Vocabulary

If you're going to come hiking with us, it's probably a good idea to get your terminology down first, just to avoid confusion. For example:

Sproinking: Climbing large boulders in a goat-like fashion, preferably enormous collections of rock off the main trail and providing ample opportunity to tumble off, breaking one's neck in the process.

Stealth-cactus: Vicious, thorn covered plants growing a) in or around the perfect hand-hold b) above a rock face exactly where one's head pops up or c) at ankle level on a narrow ledge or crevice, frequently hidden behind an innocuous plant for better camouflage.

Spider-pigging: Getting up rock faces or boulders in a way that would make experienced rock-climbers or mountaineers laugh like drains. Can include actions such as the backwards hoist (hoiking one's arse up a boulder while shoving hard with one's hands and scrabbling with one's feet), the modified chimney (bracing on one side with one's foot, knee bent, clutching the other side with one's hand then straightening the knee and hopefully moving upward) and the Child 2 starfish special (newly invented - involves rolling oneself at a bizarre angle down the rock face, meeping* for a moment, refusing all offers of help and then lunging into a desperate spread-eagle thus achieving the far easier, hand-hold rich side of the face which one had rejected with scorn as a path down).

[Male Child] route: Highly dangerous path which should never, ever be taken by anyone of any intelligence - particularly if the Male Child recommends it with words like "small gap" (read: three foot crevasse), "little jump" (read enormous leap over even larger crevasse, usually onto a face with an angle only slightly off 90 degrees), "fun way" (involves at least three "little jumps" and two bits that can only be achieved if one is blessed with enormously long arms and no body mass to speak of whatsoever) and "rock running" (read: falling with enormous style - race down a steep slope to build up speed and then sprint over as much vertical rock wall as one can, landing, hopefully, on soft sand at the end with a bit of a stagger which, inevitably, is turned into momentum for the next rock run)

*Bonus word - meeping: High-pitched chirping performed by Child 2, named after the most distinctive syllable which Child 2 produced while on an outing with me a month or so ago. Child 2 denies totally and vehemently that it meeps (in fact it will doubtless be 104 and in a care home still shouting "AY DEW NUT MEEP!"), but trust me, it meeps, it totally meeps.

So, wanna come along next weekend?