Kites. Red Ones. Lots of.

For the last six months I have travelled up and down the M40 an average of once per week.

As many will know, the immediate vicinity of the M40 in the Stokenchurch area is the home of a large number of Red Kites*. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of journeys I’ve completed without seeing a single one and on a sunny day can easily see a dozen or more. They can be quite distracting too – a truly magnificent bird soaring high over you deserves a glance – but sometimes they swoop low over you too and it’s difficult to keep your eyes on the road when they’re right there in front of you with fantastic colouring and the constant balancing-wiggle of that tail.

This afternoon I could have had a real treat if there had been somewhere for me to pull over to observe (tsk – why do the hold ups occur at inconvenient times, rather than when there’s interesting stuff to look at**?), for there off to the west of the carriageway was a ‘swarm***’. I couldn’t do an accurate head count, passing at speed as I was, but I would say that there were at least 15, if not 20, of them gliding around together.

Only once before have I seen that many playing together. On the other side of the carriageway was a singleton. I wonder what that one had done to be ostracised? Or maybe it just hadn’t noticed that there was a party going on a hundred yards away?

A couple of miles further on and another singleton was spotted. Single amongst other Kites that is, as it was being mobbed by crows****. Unlike the displays of crows versus buzzards, which I’ve always witnessed to involve much ducking and diving (plus the occasional bit of retribution when the buzzard gets fed up with the attack), the Red Kite just continued soaring, apparently unmoved (or at least that’s how he appeared in the few seconds he was in my view).

The Kites do seem to have made a remarkably successful comeback, particularly in around that bit of the M40. Let’s hope that they spread further afield too, so that more people can enjoy them.

A photo shamelessly stolen from t’internet

* For anyone who is not familiar with the bird the foolproof recognition tip that my late father (who was a bit of a birder) passed on to me was that it’s the only bird of prey with a forked tail. The ‘fingers’ of the wing feathers are also quite distinctive.

** Not entirely true. During a ‘trapped in motorway hell’ sitting-with-engine-off-for-hours incident a few weeks ago I did have a Hercules circle me quite a few times before, right in front of me, throwing half a dozen chaps out of the back who duly activated their parachutes to drift gracefully down to ground. Then I twiddled my thumbs for another hour and a half.

*** Swarm?! What is the correct collective noun for Red Kites anyway?

**** To me a ‘crow’ is anything that’s big and black. I have no clue about distinguishing a crow from a jackdaw, raven or such. Similarly birds of prey are generally BBJs***** and anything like a sparrow is a LBJ******.

*****BBJ = Big Brown Job

******* You can work LBJ out for yourself can’t you?

The Next Big Walk

From Kent to Cape Wrath it is - or K2CW as I’m calling it for short.

The initial seed of a plan started to form when I was watching the weather forecast shortly after returning from John O’Groats last year. Whilst Mick was looking at the bottom left and top right and thinking “That’s a long way we just walked”, I was looking at the opposite two corners and cogs were starting to turn in my head.

For a while very little serious thought was given to the route, planning and logistics, other than to look at a map and try to decide where the bottom right hand corner lies (and if there’s an officially recognised answer which varies from our start point then I would rather not know!). With it proving a bit tricky to decide exactly where the south-east corner of Britain is, I decided it was our walk so it was our prerogative to pick the point that looked to be: (a) a reasonable contender for the ‘bottom right corner’ award; and (b) reasonably easy to get to; and (c) reasonably pleasant to walk from. The winner was St Margaret’s at Cliffe, just up the coast from Dover.

A few weeks back the planning finally began. As it had taken me a year to plan our LEJOG route, and with our planned start date only a handful of months away, it seemed like time was of the essence. As it turned out the planning was much simpler than LEJOG for various reasons (but that’s a subject for a different post). Last weekend I finished tweaking and declared that we have a route and an itinerary (which isn’t to say that there won’t be changes, but with one fifty-mile exception I’m reasonably happy with the route that we have).

Here’s a rough approximation of our route (very rough – I’ve sketched it without reference to a big map with place names on it, so it’s based on the version of Britain that’s in my head):

The route is coming out at a smidge over 1000 miles (1017 to be precise, but based on last year’s experience it will get slightly shorter when I print the maps and realise that I’ve plotted a long way round at some point) with around 150,000 feet of ascent. A significant chunk of that hilliness is in Scotland where (weather permitting) we’re planning a good handful of adventurous days over hills.

We’ve even picked a date out of the air on which to start: 2 April 2010*.

I’ll talk about the chosen route, and will publish the itinerary, separately.

(*usual disclaimer applies: I am female and thus at liberty to bring that forward).

Lengths and Breadths

We never set out to walk the lengths and breadths of Britain.

On 7 July 2008, when we reached John O’Groats, our ‘lengths and breadths of Britain’ map looked like this:

It might have stayed looking like that, except that Mick quite fancied walking Wainwright’s Coast to Coast and taking advantage of still having a modicum of fitness left over from LEJOG we popped across from St Bees to Robin Hood’s Bay in September 2008. Our map then looked like this:

Still we had no master plan. Then, about this time last year, I came to fill in the TGOC application form and got to the question of “Why do you want to take part in the TGO Challenge” (or some such similar wording). I gave that some thought. One reason was because quite a few people had told us that we should. Another reason was that having walked the length and breadth of England and the length of Scotland it seemed like a good addition to our collection of lengths and breadths.

So, by the end of May this year, the map was looking like this:

Gradually the theme had developed and there was a job to be finished. Our attention turned to Wales.

Being gainfully employed this year, having already taken most of May off, and with the length of Wales being longer than can be squeezed into a few days, we put that one on the back-burner and instead concentrated on the easy option. Every year a mad bunch of people walk across Wales in a day, so it looked eminently achievable for us to walk across it in a long weekend. Hence in early August this year our map had gained another line:

Five lines out of a possible six completed it was inevitable that we had to set our sights on the full set and I even have a vague plan as to what our route will be (based largely on the Cambrian Way route, which will hopefully avoid significant problems with footpath upkeep issues in mid-Wales). So, it would be reasonable to think that our next sizeable walk will make the map look like this:

But, no! The length of Wales is going to be kept on the back-burner for a while yet, for first there is another line that we’re going to add to our map…

…to be continued…

Dora's 1st Outing

It has been something of a cultural week thus far.

On Sunday we spent an uncommonly long time perusing Carlisle castle (often in the rain).

Had all gone to plan both this and Monday's itinerary would have been with Ma-in-Law, in consideration for whose interests we chose the location for our long weekend. Alas, she was taken poorly at the last minute, so it became a holiday for two - but we stuck with the planned touristy activities nevertheless.

Monday was fortuitously dry (mainly) and before opening time we were at Vindolanda waiting for another dose of culture.
Once again we proved that we have the ability to spend longer than most examining things historical - so much so that we were running out of time to visit the Roman Army Museum and having bought a joint ticket we felt obliged to go there.

The Roman Army Museum I found disappointing (if you're in the area my recommendation would be to just spend a long time at Vindolanda; preferably on a nice day as it's an outdoor attraction).

Tuesday the weather in the North West was dreadful, but that wasn't a problem as we simply spent the morning window shopping in Keswick. Any thought of walking anywhere was soon discounted, given the wind-driven lashings of rain, and so in the early afternoon it was to home that we headed

Our sojourn there was short. This morning we were on the road again, this time to Wrexham where we enjoyed a tour of Erddig house and gardens. Unlike any other visitors, we had a personal tour guide and also got to see some areas that are closed to the public. An excellent excursion to a worth-visiting National Trust property.

From Wrexham we were on the road again, this time to Barmouth.

Why in the world people come on holiday here I do not know. How the eating establishments here survive is a further mystery given the general poor quality, often hideous-datedness and dearth of customers outside of August (there is only one decent place in town and that was booked out). But we are only here for one night and with particular business to attend to. By 10am we will be on our way again.

For the first time in my history with Barmouth (I lived here for a while and thanks to a (now ex-) family property have always had a bed available to me) we are camping. The campsite isn't too shoddy and we do have sea views, albeit at the expense of a level pitch.

And purely because she hadn't enjoyed an outing in the 10 months that we've had her, Dora (our Aztec Dura) is having her first trial. She's overkill for the conditions and we thought we would never be done pegging out all of those guys, but she's very spacious and I'm sure that if we were caught by a freak storm she would cope admirably.

Tomorrow's agenda (after a trip up a hillside with a bunch of beheaded flowers) is to visit either Chirk Castle or Powis Castle. Chirk will likely win purely for the reasons that we camped within sight of it on our Big Walk last year and met a chap at the Oykel Bridge Hotel who knew it well. What better reasons for a visit could one have?
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The Night Before

What I didn’t mention was that I set out on the Chase on Friday with something of a sore head.

Thursday night had seen a celebration.

Perhaps not everyone celebrates pending unemployment like it’s a Good Thing, but I saw the fact that Mick had resigned from his job last week (which was only supposed to be for six months from last November in any case) as a cause for opening something bubbly.

So, by Christmas at least one of us will be unemployed and will have the time again to regain some of the lost fitness and enjoy proper amounts of fresh air and exercise.

You’re Mad!

“You’re going in this weather?” Mick asked me incredulously as I bade him farewell on Friday morning to take myself for a bit of a leg-stretch on The Chase.

“It’ll have stopped by the time I get there” I said doubtfully, looking out at the dark sky and lashing rain.

“You’re mad!” said Mick.

I thanked him for the vote of confidence (I put it down to jealousy; I’m sure that if he didn’t have to work he would have happily come along with me) and dashed along the drive to the car.

Twenty minutes later I pulled up in the usual car park on The Chase and got quite damp around the edges as I conceded that waterproofs were going to be required.

It seemed that most people had been put off by the weather, as I can’t have seen more than a dozen people in the 8.5 miles that I covered, and half of those were from a distance. As it went the weather wasn’t as bad as it had threatened to be. The rain did eventually give way to showers and having learnt my lesson the week before I took to sheltering under trees rather than taking the trouble to don waterproofs only to need to take them off ten minutes later.

Everything was very green and lush, except where it was the startling purple of heather in flower, and except in the vicinity of this sign which I particularly liked for its being so precise about what was being cut:

I saw no evidence of any machinery in use, just a couple of men with gardening implements, and lots of cleared and burnt areas like this one:

It looks like the war against Phytophthora Ramorum is still being waged, but the ‘disease control area’ signage is still woefully lacking and confusing (as I passed half a dozen ‘you are now entering a disease control area’ signs, but not a single ‘you are now leaving a disease control area’ one).

The 8.5 mile route was the usual one. I walked it anti-clockwise, because I always do. The only times it sees me in a clockwise direction is when I’ve just walked it clockwise, am after a 17-mile brain-in-neutral training walk, and can’t face walking it the same way twice in one day.

Friday 21 August: From Cannock Chase to Wolverhampton

I’ve been following Richard’s progress southbound from John O’Groats since he set out in July and knowing that he would be passing close to us got in touch with him (via his support team back home in New Zealand) to arrange to meet up.

Having met him for the first time over a pint and some dinner on Thursday night, I was standing at his rapidly collapsing front door (he was just taking his tent down as I arrived) bright and early on Friday morning and ten minutes later we were outpacing the midges (midges on the Chase? That’s a first to me – I reckon Richard could be right when he says that they’re following him!).

Richard declared that he was having an easy navigation day as he had a local guide with him and perhaps I should have forewarned him that I haven’t got a particularly good record at accurate navigation when I’m busy chatting. He soon got the picture when just a few miles through the day we merrily walked down the wrong track (thank goodness (a) for the pylons and (b) that I noticed that we shouldn’t be walking towards pylons, or we could have gone seriously awry!). We shunned backtracking though and simply re-routed slightly with no extra distance caused.

The start and end points of the day dictated that much of the walking was on roads, so Richard got a tour not only of little lanes but also a few housing estates where I thought they looked like they would offer a better route to where we were going. Only a few hundred yards along the A5 towards Cannock (where the traffic was stationary thanks to the V Festival) were unpleasant and we wouldn’t have even been on such a major road if it hadn’t been for the complete impassability of the right of way that we should have been taking.

The forecast had been for heavy showers so we counted ourselves lucky to have fine skies for the first half of the morning. Then a few spots of rain were felt and we grasped at the straw that we were just getting the edge of a shower. Five minutes later waterproofs were donned. Ten minutes later the sun was beating down on us and off the waterproofs had to come. It became a bit of a theme for the day.

The heaviest downpour of the day cruelly hit us just five minutes before we reached the pub at Essington, which we had earmarked for a break, it was then sunny for the whole time we were inside and promptly started raining again as we left. Harrumph!

Roads and footpaths took us to a canal towpath, which would not only lead us to Wolverhampton but would bypass the dodgy areas that Richard had plotted on his map. Right into the city we did not go though, as Richard’s route had him finishing the day to the south of the city and taking a detour to see the sights of the centre didn’t seem a priority to add to a 18 mile day.

I managed to pay enough attention to our whereabouts (whilst we put the world to rights on the subject of gas and electrical regulations) to find the right bridge to take us off the canal so that we could pick Richard’s intended route back up and fifteen minutes later we were done for the day having covered 18 miles.

With the V Festival traffic thwarting Mick’s plans to drive over to pick us up, the local public transport was sampled (oh the joys of ‘exact fare only’ buses when you’ve intentionally spent all of your loose change so as to save weight!) as a bus was caught into the city centre and thence a train back to Rugeley where we found Mick waiting to whiz us back to our house for the night.

It was an good day in excellent company only marred marginally by a few inconsiderately timed heavy showers and by the discovery that the poorly knee is still far from better.

The Trials of Technology

Until a small handful of months ago I had not owned a ‘new fangled’ phone which did things like take pictures and send emails. My brief dalliance with a new blogging device (LG KS360) on the TGO challenge gave me a taster of what was possible and people seemed to like being able to see the occasional photo with a post, so I finally bit the bullet and bought the phone that I really wanted: a Blackberry.

I like the Blackberry a lot, and having a camera on it has been quite useful a number of times when I’ve found myself in an ‘I need a photo’ situation without a camera.

But … it is also partially to blame for this week’s continued failure to blog (how has it been three weeks already?).

On Monday I thought I’d put together a little write-up of last Friday’s walk with Richard, but before I did that I wanted to download a couple of photos that I had taken with the Blackberry.

Three nights later and I had lost twelve hours in my quest of getting the Blackberry to talk to the computer as a mass storage device. Having downloaded the drivers, the computer recognises the Blackberry, but the Blackberry refuses to act per its settings.

With twelve hours lost and much pulling out of my hair (a tenuously related side effect of which was that I finally got around to upgrading the RAM in the laptop from 512Mb to 1Gb; if I’d realised that it was such a cheap 30 second job I would have done it a long time ago), I admitted defeat. Finding that I could buy a card reader for £2.60 may have helped in my defeat.

But I digress. It was that “but I want the photos” interlude that delayed my post about the walk with Richard.

The card reader is going to take a few days to arrive, but in the meantime I will finally rectify my tardiness by blogging about last Friday without the photos.

AWW Day 2

(A retrospective replacement for Sunday’s accidentally deleted post)

I did not have a good night’s sleep on the campsite in Llanidloes. For once, it was not any occupants of the campsite who kept me awake, but a do which was going on down in the village which involved music (albeit not bad music) being broadcast at quite some volume until midnight.

To add to my late night, I (very annoyingly) awoke very early and so when the alarm went off Mick may have justified in calling me grumpy.

The grumpiness didn’t last too long, and by the time we set out at 7.30 I had got all of the whinging out of my system and was ready to enjoy the day.

It was a day of three parts. The first part was across farmland and was characterised by route-finding challenges (not too hot on footpath maintenance around these parts, it would seem) and challenging terrain. The exceedingly narrow path, completely obscured by overgrown heather, on the edge of a very-steep-almost-vertical drop was particularly interesting. A veritable adventure in fact.

Shortly after nearly adopting three  friendly dogs which seemed intent on walking the whole of rest of the way with us (they were finally thwarted by us scurrying through a gate), the second section of the day began. Thankfully short, at under an hour in length, it was on tarmac, but after the slow progress during the earlier route finding difficulties it made for fast transit to our lunch venue.

Hafren Forest picnic site would have been an ideal location for lunch had it not been for the man on the sit-on mower who was intent on cutting very single blade of grass on the field notwithstanding that most of the tables were occupied. We staunchly refused to move until he got so close that our toes were in danger.

Mowing the grass at a popular picnic area at lunchtime on a sunny Sunday? Surely there are more appropriate times?!

After a goodly lunch break, into the forest we headed on good tracks and on exiting its top edge the third section of the day began – on open hillside, which presented far fewer navigational challenges than the precision required for walking through farmland.

It was an arduous yomp through tussocks, bog and huge quantities of long grass up the side of Pumlumon, but I quite like a good yomp, and by-and-by the ridge was reached, and from there the going was easier up to the top of Pumlumon.

By the time we got to the top the earlier clear skies were gone and the clouds were ominously grey.

The plan had been to find a pitch somewhere above the track which leads down to the road around Nant-y-Moch reservoir, but nothing promising presented itself. After a bit of a recce along the first bit of the track, it was as the first drops of rain began to fall that we selected the best of what presented itself and tents were pitched. Mick and I chose grass-topped shale on one side of the track, whilst Martin chose deep grass on the other side.

The rain was expected to be persistent, but it turned out to be just one of a number of very light showers that passed by during the night, and by an hour later we were sitting outside of the tent eating our tea in the sunshine – and in turn being eaten by the local midge population.

Although only around 15 or 16 miles in length, it had felt like a hard day to me, and after typing a lengthy blog post (which I later accidentally deleted), I wasted no time in settling down into my sleeping bag. By 8.30pm snoring was to be heard.

Kit and Cards

A definite contender for the ‘best birthday card ever received’ award

After card opening (the one shown above did make me laugh!), a major navigation exercise was mounted when I decided that a shopping trip was what I wanted to do with the day and we headed over to Nottingham. We’ve been there before, but seem to have suffered amnesia as to the layout of the city centre and thus spent three hours walking miles and miles, trying to fathom the locations of the outdoor shops. A map from the Information Centre assisted us a little in finding two, but after three hours Cotswold was still being elusive and I had bought nothing.

GPS technology seemed like the way to go, so returning to the car we employed the Sat-Nav to find Cotswold, and finally I parted with some money; rather more than intended actually.

Being on a roll by then, a browse of Decathlon seemed like a good idea as we were so close. As always, we happily whiled away over an hour browsing, but bought nothing more interesting than underwear.

The day turned out to be just as exhausting as walking across Wales, but I returned home just as happy with my frivolous purchases as those which were intended.

AWW Day 3

Monday - 16ish miles

It was a 7.15 start this morning after an excellent, blissfully quiet, night's sleep. A bit of light rain had fallen in the night, and briefly as we breakfasted, but it was dry by the time we were all assembled and so, unexpectedly, waterproof trousers were left in our packs.

Multiple groups of 'roadside campers' were passed as we walked part of the way around Nant y Moch Reservoir before striking off along a By-way and onwards along the side of Llyn Craigypistyll.

At the dam end of the llyn two route choices presented themselves and a democratic decision was made to avoid the scree slopes on the north side of the valley. Viewing those slopes later from opposite the north-side they didn't look too bad and if walking the route again I would take that side of the valley.

A path through a forest and a footbridge took us to a track which gave us good, fast walking all the way down to Bont-goch. In fact the whole morning was fast, with easy route finding and easy walking on trodden paths and tracks.

Lanes, one of them (from where red kites were seen) particularly nice being more like a track than a road, took us to the main road into Aber, but of course a main road was not what we wanted.

We managed to find a surprising number of hills to walk up on those last few kilometres which was cruel as my mind was most decidedly in the mode of 'it's all downhill to the sea'.

Despite taking a bit of a circuitous route on the edge of Aber thanks to being faced with a plethora of paths in some woodland, we did finally make it.

As the previous post showed, toes (admittedly still enclosed in their footwear) were dipped in the sea and the trip was over.

Incredibly, considering that the forecast was for much rain on both Saturday and today, we were only actually rained on for the first couple of hours after we set out. The very edge of a few other showers caught us but nothing to warrant waterproofs. We have Martin to thank for that, for it is he who has the superb record for backpacking weather.
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AWW Success

Toes have been dipped in the sea following arrival in Aberystwyth. A successful trip!
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AWW Day 2

After a long hard day yesterday (Sunday), we pitched our tents and fell into them just as the first shower of the day passed by.

After chores had been completed I made the time to write a really long post about the day we had had (a hard but good day).

Having just stopped for elevenses I turned my phone on to see if I had a signal to send that post and in an incident of operator error I deleted rather than sent it. 'Oh darn' is a rough approximation of my reaction upon realising my error.

I shall retype a version of it when we get home (i.e. on a proper size keyboard) but in the meantime if you can't wait for the next exciting installment(!) then pop over to phreerunner.blogspot.com for Martin's view of the day.
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AWW Day 2 - Luncheon

How much mess can three people make on a lunch break?

Basking under fine skies here after a morning that was at times somewhat challenging.

Things should get a little easier this afternoon (tempting fate?) as we now leave the farmland behind and head up towards Pumlumon.

With a decidedly poorly knee (at which painkillers have been thrown) my fingers are crossed that my leg doesn't drop off before the day is out.
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AWW Day 2 - Luncheon

How much mess can three people make on a lunch break?

Basking under fine skies here after a morning that was at times somewhat challenging.

Things should get a little easier this afternoon (tempting fate?) as we now leave the farmland behind and head up towards Pumlumon.

With a decidedly poorly knee (at which painkillers have been thrown) my fingers are crossed that my leg doesn't drop off before the day is out.
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AWW Day 1

Day 1 - 17ish miles - 4 wannabe killer dogs

With huge thanks to Sue, the logistics for getting to Anchor were made considerably easier when we were picked up from Newtown station at 8.30 this morning and driven to the Welsh border.

The weather didn't look too promising as Martin (phreerunner.blogspot.com), Mick and I finally finished faffing and strode off, in the rain, up the road, across the border ... and into the cloud base.

The early navigation and underfoot conditions were good and by the time the navigation (on non-existent paths) and terrain got more interesting the weather was clearing and views were starting to be seen.

A very minor adventure was had shortly after elevenses when we found ourselves on the wrong side on a remarkably steep-sided ravine housing a stream. A bit of trespass and clambering saw us right and then things were uneventful until a black cloud deposited its contents on us just as we were enjoying Martin's excellent home-made cake after lunch.

More mud was spattered liberally over us as we made our way onwards through Llandinam where a lovely riverside 'garden' provided a welcome bench for a break before the final push to Llanidloes.

Paths on the wrong sides of hedgerows tried to confound us and a new-born calf made us take a bit of a detour just a hop, skip and a jump before the campsite, but we made it and Day one was complete.

Not only was the campsite welcome a warm one, but the site itself is very nice indeed, on the edge of the river and complete with a camp kitchen. Fingers crossed that it's quiet tonight.

Tomorrow: to Pumlumon.
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AWW Day 1 Arrival

We arrived at the campsite a few minutes ago and knocking on the door of reception we were met by a friendly woman.

'Have you been walking' she asked (she may have spotted the backpacks and liberal covering of mud). We confirmed we had and that we were now well and truly ready to stop and have a cup of tea.

'Go and sit on that bench there and I'll bring you a cup of tea' she said.

Tea and biscuits soon followed.

Now that's service that you don't expect at a campsite!

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Across Wales Day 1 - Elevenses

Three hours in and the weather is looking more promising. Hopefully taking my waterproofs off won't pre-empt another shower, or worse.
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What a good site!

With absolutely no credit to me, and entirely thanks to a link that I saw on a thread on Outdoors Magic, I found my way to a website called ‘Where’s the Path’ this evening. It puts a 1:50k map next to aerial photography, so that you can compare what you see on the map (or more often, don’t see on the map) with what is on the ground.

Pity I wasn’t aware of it a few hours before, when I had Anquet and Google Earth split-screened to have a quick look at a few features of the walk that we’re doing next weekend. The job’s a lot easier when, in pointing at the OS map, you’ve also got a cursor pointing at the exact right bit of the aerial photography.

Sophie and Patch

Taking a bit of a detour on a journey back from Scotland*, we popped by where Sophie and Patch (who are currently walking from John O’Groats to Land’s End) were camped last night, just north of Hebden Bridge.

After a bit of a hairy ride down a very narrow and windy road, both Sophie and Patch were found pitched on an otherwise deserted campsite, from where we whisked them down to Hebden Bridge, which was almost bustling in the sunny weather.

Sophie and patch, with tarp and bivvy

A couple or three hours were passed eating, drinking and chatting in the Shoulder of Mutton where Sophie proved herself to be in very good spirits after 8 weeks of walking, and (impeccably behaved) Patch just wanted a good kip.

With a couple of hours of our nine-hour journey home still ahead of us, we finally had to drag ourselves away, so Sophie was deposited back at the still-deserted campsite to do battle with the midges and off we tootled back home.

Hopefully we’ll catch up with her for a bit of a walk in a couple of weeks’ time.

Sophie’s having problems with technology and so isn’t able to blog very often, but you’ll find her blog here.

(*by coincidence, I found out this morning that yesterday morning we had stopped at the very same services in Perth where Richard, another JOGLEr, had stopped for his breakfast just a few hours before; we must have passed within a couple of miles of him a few miles further down the road.)

Saturday’s Photos

I would have posted the photos with the words, except that I’d already typed the words on one computer and downloaded the photos onto another and it was just too difficult (in the light of an attack of laziness) to transfer one to the other.

So, here are some photos:

Phil (with Catherine hiding behind him) strides away from Stoodley Pike

Catherine and Megan shouldering their fair shares

Phil, Megan and Catherine at White Hill

A bubble-car fest! As we walked by six bubble cars, plus various others, left the lay-by in convoy. It brought a smile to the face!

Not the most attractive pitch for Phil & the girls, but it was as far away from the party tents as we could get

An even less attractive pitch for Wendy – but it was comfortable (particularly when we found ourselves on a bed of water!)

Ignorami in the extreme

Looking deceptively cheerful on Sunday morning, despite the lack of sleep.

Hebden Bridge to Standedge (Saturday 18 July)

The timely running of trains on Saturday morning saw me arriving in Hebden Bridge just before 9am, which was just ten minutes after Mick, Phil and the girls had left their barn, slightly further north.

Given that my starting point was closer, it was unsurprising that I arrived at Stoodley Pike monument first, but the timing wasn’t too far off and I’d barely read a dozen pages of my book when the others arrived. After the girls (that’s Catherine and Megan; hopefully they’ll forgive me for collectively referring to them as ‘the girls’ - it’s a lot easier to type!) and Mick had popped up to the balcony on the monument and various foodstuffs had been stuffed into mouths, the brisk wind was braved as we headed south along the Pennine Way (seeing no woman in mini-skirt and fishnets, nor any sign of people searching for such a woman).

Once I’d caught up with Mick (verbally that is; I’d not seen him for five days so there was much catching up to do), we stopped being so ignorant and walked variously with all other members of the party. Phil I had briefly met before, but his girls I had not, and by the end of the day they had impressed me immeasurably. Aged 13 and 16, this was their first backpacking trip (which they had entered completely voluntarily) and despite some rather adverse weather and despite cramming the whole of the Pennine Way into 17 days, they were exceptionally cheerful, entirely uncomplaining and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the experience (on balance; they did confess to some low periods during the first few days).

Catching the occasional edges of showers, but with much better weather than forecast we made our way across t’moors until we reached The White House where it seemed a jolly good plan to pause for a cup of tea. The pause turned into a stop as it took 20 minutes to be served said cups of tea, but eventually we did move on, past the Aigin Stone, over the M62, across more moors (of which Mick & I mysteriously had absolutely no recollection despite having walked them last year), and thence to Standedge.

No sooner had we got the tents pitched, than Rosa (Phil’s wife) arrived* with the massive hamper containing fresh-out-of-the-oven lasagne, salad, crispy baguettes, pudding, post-pudding chocolates, wine and pop (not to mention real crockery and real cutlery). What an absolute star! I could get used to that sort of an occurrence when arriving at a campsite after a day walking!

Being party animals, we all managed to stay awake in the pub until gone 9pm whereupon the yawning led us to retire to our respective tents where a little sleep was had before the shouting, screeching, screaming and singing began, but enough has already been said about that.

Sunday morning dawned in a very soggy manner. It had rained heavily from about half past three**, which didn’t help to lift spirits after the poor night’s sleep (which must have been even worse for Phil and the girls in that they were so close to home and knew that there were comfy, warm, dry and quiet beds to be had just a few minutes drive away).

Not relishing walking in such a deluge, and with a relatively short day ahead of them, Phil decided to delay the start of their day in the hope that the worst of the weather would pass, and Mick and I decided to abandon our intended short walk (two sides of a triangle to Marsden station) and instead just take the direct route for an earlier train.

As it went Rosa (who had popped by) very kindly gave us a lift down to Marsden, which gave us time to pop into the excellent Angie’s Kitchen for tea and a bacon bap.

A while later, we made the dash from the platform shelter onto the train in heaving rain, and our mini-outing was over.

As for Phil and the girls, despite being so temptingly close to home in atrocious weather, they did, later in the morning, pack away all of their sopping gear, shoulder their water-logged packs, and make their way down to Crowden. On Monday, they made it to Edale. Apparently they’re already talking about their next adventure…

(*Phil had decided that, for completeness and not feeling like they were cheating, they would camp on Saturday night despite being only a few minutes away from home – hence the logistics of Rosa being able to deliver home-made hot food.

** We awoke on a water bed. The whole of the site is on a slight slope and ordinarily we would have pitched at the top of the slope to get as far away from the road as possible. Given the large tents at the top of the site, which looked like a nocturnal disturbance waiting to happen, we pitched at as far away as we could. In hindsight, the only flat ground, at the bottom of a slope, was perhaps not the wisest choice given the weather forecast!)

Food

“We need to think about food” said Mick in response to an email I had sent him about our plans for the weekend after next.

“Eeek!” I said, having completely failed to think about the fact that we would need to eat something during a three-day trip.

A small handful of hours later, after the use of almost every pan in the house and much washing up, and both dehyrdrators are running, containing chilli, shepherd, pasta sauce, chickpea curry, rice and pasta.

Thank goodness for the second dehydrator!

Grumpy!

That was not a good night's sleep and exemplifies why I don't stay on campsites on weekends during peak season.

Imagine the volume at which one yells when two feet away from a pneumatic drill and then apply that to a dozen people in a huge tent between 11pm and 3.15am. Add in to the mix much squealing and screaming, then a bit more squealing and squealing and it was not a fun night.

The good news is that my Neo-Air is every bit as inflated now as it was when I crawled into my sleeping bag last night. Hopefully that's a good indication that I have a good one.
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A Day On The Pennine Way

Have you ever seen such a spread put on at a campsite after a day of walking?

It was 17.5 miles along the Pennine Way today, from Hebden Bridge, with Phil (who works with Mick) and his two teenage daughters, who set out from Kirk Yetholm 15 days ago.

We've only joined them for a day and a bit, but it seems that we picked a good day. Not only was it an excellent walk in good company, but on arrival in Standedge (busy campsite here at the Carriage House) Phil's wife arrived by car with a huge hamper full of freshly cooked food - and a bottle of wine. What an absolute star!
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Making (Part 1 – The Stuff Sack)

(If you ignore the maps (I got a bit distracted) then what we have here is a length of lightweight tent material and two rucksack liners)

The background: until we set out to walk LEJOG I had always managed to keep the contents of my rucksack perfectly dry with a £1.99 orange backpack liner. Somehow, that felt a little too low-tech for such a big undertaking, particularly with its absence of a secure closure to keep rain out of the top, so I looked around for a suitable alternative.

Coming across Sea-to-Summit sil-nylon roll-top stuff sacks, it appeared that they would do the job nicely. In total six were bought.

What we discovered over the course of last year is that despite the word ‘waterproof’ on the packaging, the lightweight Sea-to-Summit waterproof stuff sacks are not actually waterproof. Given prolonged rain they lea and not through the seams, but through the fabric. And I’m not just talking about one defective item; every single one of the six that we bought has failed to keep its contents dry.

In October last year, on our Wet Highland Washout, not only did my sleeping bag get wet around the edges, but at the moment of needing them I discovered that I could wring out my spare hats and gloves that had been secured in the smallest size sack in the front sip pocket of my Osprey Aura.

Disappointing indeed.

Mick went back to his heavier (but waterproof, which is the more important feature) Exped drysack and the obvious thing for me to do would have been to buy one the same. What I actually did (for reasons that are not entirely clear to me now) was to buy some lightweight tent fabric to make my own.

The question was how I was going to form a good, watertight closure, and the very simple answer I came up with was to cut the top off one of the not-actually-waterproof Sea-to-Summit bags and sew it on to my creation.

The end result was something that matches Wendy’s colour-scheme nicely:

You can’t see from the photo particularly well, but it is ‘square bottomed’, and not just an envelope design

I’m not going to recommend sew-your-own as the way forward. For the amount of effort and minimal weight saving I may just as well have bought an Exped bag. The only real benefit of the exercise was keeping me entertained for an hour or so whilst making it (with a marginal price benefit; the cost of materials was just under £6).

Looking at it now, it’s bigger than I need it to be. As it happens I’ve got just under half of the material left, so I may just make another, smaller version.

Not in a tent

Had today gone as I had hoped it would, I would have been sitting inside of Wendy on the Pennine Way by now.

Plans went awry when my car failed its MOT (admittedly given its age, the high mileage and the fact that a service was overdue, it was a little optimistic to think that it would pass). The failure wasn’t an irretrievable one, but the necessary certificate came too late in the day to make the journey north.

Add into the mix the fact that I’m so tired that I’m struggling to string a sentence together and driving looked even less advisable. So, I’m at home and Mick’s having his first ever camping adventure without me (except that it seems that he’s in a barn rather than camping; due to a dodgy phone signal I’m a little unclear as to the details of why and what sort of barn).

All is not lost for my plans to give my Neo-Air its first outing. A train ticket has been booked for a ridiculously early hour of morning and if the train companies oblige with timely services there will be a rendez-vous at Stoodley Pike tomorrow.

The unexpected few hours at home has had one bonus: I’ve found the time to mix some sealant and white spirit together to seam-seal my new rucksack liner. It likely won’t be dry in time for me to use it this weekend, but at least the job is done.

 

Of Feet

'Are you worried that the first thing your plumber did on arrival was to don a pair of waterproof socks?' I asked Vic having arrived to carry out her Christmas present of fitting a new radiator.

As it happened, in the day that I was absent from Vic's house (having my stitches removed - I can soon pick up my backpack again), my new Rocky GoreTex socks had arrived. They're reputed to be the bells and whistles of waterproof socks and when I heard of a vendor with my size in stock I had to get some.

Hopefully they'll get a test next weekend but in the meantime I can report that the fit is a lot less baggy than Mick's Trekmates Amphibians.

As for the photo, that's Mick's feet clad in his Salomon Fastpackers. He ripped the plastic off the parcel this morning and hasn't taken them off since. His first stroll in them was deemed a success. He's a happy chap.
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On Saturday Last

Poking my head between the curtains and seeing a blue sky I declared that we were going out for a walk.

“Local fields and the canal, or the Chase?” I asked, giving Mick the option.

“Fields and canal” he said.

As logistically easy as a local walk is, it wasn’t what I fancied, so I sulked and pouted until Mick changed his vote to the Chase, and off we set.

We knew not whether it was the threat of rain or the imminent women’s final at Wimbledon that were keeping people indoors, but it was noticeably quieter than we’ve found it on any other visit this year – including the cold and wet ones during the less hospitable months of the year.

Despite the appearance that it was going to rain at some point, it was decidedly warm with some good sunny periods (made me regret, within the first half a mile, not wearing shorts (the first half a mile did involve me running back to the car for Mick’s forgotten hat and back, which didn’t help with the heat)), so when I spotted an Ice Cream Van at the car park at Seven Springs we diverted to give the bored vendor a bit of custom.

We fairly paced along (I was completely packless thanks to doctor’s orders), but not so fast that we couldn’t appreciate the surroundings. It’s not that often that we find ourselves on the Chase in summer and I couldn’t get over how incredibly green everything was. Places that were bare seemingly only five minutes ago were now sporting six-feet-high bracken.

Passing numerous signs that announced “You are now leaving a plant disease control area” (see this post from January for details of the disease), we noted that the consistency of signage was up to its usual standard, as we didn’t pass a single sign telling us that we were entering a disease control area and were to keep to the paths. Wonder if the battle against the ancient-oak-threatening disease is being won?

It was only a quick stretch of the legs. We were back in the car two hours after leaving, having covered 7.5 miles. The rain held off, and it was the first outing of my Roclites since I abandoned them in Chepstow last year; pity about the durability issues that I’ve had with Inov8, because they really are comfy shoes.

 

Starting and Ending

More LEJOGing news:

Brendan announced his arrival at John O’Groats today after a 66-day walk. With a very open and honest style of writing including not just his story of the journey but also details of the problems he encountered and the hurdles he overcame, his blog was an excellent read.

Losing one of my daily blog fixes is always a blow – but it looks like there may be some fortuitous timing here, as yesterday Alan Sloman pointed out the blog of Richard Barr who had just set out from John O’Groats to walk south and will be blogging it as he goes.

In the meantime, Sophie & Patch are heading down into The Borders. Technology problems are preventing her from blogging as regularly as she would like, but she’s updating when she can.

LEJOG Photos

361 days ago we reached John O’Groats at the end of our Big Walk.

As soon as we got home, I downloaded all of the photos and enjoyed a reliving of the trip by virtue of those images.

A few months later, when looking through the photos for the umpteenth time, I suddenly realised that I had made a grave error in photographing the trip. We had plenty of memory with us, and had a spare camera battery, but didn’t take the charger. Because of not having the charger I was aware of the need to make the batteries last and thus didn’t use the camera anywhere near as much as I should have.

With hindsight it was incredibly silly to ration the photography for a number of reasons. For one thing, we could have sent a depleted battery back to my sister for recharging at any time and for a matter of pence; secondly rationing to that degree wasn’t at all necessary - we didn’t run so much as the first battery flat, so the second one didn’t even get called into use.

It was sometime in the early autumn last year that I was once again looking through the album and it suddenly struck me like a wet fish quite how awful an error it was not to have snapped away with gay abandon. Why did we not have a photo of our B&B room in Welshpool? Why did we not have a photo of 90% of our camping pitches? Why were there so few snaps of wildlife? Why are there so few photos of us? How many times did I think ‘a photo won’t do that justice’ and not bother even trying to capture a fantastic view?

So taken was I with this realisation of the magnitude of my error that I was all set to go and do the walk again, setting off right that minute, this time with a never-ending supply of power and intended to take all of the photos I missed the last time. Alas, Mick restrained me from my impulsive plan…

So, anyway, all of that waffle aside, some 11.95 months after completing the trip, I’ve finally got around to uploading some photos from the trip and putting some captions on them.

I’ve only up-loaded a selection of the photos – 131 of them – so it won’t take dreadfully long to view it. In the captions I have preceded each one with the day number, and it’s quite noticeable that entire days went by without there being a single photo worthy of making the final cut.

You can access the photos by clicking here or on the photo below and then clicking on ‘slideshow’ (near the top, on the left side of the screen). If you want to be able to read the captions and have time to look at the photo, then I would suggest that you need to slow the slideshow down to 4 or 5 seconds per slide (control the timing via the bar at the bottomn of the slide show).

LEJOG April 08

Right, think I may go and buy another couple of camera batteries now so that I’ve got no excuse on our next big walk!

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

A few weeks ago, when Ron over at Walking Fort Bragg absented himself for a few days to go and walk along a railway line, he posted a few links to other blogs to keep his readers entertained in his absence.

I clicked on one of the links, and over the coming days of avid reading I discovered that there’s a whole mad world out there of people rowing across oceans!

Ron’s link was to Roz Savage, who is currently in Stage 2 of her three stage bid to row solo across the Pacific, and soon I was so hooked on her writing that I dedicated a weekend to not only catching up with the events to date on her current trip, but also lapping up every word of her previous rows, across the Atlantic and the first stage of her Pacific trip.

Truly compelling, and exceptionally well written. I highly recommend popping over there to have a look.

It was befuddling enough to a boat-hater like me to learn that there is a woman out there, bobbing around, rowing an unfathomable distance half way across the globe. Then I found out that she’s not the only one.

Currently 3100 miles into a solo row across the Indian Ocean there is Sarah Outen, and then there’s a pair, Mick & Chris, who are 1700 miles into a little(!?) jaunt across the North Atlantic.

Even more befuddling is the fact that these people who really are taking endurance to the limits and are living in some incredibly testing conditions (even without taking the wetness, salt and bobbing into account) still manage to find the time and energy to post a daily Blog.

Excellent stuff!

Harrumph!

It’s been a bit quiet around here lately. There’s lots of kit related stuff that I could write about (if only I could find the time and enthusiasm) but walking activities have been absent.

That was all going to change this weekend when I was going to take Mick for a quick overnight, (probably somewhere on this side of Wales), which was going to give me the opportunity to test out both my new Neo-Air and my new mobile blogging device.

There was one thing I had forgotten when I made that plan, and that was that I was going under the surgeon’s knife today. Or more precisely, I had remembered the knife, but completely failed to consider that having holes and stitches in the middle of my back and on my shoulder wouldn’t be compatible with a backpacking trip.

No need to fret – I’m in perfectly good health. Perhaps a touch ironically, the whole purpose of the knife was to make backpacking a more comfortable experience by removing three moley things that kept getting sorely battered by carrying my pack.

In the long run, I will be pleased to have had the removals (scarred for life mind; the things I do in the name of comfortable backpacking!) but it is harrumphworthy* about this weekend.

* Made-up word alert.

 

A Government-esque U-Turn

Remember how I said that I wasn’t interested in the Neo-Air?

Remember how I gave lots of reasons why I didn’t want one?

Remember how I got serious gear envy when I saw Mick’s in the flesh?

Sitting next to me just now is my very own Neo-Air :-)

Absolutely tiny and allegedly only 260g (a weight claim that I will of course check when I get home).

I’ve never tried a short mat before, but having questioned a lot of people about short-mat-sleeping (thank you to those who submitted to my obsessive questioning!), I thought that I would give it a go. I may find that it’s not for me, but I can’t knock it until I’ve tried it, so try it I will.

The other reason why investing in the dinky Neo-Air was a bit of a flier was the number of reports of problems with the short length. However, it seems universally to be the case that problems show themselves immediately. I blew mine up at about 5pm yesterday and it’s still firm. I take that to be a promising sign.

A report will follow after first use (either a smug report or a ‘anyone want to buy a pre-tested Neo-Air? Short is not for me’).

TGOC: What I Carried

A couple of weeks ago I said that I had catalogued and weighed all of the kit that I carried on the TGOC and that I would post it. It’s taken me a while (including battle with Google Documents that didn’t like the formatting in any of my pretty versions) but I think that I got there in the end.

You’ll find the full kit-list here. On top of that little lot, I also carried a reducing amount of gas and varying amounts of food and water.

I’ve not done a similar exercise with listing and weighing Mick’s kit list, but the theory of ‘shared load = shared weight’ doesn’t necessarily apply to us. Unless I’ve overlooked something I would only need to add a toilet trowel (+75g), and the balance of the weight for a whole tent (say +300g for a Laser Competition) to make myself self-sufficient.

The kit isn’t wildly different to what I carried on the Big Walk last year, so it has been tried and tested and it works for me. The usual disclaimers apply that we are all different and what I’m comfortable with (e.g. wearing a single pair of trousers for three months), may be someone else’s nightmare. With that in mind, do feel free to comment.

(Thanks go to Alan-of-the-ear who saw this kit-list prior to publication and spotted that the reason for the half kilo discrepancy between the total pack weight and the sum of the parts was that my sleep mat had dropped off somewhere. It’s now reinstated and the total weights now tally.)

TGOC Photos

I've finally uploaded the photos from the TGO Challenge. You can view them by clicking on this link and then clicking on 'slideshow' (near the top, on the left side).

If it's going too fast or too slow, you can change the speed of the slideshow at any time using the controls at the bottom of the screen.

A couple or three of the photos are out of order, so it does jump around a little bit, but once I'd uploaded them I couldn't find a way of moving them around (and I wasn't going to start again).

Oooh, it just makes me want to go for a walk!

Smug Mick and the Neo-Air

Our campsite on Friday night was within three miles of Ma-in-Law’s house. Had we diverted from Ogden water, it would barely have added any distance to the route to have a bed in a dry house for the night. But, Mick had his new Thermarest Neo-Air to try out…

…And was he smug about that Neo-Air? Oh yes!

Even though it’s the Medium sized mat, at 5’6” long, it packs up into a tiny package and is is noticeably lighter than the Pro-Lite 3 that he was using before (and that I’m still using). Despite these attributes, I was adamant that I didn’t want one.

Then Mick inflated it, and there it was lying next to my Prolite 3, and suddenly all of the reasons why I didn’t want one flew out of the window and I had serious gear envy.

Mick was smug; very smug indeed, but he was also an absolutely gentleman and was quite insistent that he swap with me.

I couldn’t possibly have stolen the first use of his new mat though, so he had a very comfy night. I didn’t have a noticeably uncomfortable night (well, except for the usual bruised ribs where my bony elbow dug in), but the gear envy remained.

I wants one!

  Even Ma-in-Law has a go on the Neo-Air

 

Denholme to Ripponden

Quite a while ago now Martin said that he was going to go on a backpacking trip this week. Without knowing a precise location, we said that we would join him for the weekend. The weekend in question was this weekend, and conveniently his schedule (a truly crazy schedule – really, go and look at it!) had him walking within just a few miles of Ma-in-Law’s house, making logistics a lot less complicated than they might have been.

Now, you may have noticed that we’ve had some uncommonly good weather this last week or so. You may also have noticed (if you follow his blog (and if you don’t then I would recommend it)) that Martin has a bit of a knack for getting good weather for his trips. Conversely, Mick and I have a dreadful record for good weather…

Friday

The sun was shining yesterday morning, and it was in summer-wear that we took up residence outside of the Mechanics’ Institute (in the absence of an open pub) early in the afternoon to wait for Martin’s arrival.

It was the bright orange Crocs that first alerted me to his approach and exactly at his predicted time he strode up to us and, being just about lunchtime, lunch was the first priority.

By the time the Co-op and the chippy had been visited and the dining started, the sunny day had turned into an ominously cloudy one. By the time the last chip was eaten, the rain was starting to fall.

For the reasons outlined in the second paragraph above, I accepted full responsibility for the sudden appearance of rain after so many consecutive days of fine weather.

Time to give in to the need for waterproof trousers

We managed to negotiate our way out of the village (new housing estates have made navigation of the local footpaths a bit trickier until the maps catch up (or maybe the maps have caught up and we just have old ones)) and a gold star goes to Martin for also managing to pay attention to the map even with the chatting (a notoriously difficult task and one in which I failed).

It wasn’t too long before we had to concede that the ‘passing shower’ wasn’t going to pass, and out came the waterproof trousers, which became a permanent feature for the rest of the trip.

Approaching Ogden Water we got onto ground with which I’m vaguely familiar and which I know to be very pretty indeed on a sunny day. As it was, the surroundings were a little marred by the dampness.

Blossom around Ogden Water – not marred by the rain

Respite from the weather was had as we dripped over the floor, chairs and tables of the Ogden Visitor Centre, and during that time the sun came out, which would have been quite an exciting event given the previous couple of hours, except that on this occasion the appearance of the sun didn’t cause the rain to stop.

Back out onto steaming tarmac we stepped, but the sun was soon beaten back into submission by the cloud as we crossed the almost-deserted Halifax golf course and then picked up the Calderdale Way, which was then followed all the way to Jerusalem Campsite just by Booth.

It looked unlikely that the rain (admittedly light rain) was going to abate for long enough for us to pitch so we wasted no time with picking a spot (amongst mole hills, in the hope that one didn’t appear underneath us in the night) and diving for shelter. It was an unsociable evening given the conditions and by 8pm (oh, what party animals we are!) there was a sound of snoring coming from our tent.

Saturday

The rain overnight was almost without cease. The other feature of the night was that I listened to fourteen chapters of my audio-book, but managed to sleep through twelve of them!

Fortunately the pattering on nylon was barely noticeable at 5.30 as we came to pack the tent away. Unfortunately, the respite was brief and the belief that it was going to be a showery morning was a misguided one (because surely a 3 hour shower is just called ‘rain’?).

Lots of places passed through this morning looked very oooh-worthy and would ordinarily have seen me reaching for the camera. As it went, I didn’t take a single photo. Perhaps, with the route being so close to Ma-in-Law’s house, we’ll return on a sunny day to appreciate more fully those surroundings.

Various stretches of treacherously slippery cobbles (“well recovered!” I said to Mick after a bit of arm-waving saved him from the jaws of a slip; two steps later his foot shot from under him and he appreciated the cushioning attributes of his sleeping bag in his backpack) were negotiated. Through some very pleasant (but drippy) woodland we passed. A blissfully muddy disused railway line (so many are hard surfaced, it’s nice to find one that’s soft underfoot) was negotiated. After all of which (at all of 8.40am), we were three dripping but cheerful walkers as we presented ourselves into a tea-and-sandwich-serving-but-no-tables-or-chairs establishment in Ripponden.

Along came Sue, who had by prior arrangement arrived to deliver some different footwear to Martin, who had been suffering from a bit of a poorly ankle tendon. The different-shoes mission turned into a ‘take us home’ mission as the sensible decision to abort the rest of the trip was announced. Martin had already walked further than most would in his five days (really, if you didn’t go and look at his schedule when I told you to earlier, then go and do it now!) and had thoroughly enjoyed himself in the previous good weather (i.e. until Mick & I arrived!). There was no value in making a poorly ankle worse and enduring two days of rain just out of principle – and I can’t claim to have been disappointed to have missed our final six miles of hoods-up heads-down yomping, before we were due to do battle with Bustitution (or Rail Replacement Bus Service for those who don’t understand the term) from Marsden.

And so…

The weather was undeniably shitty. We walked 6 miles fewer than intended. I destroyed a second pair of waterproof trousers within the space of a month (I’ll post about that separately). And would I have rather have been sitting on the sofa in front of the telly? Absolutely not.