Crime, murder and an underground adventure! Shenanigans in Sheffield!!!!

Today I write from the luxury and comfort of a hotel room, having finished my 41 night camping trip through southern and eastern Africa, and somehow having managed to survive the traffic, roads and open sewers of Nairobi. As the noise through my window continually reminds me, this is a hectic city, with undoubtedly the most ridiculous traffic I have seen anywhere in the world. Not only do traffic lights appear to be optional, but so does the side of the road on which one might choose to drive, the lane (or footpath) in which you might decide to career, and don’t even get me started on the speed at which taxi’s drive – usually on the wrong side of the road!!!

However, Nairobi has also impressed me greatly, and while I have been continually reminded of it’s reputation as Nairobbery, and as one of Africa’s least tourist-friendly cities, what I have seen to date has been very pleasantly surprising. However, I’ll leave that for another entry (which gives the local crooks time to change my views), as I still have a few hours left before my flight to New York.

My last entry covered my week in Iceland, from where I returned to the UK, in search of some much needed sunshine. (There are only very few places on earth that could be said to provide less sunshine than the UK, so I thought I’d better use this opportunity to document such a rare event!!!) 

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With our Icelandic adventure out of the way, we made our way back to London, where Eliza and I met up yet again with Aaron, his brother Dillon, and friend Adrienne. Not wanting Eliza’s recent Cultural Intervention to go to waste, we spent our night in the Soho district, where we all got our boogie on at Thriller – The Musical, before heading out to check out London’s pub and club scene. The musical was a disappointing follow-up to those of the week before (The Shire had more of a storyline!), however the music was good fun – with Dillon’s dancing even more so!

Up early the next morning, Adrienne, Eliza and I were off to the Camden Markets, where we spent the day wandering the wacky, wonderful, and just plain weird goods on offer, stuffing our faces with great food, and enjoying the brilliant weather the city had decided to put on for us. The Camden Markets, which with over 100,000 visitors every weekend are London’s fourth most popular tourist attraction, date back to the early 20^th century. Made up of six smaller markets selling everything from burritos to Hello Kitty toilet roll dispensers, the market complex caters to a wide range of clientele, with an obvious focus on maintaining the areas image as London’s ‘sub-culture hub’. While the picturesque Camden Lock Market follows the beautiful Regent’s Canal, much of the area is filled with less-attractive, yet no less-interesting market stalls, tattoo parlours, and ‘alternative’ shops – no wonder Amy Winehouse chose to call the area home!

After a fleeting visit to Harrods in the afternoon, and a farewell to Adrienne, Eliza and I were yet again on the move, on our way to visit friends Nick and Ali in Sheffield.

I met Nick and Ali in 2009 in Morocco, and have since kept in touch with them thanks to the wonders of the Internet – and because they are always off to some exciting, exotic destination! Nick works in an office in the city, while Ali works as a freelance photographer and writer from their beautiful home on the outskirts of the city, where after a rather lengthy delay at the local police station (my friendship with Stan and Stacey was growing stronger by the day), we were kindly welcomed with a sensational 11pm dinner.

Sheffield – the city in which The Full Monty was filmed – has a population of just over half a million, and a proud history as the home of the UK’s steel and cutlery industries. The city lies within a range of hills, bordered to the west by the impressive Peak District National Park, and while Sheffield’s industry and population have steadily declined over the past 60 years, the city has managed to continually develop as a business and cultural hub – and is today home to the most affluent district in the UK outside of London.

We spent our first day with Ali and Nick on a day-trip through the Peak District, where we stopped to learn about Britain's history of the Bubonic Plague in the small village of Eyam, before making our way to the even smaller town of Great Hucklow. Definitely off the well-beaten tourist track, Great Hucklow would usually have very little to offer tourists, however we were fortunate enough to time our visit with the unusual one-day-a-year English tradition of ‘well-dressing’ (made even more unusual by the fact the town has no well). Well-dressing, which involves decorating wells, springs or other water sources with flower petals, is a tradition which dates back to the early 14^th century, when water sources would be ‘dressed up’ in summer, as a pagan ritual to show thanks for pure, clean water supply.

After lunch in Great Hucklow (and perhaps in search of the missing well?) our day trip continued underground, at the Speedwell Cavern mineshaft. An active mine up until the 20^th century, the Speedwell Cavern has since been turned into a unique tourist attraction – which Ali had spent the whole morning raving about! Once fitted with a fetching hard-hat, claustro-loving visitors reach the main mine shaft by descending 105 stairs, at which point a small boat trudges through the water-logged shaft to the ‘Bottomless Pit’, where Ali had fond childhood memories of impressive waterfalls and rock formations, and more stalagmites and stalactites than I could ever possibly imagine!

We entered the mineshaft with our guide, who not only had the honourable duty of leading us underground to help Ali relive one of her most vivid childhood memories, but also had the distinguished honour of possessing England’s strongest, and most indistinguishable accent. The boat ride lived up to expectations, with 20 people crammed onto the hard wooden benches, while our guide talked us through the history of the mineshaft (well, I think that is what he was saying), and the boat slowly took on more and more water.

With great anticipation, and the entire integrity of Ali’s childhood memoires on the line, we nervously stepped out of the boat at the end of the shaft, into a large lit cavern… and were greatly disappointed! Where we were expecting to find cascading, pristine waterfalls deserving of a place in the Gardens of Babylon, we found a murky trickle of water, which achieved little more than making the rocks a slippery hazard. Where we had come to imagine thousands of metre-long stalagmites and stalactites, stretching from the ground like pillars of the Parthenon, and hanging from the sky like structural supports for the Pearly Gates, we were faced with two paltry formations, better resembling mouldy parsnips than anything impressive enough to greet one on their entry into heaven!

Of course, while the cave did not live up to the expectation of our creative imaginations, it was still an incredibly enjoyable experience – made even more worthwhile by the fits of giggles which accompanied us back along the mineshaft as we all came to realise how ridiculously funny the whole saga had been, and the tears of laughter Ali ended up in once back above ground, as she tried to work out if the cave of her childhood memory was in fact a figment of her own imagination, or if the years since her first visit to the cave had in fact mixed two separate experiences together, and the cave we saw in our minds still does exist… just not at the end of a leaky boat ride!!!

Sheffield

Greatly amused by our day underground, it was time to learn about yet another aspect of Sheffield’s history, as we put on our brave faces to join the ‘Sheffield Historical Crime and Murder Tour’. The tour began from the Sheffield Cathedral, where we were met by our ‘interesting’ guide, and followed a route through the city centre, as we were bombarded with horrific stories detailing Sheffield’s gruesome past. While the stories had undoubtedly fallen victim to a great deal of creative license and embellishment, the tour was certainly one of the more memorable of my year abroad – and the four of us were straight on the internet that night to check up on the facts!

Nick and Ali at their
allotment

Our next day was spent getting back in touch with my agricultural education, with Nick and Ali taking us to check out their super impressive ‘allotment’. A foreign notion to those from countries with ‘boundless plains to share’, an allotment is a small area of land which individuals can lease off the local government to grow their own food. I recall Ali and Nick talking about their allotment back in 2009, and it was great to finally see the area, taste the products, and snoop over other allotment fences… it turns out the world of allotments is quite exciting!

From the allotment we headed into town, to finally see Sheffield in daylight, before making our way out of town for a very CWA afternoon tea and a leisurely stroll at a local National Trust residence. Heading back to Nick and Ali’s place for one final dinner, it was soon time to say goodbye, as we headed yet further north on our way to Eliza’s home for the year in Durham.