Please Sir, Can I Have Some Mud?

Ivo, the head of a shadowy criminal organisation, snuck into the YHA Coalbrookdale workhouse early on Sunday morning to recruit 5 pickpockets for a lucrative mission. There was ne'er even a warm up. What a hard task master he was. Their marks were boatmen, transporting goods along the canal at the Blists Hill Victorian Town and what they were carrying was so valuable that it was worth the 15km run to steal it. The timing was essential as they needed to be back at the workhouse at 10:30am, to eat their gruel before starting work.

One of the 6 must've had loose lips in the pub on Saturday night. As the group came closer to Blists Hill, they found that the Victorian townsfolk had implemented defences on the - definitely not uphill - paths leading to Blists Hill, which included brambles and nettles that pierced their thin and worn workhouse clothes. The town's most effective defences were fences, which shielded the canal from Ivo's gang, and mud. The mud came in different forms, muddy mud, very muddy mud, "slipper-wheeeeee" mud and might-lose-a-shoe mud, in increasing levels of danger.

The pickpockets found the going hard and ended up missing the boatmen at the canal. Defeated, they retreated to the road and made their way back to the workhouse, covering only 12km in 2 hours but making in back in time to snaffle some crisps, apples and day old sandwiches from the YHA workhouse's fridges.