Dolphins were Monkeys: The Plan

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“No-one can judge you, baby”

Charles Darwin had a theory. You might have heard of it. It was all about the origins of a particular species, and so he called it ‘On the Origin of Species’ because he was a man of striking originality. His theory of evolution is pretty much universally accepted to be correct, and the big talking point was that men (or women), somewhere along the line, descended from apes (or apettes. Possibly). Going back even further than that, and I have no idea if Darwin suggested this or if it came from some other clever person later on, there is a good chance that we were once fish, or jellyfish, or a great big prehistoric killer whale. Well, maybe not the whale. You might be wondering how on earth this ties in to our travels or even the Ian Brown song that influences this particular trip, but this one is for the big 30th birthday celebration and it’s my party so I’ll ramble if I want to.

Ian Brown had possibly been reading Darwin’s theory when he wrote the lyrics for ‘Dolphins were Monkeys’, although the song is going in the opposite direction to the general theory (The dolphins were monkeys that didn’t like the land / Walked back to the water, went back from the sand). To be honest, I’d never considered the lyrics to be anything more than words that popped into his head and fitted nicely into a good pop song, but as I started to read them and work out where it would take us, I realised that there was a pretty good meaning to them. Though there is the evolutionary context of it all, the message is that everyone is different, but we all came from the same place. More than that, it says to me that there is nothing wrong with being different, and advocates saying a big ‘sod off’ to those that would rather see everyone acting like a mass-marketed sheep, being the person that the people with the most money in the world choose you to be rather than embracing three billion years of natural selection. While it might sound a bit anarchic in that way, there is also the underlying feeling that we all, deep down, come from the same place, so be different but don’t forget to let everyone else do the same. Be yourself, but be nice.

So it is with an open mind that I look towards our travels. It needs to be something wholly of my choosing, but without alienating those around me, and if I can involve dolphins, or monkeys, or sand, or trees or Charles Darwin, then we get bonus points for being cool. It is with all this in mind that I think we should head for the Lake District. With my birthday being on a Thursday it makes sense to take the Thursday and Friday off work and make a long weekend of it, so there’s the crux of the plan: three nights in the Lake District, from the 4th to the 7th August.

I’ve got a few ideas of things to do while we’re there, but some of them are slightly dependant on who comes and how many come, so we’ll make some decisions once we’ve got some numbers. One thing I definitely want to do though is a bit of monkeying around in the trees, and as luck would have it, Whinlatter Forest holds a Go Ape site. For those that don’t know, Go Ape is pretty much a cross between what people would do on the assault course part of the ‘Krypton Factor’ (dodgy 80’s quiz show recently remade for the ‘modern’ generation) and what Tarzan would do in Tarzan (dodgy films and series remade hundreds of times over the years). So it’s basically swinging from tree to tree and climbing up big nets. It is serious fun and the Whinlatter site boasts the highest aerial slide in England. So high, in fact, that you can see Scotland from it, apparently.

After a day of doing the monkey up in the trees (you see where the theme is going here?), we could probably do with looking at the dolphin side of the song. Perhaps not literally, but maybe something a little bit more water-based. This is where the events might depend on who wants to do what. I would love to go ghyll scrambling, but I’m aware that wading through waterfalls and jumping off them isn’t for everyone, so we’ll have to look at numbers, particularly as you tend to pay for the instructor rather than the event, so the cost gets split between us. There are plenty of other water based activities we can get up to, it is the Lake District after all, the clue to the amount of water around there is very much in the name. If the worst comes to the worst, there are plenty of pubs across Cumbria called ‘The Dolphin’, or some variant on it.

Go Ape and ghyll scrambling won’t take up any more than half a day each, so even if we do both, there’s still going to be a couple of days to have a nice relaxing holiday. Of course, my idea of a nice relaxing holiday might not be the same as everyone else’s, but if you bring your walking shoes and an open mind about the sampling of local ales, I’m pretty sure we’ll all have a great weekend.

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