Water fight in Winspit quarry

[watervole]

Saturday was fun. I badly needed a day of relaxation and laughter and I got
it. Borrowing a gaming friend of ours who is a big Babylon 5 fan, Richard,
Henry and my self set off for Wareham station where we met up with dougs, mindygoth, beermat, paranoidangel42 and Daniel.

In theory, three Hithchikers and six for the Blake's 7 side. As it happens,
virtually all the B7 team were also Hitchhikers fans and the quotes were flying
all day long.

We left one car in the station and car-shared to Worth Matravers. We knew from
long experience that parking in Worth Matravers on a sunny Saturday is always
tricky. The car park was packed, and were very glad we'd left the third car
beind.

Water carriers were filled at the car park, and we trecked down to Winspit
quarry. It's a lovely walk, with beautiful scenery. I managed to trip over a
rock and skinned my knee, which was pretty good going considering we hadn't even
started the battle yet.

We got to the quarry and discovered a large group of climbers on one of the rock
faces. Fortunately, we wanted the inside of the caves, so no problem.

Sitting down on an old brick incline that is our traditional neutral area (no
shooting inside the zone) we had lunch and compared weapons. dougs
had brought three, including a giant one with a pistol on the side and a
detachable wet sponge. The pistol and the sponge were a dead loss, but the gun
did have hold a lot of water. Mindy had a borg attachment - low on volume, but
not bad at all on range. The B7 team, being old hands at this, had all painted
their supersoakers black - it makes you far harder to see in the dark.
beermat and mindygoth had one natural advantage though -
goths like dark clothing.

There's a wonderful view out to sea here. In times gone by, ships could sail
upto the base of the cliff at high tide and have stone loaded directly from the
quarry above. During the war, there was a gun emplacement facing the channel.

Once we ventured into the caves, alignments got quickly forgotten. Alliances
rarely last long in the dark. If you get a good chance to shoot someone
silhouetted against the light, then you tend to take it. If you end up close to
someone in the dark, then you either have a short sharp shoot out or else form
an instant alliance against the people on the other side of the cave.

At that back of the cave, it's very dark indeed. It can take 5-10 minutes
before your eyes become fully adapted. At first, you can't even see the walls
or have any feel for the shape of the space you're in. Eventually, you can see
every stone on the floor, but it takes time. Once your eyes are adapted, you
have an enormous advantage. You can walk right upto someone without them being
able to see you at all. You can identify every person in the back cave and they
haven't a clue where you are.

We had an enormous amount of fun. We probably spent around three hours overall,
hunting, shooting, drying out, refuelling, planning ambushes, swopping sides,
getting wet, getting other people even wetter. dougs managed to hit
a rock with his shin and got quite an impressive bruise and Mindy had a bump as
well, but no serious injuries fortunately.

It's a toss-up as to who got wettest. Daniel is our normal champion, but Chris
and dougs gave him a run for his money. Watching them wringing out
their t-shirts was quite entertaining. Gave a whole new meaning to the term
'wet t-shirt contest'...

We dropped off beermat and mindygoth at the station and
made our way back home where several of us indulged ourselves with a filk
session. MY voice had finally recovered enough to be able to sing and I can't
begin to explain how much that means to me. I have so missed singing over the
last couple of months, and singing with friends is one of life's real pleasures.
Singing with people who know the same tunes is even more fun. dougs
and myself started off with 'Woad', followed by the 'Undead Hippotomaus Song'
and carried on with Gilbert and Sullivan pastiches from the 'Gilbert and
Servalan Songbook' with a brief detour to introduce the works of Les Barker.
(Anyone who wants to come with predatirx and myself to hear Les
Barker in Dorset on the evening of Sat Sept 4th, just drop me a line. Assume
filking and sumtty fannish conversations will be par for the course. We've got
floor/spare beds for a few more people if they want to stay overnight and do
fannish things/gaming on the Sunday)

We finished off the evening playing 'Apples to Apples'. After playing it for a
while, we customised the deck by adding lots of cards relating to SF shows and
cliches. I think my favourite moment of the evening was watching dougs choosing a card to fit the word 'industrious' and struggling to
justify his choice of 'women in bondage gear' before finally giving in and
saying 'Look, if you play that card on me, it's bound to win'. And the person
who played the card grinning, because he'd already worked that out. And my son
saying 'who put that card in the deck?' and looking at me...