when I picture two separate, adjacent bodies of water, I picture something like lake erie and lake ontario. adjacent (more or less... ignore the river), but clearly separated by the falls. lake erie and the niagara river, in contrast, bump heads around the vicinity of the peace bridge. they are not separate. when there happens to be a bridge where one body of water merges with another, it does not imply two separate, adjacent bodies of water. it implies a bridge. either side of which are bodies of water that may or may not go by the same name.


right? okay.


it is with this well-founded logic that a friend and I attempted to go for a run around derwent reservoir last night. we were told to follow the path around the reservoir. keep the water on your right and it's impossible to get lost.


right? well, not if you're laura and jo.


after 30 minutes or so of running, we came to a bridge. as everyone knows, reservoirs are separated by dams, not bridges, so we continued on. and on. and on.


10 minutes later...
laura: you don't think we were meant to cross that bridge, do you?
jo: no, they would have mentioned a bridge if we had to cross one. I think we keep going.


10 minutes later...
jo: the sign there says ladybower.
laura: I thought we were running around derwent.
jo: hmmm... if we keep going, maybe we'll come back around where we're meant to be. it shouldn't be too much further, right?


20 minutes later... the sun has dropped behind the hills. we come around a bend and see the rest of ladybower snaking off into the distance. ladybower, as far as the eye can see.
laura: jesus christ.
jo: maybe we should turn around.


20 minutes later... it's almost impossible to see the path, as there are no streetlights in the english countryside.
laura: (considers bringing up topic of wendigos but thinks better of it)


3 minutes later...
laura: (considers bringing up topic of werewolves but thinks better of it)


2 minutes later...
laura: (considers bringing up topic of vengeful spirit of dead child drowned in the reservoir but thinks better of it)


1 minute later...
laura: (unable to restrain self any longer) this feels kind of like a horror movie, doesn't it? you think something's going to jump out of the forest at us? or maybe the water? oh my god, did you hear that? I think someone just got eaten.




fig. 1. map of derwent, howden and ladybower reservoirs. derwent is the middle segment. the bridge we were meant to cross is just a bit north of the furthest south bit of bright pink. see the circled P in the bottom right corner? a bit further west of there is where we decided to turn around.


we didn't get eaten, though judging by the number of times we've been laughed at and/or made the subject of getting lost jokes in the past 24 hours, it might have been better for our general well-being if we had.