Mrs Bradshaw's Handbook (Discworld 40.50)
•CUTASH•
POPULATION: 672
CLACKS TERMINAL: at the railway station.
ACCOMMODATION: The Fiddler’s Riddle, Barrack Farm Camp Site.
BANK: Thrift Bank.
MARKET DAYS: Wednesday (fruit and veg), Saturday (general).
Artisan Cheese Festival, Spune.
THE BANDBOX-NEW RAILWAY station has a small bookshop where they sell guidebooks and maps of the region. There is a large market square and on market day one may meet mountain folk, including dwarfs who work the Ramtop mines, as well as shoppers from Lancre, and invariably one or two black-hatted missionaries pressing explanatory pamphlets into shoppers’ hands and inviting them to visit the mission tent to partake of a cup of weak tea and the word of Om. The dwarf-run workshop offering a broom repair service is a salutary reminder that the long tradition of witchcraft in this part of the Disc has by no means expired. Indeed it seems you can buy almost anything here: musical instruments, ably demonstrated by the stall holder, herbal medicines from a small dark tent, tools, silver jewellery, crockery, clothing, haberdashery and all manner of foodstuffs including some very fine cheese. I imagine that this town will bene
fit from the additional trade that the railway has brought. Already there are establishments which specialize in selling camping equipment and climbing gear.
Sadly not all the holidaymakers who embark on mountaineering adventures respect the landscape or take proper precautions; in the clear mountain air it all seems so safe and distances are deceptive. Following a series of unfortunate incidents it was decided something should be done. Apart from anything else reports had reached the Ankh-Morpork newspapers and it was not good for business.
The local lumberjacks and shepherds, who were often the ones to find the sad remains and who understand the treacherous nature of the weather, were the first to form an unofficial ‘Rescue Off the Mountain Team’, after a particularly distressing ‘find’. Old habits die hard among mountain trolls and it seems that on this occasion a party of boy scouts had pitched their camp and lit their fires on a particularly sensitive area of Big Alum who responded ‘with extreme prejudice’. A local troll was quickly recruited to the rescue team to encourage mountain trolls to accept this invasion of city folk or at least to identify and map no-go areas. Dwarfs also joined the team in the wake of their retrieving a group of prospectors who had been sold a map of a goldmine while in Zemphis and had fallen into a disused shaft. They too produced a map of no-go areas, as well as helpfully marking spots where there was definitely no gold at all. A large donation from the AM&SPHR Co. topped up with money from local businesses has now funded a fully equipped mountain refuge and paid for the publication of a series of maps and guidebooks. The Ohulan Cutash Mountain Rescue Team now numbers more than twenty members, including goblins, who travel the hillsides with barrels of snail ‘brandy’.
It is time for me to leave the comfort, speed and safety of the railway, although there are still many journeys to be made. If like me you yearn to visit the lofty heights and magical realm of the Kingdom of Lancre, with its romantic tales of villages like Bad Ass, you may travel onwards on the mail coach up the long and steep road through the pine forests that cover this part of the Ramtops.
For those who wish to venture yet further afield to the dark forests and mountains of Uberwald I can recommend a little guide by the travel writer Boris Von Trappe called My Adventures in Uberwald.
I have enjoyed my voyages on the railway and I would like to thank all the people I have met along the way who have helped make my journey so pleasant and so interesting. I would especially like to thank Mr Lipwig for giving me this opportunity. I hope that my observations and notes will be of benefit to travellers for many years to come.
Thank you for purchasing this little book.