2005-04-19

On Saturday I went for a relaxing stroll in the countryside, which degenerated into a one-person episode of Survivor: Isle of Wight. It started off pretty well, rambling across open farmland full of geese and cows and tiny little lambs (did you know that lambs actually do frolic? It�s not just a rumour! I saw it with my own eyes). I was having a lovely time, breathing bracing lungfuls of fresh spring air and feeling myself at one with nature. Nature felt itself at one with me too, apparently: walking up a winding country lane, I was followed for ten minutes by a pheasant. (Very suspicious: I think he was an undercover agent.) He trotted at my heels like an obedient puppy until I stopped and gave him some walnuts. It was just like a Disney film, or it would have been if the pheasant had subsequently made a ham-fisted wisecrack and launched into an Elton John song-and-dance number.

Things started to go downhill (and also, uphill) when I came to a section of trail completely blocked by a small flood of rainwater. I had to take my shoes off and wade barefoot through four inches of mud-and-sheep-shit soup. Just as the muck was solidifying into a lovely crust on my feet, I began to notice that my set of directions (printed off the internet), were not, so to speak, remotely accurate. They seemed to have been written by a blind dyslexic, randomly mixing up �left� and �right� and completely ignoring major landmarks. As an ominous raincloud descended, I found myself wandering aimlessly through a golf course, trying to plot a vaguely south-west course and hoping that I�d hit the coast somewhere along a major bus route. Fortunately the Isle of Wight is very small, and if you get lost you can pretty much just strike out in any direction and hit something recognizable within half an hour. Thanks to my crack navigational skills (and ability to read street signs), I emerged alive from the wilderness of Sandown Golf Course and shortly managed to locate a bus stop and a cup of tea. Robin Smith: Ace Survivalist.