Gorge Scrambling, or "Rocks are really hard"

So while in Cumbria I had the opportunity to participate in a hobby they call "gorge scrambling." Basically, it consists of putting on a big wooly suit and some waterproofs, then jumping into a fairly substantial stream and climbing up it. We were particularly lucky because our stream had been swollen by three days of rain and had become a bit more like a raging river of death.

Most of the experience was just sort of cold and weirdly amusing anyway. It was also fun to discover that even though the icy cold water would numb your feet after about 30 seconds once it got into your boots, your feet would eventually warm it up again. Kind of a neat trick of physics I guess.

But the great cognitive leap for me came at the end of the excursion, when we army crawled through one of those drainage tunnels that goes under roads. In case you didn't hear me right---we army crawled through a drainage tunnel that ran underneath a road. It was probably about 3 ft. by 2 ft. Crazy, crazy, experience. Going into that dark, cold, wet, rocky death trap was one of the most horrifying experiences of my life. The first few feet my whole body was just screaming, "What do you think you're doing!? Idiot! Turn around!"

Naturally, I ignored it and crawled on anyway. I even made it around the large rock in the middle of the tunnel just before the end, fun as that was, and survived the experience with only a few bruises and a cut up hand (funny how you can cut yourself pretty easily on rocks when you're completely numb). Anyway, what I learned was that rocks are really, really hard, and water is really, really fast.

There's a scene in my book that involves an underground river, and one character in particular sort of bouncing off of its rock ceiling. That scene will now be amended to include some moss, because bashing your head on a rock at the speed said river is supposed to be traveling would, I'm fairly certain, kill you.

Funny how you learn little things like that in the strangest places.