"Sheffield’s quite a big place really, isn’t it?"
There and then, the subtle perception of the comment was lost because all eyes were busy drinking in the glow of row upon row of streetlights down below, as we drove in off the Parkway and down to the Whacky Races roundabout near the station. All the way up (and I still maintain that it’s up- how can you go "down" from Cambridge when, on the map, the former is quite clearly below the latter?), it was as if someone had gradually been blowing up a balloon inside me and, by the time we were at Hunter’s Bar, excitement had erased any lingering thoughts of Cambridge.
It’s very hard to explain how good it feels to be driving out of Cambridge on a Saturday evening, knowing that soon, in just over two hours, you’re going to be within spitting distance of some real climbing. OK, so it would only be twenty minutes drive if you were at Sheffield or Leeds University, but what’s two hours drive when you’ve been waiting all week for it? Somehow it didn’t matter that the weather forecast was lousy and we’d been expecting to run into drifts all the way up the A1, because whatever we did the next day, even if it were just to pick our way, in the rain, between the puddles and ever-deepening mountain bike ruts on the top of Stanage or to pat chalk onto slimy, polished holds at Stoney Middleton, in the vain hope that it would imbue them with just a little friction, it was away from the spires, brick, tarmac, flatness and essays of Cambridge. Because expectations were modest, the balloon of excitement would stay inflated while ever there were sheep and bracken and dry stone walls in sight.
Twenty-four hours later: a melodramatic "Sheffield is my spiritual home", a big sigh and time to turn the nose of the Metro South once more. The feeling of deflation increased as, in the dusk, the outlines of the hills became fewer and further between. While Sheffield has many, there isn’t really a vantage point from which you can admire the glittering lights of Cambridge. Well, there is, but attempts to gain it carry the risk of being sent down. You feel silly walking back to college with a rucksack on and a rope around your neck. Sad, when only two hours earlier, on .html street in Hathersage, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.