. Chris's verdict on the bit of cave he'd been dying to see? "The
+hanging death was the worst I have seen, and the route has nothing to
+recommend it". Most other people who had been there seemed to concur.
+
+<p>Interview Blues refused to die, and efforts in week four concentrated
+on the nice bit (relatively speaking) -- the alternative lead at the
+top of the fifth pitch. This proceeds via a south trending rift to a
+short pitch, then a larger chossy pitch with aven above which could be
+traversed around to reach yet another pitch. Whilst bolting this, they
+heard a voice. It was Sam, who was standing at the top of an
+undescended pitch in Minoan Surprise adjacent to the Bottomless
+Pit. Another QM bites the dust. Nick and Brian were fairly sure that
+the larger pitch did not lead to the Bottomless Pit. It did of course,
+so <b>Spatial Awareness</b> got its name and another QM was crossed
+off. Meanwhile, other people were admiring the breezy but impossible
+looking traverse over the head of the 25m first pitch of Interview
+Blues. Fortunately Dave 'Walking On Air' Fearon was on hand to leap
+across the void and find yet another big pitch. This eventually links
+up with the main route down IB, and would be a superior route were it
+not for the fact that it becomes a raging waterfall at the first sign
+of any rain. There's also another breezy traverse across the top of
+it.
+
+<p><a href="../../smkridge/161/l/fearon.htm"><img alt="" width=160 height=117
+align="right" hspace=10 vspace=10 src="../../smkridge/161/t/fearon.jpg"></a>
+<b>Wookey on the Fear-On traverse over the start of Interview Blues.</b>
+(Andy Waddington)<br clear="all">
+
+<p>Being fed up with big pitches and Interview Blues respectively, JulianT
+and Helen took some time out to go hangliding. Julian provided expo's most
+impressive exhibition of projectile vomiting by chundering over most of the
+Grundlsee from a great height, and Helen's unconventional choice of landing
+site led to expo's only rescue. The Austrian fire brigade were called out to
+extricate her from the upper reaches of a tree, and she even got a free lift
+back to base camp with a nice policeman.
+
+<p>Watery fun was also on the agenda as JulianT took several people
+diving, and Waddington's canoes provided ample entertainment as
+JulianH went white water rafting in the Grundlseer Traun. He was also
+responsible for capsizing Knowledgeable Dave in the lake, but then
+came a cropper himself when he went to Halstatt for the annual trip to
+play on the pedaloes wearing sandals and removed most of his big toe
+nail.
+
+<p>The QMs were still coming faster than we could tick them off in the
+Puerile Humour series. After giving Interview Blues one of its most
+uncomplimentary reviews the day before, Becka and Anthony begged Sam
+for a nice lead and he came up with Bounce Rift. Becka scaled the far
+side, and they bumbled off down the passage beyond to emerge in a
+large hading rift chamber. Having established that none of the shitty
+unimpressive leads went anywhere, it was time to stomp down the
+draughting 4m round phreatic tube, which ended after 80m in a
+draughting choke. There seemed to be a small chamber beyond, so ten
+minutes of digging followed before Becka broke through into it and saw
+daylight. Admittedly there was only three inches of daylight at that
+point, so it took another 40 minutes of digging before Becka slid out
+of the new 161e entrance with grace, style and effortless ease. Your
+lardy scribe had obviously been over indulging in soya chunks however,
+and didn't fit through until a few more rocks had been removed, and so
+<b>Yorkshire Pudding</b> earned its name.
+
+<p>Ten minutes later, voices were heard, and Sam, Lummat and Craig
+appeared having just emerged from the second new entrance of the
+day. They had been surveying near Completely Loopy, and had similarly
+followed the main draught until they popped out of the hill. After
+sitting around grinning like a lot of little kids for a while and
+trying to guess where they were, they all went back underground to
+measure it and find out for sure. The answer is that 161e and 161f are
+about 500m north of 161d, some 40m higher up the hill, and suffer from
+the same surface accessibility problems as 161d meaning that neither
+will be very much use for access to leads other than those in the
+immediate vicinity of these entrances.
+
+<p>This was Craig's introduction to expo caving, so just to bring him
+back down to earth and show him what it's really like, his second trip
+was to an appallingly loose pitch below Bugger bolted by MarkM and
+Juliette the previous day, and appropriately called <b>Choss
+Pot</b>. Expo's senior citizens were also in action this week, as Jeremy,
+ChrisD, Tony and DaveH went to a lead near Moth Chamber and bounded
+back to top camp with mile wide grins like a bunch of novices who'd
+found their first ever bit of cave. <b>Wheelchair Access</b> is around 50m
+long and sounds faintly squalid, but there is an interesting
+draughting hole which will require enlargement. Duncan and Steve were
+already applying the 'Make Your Own' technique by hammering out a four
+inch round hole in the wall in Dr Snuggles until they fitted
+through. 60m of crawling appeared to have yielded a result as they
+emerged into a large space containing pristine mud, until they spotted
+the red and white flagging tape marking the route through Triassic
+Park and realised they were at the start of Alternative
+Universe. These exploits took place on the day of the annual photo
+trip, something of a misnomer as it turned out. All the fancy gear
+which was working perfectly at top camp consistently failed to work
+for five hours once taken underground. AndyA was not pleased. (There
+were repercussions at conference time, when the CUCC talk was
+accompanied by exactly five underground slides, but that's another
+rant...).
+
+<p>Happy with our week's work, everyone retreated to base camp to get drunk
+at the expo dinner, this year in the presence of the deputy mayor of
+<span lang="de-at">Bad Aussee</span> and the head of tourism who bizarrely
+seem quite pleased that we keep returning to their otherwise lovely town.
+This could have been a disaster, but passed off quite peacefully as they were
+both sound blokes. Even so, we refrained from raucous singing and throwing
+people in the river until after they had left.
+
+<h3>Week 5</h3>
+
+<p><blockquote>"... As my lumps of mud which passed for gear turned to slime,
+my glasses clouded over, the tacklesack became five times heavier and my
+jammers completely refused to down-prussik, it could be said I was not
+having fun". -- Nick on the joy that is Interview Blues.</blockquote>
+
+<p>With the prospect of imminent derigging upon us, base camp started to
+empty at the beginning of week five. For those that remained, there was still
+lots to do in Interview Blues and the Puerile Humour Series, and we had
+relocated 136 so there was some excitement at the possibility of redescending
+it and trying to connect to the Forbidden Land thus bypassing Stairway to
+Hell. This excitement lasted as long as a cursory inspection of the 1983 log
+book. Most of the work in this cave was done by Chas Butcher and Mike Thomas
+in 1983, and their logbook accounts don't so much hint that it might be a bit
+crap as scream it in six foot high neon letters. Although Wookey and Anthony
+made plans to descend 136, and even went as far as collecting together enough
+gear, it was obvious that any excuse would do to force an abandonment, and
+the weather duly obliged, so 136 will have to wait until next year.
+
+<p>Nick and Brian were rapidly running out of volunteers to accompany them
+down Interview Blues, which boasted eight pitches at the start of the week
+and ten pitches by the end of the week. However these last two pitches proved
+to be the nicest bit of caving in the whole series -- indeed Brian declared
+that the ninth pitch was one of the nicest he'd ever descended, but then
+maybe his standards had slipped after four weeks down Interview Blues.
+Arriving at the foot of the tenth pitch, they were presented by a bewildering
+array of leads, but obviously checked out the scrottiest one first (it didn't
+go anywhere). The bottom of Interview Blues is 449m below 161a -- the third
+deepest point in the cave -- and with a number of fairly promising leads
+giving the prospect of more depth, so a return is likely despite its
+reputation.
+
+<p>The last caving action of the expo was to the north of the Puerile Humour
+Series, where a party went in the 161e entrance hoping that the good lead
+around there would close down after ten yards so we could all go home, and
+being initially irritated when it didn't. However, it proved to be a
+worthwhile find as the area contains a number of ice formations, which are
+genuinely pretty in anyone's terms, and overwhelmingly so by the standards of
+KH. <b>Iceland</b> was a nice little find to round off expo.
+
+<p>Of course there was still the small matter of disassembling top camp, and
+the rope wasn't going to wash itself, so there was another two days of tedium
+in scorching heat. The weather stayed fine until somebody mentioned the magic
+word 'barbecue' and the heavens opened. Thankfully it cleared up long enough
+for DaveH to show us all how it should be done, and for once we managed a
+barbecue where all the food was cooked but not charcoaled -- possibly the
+most remarkable occurrence of a remarkable expo. After some last minute
+morning packing in the pouring rain, we said our goodbyes to Hilda and Karin
+and that was that...
+
+<p>...Almost. We still had to get some ailing vehicles some intimidating
+distances. Brian's car made it to France without incident, and the Angular
+Vehicle did sterling service towing the trailer, so its passengers were
+somewhat surprised to find Duncan propping up a wall when they pulled into a
+service station in Luxembourg. Paul's Peugeot 205 diesel -- universally
+agreed to be the poshest vehicle remaining on expo -- had given up the ghost.
+They eventually got given a hire car, complete with free porn mag, to drive
+to Calais, whilst the car was taken on the back of a breakdown truck, which
+promptly broke down itself. Despite this complication they arrived back in
+Britain the following morning, at about the same time that a Lada and trailer
+combination spluttered into Girton and expo was over.
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