M&G Go For A Walk

Llangollen Day 2

2012-01-29T20:00:00.001Z

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

2012-01-29T19:49:00.001Z

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

2012-01-29T19:39:00.001Z

(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.

2011: Illustrated

2012-01-01T20:05:00.002Z

It’s that time of year when I get ridiculously gratuitous with my graph production, demonstrating quite how obsessive I can be about collecting and playing with data (although I haven’t quite succumbed to Mick’s suggestion of calculating how many miles we walk per year per dehydrated curry!).

First off, the headline is that I went out for a walk on 172 days of 2011, covering 1892 miles, which was broken down between the months as follows:

The usual pattern prevailed, with the miles dropping off considerably in the second half of the year

It’s not a difficult calculation to see that I met and exceeded my target of averaging 5 miles per day for the year. From the day we set out from Lowestoft heading to Ardnamurchan, my average miles-per-day stayed above the magic number for the whole of the rest of the year:

The pink line marks the magic ‘5 miles per day’. The blue line shows how my year tracked against that. The X axis is a mess, but I’ve given up trying to make it look prettier.

My ascent-by-month chart isn’t entirely accurate because I haven’t worked out rough ascent figures for the Madeira trip in November. Most of the other ascent figures are taken from Anquet (and always rounded down), so may not be overly accurate either:

I wore a lot of different pairs of shoes this year:

Unfortunately, I didn’t fulfil my aim of reducing my shoe collection. I threw away one pair of worn-out shoes, but gained three new pairs.

As for the weather, I walked in more wet weather this year than last, with over a quarter of my outings involving some sort of precipitation:

The ‘dry’ and ‘sunny’ entries were mainly thanks to the incredibly dryness of March and April. As I’ve observed before, if we hadn’t popped home for a week in the middle of our East to West walk then we would have walked the entire thing without any significant rain (thankfully we did take that week off and thus found out that the tent was leaking before the TGO Challenge, during which it rained every day). This chart shows how much our full waterproofs were used during the 46 days of the East to West trip:

The categories are: Blue = not worn; Salmon = worn for less than half an hour; Green = worn for more than half an hour but less than an hour and a half; and Purple = worn for more than an hour and a half.

I got some quality miles in during 2011, with far fewer repetitions of my usual local circuits. I’m hoping to get some quality miles walked in 2012 too, but have my doubts that I’ll get anywhere near this year’s mileage. Shall I set myself a target? I’m not sure.

(Not) Patterdale – Day 5

2012-01-01T18:20:00.001Z

Saturday 31 December 2011

As I mentioned, our fourth night wasn’t spent in Patterdale, as it turns out that it’s necessary to book well in advance if you want a hard-standing on a campsite around New Year. A bit of phoning around did eventually find us somewhere to spend the night, just south of Keswick, and once we were all pitched up, a look at the map told us that our final walk for 2011 was going to be a quick trip up Seat Sandal. It was the obvious choice for a quick outing, given that we’ve already been up all of the hills around it.

Unsurprisingly, given the preceding four days, we weren’t greeted by a blue-skied morning when we first peeked outside. Undeterred by the greyness and low cloud, by half past nine we were parked up at Dunmail Raise and our pre-departure faff had commenced. Somehow it turned into a mega-faff and by the time we were ready rain was falling.

It was but a shower, and a quarter of an hour later not only had it passed, but we had ascended above the first layer of cloud and into a clear pocket. Things were looking up!

Bit grey. Lots of water around.

Of course, it couldn’t last. By the time we got to the top it was raining in earnest and we were well and truly in the cloud again, but the walk to get there had been an easy and pleasant one alongside the rushing burn.

On another day we would have made a circuit by walking down the spur towards Grasmere, but given that we couldn’t see anything anyway there seemed to be little benefit in doing that. We simply performed an about turn and back down we went.

The rain didn’t let up the whole way down, so once again it was two soggy people who stripped off raingear on returning to Colin. His shower room is a handy place to dump wet stuff, and we had plenty of it.

So, five days walking, seven Wainwrights visited, five rainy days and two windy days. Can’t complain really. It was all good fun in spite of the wetness, and the law of averages would suggest that we were overdue a wet and windy December trip to the Lakes.

Our holiday wasn’t entirely over. On the way home we popped by to see Conrad, with whom we enjoyed lunch and swapping of plans for the upcoming year. Then we spent a ridiculous number of hours trying to get home (a lengthy process due to a closure on the M6 which involved the passage of an hour and a half during which time we progressed a paltry two miles south). We made it home in good time to see in the New Year with a bottle of something appropriate.

New Year already! Must be time to publish my annual graphs describing last year’s walking statistics, mustn’t it?

Patterdale Day 4

2011-12-31T09:24:00.000Z

Friday 30 December

It was not a stormy night! All was calm and dry, hence we sprang out of bed bright and early this morning (relatively, we are on holiday after all) ready for another hill.

The rain started just as we left the campsite and even dithering for an hour in the car park by the Kirkstone Inn didn't make it stop, so eventually, with time marching on, off we set. Red Screes was our first of two targets for the morning and from the map it looked like it would be a quick outing.

What I hadn't banked on was how much the temperature had dropped overnight, and how snowy and icy it was on the way up Red Screes. The extra care needed slowed us down considerably.

The rain at the pass was soon falling on us as snow, and so it continued as we made fresh tracks all the way to the summit. We had met one family on our way up, but with three young children in tow, they had decided that the summit wasn't for them today. Quite right too - some of those scrambly bits required perhaps a bit more care than you would entrust to a five-year-old.

With no view to admire we didn't tarry long atop Red Screes. For the first time since I'd put my boots on, blood was threatening to return to my toes, so I was anxious to keep moving. By the time we reached Middle Dodd my toes were back with me, but we still didn't tarry very long because there still wasn't much to see.

Having followed the trodden path for a while down the north spur (during which time we descended enough for the snow to turn back to rain), off we veered to take a route that Wainwright would not have recommended. It was a tad steep.

Knees were grumbling by the time we hit the valley, where the rain was getting heavier. Pausing only to shove mini chocolate bars into our mouths, we barely broke stride on the return to the car park.

With rain/snow having fallen during the entire 2.5 hours we were out, we were two very soggy people by the time we reached Colin and, having stripped off the wet stuff and donned dry stuff, the kettle was set upon the stove. A steaming mug of hot chocolate washed lunch down nicely.

Tonight we've moved location (by lack of available pitches in Patterdale, not by choice). Tomorrow, if the weather clears up just a little bit, there'll be just one more hill before we wend our way home.

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Patterdale Day 3

2011-12-30T10:11:00.001Z

Thursday 29 December

It was a dark and stormy night and the rain came down in torrents. Well, actually, the wind finally let up a bit, but the rain most certainly came down.

Seven o'clock came and lying listening to the rain falling I decided that we may as well give it a while to stop so a lie-in was had. The same decision was made at 8am, 9am and 10am (that I was reading a very gripping book may have had an influence, on top of the continued rain).

Finally (with our planned long walk long-abandonned) we had to conclude that if we didn't make a move we wouldn't even be having a short walk, so at 11.30 off we set.
We didn't pick the easiest ascent route to get up Dove Crag. In fact, given the plethora of paths that litter the fells, we probably picked one of the harder going options, as we slogged pathlessly onto the ridge. The ascent and distance was hard won ("good training!" we said), moreover, as in the latter stages we were being lashed painfully by hail and trudging through inches-deep wet snow.

A chat was had with two chaps out doing the Fairfield Horseshoe, when we finally reached the ridge-path. No progress could be made at that point anyway, as we all stood braced against a gust of wind.

On the top of Dove Crag we had a lie down, simply because we couldn't stand. And when we did ajudge it safe to get back to our feet again Mick scurried off almost bent double to make headway, whilst I got blown over. Harrumph!

With another blow-down on our way along the ridge our hopes of getting up Hart Crag were abandonned. Being up there in that weather was madness. We started our descent as soon as we could...

...but Hart Crag was so close and it seemed such a shame not to even attempt it and with the squall having passed through the wind did seem to have dropped a bit. Back up to the ridge we climbed, dithered a little more as to whether our next move was the sensible one, and then we almost ran up to the top, from where we could see the next squall approaching.

With just a quick glance around and a shouted comment about the incredible view the top offers, down we scurried again, glad when we got into the lee of the hill.

Not that things then became easy. The next squall brought snow rather than hail and by then we were making our way down a steep (semi-snow covered) stone staircase where now and again the wind would also find us. I did manage to get below the snow-line in one piece, before next finding myself sprawling on the ground. I'm really not prone to falling over; this was becoming a record day for me, and not in a good way!

Once down the tricky section we soon rejoined our outward route and our thoughts turned to hot drinks and lunch. It was gone 3pm and lunch hadn't yet been taken.

Again, the light was dimming by the time we got back. A good day, we declared (having long forgotten my hunger-induced maudlin rant on the final, slippery, snow-covered bit of the ascent).

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Patterdale Day 2

2011-12-30T10:07:00.000Z

Wednesday 28 December
(That last post should have been dated Tuesday 27 December - seem to have lost track of the days)

It was a dark and stormy night and, my goodness, did that wind blow? I imagine it would have been a quite 'interesting' night in a tent.
Alas, it hadn't blown itself out by this morning and soon plans were being tempered. The plan hatched last night was heavily influenced by the realisation yesterday evening that both the pasta and the rice, which were key ingredients in our planned evening meals, were still in the cupboard at home. As a result we would take in Middle Dodd and Red Screes on our way down to Ambleside to rectify our grocery gap. We would also take the opportunity to buy yet another map case as all five of our existing ones were also still at home. Doh! More checklists required (or maybe if we'd even glanced at any of the ones that already exist...).

As the wind continued unabated it was clear that I didn't want to battle that wind for 12 miles (although I suppose it would have been behind us for at least some of that distance). Instead hopes of hills were abandonned in favour of a short, low-level stroll into Patterdale. Such a crying shame as the cloud was well above the summits and the day not a bad one (save for the wind).

Patterdale's Post Office saw us right in the grocery department before we fell into the White Lion for a cup of tea. That was over an hour ago. We're still making our way through the vat of tea served to us. I'm not sure that we've ever been defeated by a pot of tea before - but eight cups apiece does seem a little excessive.

The weather forecast displayed in the Post Office suggests that today's 'hurricane force winds on summits' will abate tomorrow to a more reasonable 30-40mph. As for today, after a stroll back to Colin there are books to be read and I'm sure that more tea will feature in our leisurely afternoon.

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Patterdale Day 1

2011-12-30T10:04:00.001Z

Wednesday 28 December

Our long-held plan was to be in Scotland this week, playing in the snow on some hills. A few weeks back I looked for, and found, a suitable campsite, but held off booking it as such was the snowiness of Scotland at the time that I didn't want to book if snowy roads were going to prevent us getting there.

In a complete about-turn in the weather, winter suddenly receded and Christmas day saw a record temperature of 15 degrees recorded in Aberdeen. Desperately we scoured the forecasts for some hope of a return to winter, but all we found were reports of positive temperatures on the summits and webcams showing only patchy snow. Acknowledging that our ice axes were going to remain in the cupboard a while longer we looked for somewhere to go closer to home; it didn't seem worth the fuel to travel so far in the absence of snow. We'll save that fuel for a snatched weekend in February.

And so, here we are in Patterdale, chosen as it offered the most un-bagged Wainwrights accessible directly from the campsite.

We wasted no time in our bagging. Colin had been settled on his pitch for all of half an hour (during which time a quick lunch was grabbed) before we set out with just 3 hours of daylight remaining.

Our jaunt wasn't a long one. High Hartsopp Dodd was attacked head-on (which didn't feel as steep as it looked - a good thing as it looks thigh-burningly steep), and then, having ascended into the cloud, the wind was battled on our way over to Little Hart Crag. The wind made us stagger before Scandale Pass was reached, but finally our route became sheltered again and down below the cloud we dropped.

The light was dulling by the time we climbed back into Colin. The wind was rising too. Colin is being buffetted and we can only hope that the wind will blow itself out overnight. There are more hills to be climbed on the morrow.

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Martin & Sue’s Christmas Walk

2011-12-11T20:22:00.001Z

Just before 10 o’clock this morning the last couple of cars pulled into a layby on the A515 east of Coldeaton. It was a good job that the layby was a big one, as 30 people accepted Martin’s invitation for his annual Christmas walk.

I’m not sure that Martin remembered to renew his ‘good weather’ subscription when it lapsed earlier this year. Over previous years he has been renowned for having fantastic weather for every walk he has arranged. There have been a few blips in his 100% sunshine record this year, and today’s forecast was decided wet (heavy rain from 9am to 6pm said the forecast when I checked it last night). The straw at which I clutched was the knowledge that the weather in this country is seldom as bad as forecast.

Rain wasn’t falling as we set out along the Tissington Trail, nor as we slip-slid our way down the steep, muddy side of Wolfscote Dale:

The muddiness of that descent was nothing compared to muddiness encountered later!

Wolfscote Dale is a lovely place, but today attention was captured by chatting with others more than by the surroundings. This was a social occasion, after all.

Elevenses marked the time when the rain started to fall, but that didn’t put anyone off their flasks of tea and the CCS and Fudge Brownies provided by Martin and Sue. Mick & I were particularly happy to lighten Martin’s load on both counts, as (in a repeat of last year’s Christmas walk) we had arrived at the start point only to realise that our morning snacks were still at home. Do I need a checklist every time I leave the house? Apparently so!

The river was running high, a couple of herons flew past just metres away, and a bit more mud was encountered, and before we knew it we were approaching Hartington.

The Charles Cotton Hotel was the venue for lunch, and they did a good job of feeding 30 wet and hungry walkers. They had interesting murals too. This one was in the Ladies’ Powder Room and was entitled something like ‘Why Men Shouldn’t Flyfish Naked’:

It’s always a bit of a wrench to leave a warm, inviting place when you know that it’s hammering down with rain outside, but a move had to be made and so move we did. It was something of a bonus that by the time shoes, bags and jackets had been retrieved, the rain had stopped. It stayed stopped too, until a whole 2 minutes into our drive home.

There was, however, a bit of standing water on the return leg:

I was glad to have discovered a pair of long-forgotten waterproof shoes lurking in the depths of my wardrobe before we set out this morning. They served me well.

It was still daylight (just about) when we got back to the start point, said our goodbyes and tootled off in the direction of home. Thanks go to Martin for another excellently organised Christmas walk (during which not a single navigational error occurred!). Same again next year?

(Another account of this walk will appear on Martin’s blog, and also likely on Alan Rayner’s blog, and on Helen & Colin’s blog.)

Day 5 in Madeira

2011-12-03T20:51:00.001Z

Saturday 19 November

Sitting supping beer on the roof terrace as the sun set the previous evening a consensus was quickly reached that we would return to Camacha the following day to walk the Levada de Serra.

Camacha is home to a basket factory and shop, so that’s where our day started (click here for the photographic evidence of what our tour involved…). Following a premature coffee break, off we headed out to seek the levada that we were to follow. From a promising start to the day, the weather took a bit of a nose-dive when soon after setting off it started to rain with some vigour. A handy bus shelter gave us (ummm….) shelter whilst we donned waterproofs and by the time the waterproofs-faff was over the rain had almost stopped.

Five minutes after donning them, off came everyone’s waterproofs (except for my jacket, which stayed on for most of the day – it was decidedly cooler than previous days).

The surroundings for this walk were so different to the previous day it was hard to believe that we were on the same hillside, just a bit higher up. Woodland (notably eucalyptus, but with oak, chestnut and beech too) was the main feature, and with the fallen leaves I could have believed that I was somewhere much closer to home (except that I was wearing shorts in mid-November!).

Yep, we were a matching-hat quartet in our Tilleys. Mick, Martin and Sue even had the same colour.

The Levada de Serra walk is a fine and interesting, but not overly long, so when we reached (mumble, mumble, if I knew what I’d done with the map I’d look up the name of the place) Martin suggested that we headed down the road to pick up the Levada dos Tornos that we’d walked the previous day, but that before we got to the nasty, evil, exposed bit that we should cut down the valley to Funchal. Everyone agreed it was a good plan.

The most notable thing about the Levada dos Tornos today was how much water it had in it. The previous day I could have just jumped in the water to avoid the exposed bits, and I would have been paddling up to my ankles. Today I would have been wading up to at least thigh level.

Having all failed to notice the side-path we wanted to take (even though we’d walked past it three times in a bit of to-ing and fro-ing for a photo-opportunity), we almost reached the nasty, evil, exposed section before realising that something was amiss. We’d not overshot it by too far, though, and we soon located our turn. Down, down, down we then went. It seemed to me that we descended steeply for about 4000 feet, even we only started at about 1500 feet. Thoughtfully, some path-makers had put in steps to help us on our way:

Eventually things flattened out when we reached another old levada, but the respite was brief, before we headed back down again, this time to pick up some alleyways into Funchal.

Somewhere along the 10.5-mile route, I had met and gone past my mileage target for the year (1825 miles) and so when we reached Funchal my resolve to see the walk through to its natural conclusion at the hotel was sorely tested as we passed a taxi rank. If I hadn’t tripped and accidentally fallen into the open door of a taxi, I promise that I would have walked the last 2 miles. As it went, Mick and Sue jumped into the taxi to retrieve me and before we knew it we were back at the hotel in time for the quiz. Martin, having missed the whole falling-into-a-taxi incident, wasn’t part of the rescue party and thus had to walk back. He missed the quiz, as did Sue who had an appointment with a masseuse, and so Mick & I had to put in extra effort to maintain the team’s reputation. We succeeded (by a clear five points too ).

That evening, over wine, beer and too much food, we discussed what to do with our final full day on the island.

Day 4 in Madeira

2011-12-02T18:03:00.001Z

Friday 18 November

This was the day on which I discovered that I have absolutely no head for walking along a 15” wide parapet with a sheer drop of a few hundred feet off to the side, and without even the skinniest of railings. For ‘no head for’ you can read ‘sheer terror ensued’.

The day didn’t start with sheer terror. Per the plan that had been hatched over beer, wine and food the night before, the morning saw us journey up to Monte where after a look around the church, off we went to the Tropical Gardens. It seems that there are lots of gardens in Madeira, and although we didn’t visit any of the others by way of comparison I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the Tropical Gardens – they were most definitely my cup of tea.

After a bit of a wander around, Sue was feeling all hot and bothered, so she opted for a shower…

Before we knew it, a coffee shop was before us and no time was wasted in declaring it to be coffee time. Today coffee was augmented by cake and a glass of local wine. Appropriate, we felt, given that we had just learned that we had places in next year’s TGO Challenge.

With coffee, cake and wine consumed, off we headed to pick up Levada dos Tornos. Here are two snippets of what Paddy says about this walk:

- “…in the case of the hugely popular Levada dos Tornos, you could end up stuck at the end of a long ‘crocodile’ of walkers”

- “The levada has a narrow parapet and some exposed fenced stretches.”

What we found didn’t bear out either of these statements. We did meet a small handful of other people, but a number of the exposed stretches most definitely didn’t have fences.

Even the most nervous of the party managed to get past the dodgy unfenced sections. I did it by throwing a hissy fit, bawling a bit and making Mick come back and help me. Martin did it on his hands and knees. Once again, Mick and Sue turned pirouettes above the drops and didn’t bat an eyelid at the exposure. Fortunately the exposed sections (which probably weren’t more than 10 yards long each) were finally behind us and I managed to make an effort to smile again:

Whilst Martin posed to show off his muddy knees:

And at the first suitable spot we decided to calm our nerves with a spot of lunch. It wasn’t a bad spot for lunch either, sitting in the sunshine looking down over Funchal:

Skipping forward a few miles (for the avoidance of doubt, we didn’t actually skip to get there) a significant feature of this walk is a tunnel, which can be avoided by going over the top. What’s the fun of omitting the tunnel though? Even Mick was game for it, even though he had locked his head-torch in the hotel safe that day. What this photo doesn’t show is the bits of ceiling protruding downwards, the bits of wall protruding outwards and the flooded bits of path, nor does it show how dark it was in there.

We all made it through without incident, and some while later we managed (on the second attempt) to identify the place where we needed to leave the levada and into Camacha we walked.

The day was marching rapidly towards sunset by the time we located the bus stop and started trying to decipher the timetable. The conclusion reached by Sue and I was that there should be a bus in about 15 minutes time. About five minutes later a taxi pulled up, having obviously clocked the likely fares. Twenty minutes later we were back in the hotel. It may have cost us a few euro more than the two buses would have cost, but worth every cent for the time saved. After all, it was almost beer o’clock, following which there was wine and too much food to be consumed, whilst we contemplated what to do the following day.

Mam Tor and Lose Hill

2011-12-01T18:51:00.001Z

The last time I went for a walk was in Madeira where, contrary to the indications of the fallen leaves, it felt like summer. Today, it felt most decidedly wintery.

Suitably wrapped up, we soon got the blood pumping by choosing a steep route up Mam Tor. Once on the top, our admirations of the far-reaching views on this fine day were shared by a few others who reached the trig at the same time as us (albeit from different directions). Then, like a group walk, we all set out towards Lose Hill.

When out of the wind, the middle of the day was approaching warm and thus there was no shivering as we enjoyed sandwiches just before Back Tor.

Having reached Lose Hill we shunned a proper circular walk, as it seemed a shame to drop down the hill on such a nice day. Instead, an about turn was performed and back along the ridge we went, for a while at least.

We did soon pick up a downwards path and back to Castleton we went.

It wasn't a long outing, but then size isn't everything is it?

Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

Day 3 in Madeira

2011-11-29T21:24:00.001Z

Thursday 17 November

The majority vote for Day 3’s activities was to have a look around Funchal - although not before another three-course breakfast had been consumed. After all, it would be foolhardy to step out for an arduous day of sight-seeing without sufficient fuelling!

I hadn’t really thought that a stroll into town would count as a walk in its own right, but given the distance covered it did amount to a decent circular outing (the circular bit wasn’t entirely intended, but I’ll say nothing about the tunnel incident).

After a visit to the cathedral and the market, we wandered down a randomly picked back-street, in the direction of the fort. At first it looked like any ordinary back-street:

Then we discovered that the street doubled as an art exhibition, where an art project has seen the majority of the doors in that area being painted – and not in the usual sense of a coat of gloss. Martin declared that this one was more than a handful…

The quality varied from professional right down to ‘did a five year old do that?!’, but I only snapped the ones that caught my eye.

This one was my favourite:

Further up the road Mick turned a sudden pirouette and snapped Sue & I walking up the road, without even giving us the chance to adopt the usual grins. It isn’t an interesting photo in its own right, except that a few days later Mick & I were sitting at one of those restaurant tables to the left and half way through lunch Mick (who was seated facing up the road) commented on how many photos he was appearing in, as almost everyone who walked up that road turned at the top and took a photo looking back. It wasn’t until we got home and reviewed the pictures that we discovered that Mick had done the exact same thing himself.

Having reached the fort, we didn’t get to visit it immediately as it had just closed for lunch, but we did stop and read the information sign outside. There were quite a few of these information signs dotted around and in general the translation was excellent. This one held up well until the very last sentence: “The Contemporaneous Art Museum here installed displays its heap mainly through temporary exhibitions.”

It’s heap?!

Having followed the fort’s example, and found a good spot for lunch ourselves, we returned early in the afternoon. Unfortunately my photos of the fort don’t in any way show what it’s really like, but the opinion I formed was that it’s definitely worth a visit.

The art exhibition wasn’t my cup of tea, but that turned out to be secondary to the interest of the building itself. This was one of the modern art exhibits (a backpack complete with all of the backpacking essentials: ice axe, bed roll, skeleton…):

The art exhibitions even led us down into the dungeons:

Back out in daylight we walked past the local chaps variously playing dominoes or cards in the square:

By this time we were on our return leg, but still got distracted by sculptures placed along the sea-front promenade:

Funchal seems to have quite a few gardens and we walked through one as an alternative to a road walk back to the hotel. Here we witnessed a subject of graffiti that I’ve not before seen:

Then we stumbled across the Presidents house and recalled that we’d been told that you could take a stroll around his gardens. The guard gave us the nod and so that’s what we did. It was excellent! Amongst the interesting flowers, plants and border:

there were also various caged birds, including this golden pheasant:

And these Macaws:

The president had a pretty impressive view of Funchal too:

Finally we did drag ourselves away for the final bit of a walk up the hill to the hotel. It was an excellent day out – so much more than I expected from a stroll into town. To my surprise, we’d walked somewhere in excess of 6 miles.

Having won the hotel quiz (no prize, it was just for fun) it was then an evening of beer, wine and too much food, whilst we decided what to do on Day 4…

Day 2 in Madeira

2011-11-28T20:32:00.001Z

Wednesday 16 November

The previous day we had promised the taxi driver that we would go to the east peninsula of the island, and we were good to our word. Unfortunately, that taxi driver must have had a better offer and the one who had replaced him wanted €80 (€20 more than the previous day’s quote) for the journey. Our bartering left him almost unmoved on his price, so off we headed to try to find some competition on a taxi rank.

We didn’t actually get that far as on the way I popped into a car hire emporium to find out how much it would be to hire a car for the day. €41 was the answer (or cheaper if you were prepared to take the CDW risk), and so a car was hired. Fortunately (for everyone) Martin happened to have his driving licence in his pocket; for a while it looked like I was going to drive which could have been nerve-wracking all round!

So, off to Ponta de Sao Lourenco we went. It was raining when we got there, and although not as heavily as when we’d left Funchal, it was enough to cause waterproofs to be donned. They stayed on for about three minutes, whereupon the rain stopped and the weather gradually improved as the day went on.

Even within that first three minutes it was obvious that this was a walk of a completely different nature from day 1 (well, obviously it was different, because the first walk had been a levada walk, and this one was a peninsula walk); whereas we had only encountered a smattering of other people on the first walk, this was obviously on the tourist trail. The paths were well made and although Paddy talks about steep slopes and cliff edges, there wasn’t anything like the exposure of the previous day and when there was the slightest possibility that wandering a few feet off the path could lead to disaster there was safety fencing in place.

Right at the start of the walk it wasn’t so much as a made-path as an ‘installed staircase’.

As you’d expect, these chaps were everywhere. Most of the time there wasn’t a chance of getting a snap of one as they shot off out of sight, but the day hadn’t warmed up at this point so this chap/ess let me stand right next to him/her as s/he posed for me.

Dotted along the path were a number of little spur paths to viewpoints. We visited all of them, enabling us to admire the fantastic colouring in the coastal rocks:

That last photo was taken on the return leg – it was sunny by then!

At the end of the peninsula are two lumps, the taller of which is 146 metres. We popped up to the top of the second lump before returning to sit at one of the picnic tables in front of the building you can see, to have our lunch. By that time the wind was really picking up and it was a breezy lunch break.

It may have been a touch on the windy side for our return leg, but that wind blew the clouds away. The blue sky set off the colours of the landscape nicely.

Back at the car park we passed again the information sign that told us that the walk was 4.25 miles and would take 2.5 hours. We had taken 3.5 hours and, thanks to the detours to the viewpoints, had covered 5 miles. The time taken made me glad we had hired a car. The taxi drivers had said that they would wait three hours for us. You could certainly do the walk in 3 hours, but that would have missed out the tarrying at viewpoints and the pondering over the geology, and would have made us feel a bit too rushed.

The presence of a hire car also meant that we could explore a bit further, so with the kind agreement of our driver, off we headed to the north side of the island (via an ‘interesting’ and scenic route) to see the ‘traditional houses’ that are dotted around Santana.

Here’s one under blue sky with fluffy clouds.

Across the road was a coffee shop, which we favoured with our custom. It was whilst we were in there that the skies clouded over and the rain started. With lots of other people also wanting to get out of the rain and with our drinks long since drunk, we eventually felt compelled to step back out into the weather (admittedly only Mick & I were reluctant as we had both left our jackets in the car). My goodness, that rain came down!

That is a colour photo!

Having trotted back to the car, a shorter (and much less interesting and scenic) route was taken back to the main road to Funchal where I’m sure that wine, beer and too much food featured in our evening as we talked about what to do the following day…

Day 1 in Madeira

2011-11-26T19:34:00.001Z

There were two possible ways we could have chosen which walks to do in Madeira. We could have read the guide books in detail, scratched our heads at length, done comparisons about the alleged merits of each walk and picked accordingly – or we could see what Martin suggested. Martin has been to Madeira more than once before, so when he suggested a circular walk, starting from the door of the hotel and featuring the town levada, we nodded enthusiastically.

The taxi driver who was loitering outside of the hotel didn’t agree with Martin’s choice of walk. Boring, he decried and offered to take us to the east of the island for €60. We promised him we would do that walk on the morrow and marched off up the road to find the levada.

I may not get all of these photos in exactly the order they occurred, but here’s the gist of the day:

Walking through the suburbs along the levada, we soon found that banana growing in residential areas is the norm. Quite big those banana leaves, said Mick…

You’ll notice that Mick has legs. No-one was aware of that fact before this holiday

Soon there were more banana plantations than houses, all terraced into the hill.

Terracing was quite a feature of this first day, some of it being particularly steep:

But as we made our way up the valley the cultivated parts gave way to general greenness and trees.

No tunnels were involved on the first day, although there was one bit where the levada went through the rock. Note that the railings here, as we emerged back into the open, were sturdy; probably the sturdiest we saw all week.

Not all of the railings were in quite such good repair. This bridge, over a yawning abyss, was the first part that made me suspect that I might have a bit of an issue with exposure.

After a particularly exposed bit of the path I declared that I had gone as far as I was prepared to go. Martin had already stopped a while before, so I plonked myself down on the edge of the levada and watched a JCB in a quarry below me move great boulders from right to left and then back from left to right. Meanwhile, Mick and Sue (who both have such good heads for heights that they’ll turn pirouettes on the edge of a breeze-block perched over a 400-foot drop), continued to the point where a gate prevented their further progress. They returned to me to report that I’d done the difficult bit and that I should have continued.

Having backtracked to a junction, where we lunched, uphill we went to pick up another levada further up the valley-side. On the way we passed a Renault 4, a car known by my family as a ‘tin tray’. The very colour that my mother had too. Hers was a 1976 and had at least two new floors welded in before she gave it up for an Austin Princess.

But I digress, and we had another levada to walk, first having made our way through a building site to get there.

The railings here weren’t in such good repair, nor had they ever been so sturdy:

That turned out to be one of the better maintained bits of this waterway – which sounds like a complaint, but actually it was a good and interesting walk back up the same valley as earlier in the day, but at a higher level (from where we saw the JCB moving rocks back from the right to the left; I’m sure there was method in his work somewhere).

We lost Martin somewhere along the way, but onwards we went, until we met a German chap coming towards us. He explained that the path further on was too crumbly and narrow and exposed for him to continue, but he added that if we were going that way then he would join us.

When the edge of the levada was just one crumbling breeze-block wide (and it was actually breeze-block at that point, forming a repair in the original stone wall), we took to the water and had intended going about a hundred yards further than we did. What put us off was a sudden crack and whistling noise. Mick saw one rock fall in the water just behind us, but I looked down and saw the big boulder that had just flown right over our heads. I flattened myself into the dripping rock-face, where I whimpered a little, and we swiftly backtracked*. Yikes! That was a bit too much of a close call!

Everything else about the day was uneventful. We rejoined Martin who had found himself a nice vantage point to wait for us and made our way back into Funchal, where the Garmin Gadget put into ‘back to start’ mode assisted us in relocating our hotel. It’s the first time I’ve used that feature, and it did prove useful as we made our way through the suburbs.

It was an excellent and varied first day out, all in good weather. In total 13.25 miles were covered with an amount of ascent that was almost certainly overstated by the Gadget and which I can’t quite be moved to calculate from the map.

(*After we finished the walk, I read what Paddy had to say about it in the guidebook. His description includes the phrases “sheer, exposed cliffs’ and ‘danger of rock falls’!)

A Week In Madeira

2011-11-24T20:42:00.001Z

A week and a bit ago, shortly after we got back from our first outing in Colin, we popped off to Madeira for a week with Martin & Sue.

I opted not to blog as we went, but will try to string together a few words and snapshots about our outings over the next week.

If, by any chance, you should be too impatient to wait, then you can see what we got up to by reading Martin’s on-the-go posts (which contained no fiction and barely any exaggeration, honest), which are as follows:

Day 0 – Trying to meet up in Funchal

Day 1 – The deep-end introduction to exposed levada walking

Day 2 – A gentle stroll along a headland

Day 3 – Realising we’d all dressed in matching fleeces!

Day 3 – A gentle stroll around Funchal

Day 4 – The day I discovered that I have no head for walking along 15” wide parapets with sheer drops

Day 5 – The return leg from Camacha

Day 6 – Another stroll around Funchal

Day 7 – We should have come home, but stayed an extra day

Other news from the week included me meeting (and passing) my mileage target for the year (1825 miles) and our learning that we had places in the TGO Challenge next May (thanks to Louise for conveying that eagerly-awaited news!).

Introducing Colin…

2011-11-13T20:30:00.001Z

There has been a new addition to our camping accommodation. Previously there was just Vera, Susie, Connie, Ellie, Midi, Maxi & Dora* (some might argue that we have more tents than necessary, and they wouldn’t be wrong). Unlike the previous collection of girls, the new addition is big and butch and is therefore most definitely male. He was christened as Colin well before he came into our possession last Wednesday.

Here he is on a campsite in Ingleton:

He’s rather luxurious compared to our other camping accommodation. In fact, he’s not really camping accommodation at all; he’s a mobile house.

We haven’t really taken any photos specifically of the interior, but Mick did snap me chopping an onion in between sips of bubbly out of a plastic mug.

Such was the novelty of his first outing that we didn’t take the proposed backpacking trip, but we did get ourselves out for a couple of good day-walks. I’ll try to get around to penning a few words about them in a couple of weeks’ time.

The other new thing for the trip was Mick’s shoes. I think he chose the colour to go with his jacket…

(For those not familiar with the names of our tent collection: ‘Vera’ is a Terra Nova Voyager; ‘Susie’ is a Terra Nova Superlite Voyager; ‘Connie’ a Terra Nova Laser Competition; ‘Ellie’ a Vango Eos; ‘Dora’ an Aztec Dura; ‘Midi’ a Blacks dome; and ‘Maxi’ an Aztec Sala 3.)

Chilli Again?!

2011-11-08T20:07:00.001Z

The backpacks are packed again. There’s no guarantee that we’re going to get out for the fourth week in four, but we’ve maximised our chances by having everything* ready to go.

The downside is that no cooking and dehydrating has been done for months and the stocks are severely depleted, so for the fourth week in four the meal that I have available is a dehydrated veggie chilli. Good job we’ve not been out for a four-night trip, or it could have got a bit repetitive!

We’ve run out of dried rice too. Must get some dehydrating done before the next trip.

(*by everything I mean ‘all of our kit’. I don’t have a route up my sleeve, but I didn’t last week either, and the one two weeks before that was thrown together in ten minutes too, so there’s plenty of time yet to come up with a route.)

The photo is completely unrelated to the text, except that it was a bit chilly that night too

Back to Glossop (Again)

2011-11-06T19:05:00.001Z

Friday 4 November

Distance: 13.25 miles

Weather: A bit of rain, a bit of sunshine but mainly just cloudy.

Friday didn’t get off to the best of starts when, within two minutes of emerging from my sleeping bag, I upset the stove and dumped a whole pot of water onto my gear inside of the tent. The water may have been inconvenient, but at least the stove landed such that it narrowly missed setting fire to anything; that really would have been a bad start to the day.

Over breakfast the rain, which had fallen for much of the night finally stopped, but camp was still a soggy, misty place when we emerged at 7.30. What you can’t see from the photo is that it was also unseasonably warm. In fact, still in my summer sleeping bag, I think it was the warmest night (out of 63) I’ve spent in a tent this year:

Having ended Thursday about a mile away from the originally planned route, and having no intention of backtracking, we started Friday with a ‘get back on track’ diversion. The diversion didn’t go entirely well either as, when we reached the point where we needed to cross the River Ashop, we found that the bridge marked on the map (and which appears to be in place on aerial photos) is now just two piers without the critical bit in between. With the water levels being high, none of us fancied the ford, so a bit of head-scratching and map-poring took place. The decision was that we would continue on the south side of the river for two miles until we could cross back just before the Snake Inn.

It turned out to be an ‘interesting’ hour or so of walking. None of the side streams proved to be difficult obstacles:

Some of those tumbling side-streams were quite pretty too:

But, of course, it wasn’t all just a simple stroll along a riverside. Some diversions up the hillside were required to find our way down to steep-sided streams, and then there were the two barbed-wire topped fences over which we had to clamber:

After the second clamber, a trod was found, which took us all the way to where we wanted to be. A trod was better than no trod, but it was deceptively strenuous walking, being very slip-slidey in its muddiness. I look happy enough to be walking it, mind:

One last stream crossing brought us to second breakfast time, which was enjoyed with a cup of tea whilst sitting on the wall-of-convenient-height that you can see on the left side of this photo:

Back on the north side of the river, into woodland we went (entering the shade at almost the exact moment that the sun finally came out). Someone had rigged up a swing in that woodland and Mick & Martin both turned to me to pose for a photo opportunity. It didn’t look the most secure swing that I’ve ever seen hanging from a tree, but they made me. That expression on my face is me trying to smile whilst being very alarmed at quite how much the string is moving along the branch.

It was as we made our way up the Snake Path (still in the sunshine, you’ll note) that we first started seeing a helicopter going back and forth between Glossop and the east end of the Kinder Plateau.

Each leg of the helicopters trip took about five minutes and it went back and forth continuously until we were out of sight of it, as we approached Glossop. On each outward leg it was carrying a skip full of something. On each return leg it was dangling the empty skip from one end. It was flying pretty low and it came quite close to us on Mill Hill – so close that we exchanged waves with the pilot. This website has lots of information as to the current regeneration project on Kinder Scout, which confirmed that the load would have either been lime or fertiliser.

A similar project on Black Hill has had very noticeable results, as shown by the ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos I posted back in June last year.

As we dropped off Mill Hill I vaguely noticed something out of the corner of my eye, but didn’t think to investigate. It was Mick who spotted that it was aircraft remains, and over we popped for a look. Given how little wreckage was at this spot, I thought that Mick was guessing when he said that it was a Liberator, but it seems that he was right. It crashed in October 1944 on a delivery flight and both of the crew on board at the time survived.

The 1:25k map had suggested that there was a path running down from the Mill Hill path to the shooting cabin on Chunal Moor, and so there was. It may have been narrow and wetter than a wet thing, but it was definitely a path and it did take us down to where we wanted to be. From there we managed to stay on footpaths until nearly the centre of Glossop, from where it was just a bit of a road-walk back to our starting point.

We were later arriving back than expected, but then we had walked further than expected and with more obstacles than anticipated. All good fun though, and the trip was rounded off nicely when Pam & Paul didn’t baulk at allowing two muddy walkers (i.e. me & Mick; somehow Martin was remarkably clean!) into their house, for us to finish the trip exactly as it had begun, with tea, cake and good chat. (If you happen to read this Pam & Paul then thank you very much for your hospitality!)

From Glossop (Take 2)

2011-11-05T20:47:00.001Z

If you were standing in a pub at gone 9.30pm tonight (and not even a local pub) and someone said to you “Do you want to come on a quick backpack tomorrow morning?”, and if you hadn’t had any of your backpacking kit out of the cupboard since May, how would you react? I think that my mind would immediately spring to the negatives of how difficult it would be to get home, get enough sleep, sort out the kit, pack and get over to the Peak District in the timescales.

Martin, however, was apparently unfazed by the lateness of my announcement in Stockport on Wednesday night, that the trip that I’d hypothesized about earlier in the week was now on, and he agreed to meet us in Glossop in under 13 hours time.

And so, for the third week in three we managed to get out for a quick jaunt.

Thursday 3 November

Distance: 11.75 miles

Weather: Some rain, some dryness, some early darkness

By the time we left home at 9am on Thursday morning I had come up with a route and Martin had not only located and packed all of his kit (including new tent and rucksack) but had also arranged for parking, tea and cake at a friend’s house in Glossop.

A good time was had chatting over tea and cake with Paul, but as 11.30 approached we knew that we had to get going. Only 5.5 hours of daylight remained, and as Martin was using a tent that he’d not even looked at before, there was a certain imperative to reach our destination and find a pitch within daylight hours.

Given the very late arrangement of this trip, I hope that I can be forgiven for my lack of imagination in route choice. We headed up to Doctor’s Gate, turned left onto the Pennine Way, went down the Alport Valley, up to the trig point and down Alport Castles. In fact, the exact route Mick & I had taken in the opposite direction just five days previously. I still maintain that it’s one of my favourite bits of walking in the area, though, and so I was perfectly happy to be walking it again.

All a bit grey as we head up to Doctor’s Gate from Glossop

It was just a bit of a shame that the weather wasn’t playing ball, as, after a bit of sunshine earlier in the day, it started raining on us as we headed down the River Alport. Things had become rather more soggy underfoot in the last week too, although thanks to the freakishly warm weather I didn’t get cold feet even though I was wearing slippers without even the precaution of waterproof socks.

With the bad weather came dull light and by three o’clock it seemed like it was dusk. That light level didn’t improve as the rain stopped (at which point the bits of forest opposite started steaming nicely). My calculation of the hours of daylight didn’t prove to be misguided, and it wasn’t until gone quarter past four that the sun briefly made an appearance as it disappeared behind Kinder Scout and the sky to the west took on a certain glow.

With the light levels getting really low, we dived off the path to detour over to the last stream before where we would camp (but it seems that no photo was taken of said stream). Peaty water (but positively sparkling compared to last week’s strong-tea coloured specimen) was collected and just ten minutes or so more yomping took us to a patch of woodland with some nice lush green grass that, in the semi-darkness, looked almost flat.

Our tent was thrown up in double quick time before we went to inspect the components of Martin’s tent (a Nemo Obi 1p, on loan from Webtogs). We soon had it sorted, pitched and in a nice state of taughtness, by which time it was quarter past five, and night-time:

We did get around to pegging Vera down before bed!

I was happily and snug in the down trousers which hadn’t made it into last week’s packing list (and had been missed). It wasn’t that down trousers were required from a temperature point of view; it may be November, but the temperature was 12 degrees in our tent, and it got warmer as the night went on.

As well as tea-drinking, cooking (if you can call boiling water and adding dehydrated ingredients to it) and eating, I managed to read (and rant about) a good chunk of a Cicerone walking guide. In the meantime, Mick did what he usually does in tents in winter – he promptly fell asleep.

Thanks to the shelter of the woodland, all was quiet in our campsite, and I think that I was the last awake, not putting my book down until the exceptionally late hour of 8.30pm…

…to be continued…

The Gratuitous Graphs of October

2011-11-01T20:01:00.001Z

With only 60 days left this year, it seems like a good time to review how I’m doing against my target of walking 5 miles per day (or 1825 miles for the whole year).

Here’s the graph of the miles per month so far:

No break from the usual trend this year; in the middle of the year the mileage collapses

If you were to tot up those monthly totals you would come up with 1748 miles, just 77 shy of my target with 60 days to go. Seems achievable, doesn’t it?

This graph shows the average miles per day throughout the year so far. I concede that it’s not very well presented (miles are up the side; the first entry is 2 January 2011, the last entry is 30 October 2011), but the important thing is that as long as the blue line doesn’t touch or go below the pink line then I will be a happy tomato.

What isn’t shown by the graphs is that, this year, the miles I’ve put in have been of better quality than the last few years. There haven’t been endless repetitions of my local circuits (which isn’t to say that I haven’t walked them a good few times, but always with decent gaps in between those repetitions).

I will now try to refrain from posting any more graphs until year end!

Back to Glossop

2011-10-31T21:05:00.001Z

Saturday 29 October (0700-1315)

Distance: 14 miles (allegedly with 2700’ of ascent; I’d say it was less than that)

Weather: Sunny intervals but catching the edge of two showers

I slept really well considering how the wind had picked up as night fell. I had been woken by some particularly violent gusts at about 12.30am and then again at 5.45am. In the case of the latter waking, I’d already had more than my required 8 hours of shut-eye, so sprang into life with gusto. Mick accused me of being on speed as I set about making cups of tea and packing away.

Incidentally, last weekend I’d taken my down trousers with me and decided that they weren’t necessary given the mildness of the weather, so I didn’t take them this weekend. Oh, how I missed them. The weather may be mild during the day, but (as you would expect at the time of year) the temperature collapsed quite remarkably as darkness fell and, given that my walking trousers were covered in peat, some alternative leg-wear would have been good (not essential, but certainly good). Next time they will make it onto the packing list.

Anyways, after the early cup of tea and breakfast, we were all packed up and walking at 7am, at which time the moon was still up and only the slightest hint of light was appearing over the eastern horizon. For the second time ever (the first time was this rather interesting trip) our head-torches were called into action as we set out.

I concede that the route we took was a tiny bit on the steep side for tackling in the dark, but I managed to stay on my feet all the way down to the valley. Mick only missed the same boast by a count of one ass-slide.

By the time we reached the valley there was a hint of sunrise (in the absence of a tripod, I didn’t manage to hold the camera quite still enough for the long exposure, but I’m sure you get the idea):

Day broke as we made our way up to Rowlees Pasture on the other side of the valley day, from where we could clearly see where we had camped the previous night. It’s in this photo, but I won’t attempt to describe where (other than that it’s on the far slope on the left side):

Our diversion at Lockerbrook Heights to try to locate Tor & Lande didn’t bear fruit (I now know where they did spend the night and we weren’t even close), so onwards up Alport Castles we went. I’d thought that we would use the hide up there to shelter from the keen breeze whilst we had second breakfast. Alas, when we got to Alport Castles there was no trace of the hide. I guess it was a temporary thing, but it was certainly there in June (or was it a figment of my imagination?). Still, we got to admire the ‘tower’ and the cliffs as we walked by.

The boot-prints died out just after Alport Castles, so it seems that most people miss out on the glorious surroundings on the way up to the trig point. I see that I’m almost completely obscuring the trig in this photo, but it was there.

Our descent down to Upper Ashop that morning had been ridiculously steep, but even steeper (although much shorter) was our descent to pick up the trod that runs along the Alport Valley. I did have Ben Fogle’s voiceover in my head saying ‘One slip here could spell disaster for the whole expedition’. Fortunately there were no slips, trips or falls and thus we made it to the path without incident.

Yep, that’s quite steep!

Not long afterwards, we crossed a boggy bit of path and, after the peaty water of the night before, I was overly excited to realise that the boggy area housed a spring. I was almost out of water, so decided that a cup of tea would be in order at this point, using the perfectly clear water. Lovely! Just as lovely was the view across the valley to this tumbling stream:

The rest of the valley was muted browns rather than the lush greens of earlier in the year, but I was still rather taken with the unspoilt beauty:

Not a single person was seen all morning (apart from the chap in a car on the road down from Rowlees Farm, who stopped to comment that we’d got an early start), until we reached the Pennine Way, whereupon it was like we’d joined a motorway. It was as we unexpectedly bumped into Dave, Phil & John that the first edge-of-a-shower hit us, which is what led to the synchronised pack-faffing that I mentioned the other day, as all of the chaps reached for their waterproofs. Personally I was wearing Paramo, so my pack stayed on my back.

All we had to do then was to nip back down Doctor’s Gate and onwards back to Glossop, arriving at the car within 26 hours of leaving it, with 28 miles covered.

I’m pleased to say that my body didn’t revolt at all during this trip*. I can only assume that it was the violence and frequency of the ascent that caused everything to object to the effort during the previous weekend’s trip. I even managed to take myself out for a little stroll locally on Sunday. Then I had to go for a lie down. Four consecutive days of walking – phew – it’s been a while since I last did that.

This was the route we took, and I do recommend it (except that a slightly more gentle line down to Upper Ashop might be advisable – or even better, walk it clockwise so that the killer descents become ascents):

The green line is what I’d plotted in advance. The red line is what I recorded on the Garmin Gadget.

(*Not true! My feet hurt like I’d never worn walking boots before in my life. People reckon that switching to lightweight, flexible footwear can be hard on the feet, but I found out on this trip that moving back the other way can be just as painful. My feet still ache now. It was the first time I’d worn boots since our 17-mile trip onto Bleaklow at the beginning of January (the snow and ice on that trip made the boots the more sensible choice). On Sunday I reverted to trail-runners and it was bliss.)

From Glossop

2011-10-30T20:39:00.001Z

Friday 28 October (11.35-1730)

Distance: 13.9 miles (the Garmin Gadget said 3100 feet of ascent; the map suggests significantly less)

Weather: Glorious!

Having left home under clear blue skies, promising a fantastic day for a walk, increasingly sizeable patches of fog were encountered as we made our way north. Was the sun going to win over the fog by the time we reached Glossop? We gave it every opportunity by being waylaid by a completely unnecessarily fat-boy fry-up of a second breakfast as we passed through Buxton. By the time we reached Glossop the sun had won, making everything look autumnally attractive as we wandered up to Doctor’s Gate:

Having followed the flags of the Pennine Way past Mill Hill there was the steep staircase to tackle to get us up onto the Kinder Plateau. I remember walking down here on our LEJOG and commenting that I was glad we weren’t heading up it. In reality it’s easier in ascent. It may cause me a bit of puffing and gasping, but climbing it is definitely gentler on the knees.

Mick thought I was really dawdling up here. What he didn’t notice was that I’d stopped to take this photo!

The north edge of Kinder Plateau was our chosen side, as Mick hadn’t been that way before. It is surely not possible to walk around this area without marvelling at the shapes of the rocks, and this was no exception:

I would have missed this ‘cosy’ little man-made bivvy site, which took advantage of the overhanging rock, if Mick hadn’t pointed it out. Fortunately no-one was in residence when I stuck my head in for a look.

A while later Mick said “That was an owl!”. I looked at him as if he was daft (well, it was mid-afternoon and not an owl-hooting time of day) and said that it was clearly a sheep. Not two minutes later what should fly across the path right in front of us, but a barn owl. Seems like Mick may not be daft after all…

Things were significantly damper underfoot than they had been in June (which is hardly surprising considering how little rain fell in March, April and May). All of the peaty, boggy wallows which now littered the path were sufficiently avoidable to avoid sinking by more than an inch or so, and the benefit of the recent rain (it had certainly rained quite a bit on Thursday) meant that the streams were flowing. Even so, the last stream of any significance that we were going to pass before finding a pitch was Blackden Brook so we stopped to fill our bladders. I drink my tea weaker than that peaty water looked!

At this point I should probably digress onto one of the purposes of this trip. Having been in correspondence with Tor and Lande about their intended trip to the Peaks this weekend, we had hoped that by walking a similar route in the opposite direction we would bump into them at some point. The plan seemed like a good one until around abouts Blackden Brook when I suddenly realised that the route that I’d plotted for our own walk was quite possibly not the route the Tor and Lande were going to take. A little detail that I should have checked in advance, particularly as the only bit of the route in doubt was the bit where we were hoping to meet them.

The best thing to do, we decided, would be to head over to Rowlee Pasture before looking for a pitch. The problem was that we didn’t have enough daylight to cover another five miles, and I didn’t want to be scouting around for a pitch in the dark. The next best option was to stick with Plan A, camp on the Kinder side of the valley and get up silly-early in the morning to try to get over to Rowlee Pasture before Tor and Lande moved on.

With the west end of Kinder being mainly a bed of heather, we dropped down off the side a bit to find a pitch. The spot we chose would have been visible to a number of farms across the valley, if it hadn’t been for a conveniently placed shooting butt.

The pitch looked perfectly reasonable as we threw the tent up about half an hour before darkness. However, crawling inside, I discovered a big lump and dip by Mick’s knees (or, more precisely, where Mick’s knees would be spending the night), so we moved the tent forward a couple of feet. On reflection, I should have kept quiet about the lump and dip as, come bedtime, I realised that by giving Mick a nice flat bed I’d gained a lump and a dip myself (harrumph!).

Being the party animals that we are, by just gone 9pm our books were away for the night and eyelids were being rested.

Four Men Faff With Their Packs

2011-10-29T21:00:00.001+01:00

We were just on our way back to the car today, after a good little trip, when three chaps approached us along the Pennine Way.

“What sort of a knob wears a jacket that colour?” one was heard to ask as we got within earshot (with reference to Mick’s YELLOW! top), at which point I realised that these weren’t three strangers. In yet another of those incredible coincidences (which wouldn’t have occurred if we had been 90 seconds earlier or they 90 seconds later), we bumped into John, Phil and Dave.

The last time we bumped into them was less coincidental, at a campsite in Hathersage during our Kent to Cape Wrath jaunt last year:

As first exhibited in the ‘three men, three matching tents’ snap above, it seems that these are three chaps who rather like to do things in sync, as today they co-ordinated their pack faffing activities:

Unrelated to that, here’s my favourite sign of the trip (in fact, the only sign worth photographing). I think they should delegate the sign-writing to someone else…

More about the rest of the outing tomorrow…

Contrasts in October

2011-10-27T20:37:00.001+01:00

On 2 October (which you may spot was just four weeks ago), we were out for a walk on Cannock Chase and found it to be busier than we had ever seen it. The car parks were full and, at the Visitor Centre, not only was the over-flow car park full but there were cars lining the nearby roads. More cars than we’ve seen even on a sunny summer weekend. This is a photo I took of the area outside of the Visitor Centre that weekend:

There were people picnicking all over the big grassy area, and hoards of children enjoying the play area. The reason for so many people being out was apparent. On a sunny summer’s day there will be lots of people around, but there will always be the expectation of more good weather so there’s not the imperative to get out. However, when the thermometer hits the high twenties in October you know that it’s almost certainly not going to be repeated in a week’s time, hence everyone was making the most of it. I was certainly enjoying being out in shorts and t-shirt in October!

Today was the contrast. I don’t think we’ve ever encountered so few people on the Chase! (No photos of that fact because it’s difficult to demonstrate a general lack of people in a photo (and because we didn’t take a camera).)

That it is a weekday doesn’t explain the notable lack of people. The general greyness and the forecast for a day of heavy rain is more likely the explanation. We were five miles into our walk before we passed anyone and only passed two sets of people in the whole 8 miles we walked. There were other people in the tea room at Springslade Lodge, but it was obvious that we were the only people who had walked there (we walked in and waddled out; in between times many chips were eaten).

The people who stayed at home missed out. The weather was nowhere near as bad as forecast. We did get rained on, but not heavily, and it must have been dry as much as it was wet. Moreover, it was all incredibly pretty with the autumnal colours, not just on the trees but on the heathland too.

As darkness fell this evening such was the persistence of the greyness that it’s difficult to believe that tomorrow’s going to be a nice day. Hopefully the forecast will prove to be reasonably accurate for both tomorrow and Saturday, as we’re off out for another quick backpack .

From Top Withins

2011-10-24T17:20:00.001+01:00

Saturday – From Top Withins to Illingworth

Distance: 10 miles (1000 feet of ascent)

Time: 0750 to 1230

Weather: Fine, with increasingly blue skies

The sun was just peeping above the horizon as we set out on Saturday morning to demonstrate how to make a meal about navigating our way back to Halifax:

Someone had made a really early start (or had camped somewhere else nearby) as there were wet boot-prints on the slabs of the Pennine Way passing Top Withins.

Pausing on our way down towards Haworth (not that we were going down to Haworth, but we were heading in that general direction), we looked back to see that our pitch was now bathed in glorious golden morning sunshine (that tree sticking up above the hill on the horizon is next to Top Withins, and we were just above there):

The early route issues weren’t really navigation issues. It was more that I was taking us along the route that I had hastily plotted without putting any thought into whether it was sensible. As a result we (completely unnecessarily) walked three sides of a square before reaching Bronte Falls. I didn’t manage a passable shot of the falls, so I’ll make do with one of ‘Bronte Bridge’:

I was surprised that we only met one fell-runner on the walk down towards Haworth (Mick was very admiring of her running style), but once down onto flatter land we did meet plenty of dog-walkers, including three old-dears, who were most concerned that we must have been cold camping up by the ruin overnight. They were relieved when we told them that we did have a tent with us!

Having skirted Oxenhope, a bigger meal was made of navigating our way. It’s actually pretty rare that we have to backtrack, but this was one of those occasions. Our mishap was witnessed. We’d exchanged a few words with a builder shortly before I’d dug out my compass and declared that we were heading the wrong way. As we passed him again he reassured us that there was a path heading that way. There was indeed a path, but not heading in a direction that was useful for us.

A plethora of paths just past an unnamed (on my map) reservoir saw us further discombobulated, and if it hadn’t been for the position of the sun and the needle of the compass my sense of direction would have taken us off in the wrong direction. All was very pretty looking back:

Heading up past Thornton Reservoir the moorland was so desolate that it was hard to believe how close we were to civilisation. My legs (particularly knees and hips) were pleased to hear that we were now within 3.5 miles of Ma-in-Law’s house. The thoughts of sinking into a soft sofa was bliss. The thought of a steep hill was not.

Happily the climb up onto Thornton Moor wasn’t as violent as the climbs of the previous day and we both agreed that we were glad to have walked the route in a clockwise direction (although if we had done the short and gentle day first I probably wouldn’t have been so wrecked for the second day).

The meandering route I had plotted from Ogden Water to the finish was abandoned in favour of a shorter walk along roads and by lunch time we were back. Gladly I sank into the sofa and had a cup of tea put into my hands (you can always rely on Ma-in-Law to have the kettle on within 30 seconds of you walking through the front door).

The trip was just what the doctor ordered and I’d happily go and walk it again. In the meantime, I must do something about my woeful lack of fitness. It’s not in any way reasonable to hurt so much after 24 miles of walking, spread over 2 days.

Not that I’m expecting anyone else to want to start and end a walk from Ma-in-Law’s house (although she’d undoubtedly put the kettle on for you if you did), but this is (more or less) the route we took (excluding the first and last mile, which I’ve cut off the edge of the map):

To Top Withins

2011-10-23T18:50:00.001+01:00

It was a last minute trip. As I got home at 5pm on Thursday I suggested that, as we needed to be in Halifax early the next morning, we should travel up that evening and make the most of the trip by spending Friday night on a hill somewhere. So as not to arrive on Ma-in-Law’s doorstep at an impolite hour at night that gave us 2.5 hours to cook and eat tea, wash up, pack our bags and plan a route.

Two and a half hours later we were on the road with a plan.

Halifax isn’t the obvious choice for starting a backpacking trip (I say that based on not recalling having read a single trip report that used the town as its starting point), and I can understand why. But, given that our business in the town was unlikely to see us free to set out until around noon, I thought that we would save the time and trouble of travelling anywhere by setting out from Ma-in-Law’s front door. With the benefit of hindsight I can report that to have been a good decision; it was an excellent trip on good and varied terrain!

Friday – From Illingworth to Withins Height
Distance: 14 miles (2700 feet of ascent)
Time: 1140 to 1755
Weather: overcast but mainly dry, with just the edge of a few drizzly showers threatening us

This area of West Yorkshire is notable for its steep-sided valleys. Having spent a whole fifteen minutes planning a route, I hadn’t paid much (or in fact, any) attention to the contour lines and even though I’d walked most of this route before as parts of various day-walks, I had overlooked the violence of the inclines. I’d also, perhaps, overlooked the fact that I’ve spent the last four months sitting down and thus that I boast very little fitness just now.

Here’s the profile of the route we took:

Those ups at 5.5 miles and 8 miles certainly attacked the valley-sides straight on. The one at 5.5 miles was so steep that steps had been installed, seemingly with the planners basing the step size on a walker with a 50-inch inside-leg measurement!

The route featured streams:

Interesting buildings (albeit with the sun in the wrong place for a photo):

Good views:

And, on our way to the trig point on High Brown Knoll, the view included Stoodley Pike in the distance:
The waterfalls at the head of Crimsworth Dean were a fine spectacle:

Perhaps, at this point, I should mention that I have now declared summer to be over. For the first time since spring, I was out in full Paramo, and as we reached Crimsworth Dean I was wearing gloves too. Apparently these chaps weren’t finding the weather quite as cool as I was:
As we met them again after they had jumped into the pool below, swum around a bit and had climbed back up to the path, they were asked how the water was. “Freezing!” came the response “But quite refreshing” the other added after a pause. They breed them hardy up north, you know!

By the time we joined the Pennine Way at Walshaw Dean Reservoirs, my body was feeling the effort and I was about ready to stop. Perhaps, given my complete lack of fitness, it would have been wise to take the walk at a slower pace and to have stopped occasionally. However, in my mind I can still walk 25 miles in a day without a problem – and, in any case, daylight was conspiring against us.

It looked like we were going to be caught by a heavy shower as we first left the Pennine Way to try to find a pitch for the night. Unfortunately, where we’d hoped to find a nice stream with a patch of flat grass alongside, we found a boggy wallow where I succeeded in losing one of the ferrules off my Pacerpole. I think that’s four that I’ve lost so far this year. I plunged my hands into the peat to try to retrieve it whilst Mick donned his waterproofs. I didn’t find the ferrule, but Mick’s donning of waterproofs did the trick and the rain skirted us.

Upwards we continued, even though we didn’t have enough water for the night and even though we weren’t optimistic of finding any up higher. Whilst kicking myself for not having stopped to collect some earlier, we cocked our heads at each indent in the ground that looked like it might be hiding running water, listening for a give-away tinkle. Finally, just before Top Withins, the magic sound was heard and after digging through the grasses I managed to find a hole down to the underground stream. Slowly, a mug at a time, our water bladders were filled with water that was peaty, but not as brown as expected.

What we didn’t know until Saturday morning was that if we had continued on for about 20 paces beyond Top Withins there was a perfectly clear and perfectly accessible stream…

We didn’t get that far, because when we got to Top Withins we set about finding a pitch and were pretty pleased with the one that we selected. Although very close to the Pennine Way it was completely out of sight of the path and whilst a tiny bit lumpy (fortunately, those NeoAirs are very forgiving), it was level, sheltered from the worst of the strong wind, and with a far-reaching view. By the flatness of the long grass, I suspect that we weren’t its first occupants this week.

With the darkness falling, we wasted no time in pitching Vera, making tea and settling down for the night as the street lights all lit up below us, proving quite how close we were to civilisation whilst feeling like we were properly out on the moors.

By Withins Height

2011-10-21T18:40:00.000+01:00

We're sitting here trying to remember the gist of the story of Cathy and Heathcliffe* and failing miserably.

The far-reaching views are serving to distract us from our poor knowledge of classic English literature. Having not pitched until gone sundown (because that's when we arrived, not because we waited for dark), as I type this the view has become one of a sea of twinkling street lights.

It's not a bad place to be on a Friday night and it wasn't a bad walk to get here. More to follow after we get home.

Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

East to West Photos: The Finale–Day 42

2011-10-19T18:02:00.001+01:00

Sunday 8 May (0700-1605) (Resipole to Ardnamurchan)
Distance: 26.5 miles (Tot: 747)
Weather: wet until 2pm, then increasingly fine

Two and a half miles through our monster day we came across an exciting signpost. You know you’re getting close when there’s a brown signpost naming your destination:

An interesting bit of demolition. It would have been better if they’d left the three flying ducks above the fire place and maybe a mug on the mantle piece:

It may have been predominantly a road walk, and the weather may have been decidedly wet, but some of the views weren’t too shoddy:

There was a little bit of a yomp to break up the road walking (also, conveniently, cutting off a big loop in the road):

On that yomp we saw a herd of deer – incredibly the only deer we saw on the whole trip.

Until 2pm it had looked like we were going to have a rather grey and damp walk in. Then the rain stopped and as the cloud started to break up. By the time we were past Kilchoan and well into the final leg of the day, the weather had done a complete about-turn:

Glorious! Blue skies, blue seas and the lighthouse just a mile away:

See! There it is.

Only a few paces to go!

More gloriousness:

Beyond the lighthouse is the fog horn, which seemed like a good location for the ‘finish photos’.

As we didn’t conveniently have a photographer with us, we had to call the stick-pic into action (really must practice using the stick-pic without getting the hands and walking pole into the shot!):

We couldn’t get the lighthouse into view using the stick-pic, so we had to take turns for those shots:

And then all we had to do was to go and mug three old ladies to get a lift back down to Kilchoan. It was actually rather a shame how the trip ended. I would much rather have taken the originally planned two days to get from Resipole to Ardnamurchan, to take a less tarmacked route, and to have had time to loiter at the end. But, thanks to the severe leakiness of the tent (which had become apparent the previous night) combined with the increased raininess of the weather, we had to conclude that the only thing to be done was to get the walk finished and get ourselves to Fort William where we could sort out the tent situation before the start of the TGO Challenge.

At some point we will return to Ardnamurchan to explore the area more thoroughly. But, I digress. What (I’m sure) you really want to know is where you can find the original blog post for the day, and the answer to that is: by clicking just here.

East to West Photos: Day 41

2011-10-16T17:46:00.001+01:00

Sat 7 May (0740-1530) (Glen Gour to Resipole)
Distance: 16.5 miles (Tot: 720.5)
Weather: overcast morning, sunny afternoon until about 10 minutes after pitching, when thundery showers started

Glen Gour is a soggy place underfoot, but does have the virtue of a very attractive river, complete with gushing falls:

And gushing narrows:

Other bits of it were just a wide river. Looking at this photo it looks fordable at this point, but by the fact that it’s still on our right we obviously decided that it wasn’t, as we really wanted to be on the other side.

We did eventually get to the other side:

This is me demonstrating how to do it without falling in. Mick didn’t follow my example.

By the time we reached the nature reserve on the way into Strontian, I was almost jogging to keep up with Mick. I’d mentioned that there was a Visitor Centre marked on the map and Mick obviously got the thought of a bacon sandwich into his head. It’s usually Mick who complains that I walk too fast.

From Strontian the rest of our day was a road walk, although it did boast some reasonable sights.

If you were to click just here you’d find my original the blog post that I typed whilst sitting in the laundry of the campsite at Resipole. We were trapped in that laundry for ages by the rain that had started absolutely lashing down some time after we put the laundry on and that didn’t let up for hours.

East to West Photos: Day 40

2011-10-13T17:31:00.001+01:00

Friday 6 May (0810-1715; 1835-1915) (Kinlochleven to Glen Gour)
Distance: 16.5 (Tot: 704 miles)
Weather: Dry! Sunny intervals

The rain that had (apparently) persisted throughout the night magically let up as we crawled out of the tent in the morning and although the sky was still heavy, it didn’t leak on us. Having gained a bit of height, a good view was to be had down to Glen Coe…

…and up Loch Leven. Once again, my snaps completely fail to do it justice. It was absolutely stunning.

Then we left all trace of trodden paths and were intending to head down through the forest you can see in the photo below to the bottom of the valley. It was during this yomp that we met a chap called Mick, wearing running vest and tights, who had just come up through the forest and was out for a round of four Marilyns. Of all the places to meet another person, this pathless hillside wasn’t where I would have expected.

The walk through the forest was ‘interesting’ and a little bit too steep in places.

Thankfully a great swathe had been felled, so we didn’t have to battle through branches (which is always the vision Mick gets when he notices that I’ve plotted a route through a conifer plantation; he’s still scarred from the experience on Day 62 of LEJOG)

We came out exactly where we wanted to, next to this remote house (with not even a track for access)

I’d thought we would have to wade the river, but Mick (no, not my Mick, the Mick we’d met on the hillside) told us there was a bridge, and so there was. Two, in fact. We opted to use the new one.

A stroll through the forest brought us down to Loch Linnhe, although first we had to cross the A82 where someone had parked in an less-than-conventional manner:

Considering that I’m on a ferry, I look reasonably relaxed about the experience:

Perhaps it was the view that distracted me from the mode of transport. Talking of views, here’s what it looked like looking up Loch Linnhe as we made our way to Glen Gour.

The bottom of Glen Gour used to be dammed, but the dam is now in disrepair:

Which meant that the old boat house looked a bit out of place as we passed along the track on the water-ward side of it:

This was the day of ants, ticks and three different pitches for the tent. I’m not sure whether this was the first or the second pitch, but it’s certainly not where we spent the night:

This is where we spent the night:

No ants, no ticks, just a rotting dead deer in the stream, just in front of that tree…

If you fancy reading my original thoughts on this day, you’ll find them here.

East to West Photos: Day 39

2011-10-12T18:52:00.001+01:00

Thursday 5 May (0745-1405; 1550-1745) (NW of Corrour Station to 5 miles beyond Kinlochleven)
Distance: 18 miles (Tot: 687.5)
Weather: showery. Probably as much wet as dry, but mainly light rain

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if we hadn’t popped home for a week at Easter then we would have walked for six weeks in stunning weather, with only afternoon of significant rain the whole way. However, we did pop home for a week and some rainy weather was well overdue. In 42 days of walking, this was the first of two rainy days.

We had considered continuing on to Loch Treig the previous day, but when we got there we were glad we hadn’t as the two obviously good pitches were both taken (the blue tent in this photo was quite a sizeable car-camping sort of a job):

It all looked grey and moody looking the other way too, although I think that the rain had eased up a bit by this point:

It’s a pity that I didn’t take a photo of the front of Loch Chiarain bothy, although this snap does show that it’s in quite a nice location. As an added bonus, someone had left half a canister of gas in one of the upstairs rooms, so we got to enjoy a ‘free’ cup of tea whilst we took a break there.

The rain hadn’t been falling for long enough to make the waterfalls spectacular. In fact, many of the falls were dry. There was a bit of a trickle here though:

The path from Blackwater dam down towards Kinlochleven was horrible. Stony and slow-going, without any views to distract us.

Having stopped for a late lunch and a long break in Kinlochleven, during which time we saw hoards of West Highland Way walkers arrive, it was dry as we left. The next hour and a half of drizzle wasn’t enough to get us wet, but the rain started again in earnest just as we were looking for a pitch. Foolishly I didn’t don my waterproof trousers, thinking that we’d have the tent up within moments. We made a meal about choosing a pitch, so by the time the tent was up I was soaked.

I did a quick tot up in my head at the time and said that it was only the second time we had pitched the tent in proper rain in over 170 nights, spanning the previous 3 and a bit years. I’ve now checked my records and can confirm that I wasn’t far out. It was actually the second time in 179 tent-nights. Considering the British weather, and that on long walks you don’t get to choose the weather, I don’t think that’s a bad record. All things must average out in the end, and I’m not expecting that record to persist!

My original take on the day can be found here.

East to West Photos: Day 38

2011-10-11T18:29:00.001+01:00

Wed 4 May (0735-1650) (S of W edge of Rannoch Forest to NW of Corrour Station)
Distance: 20 miles (Tot: 669.5)
Weather: wall-to-wall sunshine

I knew it was going to be another nice day as soon as I set about making a cup of tea. Ice in the water in May is a sure sign of clear skies. As the hat and gloves suggest, it was a bit of a nippy morning, although the first mile of the day did its best to warm us up. That ground may look reasonably easy-going in the photo, but I can assure you that it was not. Tussocks, bogs and oozing peat hags that caused great detours meant that we walked far further than a mile to cover the first linear mile.

As you might expect, we had to cross a deer fence to get into Rannoch Forest, but at least this one had a crossing-aid (I think it’s a bit generous to call this style of crossing-point a ‘stile’). As is usually the case, there was equal evidence of deer on both sides of the fence.

Mick crossed it far more elegantly than I did!

I had expected our passage through the forest to be a narrow track hemmed in by trees, so the first three-quarters of a mile, before we reached the forest track, was surprisingly pleasant (if you overlook the bogginess):

I didn’t feel it necessary to take any photos within the forest, not even when we left the forest track and joined an old long-disused track which nature was reclaiming. I didn’t photograph the bit where we ran out of track and carried on through a bit of a break to get out the other side either. Get out the other side we did and after a short while we managed to work out where it was that we’d popped out. This body of water was a bit of a clue.

To get there we had to cross over a brand new deer fence, and one without a stile. It was going to take another half dozen of these crossings before I concluded that they’re much easier without the chest pouch on. Until I came to that realisation I bruised my forearms a lot and uttered (or maybe shouted) many words that my mother-in-law would be surprised to find within my vocabulary.

Once over the deer fence there was a river to ford. Mick unzipped his legs, donned his crocks, and went first.

I don’t have zip-offs so, to Mick’s great amusement, I took my trousers off to save getting them wet:

There were plenty of rocks to choose from on the other side for us to take a comfortable seat whilst we dried out in the warm sunshine and took the opportunity for another snack.

Heading past Corrour Old Lodge towards Loch Ossian we came across the first evidence we’d seen of the Scottish Six Day Trials, which were taking place at the time, in the form of these orange and blue flags alongside this burn:

With the end of Loch Ossian in view we could see the attraction of staying at the Youth Hostel there. What an idyllic location! (I know you can’t really see it in this photo; see the next one for a closer view.) We would undoubtedly have stayed there if there’d been a girl’s bed available. As it went, there was only room in the boy’s dorm, so we walked on.

Here’s a snap where you can actually see the hostel.

and here’s the view from slightly further up the glen. Superb!

Having carried on another couple of miles we found some (apparently) flat grass alongside the Allt a’ Chamabhreac and then wandered on another hundred yards or so constantly thinking that the area five yards hence looked a bit flatter. Eventually we decided that it was all a bit lumpy and just set about finding the flattest of what was available. What we ended up with was a perfectly level and comfortable pitch, with any slight lumps nicely ironed out by the Thermarest NeoAirs. As well as their other virtues, I have to praise those mats for being very forgiving on lumpy pitches.

Here’s another evening shot of the pitch. What neither photo shows is the railway track thirty paces to the north of us, but there aren’t many trains a day running along that line. Of the three or four that we did see one of them was comprised of vintage carriages.

Some of the evening entertainment was provided by this ant who spent quite a while transporting a caterpillar of twice his own length across our porch.

More about the day (including the fortuitous finding of a chunky KitKat!) can be found here.

East to West Photos: Day 37

2011-10-10T18:43:00.001+01:00

Tuesday 3 May (0840-1550) (Killin to S of the W edge of Rannoch Forest)
Distance: 20.5 miles (Tot: 649.5)
Weather: mainly sunny; 4 oktas of cloud early on, clearing as the day went on. Hardly any of them obscured the sun

Is it just me, or does there seem to be something missing from in front of that front door? Like a flight of steps…

That was on the way out of Killin. It takes a while to really get out of Killin as it’s a strung out place. On the way we passed the Killin Hotel, where we had dined the evening before, and I was tempted to detour and loiter outside so as to use their wifi to download a new reading book to my iTouch. Having already had a late start, I didn’t want to disrupt our stride again so early in the day, so I didn’t take the time, and it wasn’t until we got to Fort William, after we’d finished the East to West, that I finally found another wifi signal where I could get a new book. That’s a bit of a digression though, and nothing to do with this next photo, which was Mick modelling how far his beard had progressed over the course of the walk.

Although there were a few more clouds today, they were high and fluffy, giving us some good views:

I particularly like this photo looking down Glen Lyon from in front of the dam. Perhaps I like it so much because it was my random choice of photo for my wallpaper when I got a new laptop a while ago, so it’s a photo I look at almost every day.

And here’s the dam. This photo was taken from almost the exact spot where we camped during the TGO Challenge in 2009. We had lunch at that spot this year.

I couldn’t help myself. I took photo after photo:

Remember that boulder on the path on day 21; the boulder that hadn’t long fallen from the cliff above? This one looked similarly fresh. Was someone going just ahead of us and dislodging them?

Another one of Loch Lyon looking particularly fine:

Then we left the loch to head over to Rannoch Forest. There was no path, but I can’t really describe it as a yomp. With short grass and firm ground, it was an easy walk up an attractive valley.

Once again there was a plentiful supply of good-looking pitches and at some of them we dithered over whether to cut short or whether to carry on. Each time we carried on I muttered about “there’d best be somewhere good down by the forest’. I had a foreboding that we would get to our destination to find that it was all bog and tussock without a campable pitch to be found.

On the way down there was a gorgeous stream, running over rock and complete with clear pools:

Happily, when we did get down into the valley there wasn’t a lack of river-side pitches, although not quite as bowling-green smooth as those we’d seen earlier. It was at this pitch where I got most worried about wild-fires, as we could see yet more great plumes of smoke not massively far away from us. Fortunately the wind was blowing away from us, although I do confess to having been a tad nervous as to the possibility of the wind shifting and us finding a fire heading towards us. It was at this point that I decided that as lovely as the dry weather of the previous 5.5 weeks had been, we were in desperate need of some rain.

As per our routine, once camped we needed to sort out the following day’s drinking water. I never filter water for cooking or for cups of tea, but I do filter my drinking water. That turned out to be something of a trial on this trip, as I didn’t get on at all well with the Delios water filter. It caused me a few grumpy episodes* and much, much cursing. One of the only ways I could get water through the damned thing was to use my knees. I have since found that using the bottle it came with makes it massively easier; I also cursed myself roundly for not testing it both with its own bottle and with a Platty before we left home.

(*and when I say ‘grumpy’ I mean *really* grumpy. Grumpiness right up there with that caused by the scaling of deer fences)

If you should feel inclined to read more about this day, you’ll find the original blog post here.

East to West Photos: Day 36

2011-10-09T14:06:00.001+01:00

Monday 2 May (0740-1330) (South of Loch Lednock to Killin)
Distance: 13 miles (Tot: 629)
Weather: Increasing cloud (some low level, but still only a tiny amount of cloud overall) still failed to obscure the sun, but much cooler than yesterday

Another sunny morning, and yet I wasn’t getting at all bored of the same weather conditions. The sun wasn’t in the best place for this photo, but it was a view for which I turned around time and time again. The night before we had been pitched just this side of the lump in the middle of the valley.

A bit of a yomp took us down to Loch Lednock. At some point whilst trudging through the heather I stopped to don my mini-gaiters. I think that it was the only time I wore them in the trip (I only carried them from Inverkeithing):

Under the blue skies even the concrete block of a building didn’t look like too much of monstrosity from a distance away. On this photo the first little hint of the fire can be seen too, on the right side of the end of the loch.

The real fire had been on the left side. Acres were burnt off, with some of it still smouldering.

Good job we hadn’t come this way the day before, as our route went straight through the area which had been in flames the previous afternoon.

Having cleared the burnt area, and looking back towards Loch Lednock as we paused for second breakfast, it looked like the cloud was rolling in and that we were going to lose the good weather.

As it went, the cloud stayed behind us all day.

There was far more uphill than I was expecting as we made our way along, which perhaps is another gentle reminder that I ought to look at the contour lines every now and then.

Is that an upside-down rabbit on that hillside?

I’ve been to Killin twice now and I find it a bit of a strange place. Can’t deny that they’ve got an attractive bit of rocky-river running through, though.

I originally wrote about the day (on a very small keyboard) just here.

East to West Photos: Day 35

2011-10-04T20:12:00.001+01:00

Sunday 1 May (0740-1555) (East of Muthill to S of Loch Lednock)
Distance: 18.25 miles (Tot: 616)
Weather: A couple of lenticular clouds in the distance didn't hinder the wall-to-wall sunshine. Hot.
Our night in the farmer’s field was quiet – and a touch nippy. The sun had melted most of the frost by the time I ventured out of the tent and took this photo:

Being forced onto the road shortly after setting off, due to a large industrial business (complete with security guard) blocking our way on the old railway line, we had to wonder whether a) the road used to be significantly wider; b) cars can only travel south if they’re really narrow; or c) the line-marker was having an off day:

We thought we were going to be on the road all the way into Crieff, but a finger post suggested that there was a path alongside the river, and so there was:

Even better, on the other side of Crieff we were able to take another riverside path:

Mick walked straight past Mole’s House without noticing it:

I called him back for a bit of perspective. I bet lots of children (and me!) walking along this path are delighted with it:

We had to put up with yet more of those blue skies. Hard life…

As the morning wore on, we rejoined the disused railway line and found that it was more passable than the earlier sections – that is until we got to the bit where the old bridge was missing. Mick fought his way across before I looked at the map and realised that we’d overshot our destination. He came back and we sat and had lunch. Ten minutes into the afternoon session I realised that I’d got ahead of myself on the map and that we did need to still be on the railway line after all. We were picturing another couple of miles of fighting through overgrowth, but within minutes it had become a wide farm track, allowing us to stride along.

Lumpy bits then appeared in the near distance. Lumpy bits are good!

On reaching the lumpy bits it was HOT and we couldn’t resist a bit of a foot-dunking in a stream:

I didn’t take any photos of the plumes of smoke a short way to the north-west, but fortunately when we spotted a nice pitch we decided to stop, rather than carrying on (as we had intended) in the direction of the smoke. It was 2am when I realised the significance of the smoke. In the meantime, I was happy as a pig in a wallow:

Pretty good pitch?

Must be time for tea:

My original witterings about the day can be seen here.

East to West Photos: Day 34

2011-10-04T20:09:00.001+01:00

Saturday 30 April (0750-1600) (Dollarfield to East of Muthill)
Distance: 18 miles (Tot: 597.75)
Weather: Sunshine except for one fluffy little cloud which covered the sun for about 30 seconds

In contrast to the uninterestingness of Day 33, Day 34 was superb! So much so that I have far too many photos and I’ve struggled to whittle them down to something approaching a sensible number to share.
Walking out of Dollar was extraordinarily pretty with the burn that runs down a residential street being edged with blossom trees:

Once again, there was a pretty church too. Mick photographed a lot of churches, and I'm pretty sure that no two were the same:

The walk up Dollar Glen was made possible by the use of considerable lengths of walkways, which were undeniably intrusive:

Plus there was a viewing platform (of which I made good use):

But without the walkways and the viewing platform we wouldn’t have been able to walk all the way up this glen, or to enjoy spectacles like this fissure:

This day really did pack the features in. Still within a mile of Dollar (and within 2 miles of the start of our day) we reached Castle Campbell, and from a distance away I managed to use the trees to disguise the huge amount of scaffolding to the south side of the castle:

Skirting around Hillfoot Hill and looking down at Glenquey Reservoir it was all so pretty as to bring many a smile to our faces.

There were pitches aplenty at various points throughout the day, but we still had a way to go, so didn’t succumb to sampling any of them:
It was a hot day again and I seem to recall that I was feeling either sapped or otherwise under the weather by the time we got to Auchterarder. I must have looked awful too, because Mick didn’t put up any protests when I plonked myself on a window sill outside of the Co-op and told Mick that he was doing the shopping today.
An ice cream and some cold pop revived me, which was a good thing, as we still had a way to go. Moreover, the rest of the way wasn’t all plain sailing, as we had to negotiate a disused railway line which I’d perused on aerial photos and hoped would be passable. Early indications weren’t great:
Things didn’t get much better a bit further on:

There were sections that were walkable in between the obstructions, so it was an adventure more than an ordeal and in due course we found ourselves a pitch for the night in a farmer’s field. If you should want to read even more words to go with these photos, you’ll find them here.

East to West Photos: Day 33

2011-10-04T20:07:00.001+01:00

Royal Wedding Day, Friday 29 April (0730-1530) (Dulloch Hamlet to Inverkeithing*)
Distance: 20 miles (Tot: 579.75)
Weather: mainly sunny

(*In case anyone’s spotted the discrepancy, let me explain: Day 32 ended at Inverkeithing; Day 33 started at Dulloch Hamlet. The 0.75 miles inbetween Inverkeithing Station and the campsite at Dulloch Hamlet was covered on Day 32a (it not being far enough to warrant a day number of its own), but, unsurprisingly, no photos were taken during that fifteen-minute walk)

By way of surroundings, Day 33 was the least interesting day of the entire trip. It was all on tarmac, although not all on roads. This disused railway line took up a chunk of the day, but without views and with long straight sections it wasn’t the most inspiring walking that I’ve ever known:

Even when we were on roads they were nice friendly ones, just like the signage told us they would be:

Thankfully, by the end of the day lumpiness was coming into view.

The original blog post for the day? You’ll find that here.

East to West Photos: Day 32

2011-10-04T18:50:00.001+01:00

Wed 20 April (0645-1135) (Edinburgh to Inverkeithing)
Distance: 13 miles (Tot: 556)
Weather: fog

The curtailed views of the previous day had turned into full-blown (or rather not blown at all, but quite still) fog by morning. There was little to be seen as we made our way onto the Dalmeny Estate.

By the time we reached Dalmeny House (the lawns of which are part of another golf course) the murk had lifted enough for us to be able to see it:

We were able to see this nice sandy beach too, but when the tanker berth just half a kilometre off shore came weakly into view we could barely make out, with a bit of squinting, that there was a tanker berthed there.

Alas, any hopes of seeing the magnificent engineering of the Forth Rail Bridge were dashed. This is as much as we could see as we approached (look carefully, you can vaguely see some of the lower bits):

A cup of tea was called for in Queensferry, with the hope that the delay in our progress would give the fog a bit longer to clear in the hope that we would get a bit of a view from the Forth Road Bridge

As it went we couldn’t even see the pillars of the road bridge:

A quarter of an hour or so after getting off the other side of the bridge we were at Inverkeithing Station and a short time later we were on a train home for a week. Our journey was to continue from Inverkeithing Station just over a week later, after we had attended to our business at home.

The original post of this day can be found here.

East to West Photos: Day 31

2011-10-03T18:20:00.001+01:00

Tues 19 April (0825-1430) (Musselburgh to Edinburgh)
Distance: 13 miles (Tot: 543)
Weather: rain in night! Day: high cloud clearing to wall-to-wall hazy sunshine

This was a day that surprised me, mainly because I hadn’t expected to walk through a seaside resort as we skirted Edinburgh. I also hadn’t expected to walk past the Scottish Parliament building and thus get a glimpse of what all the overspend fuss was about. First though our day started out at the ‘Ash Lagoons’. The oldest ash-dumping areas have now been landscaped into green areas with lakes.

But further on the area is still used for the dumping of ash from Cockenzie Power Station. I should have put Mick in the foreground of this photo to give a sense of how huge these ash piles are.

This French couple must have heard about Scotland’s liberal access laws and had decided that it was appropriate to wild-camp on a residential street, alongside the River Esk!

Having heard the night before about how this is a borough which goes all out to obtain ‘Loo of the Year’ awards, I was amused to have that borne out just hours later when I wandered into these facilities:

Soon after we were officially in Edinburgh, even though our route really only skirted the very edge:

It was on that edge that we found a proper promenade, and a long sandy beach! There were even the obligatory amusement arcades further on.

Like a millpond! (Or a milk-pond, to some people…)

Those blue skies really did make the harbours look attractive today:

But the day wasn’t without a bit of haziness, which increased as the day went on:

Perhaps it was because we were so focussed on Cramond Island (the land emerging from the mist in the snap above) that we overshot our campsite…

When we got there Mick was perturbed by this sign. Looking over at the only other tent in the field he turned to me and said ‘But I don’t want to pitch 3 metres away from that tent when the rest of the field is empty!’. Based on the instructive wording of the sign, he had a point!

The original post for the day can be found here.

East to West Photos: Day 30

2011-10-02T15:10:00.001+01:00

Mon 18 April (0825-1555) (North Berwick to Musselburgh)
Distance: 18.75 (Tot: 530)
Weather: sunny intervals with high level cloud, turning to heavier cloud later

To leave North Berwick we had to walk across the town, which gave us a good opportunity to ogle lots of impressive houses:

Once we had cleared the residential streets we were once again able to appreciate the views out into the Forth, on the other side of one of the many golf courses we passed or skirted that day.

Wonder from which way the prevailing wind blows?

As I mentioned, there were quite a few (and by ‘quite a few’ I mean a ridiculous number – looking at the map, we passed 10) golf courses on this day. The town of Gullane looked particularly pretty viewed across this one:

Adding to the ‘prettiness’ score of the day was the church at Aberlady:

Soon after which we encountered the mystery of the concrete blocks. Last time I saw something like this it was to stop cars being driven into a reservoir (in a bit of a dodgy area where the dumping of cars in the reservoir had been a problem). But the location of these blocks didn’t make sense with that explanation, and they’d obviously been there a very long time. It was Mick who finally came up with the answer that they were anti-landing defences from the second world war.

Along the beach they had seen better days:

Considering how close we were getting to some sizeable conurbations, there was still a feeling of coastal openness:

More Scottish architecture attracted our attention (viewed on a computer screen I keep thinking those gables have become bizarrely pixelated!):

And yet more architecture, although perhaps not to everyone’s taste, in the form of Cockenzie power station.

I don’t deny that it was a warm day, but I didn’t think it was warm enough to be jumping into the harbour, as these children were:

Some of the buildings apparently thought the water was a good place to be:

And so did this mural:

As indicated by this wall, that was one of many murals in the area (and I did really well to resist calling them ‘muriels’ there!):

So, lots of interesting things to see on this day. It made me feel pleased that we’d selected the longest of the three or four routes I’d plotted into Edinburgh. My original thoughts on the day can be found here.

East to West Photos: Day 29

2011-10-01T20:09:00.001+01:00

Sun 17 April (0750-0830;1015-1205; 1305-1510) (Below Lothian Edge to North Berwick)
Distance: 13.75 miles (Tot: 511.25)
Weather: a few high wispy hints of cloud in a glorious blue sky

Having been forced off Lothian Edge the evening before (due to a lack of water) we found ourselves a bit stuck for somewhere to pitch as we had entered farmland being used mainly for grazing livestock. Consideration had been given to carrying on to the nearest campsite (which would have been a 25-mile day), but, having found a trickle of a stream, we decided to investigate one likely looking area on the map. Where we ended up (pictured below) was notable for the facts that it was in a natural wind-tunnel (on quite a breezy day) and that it was only about 200 yards from the nearest house. We could have been seen by any vehicle driving up to that house, but by this point of the walk I had come to the conclusion that often passers-by simply don’t notice a tent pitched within their clear view quite simply because they’re not looking for a tent there. How else did the farmer on Day 10 miss us?

It was another gorgeous day and in case we had forgotten which country we were in the planes were giving us hints:

Our route took us onto the John Muir Way (JMW), which isn’t a route that’s marked on my (outdated) maps, but TVPS had lent us a cycling map that contained a wealth of useful information and saved us some road walking. I think that we were already on the JMW when we passed Preston Mill:

On the approach to North Berwick a really big chunk of white rock (Bass Rock), just off the coast, becomes a focal point. You can easily overlook it in this photo, but in reality it was a striking feature.

The other focal point of the walk into North Berwick is North Berwick Law. A bit like the Wrekin in Shropshire: you can’t miss it as it’s a pimple in a land of flatness. I only have two regrets from this walk: firstly that I ridiculously decided to switch away from my tried and trusted footbeds the day before we set out on the walk (I’m sure that my blister trouble wouldn’t have occurred if I hadn’t made this decision); and secondly, that I didn’t go up North Berwick Law. I wanted to go up it, Mick didn’t. I said that I would give Mick my half of the tent and the stove and would meet him at the campsite. Mick harrumphed and reluctantly said that he would come with me. I didn’t want to drag him up there against his will and so decided to miss the side-trip myself. It was a really bad decision. I now acknowledge that I’m going to have to return to North Berwick at some point to remedy this omission.

Back to the subject of Bass Rock, here’s a better snap of it:

The views from the campsite (which is where the photo above was taken too) were excellent. As well as Bass Rock, we could clearly see the other side of the Firth of Forth.

And as darkness fell we were treated to a good sunset – and the promise of yet another cold night.

The original blog post for the day can be found here.

A Change of Plan

2011-09-30T18:54:00.001+01:00

Nothing like making a u-turn and then impulsively acting on it.

We’ve told lots of people that we’re not applying for TGO Challenge 2012. We were quite decided on the point – for a while at least.

About twenty minutes ago I said to Mick “Shall I fill in the TGOC application form?”

About fifteen minutes ago I went and dug out the cheque book.

About ten minutes ago I popped up the road to post it.

So, contrary to our previous declarations that our plans for next year won’t allow us to take part in the Challenge, our application has been made. Next year’s plans have been re-jigged accordingly. Our big map of Scotland is now spread out on the living room floor and some poring over it is about to occur.

Fingers are crossed.

A random snap from Scotland, taken before (not during) this year’s TGOC (I don’t think we saw that much blue sky during the Challenge this year!)

East to West Photos: Day 28

2011-09-30T17:43:00.001+01:00

Sat 16 April (0830-1710) (NE of Lauder to below Lothian Edge)
Distance: 19 (Tot: 497.5)
Weather: cloudy start, then sunny intervals, clearing late on to mainly blue sky; windy

It was a day that involved much yomping, some of it very colourful (even if a bit squelchy):

In between the colourful bogginess it was knee-deep heather:

Then, suddenly, we came across a motorway under construction. For access to the site of a new wind farm, we guessed.

Now that’s a sign you don’t expect when you’re up a glen, quite a distance away from the nearest road:

The route that we were on for much of the day was the Herring Road, which runs from Lauder to Dunbar. At times there were sign-posts:

Then we got to Crystal Rig wind farm and, just as waymarking would have been really handy, all signs disappeared (according to the sign at the entrance, we were supposed to be following the red posts; we saw one just after we entered and another just before we left). We were hampered even more by the fact that our map showed a sizeable chunk of forest ahead of us (the other side of which we had intended to camp), yet when we got into the wind farm we noticed that there wasn’t any hint of that forest – not even stumps.

Making rather a hash of navigating our way, as none of the wind farm tracks were shown on our map, I suddenly noticed that we were in the forest. See those bits of old branches on the ground? That’s all that remained.

If this map had been in our possession at the time our passage through the wind farm would have been smoother – but far less memorable.

By contrast, this is what we’d expected to find on the ground:

The original blog post for the day can be found here.

East to West Photos: Day 27

2011-09-29T18:54:00.001+01:00

Fri 15 April (0930-1545) (Melrose to NE of Lauder)
Distance: 14 miles
Weather: cloudy, one brief drizzly shower

Easter was now just over a week away and the bakers in Lauder was selling cakes appropriate to the occasion:

It was a couple of miles outside of Lauder when we caught our final sight of the Eildon Hills. Being lumps in a land of flatness they really are noticeable for quite a distance.

The day became curtailed when we found this camping spot. I don’t think the photo makes it look quite as perfect as it was. We were happy campers!

The original post for the day can be found here.

East to West Photos: Day 26

2011-09-27T20:01:00.001+01:00

Thurs 13 April (0740-1455) (Jedburgh to Melrose)
Distance: 17.5 miles (Tot: 444.5)
Weather: some sun, some light rain, much warmer than yesterday

Leaving Jedburgh on the Thursday morning we found that there were quite a variety of routes that headed the same way as we were going:

To the River Tweed we went, where the most memorable five minutes of the trip occurred. We had stopped to don waterproof jackets (completely unnecessarily as it turned out, the drizzle stopped as soon as we had them on) when I caught sight of some movement out of the corner of my eye. One adult otter and two pups fishing just a handful of metres away from us.

Here’s a cropped and zoomed version of the adult. I did take some video, which looks fine on my computer but in the small format on You Tube doesn’t really work.

A while later the Eildon Hills came into view. They stayed in view until late the following afternoon! At the time that I took this photo I expected that we would walk between the right and and the middle lump. When we got there, we decided to go over the top of the one on the right. A good decision, methinks.

Before we got to the Eildon Hills, we walked a while down the River Tweed (where, stopping for the lunch we had bought in Newton, I had my first experience of a Macaroni Cheese Pie). A while later I was so taken by the blossom that I failed to notice a tree root in front of me and caused Mick’s eyebrows to raise, and maybe a mumbling about watching where I was going, as I stumbled.

Reaching St Boswells we had to wonder whether the council offices there win the prize for the least attractive building in Scotland.

As a complete contrast, everything looked good from the east top of the Eildon Hills, where I sheltered behind the cairn from the brisk wind.

There were clear paths up to the other tops too, but we didn’t investigate them.

Instead we made a meal of navigating our way the short distance into Melrose. One hundred and thirty three wooden steps featured as we made our final approach.

Abbeys were feeling like they were ten a penny at this point.

The original blog post for the day can be found here.

East to West Photos: Day 25

2011-09-26T19:00:00.001+01:00

Wed 13 April (0735-1400) (Chew Green to Jedburgh)
Distance: 16 miles (Tot: 427)
Weather: few brief bits of sun, light showers (every time one of us dared take off a waterproof item), windy again.

About five paces into the day we joined the Pennine Way, which we followed for a whole mile and a half, before we headed off along Dere Street. Here’s Mick on Deer Street. You might think from his attire (even waterproof mitts feature in his ensemble) that it was raining. Although the day did involve a few light showers they certainly weren’t enough to warrant this level of waterproofing. We were actually both dressed in full waterproofs just for warmth. Up at 400m and with the wind still battering us, it felt very cold.

Our surroundings were, once again, absolutely stunning. The photos just don’t do justice to all of the lumps and undulations, with all of the subtle differences in colour.

Getting towards Jedburgh, Dere Street became a nightmare to walk along, having been deeply rutted across its entire width by 4x4s. We were pleased to get off that section.

Arriving in Jedburgh our priority was to find ourselves a nice big lunch, but we did take a little bit of a detour to have a look at the abbey, which is in pretty good shape compared to some that we had passed earlier in the trip.

My original comments about the day can be found here.

East to West Photos: Day 24

2011-09-25T19:56:00.001+01:00

Tues 12 April (0800-1615) (S of Harwood Forest to Chew Green)
Distance: 20 miles (Tot: 431)
Weather: mainly sunny, luckily avoiding 2 showers that passed behind us, but strong westerly wind

Day 24 started with a bit of a yomp, but at least there were bridges (sort of) to help us across the streams!

The bulk of the day was on Otterburn Military Firing Range, and although the first three miles were along the perimeter, the next 11 were across the range. What we really didn’t want to see was the red flags flying. What we found was the red flags flying:

Continuing on regardless (and with heavy artillery going off to our right) even the strong wind didn’t spoil my enjoyment of this gorgeous area of the country. Lots and lots of space, with no sign of civilisation (except for the passing army vehicles and the sound of heavy artillery…).

Practically every sign post had a bullet hole. Clean on the entry side:

Jagged on the exit side:

Seeing livestock made us feel more confident that we weren’t about to be bombed in these gorgeous surroundings:

Talking of gorgeous … I was demonstrating the high fashion of bright pink buff worn as a semi balaclava over my warm hat. That wind (coming almost head on) had quite a bite to it – such a contrast to a couple of days before.

With less than a mile to go until we cleared the range, and just as we were heaving a sigh of relief that we had made it through without being removed from the site and forced to take a lengthy detour, the military activity suddenly got very close indeed:

The black dots on the road in the photo below are some of the three dozen troops who, fully camouflaged up, came trundling past us. At least they didn’t object to our presence.

There are already quite a lot of photos in this post, but I think that there’s room for another gratuitous shot of the gorgeous surroundings. I really do like this area:

We cleared the boundary of the firing range by a whole fifty metres before deciding to camp. We could have carried on another half of a kilometre to camp legally in Scotland, but this spot was reasonably sheltered. The farmer didn’t seem to object either, as he passed by and saw us about half an hour after we had pitched.

The original post for the day can be found here.

East to West Photos: Day 23

2011-09-24T15:52:00.001+01:00

Mon 11 April (0950-1845) (Hexham to S of Harwood Forest)
Distance: 21 miles (Tot: 411)
Ascent: 4500'
Weather: sunny intervals, a few very brief light showers, windy

Having left our B&B in Hexham (which was excellent value for money and would be recommended if I could remember what it was called), off we headed, up the road, across some fields and into some woodland:

Then we joined Hadrian’s Wall Path, although that wasn’t an easy thing to do; we had approached it perpendicularly, from a side road, from which direction there wasn’t a path. A bit of careful clambering over some fences got us where we wanted to be, and there was clear evidence as to where we were. Even though there wasn’t any wall on this section, the ditch (vallum?) was evident.

Then it started raining! It wasn’t enough to get us wet, but enough (when combined with the sunshine) to give a nice rainbow.

I’m sure at least one of us must have been singing ‘Little White Bull’ as we passed this field. Thoughtful of the livestock to pose so nicely for us!

This church was right at the end of the day. I’d just asked a chap in the garden if he could oblige us with filling our water bottles, but it turned out that he was the gardener and didn’t have access to a tap. He pointed us in the direction of the village toilets where we did manage to get water. In between the asking for water and actually filling our bladders, a break was had (with more Peanut M&Ms than it is reasonable to eat in one sitting) outside of this church. I like churches as buildings anyway, but they do look particularly fine with the daffs in flower, don’t you think?

There was nearly a disagreement as the day wore on. Mick found a place to camp that I didn’t much like, and I was in favour of clearing the farmland and getting onto the open land that started a few yards further on. Mick had a good argument that his pitch was sheltered (it was Very Windy), but I wasn’t happy being next to a farm track. Mick also had a good argument that the land we could see ahead was a tussock-fest, whereas his chosen spot was flat. I assured him that there would be somewhere flat, sheltered and discreet half a kilometre ahead, by a patch of woodland. Of course, I had no idea whether that was really going to be the case, but fortunately it did turn out to be so (even if the shelter only lasted until the wind shifted). We spent a very blustery (but comfortable) night there. As you can see there was a lot of nothing in front of us:

And a lot of nothing behind us too (looking at that photo, I see that Mick took it before we had even unzipped the inner tent to start arranging the sleeping quarters (no idea what I was doing there; looks something like the robot dance)):

The original blog post can be found here.

East to West Photos: Day 22

2011-09-23T18:34:00.001+01:00

Sun 10 April (0745-1610) (Beyond Stanhope to Hexham)
Distance: 18 miles (Tot: 390)
Ascent: 5000' (per the altimeter)
Weather: some high cloud but mainly sunny

It wasn’t surprising, given that we had camped in a valley, that our day started with an upward trend. I may have huffed and puffed my way up, but the view back was worth it, particularly with the mist hanging over Stanhope.

The moorland was as lovely as the views were extensive.

We didn’t need to go via the trig point on the top of Bolt’s Law, but it was the easiest thing to do (i.e. following a trodden path versus more yomping through heather), and once we got there it seemed like a good opportunity to use the top of the trig pillar for a timed photo.

It all seemed so big and open!

Too soon we were out of the big openness … and wondering if we had entered a war zone. That damage had been done by something more significant than a shotgun, but happily all was quiet and deserted as we passed through.

At around lunchtime we were walking through some woodland and looking out for somewhere nice to sit for lunch, when we noticed that the whole place was crawling with massive ants. Wood ants, I thought (and some Googling has borne out that thought). I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such massive ant hills in this country before. Here’s one of them.

And here’s another – it’s the lump above and to the right of the right-hand arch in this photo. Huge!

This was the day when we saw four sheep with bottom-less buckets attached to their heads. No idea what that was about, but they weren’t all in the same area and I’ve never the same thing before or since.

My original thoughts on the day can be seen here.

East to West Photos: Day 21

2011-09-22T18:50:00.001+01:00

Sat 9 April (0800-1945) (Barnard Castle to Beyond Stanhope)
Distance: 22 miles (Tot: 372)
Weather: wall-to-wall sunshine, bit hazy

On Day 21 I discovered that there’s a castle at Barnard Castle. Who knew?!

Back to the riverside we went, along a lovely path. Then we came across this boulder, which you may notice is a lot cleaner (specifically, lacking in moss) than the other boulders lying around. Having looked up at the rock face from which it had fallen, in the photo below Mick’s just investigating the witness holes where it bounced on the way down. By the fact that there were still live, green leaves, bent in half where the edge of the rock struck, in the bottom of the indentations we deduced that the rock had fallen in the last few hours. We were glad that we hadn’t passed this way a few hours earlier!

Soon we were heading up a staircase. It always seems strange to be walking up a proper staircase in locations such as this.

Having realised that we didn’t need to walk two sides of a triangle, via Middleton-in-Teesdale, we cut off a corner by heading north from Egglestone. Over lunch we pondered whether to go the slightly longer route to the west of White Hill or the shorter road route to the east. The final decision was to take the direct route over the top. It was a bit of a heathery yomp, and we both had to stop to empty half a kilo of heather out of our shoes as we rejoined the path the other side, but it was good fun. Incidentally, the ridiculous flaredness of the thighs of my trousers is because I had the leg vents fully open. It was a hot day!

Given that it was such a hot day we couldn’t believe our luck when we came across an ice-cream van.

It was a busy little area, with children playing in the river and parents lounging on the banks, all taking advantage of the fantastic weather. Hard to believe that it was only early April.

Having killed some time in a pub in Stanhope (where I was woefully underdressed amongst the girls out for a Saturday night on the town) so as not to be too early in finding an unlawful pitch, we then found that we couldn’t pitch where I’d hoped we could. It turned out that a building which, from the map, I had hoped would be a barn (there not being a track going to it, it seemed like a reasonable hope) was a farmhouse with a view over quite a wide area. By 7.30 (with hunger truly gnawing away), we were out of sight of the farm, but all of the flat land was too lumpy. Happily we didn’t have to compromise – a good and flat pitch was found after a bit of scouting around.

The original post for the day can be found here.

East to West Photos: Day 20

2011-09-21T21:44:00.001+01:00

Fri 9 April (0655-1605) (Ellerton-on-Swale to Barnard Castle)
Distance: 22 miles (Tot: 350)
Weather: wall-to-wall sunshine and jolly warm when out of the brisk breeze

I can’t remember why I was out of the tent early enough to see the sunrise on Day 20, but I was and I even took a photo of it:

Right at the other end of the day (after a detour via the A66 when a failure to navigate landed us at Scotch Corner, and after a few episodes of trespass), we found ourselves at the River Tees – my favourite English river:

It brought me to my knees, apparently:

Another ruined Abbey (Egglestone) was just the other side of the river from us:

And everything looked quite lovely under the blue skies:

The sky was about perfect as we arrived in Barnard Castle, where the Butter Market is a focal point as you approach the high street (pity about the cars; I did take another photo, without cars, the following morning, but this one wins for the perfection of the sky). Mick’s Mum comes from Barnard Castle and tells us that the butter market was all a bustle on a Wednesday in the 1930s.

The original blog post for the day can be found here.

East to West Photos: Day 19

2011-09-20T20:12:00.001+01:00

Thurs 7 April (0735-1530)
Distance: 18 miles (Tot: 328)
Weather: vaguely drizzly start then fluffy clouds clearing to wall-to-wall sunshine
Number of tree creepers seen creeping up a tree: 1
Day 19 saw us take to Wainwrights Coast-to-Coast route for much of the day and after an initially grey start we were soon back to glorious blue skies. The blueness made the flat farmland (wholly inoffense, in my opinion, but also pretty unremarkable), which made up most of this day, more attractive than it would otherwise have been.
Anyone whose walked Wainwright’s Coast-to-Coast will have noticed this tower at Ingleby Cross. I’m sure that earlier in the year I knew what it was, but its purpose seems to have escape me as I type this:

The farmland may have been shown to its best advantage by virtue of the weather, but the vermin was in evidence:

Did I mention that there was plenty of flat farmland? A bit like being at home really, except that the rights of way weren’t at all overgrown or obstructed:

At the end of the day we stayed at a campsite at Ellerton-on-Swale. We had learnt the night before that this site didn’t take tents, but a phone call had netted us a pitch. When we got there we were told to go behind the toilets and to pitch in a field with two horses, rather than going on the campsite itself. No matter what the owner said about the horses being harmless, neither of us was happy with the thought of our tent (and us) being trampled in the night, but having already paid up we dutifully went and inspected the field. Fortunately, it was far too rutted for us to camp and after a bit of pleading we were allowed to pitch on the lakeside. It turned out to be a pretty good pitch:

The original blog post for the day can be found here.

East to West Photos: Day 18

2011-09-19T20:39:00.001+01:00

(Back from our holidays, it’s time to return to the East to West Photos series)

Wed 6 April (0740-1520)
Distance: 17.2 miles (Tot: 313.6)
Weather: blue sky all around but a big cloud overhead

It wasn’t the brightest start to a day, but it was warm enough and dry as we set out to wander off our map, having noticed the night before that the Cleveland Way looked a better way to get to Osmotherley than the route I’d plotted. Thanks went to Al for giving us brief but comprehensive directions that kept us on course!

Not far into the day Mick obliged by performing a ridiculous pose on some generously-sized stepping stones.

In Al’s directions, one of the landmarks he mentioned was ‘a horsey place’. We were relieved when we saw it, as (unusually for a National Trail) way marks had been scarce in the bit leading up to it. As we headed out the other side of the horsey place fourteen horses (which looked more like race horses than old nags, not that I’m any sort of an equestrian expert) passed us.

Al had also mentioned, in his directions, a ‘great view’ and sure enough as we approached Sutton Bank there were ‘ooohs’ uttered. It’s a fantastic escarpment, but once again you’ll have to believe me on that score (or draw on your own memory if you’ve been there) as the combined lack of quality photographic equipment, dull day and poor operator skills meant that we didn’t capture it very well. Here’s evidence that I tried:

Looking in the other direction from the same spot:

This dry-stone wall proved not to be an overly effective wind-break at lunch-time, as the wind whistled through, but I was pleased that this grouse was kind enough to pose so nicely for me.

It must have been my day for timing shots nicely, as here’s a fly-fisherman’s line in mid fling (I’m sure there must be a more technical name for that act of casting!):

The original blog post can be found here. In that post I’d put the mileage as 15 miles and said that it felt longer, but was erring on the side of it feeling longer simply because we’d faffed so much throughout the day. As it turned out when I got home and measured it, the day was over 2 miles longer than we expected. It was only when I looked at the route on a map afterwards that I recalled that the reason that I hadn’t plotted the Cleveland Way route was because the Way throws in a big southerly swing early in the day. Even so, I’m glad that we did go that way – it was an excellent walk.

Holiday Snaps: Our Week In Cornwall

2011-09-18T20:54:00.001+01:00

Friday: Last time I walked across this viaduct it was about 5.30am, on an equally fine morning, in July 2008:

Dartmoor was looking particularly lush and inviting just off to our left.

Later in the day, in Launceston I spotted a top contender for ‘sign of the week’:

Saturday: On the north side of Bodmin Moor, Mick was impressed with the size of the horns on these coos (I suppose I should have done a bit of cropping and zooming to give a better view)

Meanwhile, elsewhere, on the other side of Bodmin Moor, I was quite impressed with these samples:

Sunday: Jade was back on the walk, and after a gentle couple of miles we came across some challenging stiles; particularly challenging when you can’t easily lift your one leg.

The overgrown brambles (not in evidence so much in the photos, but I assure you that they were there) added to the challenges.

Then, when the stiles got easier, there were the added obstacles of slurry-filled water obstacles combined with brambles and nettles.

Monday: Winner of the ‘sign of the week’ award:

Tuesday: Becks holding an ‘ickle mouse. Or maybe it’s a leaf. Easy mistake to make. This campsite was also the venue of the ‘biggest spider ever’ incident:

Thursday: They were no doubt cursing my route choice as we negotiated this muddy little lane:

A little while later we found that a different mud-fest had been surfaced. Never seen ‘ashtray shells’ used for this purpose before:

As we had entered this field, we scratched our heads for a while as to the whereabouts of the exit. Not being able to spot it, we just followed a bearing and sure enough, when we were about 3 feet away, it became clear. It looks far more obvious in a photo with Jade demonstrating the location of the wall-stile steps. (The other side of this stile was the location of the unfortunate incident involving the handle of my walking pole and a cowpat.)

In a week that was mainly road-walking, the first four miles of this morning really crammed in ‘interesting features’. Here’s another mud-fest of a track which was just before the killer dog and killer horse incidents.

A good way to end a day: Becks delivers two scones to our tent, complete with clotted cream (food of the devil!) for Mick:

Friday: Demonstrating the best way to carry your lunch (in antenna style), as they set off on another murky morning.

Meanwhile, Mick and I went to explore how little we could see off The Lizard. Very little was the answer:

At the end of the day the girls were happy indeed to see their first road side with a mention of Land’s End.

Saturday: I didn’t do a full blog post about the last day (of which I walked all but the last mile with Jade & Becks), so I didn’t have to mention to the world-at-large how I led the girls astray as I took them trespassing across farmland, nor how we had to negotiate a barbed wire fence and impenetrable gorse and prickles. They arrived at Land’s End looking like they’d had an adventure, what with the bloody, scratched legs!

Although many prickles were encountered (not to mention a few back-tracks; I can’t believe they remained so good humoured when I led them astray so close to the finish!), some of the moorland was absolutely stunning in its purples and yellows:

The plus side of the faffing around with finding a way to trespass our way to the coast was that, by the time we were backtracking once again to find our way off Carn Brea in the right direction (at which point we were on Access Land, but with the impediment of dense gorse preventing a direct route in the direction we wanted), the murk finally melted away. By the time Mick had joined us just outside of Sennen Cove the sky was turning blue (you can just see the last of the murk disappearing off in the top right of this photo).

By the time we got to Sennen Cove it was looking absolutely stunning:

Having quickly nipped around to Land’s End in the car, we were there to see Jade and Becks achieve what they’d set out to achieve:

After the End-to-Enders book had been signed, Jade & Becks went off to join Becks’s family for a picnic and we decided it was time to wend our way home.

It may have been a bit of a spur of the moment holiday, and the weather was undeniably disappointing, but a top time was had. Such a good time, that it’s strange to think that we had only met Jade and Becks for the first time three weeks earlier!

Land's End

2011-09-10T12:57:00.001+01:00

A big well done to both Jade and Becks.

A good walk, done well.

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Godolphin to Penzance

2011-09-09T16:08:00.001+01:00

What a miserable day again! Our hopes that the fog would have gone by morning were in vain. It was another damp day with limited visibility and frequent drizzle.

Given the conditions we left the girls to it and decided to go and do the touristy thing by visiting The Lizard. Last time we were there was on our big walk in 2008, on a day when the weather was far from friendly.

On reflection, a foggy day isn't the best time to choose to go down to the Lizard. We could smell the sea, but couldn't see it; we could hear the lighthouse, but couldn't see it. On the plus-side, we did remember the location of 'Ann's Famous Pasties' and so popped by to buy some.

Having done a quick calculation as to where Jade and Becks would have got to, we managed to intecepted them, almost exactly half way through their day. Even though they'd only just had their lunch, they didn't object to jumping into the car for a hot-pasty-break. Abandonning them to disappear back into the mist, off we went to find our campsite for the night.

Our day wasn't entirely lazy. We did walk out a mile to meet them as they walked the final bit into and through Penzance, where they were particularly happy to see their first road sign pointing to Land's End.

And so tomorrow is the day. Just ten and a half miles to go. I really do hope that this fog has lifted by then. After all the effort they've put in, it would be such a shame to walk in and not even be able to see to where they've walked!

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Ponsanooth to Godolphin Cross

2011-09-08T16:45:00.000+01:00

At a quarter to eleven last night there were screams and squeals emanating from the tent next door. We decided that there were two possible explanations: 1) the girls were being attacked by a mad axe murderer; or 2) Jade had found a spider in the tent. Arguably in neglect of our duties, we didn't leap out of our sleeping bags to investigate but happily found both girls to be free of protruding axes this morning and thus the story of 'the biggest spider ever!' came out.

As for today, well what a miserable day! Mick's description of Cornwall's "40mph fog" may have been a bit of an overstatement for today's conditions, but there was certainly quite a degree of foginess and, with it, wind-blown mizzle.

Too wet to go without a jacket, but too warm to be comfortable in a jacket on the uphills, it wasn't the best of conditions.

With the first four miles of the day being across fields - a pleasant break from the little lanes - I opted to walk with the girls until Carnkie. Well, what an adventure we had. Deep mud was prevalent, together with obscenely tall (and often camouflaged) Cornish wall stiles, then, for added interest, there was a killer dog incident closely followed by a killer horse incident. And there was the incident involving the handle of my pole and a cow-pat, but that was purely carelessness on my part.

I left them in Carnkie, where we found Mick at the roadside, waiting exactly where he was supposed to be.

Having pitched the tents at our night-stop and had a cup of tea, our intention was to walk back to meet Jade and Becks. They must have been putting on quite a pace as we hadn't been going for much more than five minutes when we saw them coming towards us. And so, before we knew it, we were back in the tent, drinking more tea.
Only 23 miles to go...

(Sorry, not even the dodgiest of dodgy photos today. It really wasn't the weather for it.)
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St Allen to Ponsanooth

2011-09-07T17:31:00.000+01:00

Jade has come to the conclusion over the last few days that 12 miles is about as much as her poorly leg can take at the moment. Fortunately, in order to time their arrival into Land's End for Saturday, there's not a day this week that needs to be longer than 12.5 miles. So, today was another 12 miler.

Blue skies greeted us first thing this morning, and even though they didn't hang around for long, it wasn't a bad day. It was warm enough that I didn't reach for my waterproofs even when a couple of showers passed.

The day was once again mainly on lanes, with just one off-road interlude through Idles woods. We weren't there at that point; we were in Tesco in Truro enjoying third breakfast!

Having met up with the girls in Carnon Downs (at the end of a hill that seemed like it was never going to end; we're certainly into the lumpiness of Cornwall now), back towards Ponsanooth we wandered.

The wandering lasted until we imparted the news that the pub in Perranwell Station closes at 2pm. Jade was having major fantasies about a cup of tea and we all trailed in her wake up the next hill as she set a blazing pace. It was only when she paused at the sight of a lorry approaching that we caught up and heard her mutter "Got to make it in time for a cup of tea!" as she strode away again.

She was disappointed to find that the pub was further on than she thought, but we still got there in good time and even though the barman was taken back to be asked for 4 cups of tea he managed to oblige.

A sensible pace was then maintained for the final couple of miles to Ponsanooth.

As has become the routine, as soon as we were in the car, Jade and Becks were checking their progress on the road atlas. Excitingly, about 10 minutes into tomorrow they will make it onto page 2 of the map. That's the same page as Land's End. The end is within sight.

(Louise: I agree - barring any unfortunate slips, trips or falls I have no doubt that they will make it.)
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St Columb Major to St Allen

2011-09-06T21:11:00.001+01:00

Doh! Through operator error I just lost the entire post I'd just typed.

Here's the gist of the last 48 hours:

The girls got left to their own devices yesterday whilst we opted to be tourists for the day. Having delivered their bags to their night-stop, off we went to Newquay, Fistral Beach, Watergate Bay and Padstow before returning to Newquay to find a B&B.

Even in the comfort of our B&B we were woken by the storm that raged last night. It must have been mightily disturbing from inside a tent (although Jade was, understandably, most disturbed about having accidentally left her shoes and towel outside all night!).
Today dawned wet, windy and very grey, but after our lazy day yesterday we didn't shun a bit of walking even in the conditions. Having picked up Jade & Becks's kit and pitched the tents at the site which will be our home for the next two nights, off we went to walk back towards them.

It wasn't just the weather that was a little uninspiring today. The entire day's route was on lanes (all little and all very quiet indeed), which, with the typical Cornish high hedgerows, meant that views were limited. On the plus-side, the blackberries were very tasty!

The highlight of the day (for me; J&B would probably claim that finally finding an open tea-serving establishment to be up there as a highlight - they've not been having much luck in finding cups of tea the last couple of days) was the church at St Allen. We popped in for a quick look, although there was no information about the building, which certainly looks like it must have a long history. The strange thing about it (or so it seems to me) is its location; there is no obvious settlement in the immediate area. It doesn't stop it being a popular church, though, as when Mick and I walked by in 2008 it was a Sunday morning and people seemed to be flocking there (and there's certainly a sizeable car park).

Continuing the religious theme, today has also included a trip around Truro cathedral (a magnificent building), although that was a post-walk, pre-tea activity.

As for Jade's injury, I'm pleased to say that, whilst she's still limping, she's massively improved from how she was walking even 2 days ago. Fingers crossed that that continues for the final 4 days.

(The photo today is unrelated to the walk, as today's weather wasn't conducive to getting the phone out. That's Newquay Harbour, taken yesterday.)

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