“What the heck’s that face in the river?” – no sooner had Matt said that, he had plunged both his hands into the water and was digging for something, and then pulled out a large stone.
“Looks more like a huge cock to me” Jeremy said.
Indeed, he pulled out a large phallic shaped stone from the river. But sure enough, however, from a certain angle, there was an old man’s face.
Let’s take this as a memento, we agreed. Old man river – there was a significance of some sort. We carried it back and when we got back to the lodge, placed it in the middle of the living room – our totem pole for the next few days.
Before we ate, we decided to check the routes for tomorrow – our journey with the mushroom required preparation.
We walked into the village and chanced upon an old man sitting on an old bench in his garden. His house was a small stone cottage with ivy growing up the sides. He looked reliable. I could tell by looking at him that he had lived here so long that he had almost harmonised with the surroundings, I almost expected ivy to be growing up him too.
We asked him about a suitable four-hour trek around here, and he advised us, in his thick Welsh accent, to goh folloo tha paath thattaway t’wards scooderrider, pointing with his crooked root-like finger somewhere thattaway, in a direction towards the river we had come from. The advice from the old man was good enough for us.
We strolled around a bit more to get our bearings and agreed that the walk to scooderrider was sufficient for our needs tomorrow.
Time for steak!