Gentle Gradients Are For Girls (Day 3)

Saturday 4 March

Distance: 10 miles (3300’ of ascent)

Weather: Snow, low cloud, high cloud, sunshine and hail

Sunday’s outing was a walk I’d planned for our trip in December, but the weather didn’t oblige on that occasion. The last forecast I’d seen (on Thursday afternoon) suggested that Sunday was going to be dry and increasingly fine, so whereas Friday and Saturday had been planned at the last minute, on Sunday we knew exactly where we were going.

What I didn’t expect, when Mick drew up a blind and peeped outside, was to hear an exclamation of ‘Oooh, snow!’.

The snow continued to fall as we set off for our first target of the day: Hartsop Dodd. There are a few possible routes up Hartsop Dodd from Sykeside. Perhaps you might guess, from the titles of this set of posts, that we opted to attack it head-on. My goodness, it was steep!

Even with a bit of slip-sliding around, the effort didn’t feel anywhere near as arduous as the previous two days, which was a good thing, considering the day ahead of us!

Whilst Mick informed the world of our location, I swore and stropped as I tried to free a stuck zip on my trouser pocket; it wouldn’t have been so bad if the pocket hadn’t been open when it jammed!

The walk up to Stony Cove Pike was unremarkable, particularly as we ascended up into the cloud, but from there to our next objective was more memorable for the snowy-scrambly descent down to Threshtwaite Mouth (which we hit just at peak time of day for big groups to emerge there from the north).

Our descent down to Threshthwaite Mouth. It doesn’t look that snowy on the photo, does it?

Thornthwaite Crag is topped by Thornthwaite Beacon, which aside from being a notable landmark, also serves as a good windbreak for a lunch break, provided that someone hasn’t beaten you to the conveniently placed rocks on the lee-side. Unfortunately for a good handful of other people, we had beaten them to it. We were smug; they all skulked off to find alternative windbreaks.

I have no recollection of taking this photo!

It seems that our next top was not on the popular route. In fact, footprints in the snow would suggest that only three other people had been that way earlier in the day, but for the length of detour involved we didn’t hesitate in popping over to Mardale Ill Bell.

High Street was a rather more popular top; not quite teeming with people, but a good handful within view both ahead and behind. I was particularly pleased to be there as I had included it on a planned trip which didn’t come to fruition a few years ago, so I felt I was overdue a visit.

Then we had but one top left: The Knott. It hailed on us on the way up there, before the hail gave way to snow showers, but it seems that we were right on the edge of the weather as to the east it looked like this:

Whereas to the west it looked like this:

From there it was down, down, down to Hayeswater, where the view was a bit different two 48 hours earlier:

Stopping for second lunch just by the dam of Hayeswater I was happy indeed to find that I wasn’t tired! In fact, if someone had told me that I had to go over another hill to finish the day off, then I wouldn’t have been horrified at the notion. Quite why I’d been so exhausted the previous (unarguably easier) day and yet felt fine after this outing, I have no idea. Certainly nothing that I can put my finger on.

It was then just a hop and a skip down the valley to Hartsop and another hop and a skip down past Brothers Water back to the comfort of Colin. By the time we got there the sun was blazing down and the snow was making a hasty retreat:

That’s Hartsop Dodd, our first hill of the morning, but now without the snow.

Here’s the route we took, as recorded on the Garmin Gadget:

And that was that. Our Gradual Gradients Are For Girls outing was over (and my very-aching body was going to be given the chance to recover – I really am very unfit just now!). The 10 Wainwrights we’d added to our tally means that we’re now a quarter of our way through the Wainwrights. Not that we’re counting, or bagging, or anything…

Gradual Gradients Are For Girls (Day 2)

Saturday 3 March

Distance: 8.5 miles (2700’ of ascent)

Weather: Sunshine and showers, probably more dry than wet

A large school group was standing around in the rain as we sat in the comfort of Colin on Saturday morning trying to decide what to do with our day. We kept looking out to see what they were doing, and for over half an hour they just stood there. I think I’d have been pretty grumpy to have started my day by standing in the pouring rain for that long wearing a big backpack!

Half an hour after they set out, we followed in their footsteps, heading towards Caiston Beck. Having ruled out the hills that I want to do in good weather, we’d settled on High Pike and Low Pike as our objectives for the day. Brothers Water isn’t the most obvious start point to do those two hills, but with the last forecast we’d seen having suggested low cloud, many hours of rain and some strong winds, two hills of 656m and 508m looked like a sensible choice (and we’ll gloss over the fact that we climbed up to over 750m before descending to High Pike…).

Someone must have slipped some bricks into our bags and lead into our shoes, as by the time we were on the final approaches to Dove Crag (which wasn’t on our agenda; having been up there a couple of months ago we turned off just before the summit) we were both flagging. Finally dragging our weary legs over to the ridge wall, down we plonked ourselves for an early lunch in the hope that it would perk us up.

“Looks like the sun’s about to come out” said one of the chaps who had stopped a few feet away for a butty-break of their own.

“I’d just been saying that myself” I responded, as we all looked doubtfully at the thick cloud that had been enveloping us since early in our outing.

Not five minutes later, without prior warning, a hole appeared in the cloud and out came the sun! There was more rain, a few hail showers and the wind did continue, but for a chunk of the early afternoon the sky was a gorgeous blue. In fact, contrary to the forecast I would say that the day was as dry as it was wet.

High Pike on the left, Scandale Pass on the right – and finally the cloud is lifting so that we can see them

What of the ‘Gradual Gradients Are For Girls’ though? If you look at the map of our route, you’ll see that our ascent route was nice and gentle. For today we had saved the ridiculous gradient for our descent. Standing atop Low Pike we shunned the sensible (but longer) route, and instead looked down at the slightly-craggy slope below and decided that it looked doable. I’m sure that anyone watching us (and there was no short supply of people around) would have classed us as either clueless or stupid, but we’ve certainly made more severe descents and not only did we make our way successfully through the crags to our earmarked hole in the wall, but we also got across the beck dry-shod (something that hadn’t looked a certainty from up high).

As I mentioned, Brothers Water isn’t the obvious starting point for these two hills (Ambleside would probably the popular choice), so our descent from Low Pike didn’t end our day as we still had to get back over into the Patterdale valley. The Scandale Pass served our purpose to get us there and the woefully unwilling legs that carried me up there were nicely counter-balanced by the sheer joy of the turn in the weather.

Heading up to Scandale Pass – what a contrast to an hour or so earlier!

It wasn’t encouraging, being so weary after such a modest outing, and without a big pack, but otherwise it had been a good and enjoyable day.

Gentle Gradients Are For Girls (Day 1)

Friday 2 March

Distance: 6.5 miles (2100’ of ascent)

Weather: Nice and warm, with some glorious sunshine and stunning patches of blue sky at times.

 

Exhibiting our usual level of preparedness for a weekend in the Lakes, we arrived in Patterdale just before noon on Friday and then set about looking at some maps to decide where to spend the remaining hours of daylight. One day we’re going to do that preparation bit before we go, thus allowing ourselves more hours of daylight to do the walking!

With the first couple of choices rejected for being too far to walk in the hours available, we settled on a modest route over a couple of hills and off we wandered for our first objective of Brock Crags.

There are two obvious ways to get up Brock Crags from the direction from which we came: 1) follow the path as it traverses the hillside then switches back to maintain a reasonable gentle gradient; or 2) go straight up the side of the hill. We chose option 2.

The direct route up Little Hartsopp Dodd (where we went in December) looks ridiculously steep when you’re standing in front of it, but in reality isn’t too bad. In contrast, the side of Brock Crags doesn’t look too steep when you’re looking at it head-on, whereas in reality I came to think that maybe my lungs would burst and my thighs explode before we reached the top*.

Fortunately both lungs and legs held out (if you can call jelly-legs ‘holding out’), and to the top we got where we were amply rewarded for our effort by some lovely lumpy views:

It looked like we’d made the right choice of where to walk, as on the other side of the valley the tops were in cloud.

Not the best ever snap to demonstrate a point,  but the best I’ve got

Rest Dodd was our next objective, and having popped over Satura Crag we had two options: 1) we could follow the gentle path that curved around to the left and approached Rest Dodd from the side; or 2) we could yomp straight on up. Guess which we did? At least this time the lung-and-thigh-abuse was broken by a pause for a cup of tea. A snack might have been nice too, if either of us had thought to pick up any snackables before we set out…

Reading Wainwright’s opinion of Rest Dodd later in the evening it seems that he didn’t rate it as a hill of much merit. My standards must be much lower, as I was quite taken by the view of the surroundings, which we admired for a while before heading down towards Hayeswater.

I took another photo from this vantage point on Sunday. It looked rather different then!

We hit the descent route at a busy time – four other people were met on our way back down to Hartsopp; the only people we met all afternoon.

A good walk, but not a great confidence booster for my level of fitness!

May

A while ago I stated our plans for April this year, which mainly features the length of Wales to finish our ‘lengths and breadths’ series of walks. We’re going to have a tiny bit of a break after we get to the north coast of Wales, then it’s off to Scotland for our third TGO Challenge.

Mick was more involved than normal in the route-planning this year, and a few possibilities were roughly sketched out from various starting points. Having weighed up the options the final decision was based largely on wanting to pass through the Monadhliath again before it gets covered in wind farms and the accompanying motorway-esque tracks. So, we’re setting out from Shiel Bridge this year and our route looks roughly like this:

If I’d made that line red it would have showed up a lot better, wouldn’t it?

We’re taking something of a non-standard route to get from home up to Shiel Bridge. Considering that we live in the Midlands, the obvious way to get to Scotland would be to head north. However, when we saw that we could get Sleeper tickets up to Inverness for £19 each, and tickets from home to London for £6 each, we decided that the ridiculousness of a via-London route was far outweighed by the comfort and value of the Sleeper.

We’ve not done too badly coming back either at under £35 door-to-door. The bad news is that we will be missing the post-Challenge dinner this year, as we need to travel home on the Thursday morning. More about that, though, when I publish our plans for June…

February

I think the less said about February the better! I’ve already walked further in March than I did in the whole of February.

This is the sorry-looking comparison to previous years:

Not quite as bad as 2006, but something of a contrast to last year.

My excuses? Well, I worked full time hours and was poorly on two weekends and decidedly under-the-weather on a third – and there’s not many more weekends than that in February!

The other notable thing that happened in February is that this blog hit its fifth anniversary, during which time I’ve wittered on for tens of thousands of words across 1007 posts. I might have mentioned that fact on the appropriate day, except I got my dates mixed up and missed the anniversary itself. I know that it’s been awfully quiet on here lately (1 post in the whole of February!), but this year’s post tally will start picking up in a month’s time, for it is now just a month and a day until we head out onto the Pennine Way

Plans: April

There’s no really big walk this year. The furthest we’re going to walk in one trip this year is 500 miles. Building up to that one, we pencilled in a couple of shorter walks: the length of Wales (finally completing our ‘lengths and breadths’ series) and the TGO Challenge.

A few weeks ago, I started plotting the length of Wales walk, based on Tony Drake’s Cambrian Way guide, with it in mind that we would take 3 weeks over the outing. However, when I plotted it, I couldn’t quite get on with the route from Cardiff to Llandovery – particularly the big loop in the Black Mountains which involves spending three days to make 3 miles progress northwards:

The Cambrian Way Route

I’m not adverse to taking meandering routes on a linear walk so as to take in the best scenery or to link good features, but I also like to make meaningful progress in the direction of travel, so couldn’t quite bring myself to plot a route that involved a day and a half of walking south on a northbound walk. I’m sure there’s merit in that loop, and at some point we will go and walk it as a stand-alone trip. For our Length of Wales Walk, however, we will start at Swansea and take a direct line.

The result is that the three week walk has become a 15-day walk, which meant that we found ourselves with a spare week at our disposal.

I didn’t have trouble with finding something to fill that week. In 2010 I walked from Horton-in-Ribblesdale to Edale along the Pennine Way. In 2011 we walked from Dufton to Horton. This April we will walk from Kirk Yetholm to Dufton, thus completing my second walk of the Pennine Way (although I’m still not going to do it properly; we will once again modify part of the route, and I’m not ruling out catching a bus to miss out the dull day between Haltwhistle and Alston).

Train tickets have been bought for both trips, and with the sudden realisation (not to mention a touch of panic) that April isn’t dreadfully far away, today the cooking and dehydrating has started (5 meat pasta sauces and 5 meat chilli are drying as I type).

Llangollen Day 2

Saturday 29 January

Distance: 11.6 miles (2000’ of ascent)

Weather: Sunny and delightfully crisp

As unlikely as it seemed as we listened to the rain fall last evening, today dawned clear and bright, with a good frost adorning the grass. Seeing the conditions caused us to put a spurt on, curtailing our pre-walk faffing, and we managed to get ourselves out at 9am.

A slightly different route was taken to get to the path up to Castell Dinas Bran, this time passing an information board which had apparently been covered with blobs of water from last evening’s rain at the point that freezing level was reached:

The speed at which we ascended the hill was entirely the fault of this sign. Had it been less definite about the time it would take to reach the top we would probably have had a leisurely stroll, but so firm was it in telling us that ‘It will take 25 minutes to reach the remains of the castle’ that we saw it as a challenge. Mick was amongst the ruins in 10 minutes; I took 12 minutes, although I did pause briefly to take a snap of the escarpment under which we had walked yesterday:

This really is a fantastic oversized-pimple of a hill, with incredible 360 views, augmented by the remains of the castle. Definitely worth the walk. Compared to yesterday afternoon’s greyness:

It was much nicer today:

A good poke around was had, oohing in every direction, particularly to the north where the mist hung in the valleys and capped the hills:

Afraid of slipping on the steep descent (it had been very slip-slidey on the iced-up stones on the way up), it was a bit of a nervous descent, but we made it intact to pick up Offa’s Dyke Path. After a bit of road walking, through some pleasing woodland we went. Trevor Hall Wood said the sign. “Who’s he then?” asking Mick, supposing that a hyphen was missing.

The main purpose of this walk, for me, was the Pont Cysyllte aqueduct and by-and-by the route took us to the canal:

I have clear memories of not crossing the aqueduct when I was somewhere between 9 and 11. We got onto the end of its lengthy span, my grandmother (who has no head for heights at all) appreciated what we were about to do and refused to go any further. No amount of cajoling would convince her that there was nothing to worry about, so back we went. Finally I had the opportunity to rectify that unfinished business.

It’s a truly incredible structure:

Mick tried in vain to try to take a sensible photo of me on the crossing:

It was a long way down to the river!

Having crossed the span twice (our circular walk came very close to the end of the aquaduct, but didn’t require us to cross it, so it was a bit of an out-and-back side-trip), we detoured further to a local road bridge in an effort to find a vantage point where we could admire the entire magnificence. We didn’t find that vantage point, but we could still admire sections of it between the trees.

Our way back to Llangollen was a simple stroll along the canal, the tow path of which was unsurprisingly busy on this fine Saturday morning. No narrow boats were moving on the canal, although there were a few people making other use of the waterway:

Dinas Bran had been within our sights for much of the day, and so it was as we paused for lunch. Finding a picnic bench for our break was an added bonus:

As regular readers will know, I’m not always a fan of canal walking, but some canals are better than others, and this one is lovely:

Reaching Llangollen a detour was had into the town before we made our way back to Colin. It seemed obligatory to join the other tourists on the bridge to take a snap of the river:

Equally obligatory was a trip to the butcher for a lamb oggie for Mick. He was quite pleased with it:

So, a good couple of walks had. I think we’ll be back to explore the area further.

Llangollen Day 1

Distance: 7.25 miles (1500’ of ascent)

Weather: decidedly rainy, with a few brief dry interludes

Having scrapped the idea of a backpacking trip last weekend due to the high winds (those winds that blew the tea out of my cup!) and having had the previous weekend’s late-proposed trip vetoed, I was determined we were going to go somewhere this weekend. Great indecision surrounded whether it was going to be a backpack or a Colin weekend and finally I came down on the side of Colin. With that decision not finally made until Thursday morning, I was left with only a couple of hours on Thursday night to get everything together, chose a destination and print some maps.

After much consideration, at 9.30pm I declared that a conclusion had been reached as to venue – we were going to Llangollen. Just over twelve hours later we arrived in the town and wasted little time in getting out for a stroll.

To the north we went, pausing to look up at Castell Dinas Bran which (as the name suggests if you’re familiar with Welsh) is a castle atop a hill, which was due to be on our route for Day 2:

Picking up the Clwydian Way, which wended its way very pleasantly along a hillside, we passed above the remains of an Abbey, although it was the caravan park to the side and the hill beyond which dominated such that you could easily overlook the Abbey in the view:

The surrounding views were worthy of consideration too, which is probably why the trouble had been taken to create some seating overlooking the vista:

With the climb needed to get to the upper seating level, the picnic bench was noted as being ‘for the less nimble’!

Having paused for lunch in between showers (it was turning out to be more ‘rain with a few brief dry periods’ than the forecast ‘sunshine and showers’) we made straight for the escarpment which dominates the views to the east. A fine geological feature, we declared, but the weather wasn’t conducive to good photos:

Even in the miserable weather, we could appreciate how attractive were the surroundings and many a pause was had to admire the features. By and by we got to the point where we were to leave Offa’s Dyke Path, with the intention that we would skirt Castle Hill. There had seemed little point in going over it in this weather when we would be up there on Saturday morning, when the weather was forecast for wall-to-wall sunshine. However, when we got to the junction where we would have turned to go around the base we were both in firm agreement that going over the top seemed like a much better plan.

Up we sploshed, got rained on a lot at the top (I did take plenty of photos, but they’re all very grey), and then by the time we got down the other side the sun was out! Even the bird life was sunning itself on every available perch:

The sun was but a brief interlude. It was wet outerwear that got stripped off as we returned to Colin and it was hard to believe that the weather was going to make such a remarkable about-turn overnight.

January

(Subtitle: Work is a Restrictive Practice)

By the amount that I’ve posted on this blog so far this year (i.e. nothing), I’ve probably given the impression that we’ve had a month of laziness. Although our mileage isn’t as high as previous Januaries (I refer you to the subtitle of this post), we have been out and about a little bit; I just haven’t written about any of it (yep, that subtitle again).

So here’s a bit of a taster of what we’ve been up to in January:

New Boots!

I started the year with new boots! Father Christmas had bought me a new pair of Brasher Superlites to replace my old knackered pair (I would say ‘worn out’ except that it’s more that I never cleaned or treated them and the leather finally cracked, but they did last five or six winters of muddy local walks). Alas, Brasher felt the need to change the design beyond recognition in the intervening years. The new pair no longer look new, but I fear they’re never going to be quite as slipperesque in their comfort as my old pair.

5, 19, 27 January – it’s borderline whether these counted as proper walks, as on these three dates I walked from the edge of Derby to work at Pride Park and back again. It’s not a walk without merit; almost the entirety can be done on off-road cycle paths and some of the length follows the river Derwent. There were storms raging on 5 January. The river was mightily high and I got blown along, glad that the wind was mainly behind me; I was even more glad that the winds had calmed down before the return leg of the journey.

8 January – Martin mentioned that he and a group of other people were going to go for a 10-mile (or so) walk from Taddington, which seemed like a jolly good idea to us, so along we went. Martin & Mick took it in turns to adopt ridiculous poses:

Photo of Mick is copyright Martin Banfield

I chatted myself hoarse:

(Sorry JJ & Viv; I obviously don’t get out in company enough!)

And in all honesty I didn’t pay an awful lot of attention to our surroundings, except for the old mine buildings:

And the skein of geese:

You can read Martin’s full account of this outing here.

11 January – I noticed that there were crocuses out on the estate, which struck me as being rather early.

The snowdrops took a couple of weeks longer to appear. I looked more of a sight that usual on this outing; people stared quite a lot

You can’t quite see the half-a-reel of tape over my face!

(I was on my way home from the hospital; the patch came off a couple of hours later).

14/15 January – Finally a bit of crisp winter weather! Mick vetoed my suggestion, made bright and early on the Saturday morning, that we should quickly pack our backpacks and get ourselves up to the Peaks for a quick overnight, but we did get out for a couple of local walks.

Gorgeous conditions!

I’d already done my ‘local villages’ circuit the previous weekend and noted three big trees which had been downed by the late December/early January storms. Someone was busy cutting these up for firewood:

21 January – It had been a week short of 3 months since we’d set foot on Cannock Chase! Well overdue a visit, that’s where we headed on the 21st, spending a good chunk of the day walking a 13.5-mile route. Not much had changed except for the complete disappearance of one of the forestry plantations on our route. No photos from this walk, other than this sign which had me confused as to what it is they’re trying to convey:

Is it where cyclists arriving by car should park? Is it where cyclists should go, and also where there’s a car park? Or is it a cycle park badly described?

22 January – With spray coming off the river, a swell on the canal and white-tops on the lake, it was another breezy weekend as we did another repetition of one of our local circuits. I even had a gust blow the tea out of my cup! Of all the interesting things I could have photographed on this outing, this is the only snap to be found on the camera:

Not an interesting snap, and taken purely because a new footpath-fingerpost had appeared during the previous seven days. There’s currently no evidence that anyone else uses this path; maybe it will suddenly gain popularity by the addition of this post?!

27/28 January – We were always going to go somewhere this weekend, but it was gone 9pm on Thursday night when I decided that Llangollen was where I fancied. I think that deserves a post or two all of its own…

So, there’s January been and (almost) gone, with just a smidge over 100 miles walked.