Having conquered Thor's Cave this morning (by which I mean climbed up, looked at it, and went 'nope that contains too much Edge' to the path down to the cave mouth), I thought I'd take in a nice easy walk for the afternoon. Dovedale was described as a nice flat walk suitable for small children.

I was a little uneasy about the 'stepping stones' portion of the work, but consulting my trusty OpenStreetMap there appeared to be a footpath on the other side of the river from a nearby bridge.

So I set off cheerfully down the nice flat road, over the little bridge (no railings on the rather worn and muddy stone steps, but there were only a couple of steps and they weren't that steep), and set off down the wrong side of the river.

The footpath was a little bit fun, as the white rocks were quite slippery and at odd angles, but not a major problem, and I saw three maintenance trucks going down the road on the other side and thought, "I'm glad I'm not on the road in their way!"

There were a few bits where the path was being an alternative river channel, but many people had clearly pioneered an improvised high route, which was a teeny bit narrow in places but not a problem.

Then, I saw what I thought was the climax of the somewhat disaster path - my old nemesis, the 45 degree scree slope.

However, it was actually pretty easy to get by - the river was shallow at the bank and the falling scree had paved a nice little path at the base of the slope.

As I proceeded through more somewhat jutting rocks, placing my feet carefully, I thought, I really don't want to be doing this in the dark. The plan had been to walk an hour out and an hour back, but it was already only one and a half hours until sunset.

I reassured myself that I did have my head torch in my bag, 'because I'm not a complete idiot' I asserted to myself, and anyway, the stepping stones would probably be fine.

The path had utterly and completely washed away at one point, and a guy coming the other way had to wait for me to navigate the lovely sandy red incline that had been left behind.

(Throughout this endeavour there were people coming the other way all the time, who didn't look especially over prepared, and not one of them said a word to warn me.)

As I got off the incline safely, although not without a close call where my back foot slipped, I thought, I'm definitely not coming back this way.

Then, as I was catching my breath, I was treated to a lovely view of a guy crossing the stepping stones with his dog, as his companion filmed him from the bank. It did look, uh, kind of effortful. He was definitely doing a little bit of a reach in the middle there.

And then they got near the end, and there was definitely something up with the penultimate stone, but I couldn't quite make out what, and he seemed to manage okay. The dog got a bit wet but maybe it meant to do that.

Anyway, I was busy contemplating my own stepping stone challenge, as the path was totally washed out ahead with just some rocks sticking out of it. Fortunately these were much nicer, mostly flat topped rocks, and the stream didn't look all that deep anyway, so I started to navigate carefully through.

It was about three quarters of the way through that, having taken a minor risk on a wobbly rock that would probably only work in that direction, that I heard raised voices and looked at the crossing couple again. She was definitely having trouble, and he'd gone back to help her over.

A smart person would probably have turned back, or ideally some time before that, but the rest of the stream stones were kind of okay, so I got to the other side and sat on a dry rock to watch him kind of lift her onto the last rock.

Maybe she was just a bit nervous, I thought. I let them head off and went to inspect the stones.

The river was in fact washing over most of the stones, which wasn't a great start. The first one was partially submerged. And the penultimate one… was on its side, having rolled considerably out of place, and in its place was part of a tree.

I had encountered a similar looking small part of a tree in my stream excursion. I stepped onto the first stone and tapped it with my stick. It seemed very solid. But also very - round. And very in the way. And higher than the stones.

And when I experimentally poked my stick into the water, the current felt kind of strong. And my foot was already wet from the submerged first stone being more submerged than I expected.

On the plus side - as my feet were already wet, I had a cavalier disregard for just walking in the edge of the river on the way back, which let me skip the horrible red incline entirely. And that section was the worst and quite close to the start of the return adventure.

And I had replacement shoes in the car. But not dry socks, so I had to drive back to the Airbnb with wet feet anyway.

I have no interest in signing up to the new LJ terms of service. I am also 'chess' on DreamWidth. It's not like I post much but fic exchange letters any more anyway (although I keep intending to do compilation posts from FB some time when I have infinite free time).

If we're mutual friends on LJ and you can be tempted over, I'd appreciate it - I want to switch over to reading my DW page, because LJ already won't let me comment without agreeing to the new ToS and I don't know how long it will be until I also can't log in.

The DW importer is incredibly easy to use (even with such a long journal backlog as mine was) and you can automatically crosspost back to LJ (which is how I posted this).

It's Yuletide signups time again!

General stuff:

I am pretty easy to please in any of these fandoms. I am generally more keen on worldbuilding / background details / plot than relationship stuff, and not particularly interested in transplantation AUs (e.g. coffee shop), but otherwise just go for it! I do not have any DNWs and I enjoy dark stuff if that's what you want to write.

My requests this year:

As Simple As Hunger - D Des Anges

Any

I have loved this universe ever since I read the first scraps of it on the author's LiveJournal and hoped one day there would be more. I just want some more intriguing glimpses of the world! Show me some more of the characters' run-ins with the divinatory establishment, more of the weird and wonderful ways that the arthropods organise themselves, what happens next - or what happened to set the characters up in the places we see them take the stage at the start...

I am up for canon-divergence AUs (e.g. what if Benjon had been returned in working order? what if El Alacrán somehow returned?) but not different-universe AUs as the universe is my major love here.

The Culture - Iain M Banks

GCU Grey Area, GOU Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints

First off - please feel free to take this as an 'or' rather than an 'and' request.

I have had some awesome stories out of this request in the past, so I can't resist making it again. I feel there should be as much fic exploring the edge cases and limits of the Culture's 'benevolent' Mind overlords as possible.

Literally any snippet featuring these characters will make my Yuletide, but if you would like some more guidance, I am very interested in the relationships between ships, ships' mobiles, drones, and their biological crew - how these beings of widely ranging processing power nevertheless relate to each other and treat each other as important, useful parts of the whole society - while not necessarily respecting each other in the way that they thought they wanted to be respected, but almost always respecting each other in some important way.

Changeling: The Lost

Any

Tell me about your character! No, really - tell me about your character - or the character you've always wanted to play in this setting but never got a chance to actually run them. Tell me where they came from, what happened to them, how they got free, whether they're sure that they are free or whether they are just waiting to be reeled back in, what they're doing with it / about it...

I just think there are so many fascinating characters that can exist within this setting and I'd love to hear about yours.

I've been a bit remiss in Yuletide-posting this year; I got a lovely gift about Mo from the Laundry Files and how she comes to terms with that seriously creepy violin:

Violins at Work

Alas, it looks like my Mystery Author hasn't written that much else - although I still have a pile of other reading from the rest of the archive...

Despite being out for the entire month of December in NZ, I also managed to write some stuff ( and I waffle about it at length in the rest of this post )