Photos a-go-go

For those who didn’t read my last post, let me just repeat the important bit: we got a new camera this week. That’s no real excuse for posting quite as many photos as appear below, but today was its first proper outing and so I took an abnormally large number of snaps.

This was the exact same walk as I took last Friday, except that I was half an hour later setting off. Once again Mick dropped me off in the next village along, right by this bridge:

 

I’ve walked past and over that bridge any number of times and yet had never before noticed that there’s a big weir on the upstream side of it (probably because the pavement is on the other side, so I always look over the downstream side).

The view on the downstream side made me remember that it had rained a lot in the night. It’s not usually this high (nor so muddy):

Green lanes and enclosed paths followed for a while:

 

Across the first of the open fields I had my first dog incident. Having charged at me it turned out to be friendly enough.

The next field used to house a ‘watering hole’ where I have often seen a herd of cows wallowing. This year it seems to have turned into a bit of a puddle and is rapidly reverting to being just a sunken part of the field.

 

Sheep were encountered (non-killer variety):

 

And then I was into a section of National Forest plantation, where I had my next dog encounter. Much to its owner’s embarrassment it ran up to me repeatedly to place its muddy paws on my trousers (it was too small to reach my jacket); even I couldn’t categorise this one as a killer.

The large man-made lake here seems also be filling in and now it looks more like a marsh than a lake, but I’m sure that it’s still a friendly place for much wildlife.

 

The viewing platform was less friendly; those planks were mightily slippery in today’s damp conditions

 

Onto crop fields and the path was the cause of much slipping and sliding. I reached the roadway with half a field’s worth of mud adorning my shoes.

 

But first there was a real sense of deja vu when I had an exact repetition of last week’s dog-running-at-me-at-full-tilt incident (same dog, at the same point in its walk, with me at the same point in my walk, ran around me and barked, then left at the same speed with which it had arrived):

 

A four-ball on the first tee caused me to pause part way across the golf course and whilst paused I looked over to the club house. Funny that I’ve walked past it so many times and yet somehow never really noticed it. I suppose I’m usually more interested in the golf course itself (particularly if there are any balls flying around)

 

Approaching the river/canal junction my eyes were once again drawn to this building. Every time I walk past I wonder what its history is

 

Once at the canal/river junction there is a sign warning craft not to venture over the tall weir between the canal and the river

 

And just to be sure there’s a barrier to prevent incidents involving people who haven’t read the sign. Until late last year that barrier was in a much worse state of repair, and during its disrepair period we did witness a narrow boat in quite a pickle there (but I was too polite at the time to take a photo of their panic and predicament)

 

Mallard are starting to pair off again, but some fussy females are keeping their options open

The Navigation Warning System on the lock before the river section shows that conditions are just about qualifying as ‘normal’.

 

I’m sure that it will only be a short while before the ‘open as normal’ becomes ‘proceed with caution’ for much of the winter, with occasional closures (at which times the lock gates will be chained shut).

 

The next mile of the canal would be nicer save for being immediately adjacent to the A38. The volume of my audiobook had to be pumped up at this point to be heard over the traffic.

This sizable residence across the other side of the road looks to be falling into disrepair

Hardly surprising when you consider the usual traffic conditions right outside of the front door

 

With attention back on the canal, here’s a better version of the bridge-bridge-lock combo that I snapped with the Blackberry last week

 

Last pic of the day (sigh of relief all around). Much smoke coming out of chimneys along a residential section just before I left the canal, walked up the roads, past the ponds and called Mick to beg for a lift the rest of the way home.

 

Unsurprisingly the route was still 7 miles long and still featured a negligible amount of ascent. As you may have noticed the day was grey, but the rain was good enough to hold off until I got home.

Camera Troubles

At the beginning of September, at a critical moment whilst standing atop a model of a section of Hadrian’s Wall at Vindolanda, our camera’s auto-focus ceased to focus. For a couple more days it was a bit hit or miss as to whether it would play along, or whether it would whir away before coming up with a nasty blue error screen. Then it died completely.

That was disappointing indeed. I can’t say that I thought much of the picture quality that it produced, but we had only had it for 20 months and I was a long way from ready to fork out for a new one.

As much as I wasn’t impressed by the Olympus mju700 it has four benefits: 1) at 104g it’s very light (the main basis upon which I originally bought it); 2) it’s weatherproof; 3) I already own spare batteries for it; and 4) I already have the right memory cards for it. Buying a new camera would likely result in something heavier, not weatherproof, and it seemed highly unlikely that the chosen model would require the same battery or memory card.

The happy solution seemed to be to take the ‘spare camera’, which we inherited, out of the drawer and use that instead. Much chunkier and less user friendly it may have been, but it took decent snaps.

Alas, on its first outing, on Dartmoor, we came to the conclusion that the battery indicator is dicky. Sometimes it’s happy that the brand-new lithium batteries are good. Sometimes it’s convinced that they’re dead and switches off. Sometimes it takes one photo in the belief that the batteries are good, then switches itself off. Switch it back on and it may be fine again for a few more shots or it may randomly decide that it’s powerless. Add that fault to the bulk (it won’t fit in my hipbelt pocket) and it didn’t take long for me to become resigned to getting a new camera.

As much as it rankled to settle for poor picture quality again, if I could have picked up another Olympus mju700 at a reasonable price then I would have, because for my level of snap-shots the plus-points outweigh the major drawback. But I couldn’t pick one up at a price that justified that decision, so it was back to the drawing board.

The new camera arrived last Monday (Canon Ixus 95IS). My initial test shots that afternoon, around the River Crane and the outside of Twickenham Stadium, in failing light, were highly uninspiring. So when I popped out for a walk this morning I took an abnormally large number of photos.

See next post…

 

Shuffling Around The Block

As I set out along the track just up the road from the house this morning, I regretted not having a camera on me – not even the one on my phone. The fields were hoary, with the early fog just starting to burn off on what was setting itself up to be a glorious day. One field in particular looked particularly fine in its whiteness, and my immediate thought was to get a photo of it, but even upon realising my lack of equipment I wasn’t moved to return home to pick up a camera.

My attention was soon drawn instead to the other side of the track and, more specifically, to the most enormous bull in the field there. There is seldom a fence between that field and the one across which I was about to walk (when there is it’s a temporary electric one), and from where I was standing I could see no cows to keep the bull distracted.

There did turn out to be cows, and they did follow me, eventually breaking into a trot (the cows, not me; surprisingly I remained calm even when the trotting caught the bulls attention and he started making his way over for a look too). By then I was almost at the next gate and over its icy bars I vaulted (not out of haste, just because I know that this gate doesn’t open).

The track which I cleared of overgrowth back in February, and found out in August was practically impassable again, has benefitted from the autumn. The undergrowth has died back a little and so I was able to pick my way along without being slapped about the face or grabbed or tripped by spiky things.

There was an unusual amount of livestock on my route today (this being my bog-standard ‘shuffle around the block’ route), but fortunately the only other cows were completely uninterested in my presence as I slip-slid my way through the churned up muddiness of their field. The only other animal incident of the walk was another dog which bounded over to place it’s muddy paws on my jacket (why is it that since I stopped shrieking and hiding behind the nearest tree/person every time I see a dog they take it that I’m the friendliest person in the world and want to jump up me?!)

I would likely have walked an extra mile and a half, returning home over more farmland, except that to do so would have required a repetition of the frisky-cow-and-bull-field (or alternatively a walk along a busy lane in dubious visibility), neither of which appealed, so I cut into the village to walk back home along the road. The road walk did at least give the opportunity to see how various building projects are progressing.

Random hoary photo from January this year;

it looked nothing like that today!

 

Little Josh

Mick holding first-born Grandson for the first time:

 

 

He’s five days old now (Josh that is; Mick’s a tiny bit older!), and weighing in at over 10lb at birth, is a big lad for his age.

He was declared, before our arrival, to be the “most perfect baby in the world” and having met him, we are inclined to agree.

Congratulations go to Nick and Holli (the doting parents of whom we failed to take a photo with Josh – but hopefully they’ll send some through soon).

The Trent & Mersey

Having announced that I was taking myself out for a walk this morning, Mick asked where I was going. I gave the matter some thought and reeled off four options.

A while later, as I laced my shoes and put on my jacket, I still hadn’t made a decision but surprised myself by asking Mick whether he could give me a lift down the road to the next village. A fifth option had apparently popped into my head, which would have been dismissed for the certainty of being chased by three large horses. Getting a lift 3 miles down the road would avoid the horse situation.

As I set out into the gloom a few minutes later, it occurred to me that my concern about the horses had prevented me from thinking through the rest of the route and the fact that it often features cattle, sometimes of a troublesome nature. It also passes through some areas popular with dog walkers, so killer dogs were a further danger.

Just as these thoughts were in my mind, a dog suddenly started barking ferociously about three feet away from me. Having returned to land after leaping six feet in the air, I calmed myself as I realised that the killer beast was securely behind tall palings.

Minutes later I was looking to be doomed to be a nervous wreck when I heard hooves stampeding behind me. Looking over my shoulder I identified the source of the sound as four horses, and gave myself a good talking to as, being on a narrow green-lane, it should have been quite obvious that they were safely in an adjacent field.

It seemed inevitable after such a start that I would come face-to-face with the hugest bull known to man upon entering the first field.

Happily, all of the first set of fields were empty and even more happily all of the dilapidated and missing stiles have been replaced with sturdy new ones.

The 7 miles didn’t all pass off entirely smoothly. Although the only cows I encountered were so small as to be no threat at all, I did have not one but two dogs turn from their owners and stride out at top speed towards me. Both turned out to be less threatening than their approach suggested. The second one turned out to be very friendly indeed – so much so that it left a lovely muddy paw-print on the front of my bright orange jacket.

Anyway, enough words, here are a few (poor quality) snaps:

 

Into the misty gloom

 

Friendly cows

 

Swans and ducks organising themselves by colour

I like this bridge-bridge-lock combination on the Trent & Mersey, but I’m sure that I’ve got better photos of it

The water in all of the local ponds was remarkably low

A Touch of Disappointment

Places on the TGO Challenge were announced earlier this week, followed swiftly by much comment around t’internet as people expressed their excitement at being selected or their disappointment at being on the stand-by list. As I read all the excited postings, I found myself (rather ridiculously) in the category of ‘mildly disappointed’.

That we didn’t get a ‘You’ve got a place!’ email wasn’t a surprise, really, given that we hadn’t entered. But, now that we’ve taken part and understand the attraction of the Challenge, there was a tinge of sadness that we had chosen not to join in the fun next year.

Mick had been all for applying, and for a while I had entertained a plan whereby we worked the Challenge into our K2CW (albeit with some assistance of motorised transport).

Mick remained enthusiastic about that plan, but the more I thought about it the more I dismissed it. Amongst other issues, the biggest argument in my mind was that by delaying our progress north by over two weeks we would be putting ourselves more firmly into midge territory during midge season.

Besides, who in their right mind would incorporate a TGO Challenge into an End-to-End walk?

So in 2010 we will be enjoying the TGOC via the blogs and reports of others. And, in 10 months from now we won’t be dithering; that application will be going straight off for the 2011 Challenge.

Step Away From The Pudding…

(This is a missing post. Typed on Friday evening, it should have preceded the last two, to explain where we were and why. It’s failure to materialise in the right order was entirely operator error (pressing ‘send’ always helps…))

"I'm going to take you away for the weekend" announced Mick a couple of weeks ago and it didn't take me too long to work out that the occasion prompting this was our wedding anniversary.

"Where?" was my natural response, but Mick maintained that it was a surprise. He wasn't even drawn in by my probing questions.

It was the apparently innocent statement of "We'll travel down on Friday" that led me to guess the location - much to Mick's consternation. It was the word "down" that did it.

"Down?" I repeated "Not up?". Mick tried to back-track. "Warren's Farm?" I asked. Mick looked sheepish. I grinned.

We discovered Warren's Farm in Yeoford (thank's to Vic's assistance at short notice) during our Big Walk last year and it maintained its 'best B&B' ranking throughout the entire trip. We not only vowed to return, but as a result of some comments in the Visitors' Book last year we quite fancied sampling one of Winnie's (the host’s) famed three course meals.

We arrived at the farm on Friday afternoon

and with the friendly welcome came the apparently bottomless pot of tea and warm scones. Mick's eyes lit up at the sight of the large helping of clotted cream which he knew he would enjoy all to himself.

We had a different room this time, but once again it was large, comfortable and full of character (and it had a bath in the en-suite, making me rue not having that room last year when the bath would have been even more welcome).

The evening meal was superb, even if there was enough food to feed a family of six hungry people. After cream of mushroom soup with sunflower-bread, it was pheasant cooked in a delicious sauce, served with roasted parsnips and swede, broccoli, cabbage and leek and carrot, a whole head of cauli baked in cheese sauce, and potato croquettes.

We were absolutely stuffed after the main course (and yet struggling to stop eating whilst it remained in front of us, so tasty was it), and then came the dessert. With Winnie being Belgian it had seemed wrong to request anything other than the Belgian Chocolate Mousse, and it came served in two very large bowls.

I took a couple of mouthfuls and found it to be very rich indeed and declared that no-one could possibly finish a whole serving. Mick, however, was making a brave attempt, and possibly would have made it except that in the end I suggested (for his own good) that he stepped away from the pudding.

Later we reclined in bed complaining that we had eaten far too much. I wouldn’t hesitate, next time we visit Warren’s Farm (for I’m sure that there will be a next time), to have a meal here again (albeit next time I will take a bottle of wine to make use of the redundant wine glasses that were curiously part of the place setting).

A fantastic B&B, with a fantastic host and plentiful tasty food. Bliss!

(subsequent note: After Winnie’s excellent breakfast on Saturday morning I was so absolutely full that I skipped lunch and tea and didn’t suffer from any hunger until Sunday morning – almost unheard of for me!)

A Day on Dartmoor

A lengthy bumslide was certainly a quick way to descend Great Link Tor but it wasn't my intended method. What it did achieve was the deeply unpleasant experience of continuing onwards to Kitty Tor with sopping trousers slapping against my legs and a soggy sleeve where I had managed to scoop up some quantity of water. Mick was mercilessly unsympathetic.

Fortunately the mishap didn't occur too early in the walk. We had already walked from Meldon Reservoir and up Sourton Tor before pausing briefly to watch a running event pass by.

As my photo from the top of Kitty Tor showed, visibility up there wasn't great, but it was better than we got for our next objective.

Being woefully lacking in fitness our plans for the day weren't fixed and from Kitty Tor we thought it likely that we would take the easy option of tracks back in the direction whence we had come. A surprising (to me anyway) level of energy remained when we reached Kitty Tor, however, so we took the more interesting route to yomp pathlessly over to Branscombe's Loaf.

A significant amount of murkiness persisted which made the yomp all the more interesting (compass in hand, "to that tussock", "which tussock?", "that darker one" pointing in the direction of any number of tussocks of various shades).

Our navigation proved good (in contrast to earlier in the day when a brain-fart (or plain rustiness) saw me struggling to remember how to take a bearing) and after wading through much bog (oh how magic my GoreTex socks are!) we found ourselves back below the cloud, exactly where we needed to be.

Past a large herd of tiny ponies and normal-sized coos we went, then steeply down to join a path that would lead us to the path around the reservoir.

"How long does it take to walk around" a heavily necklaced woman asked as we skirted the south-east side of the reservoir. "You have just walked around, haven't you?" Well, technically we had but I don't think that our route was the one they intended. We gave them the benefit of information read from our map and they merrily continued.

Thanks to having taken a detour in the morning to buy an emergency map case (having failed to pick one up from home), we ensured that the threatened rain would hold off, and so it did.

A mighty fine walk it was too. Women in heels and necklaces, old chaps in shirts and ties, runners in skimpy shorts; sunshine, mist and murk; paths, bogs and yomping - and freakishly warm for the time of year. What more could one ask for?
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On Kitty Tor

Bit murky up here!
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K2CW: Route Outline

I will post the full itinerary separately, but here’s a rough outline of the route that we’re planning to take from Kent to Cape Wrath:

• Saxon Shore Way (which follows the cliffs) from St Margarets to Dover
• North Downs Way (the southern option, not going via Canterbury) from Dover to Rochester
• Local paths and lanes to Dartford, thence to the south bank of the Thames (note Geoff: that’s the south side, so no need to sneak through the Dartford Tunnel!)
• Thames Path to Kew
• Grand Union Canal to Birmingham
• More canals through Wolverhampton until we can pick up some local paths to Cannock Chase
• Staffs Way to Rocester then the Limestone Way (with a few diversions/shortcuts on local paths) to Youlgrave (pretty much following the Cicerone End-to-End Trail route at this point)
• Various paths to meet up with the Pennine Way at the burger van on the A635 (double egg bap and two mugs of tea for me, please), then almost immediately leaving it to go via the Kirklees Way to Marsden
• Paths and lanes via Ripponden and Sowerby Bridge* to pick up the Calderdale Way to get us to Halifax where hopefully one of Ma-in-Law’s famous roast dinners will await us
• Various paths and lanes get us to the Dales Way LInk via Bingley to Ilkley where we pick up the Dales Way
• Leaving the Dales Way just before Windermere we have the bit of the route that involved the most planning and re-planning. As it stands we’re going via Helvellyn to Scales, thence to the east of Blencathra to pick up the Cumbria Way
• Reaching Carlisle via the Cumbria Way an incredibly brief encounter is had with Hadrian’s Wall Path before we head north taking the best route I could come up with until we reach Hawick
• Just over a day later we join up with our LEJOG route and maybe out of laziness or maybe because I couldn’t see anything more attractive, we follow that route the whole way to Kilsyth. This time I will make the time to have a go on the Falkirk Wheel, but I’m also aware that this section involves my two least-favourite days of the whole of our LEJOG walk
• From Kilsyth it starts to get interesting as we head west as if we’re going to join the West Highland Way, but then off to follow (more or less) the route of the Highland High Way** all the way up to Fort William. We’re missing out a few of the Munros included in that route, but also adding in a couple.
• At Fort William the Cape Wrath Trail gives us our route to our destination, which again involves a few days that we’ve seen before. I’ll be particularly interested to see whether the zig-zag through the forest above Inverlael is more obvious now that the End-to-End trail has become quite a popular route.

*If memory serves, I’ve shamelessly stolen Martin’s route, or a very close approximation thereof, to get us from Ripponden to the Dales Way

** Like the Cape Wrath Trail, the Highland High Way is not an official route but just one described in a book. That book is long out of print. Eventually I decided that I wanted a copy of it. Out of print books tend to demand quite a lot of money second-hand. Never before have I paid that much for a little guide-book!

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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