Easter Weekend Backpack - Day 2

It's a few days more than two years since I last spent a night in a backpacking tent, and that was only a one-nighter. My last 'proper' backpacking trip was on the GR10 in the summer of 2016. It's a bit like riding a bike, though, in that I found I hadn't forgotten how to pitch a tent, prepare an evening meal or any of the other tasks required for a comfortable night on a hillside. There was just one 'how to' that had apparently fallen out of my memory: sleep.

The upside of a wakeful night was that we got an early start. Everything was packed, the tent stowed and breakfast had in the bothy (I did peer through the windows first to ensure it hadn't become occupied during the night; a late arrival wouldn't have appreciated us clattering in just after 6am!).

Well fed and watered and with our packs feeling light (even though we were carrying almost everything we'll need for the TGO Challenge - we didn't repack to remove stuff unneeded on a one-nighter in excellent weather), out of the building we strode whereupon a decision had to be made: left or right.

The plan had been to return by following the track towards Garrigil, then skirting back around Cross Fell. The whim that took us when faced with the decision was to go back over Cross Fell. It's taken me 11 years to get around to visiting its summit, so why not do it twice in 13 hours?

Mick on Cross Fell, with the sun in the east

In contrast to Saturday, when I scampered over the hills seemingly effortlessly, even with the pack on my back, on Sunday morning I felt positively sluggish and my legs protested at the reascent. I drew on the recollection of many mid-trip-weary Marilyn-bagging days when, during my first ascent of the day, I felt like I couldn't possibly do another X hills that day. So it proved to be. By the time we were on our way up the next lump on the ridge (Little Dun Fell), my legs had come to accept my expectations of them.

It was in between Little Dun Fell and Great Dun Fell that we passed the tent of a couple we'd spoken to on the other side Great Dun Fell on Saturday. We'd wondered what had become of them.

Our retracing of Saturday's steps only lasted as far as Knock Old Man, where we shunned the Pennine Way in favour of what could be described as 'good TGO Challenge training' as we set off across tussocks (fortunately no bogs to speak of in the current dry conditions) towards the old mine track above Great Rundale Beck.

By the time we made our way down the steep grassy slopes to the track below, the day had warmed back up to 'shorts and t-shirt' level. Being the weekend (indeed, Easter Sunday), we soon started meeting families walking up towards us and could see people making their way up and down the SE ridge of Dufton Pike.

My plan for Dufton Pike had been to head straight up its east side, visit its summit and descend the path down its SE ridge. Then Mick said he wasn't joining me on this little side trip, which meant I could stick with the plan, or walk slightly further, adding on a bit of descent/re-ascent, in order to take the side trip without my pack. I opted for the latter.

It's a steep ascent even on the path, but the ground was packed hard and was relatively smooth so I was able to make good time* and Mick wasn't waiting for long. Save for two people just finishing their ascent as I set off, I was lucky enough to have the hill to myself.

Happy to be there

It was then just a matter of following the track into Dufton and retracing our steps back to Brampton, where we arrived just over 23 hours after setting off, having covered a total of around 22 miles with (for me) around 4700' of ascent (3000 on Saturday, 1700 on Sunday).

A successful shake-down trip, except for the small matter of sleep. I'm wondering whether we can manage the logistics of another overnighter next week so I have the opportunity of practising that aspect of backpacking one more time before embarking on a longer trip.

^{(* I reached the top in 13 minutes and trotted down in 5. Later in the evening I saw that the route I took (0.35 mile with 170m ascent) is a Strava segment. Admittedly the entries on that list will have been running it, but their times made my times look very leisurely.)}

Easter Weekend Backpack - Day 1

It was only a few days before we set out on our current trip that it occurred to me that Easter hadn't yet happened and with April marching on apace, it had to be coming soon. That led us to realise that our timing was poor; we wouldn't usually set out on the roads, to visit tourist hotspots, on the day before a sunny 4-day bank holiday weekend. Plans were too far advanced by then to change them radically and I'm pleased to say that everything has worked out just fine (excepting the mile-long queue of vehicles trying to get onto the M6 or into the Lake District, which held us up when we were on our way to see Conrad).

A slightly meandering journey over the course of two and a half days, brought us to Brampton, just outside of Appleby-in-Westmorland, yesterday (Saturday) lunchtime. We soon had Bertie settled onto a pitch at the small campsite here and after lunch and a bit of faffing, we hoisted packs onto our backs and joined the footpath that runs straight through the campsite about 5m away from Bertie's door.

Making our way across fields to pick up a green lane that would take us into Dufton, the hills we were to visit on this trip were set out before us, albeit under a heavy haze. Such was the temperature that I don't think we'd made it a mile before I had to pause to remove the legs of my trousers - it turned out to be the warmest day of the year.

Behind Dufton Pike, all other detail is lost in the haze

Beyond Dufton the Pennine Way became our route, where we almost immediately met an obstacle in the form of cows who had decided that faced with the options of a stony green lane or a field full of lush grass, they preferred to loiter in the lane.

The last time I walked this section of the Pennine Way was in 2008, when we were on our way to John o'Groats. The main thing I remember of the first half of that day is that I had opted for glasses, rather than contact lenses, because the day was forecast dry. The reality was a driving mizzle that kept my view fogged up throughout. Perhaps that's why so little of the ascent rang any bells in my memory.

Nearly at the top of Knock Old Man, with the 'golf ball' of Great Dun Fell just above my head.

When we passed over Great Dun Fell in 2008 visibility was so poor that, from this same vantage point, we could make out the mushrooms but not the golf ball.

Cross Fell was the real purpose of this walk, (given the weather in 2008, we couldn't see any point in going over the summit, so skirted it) and at 1815 we had it all to ourselves, although I'm sure it had seen plenty of visitors during the day.

Photo of the day! I got a new phone last week and we both need to get used to the position of the camera lens; eight of the photos taken in the last 24 hours have a finger across the lens.

Our day ended half an hour later when we arrived at Greg's Hut - a location we had expected to be inhabited, if not busy, on such a sunny bank holiday weekend. Incredibly it was empty, although we still opted to pitch the tent and use the building only for cooking and eating.

If I'd taken this snap when we pitched the tent, rather than at bedtime, it would have been a bit lighter!

Catch-up

All went quiet on this blog after my last post on 1 March, at which time we were in the south-westerly corner of Portugal. Here's a very brief catch-up on what has gone on since:

We stayed in Iberia for another couple of weeks before journeying up through France and back to the UK. Other than general ambling around looking at stuff and places, there was no other walking in that time. That's not because we were overcome with laziness, but because every time we saw an alluring walking route, we opted to run it.

The day after my last post, I ran from the southwesterly tip of Portugal that is more south than west to the southwesterly tip that is more west than south.

On the west coast a lovely circuit was all on road (around 50% dirt road), hence we decided it lent itself more to a run than a walk.

Once home we were unusually busy. In amongst other things, we had a relatively short window to get ourselves organised for the TGO Challenge. Food was cooked and dehydrated, other supplies bought, parcels packed, and maps printed. All reasonable travel options up to Scotland were contemplated, with the result that Bertie was booked into secure storage for the two weeks of the Challenge, thus giving us an excuse to extend a 2-week trip into a 5-week trip.

With the number of things on the to-do list our intention to go out for an overnight backpacking shake-down trip didn't get squeezed in. We did, however, start the process of re-acquainting our bodies with load carrying, with four separate walks from our front door. After trying a new route for the first walk, we reverted to an old favourite, and just walked circuits of the lumpiest bit of land we have within easy reach.

Taken in March 2018 (L) and March 2019 (R). If there was a mud season this year, we missed it.

Ooof! All those cans of chopped tomatoes wrapped in bath towels were heavy! It turns out we walked our training walks carrying more weight than we will for the Challenge itself.

In a flurry of activity last week, Bertie was packed and off we set northwards. Never has his boot been so full! It seemed a bit of a squeeze the last couple of years with just Mick's backpack and resupply parcels in there. This year that's all multiplied by two, alongside the gear for the Marilyn-bagging we'll be doing over the next couple of weeks.

We haven't gone straight to Scotland ... but more about that in my next post.

Friday 1 March - Sagres

After five weeks tootling slowly across the south of Portugal, we have made it to the south west corner. There are two south-westerly points: Sagres is more south than west, whereas Cabo de São Vicente is more west than south. We are at the former and today walked towards the latter (I've just looked at a map and discovered that they are only 6km apart; had I realised that earlier we likely would have walked the whole way between the two today).

A coast path wends its well-waymarked way along the limestone cliffs, through a landscape that manages to look simultaneously arid and green. The large variety of plant life contrasts with a lack of bird life.

Here are a few snaps:

My favourite photo of the day - just look at those colours and textures! From where I took this snap, we dropped down to a beach, walked below this formation and up a staircase, only then to find ourselves in someone's garden. Fortunately, there was no-one about, so we continued along their drive, through their gate and out onto the road, which is where we would have been (per the route I'd downloaded) if we hadn't been enticed by such an obvious stepped path.

What a huge walking group! We hurried past, whilst they re-grouped and took photos, as we know how difficult it can be to get past this many people when they are in motion:


As is typical with limestone country, caves and archways abound, some of which are visible in this snap. We had to walk around a few sizeable sink holes (at the bottom of a couple, we could see the sea) a short distance inland too.

This beach marked out turn-around point. Notice all the surfer-dudes bobbing around, but there was rather a lack of waves for them to ride.
 
Can you spot the cliff-clinging fishermen in this snap? I'm not sure I could bring myself to scramble down to their perch, never mind sit with my feet dangling over the edge once there!
 
Finally, a view over to the fort at Sagres, next to which Bertie is parked. It's a bit of an exposed headland in the current strong westerly winds.


Edited to add a further version of the fishermen photo, this time with an arrow pointing at their location:

Friday 22 February - Silves

We've been in Silves for a few days now, and whilst there doesn't seem to be much by way of walking options around here, I did find a local circuit on wikiloc.com, so today we went to take a look at it.

It didn't start with promise, being on a wide dirt road with nothing much of interest around us. Fortunately, it improved greatly as it went on. 

I'm not sure how much of the walk was within a nature reserve, but signs told us that thousands of trees had been planted. Given that there doesn't seem to be any other significant use for this type of arid land, it is something of a mystery to me why there are quite so many tracks criss-crossing the land. Thank goodness for electronic navigation tools, otherwise huge concentration would have been needed to keep on the right line! Here's just a small snippet of the map, by way of illustration:

Here are a few snaps:

A watering hole in the planted area:

Looking back from the same spot:

This is the first time, whilst walking in the Porguguese countryside, that we have come across a bench (contrast with Germany, where we were almost tripping over them at every turn, and Spain which is very partial to picnic areas in obscure locations). It was the bench beside the track that we saw first, before the full picnic area below came into view. It was just a shame that today was the one occasion that we went out with neither a flask of coffee nor a snackette. There didn't seem much point on such a short walk when there was no chance of there being a convenient bench... 

I think this one illustrates quite how barren the landscape can be around here:

The sun was in the wrong place for the photo, but as we started to descent back towards Silves, we rounded a bend to see a windmill ahead of us. The track leading up there was incredibly steep! 

A bit closer to (and using the HDR camera function to counteract the sun being in the wrong place):

The air has been a bit smoky and hazy this week, which robbed us of a good view of the large castle at Silves (we visited it yesterday - more of which here):

It was around 5.5 miles with around 600' of ascent. 

Monday 11 February - PR1 at Ameixial

Last Monday's walk was always going to be a short one, with the PR1 being only around 3 miles long. It turned out to be even shorter than expected when four loose dogs prevented our passage through a farmyard. Our initial thought was that after a bit of a backtrack, we could take an on-road detour to get back on route, but that plan was abandoned when we realised that the road led us straight past the other side of the farmyard, where we would be accosted again (potentially not as aggressively, as we wouldn't have been within their territory, but we didn't venture to find out).

Here are the main features of the bit of the walk we did manage:

The first bit of the route was on a path that was well waymarked, but not well trodden:

Having dropped very steeply down to the river (whereupon I decided this was not a suitable running route!) we climbed all the way back up to the village, and then up a bit more to look down on it:

It was from that high path that something in a field below us caught our attention:

What were we looking at? Wood piles? Very deep stone walls with no apparent purpose? I zoomed in for a shot, but we really couldn't work it out:

It turned out that our route took us right past the high-security (high fences, CCTV) field in question and finally we had our answer - neat stacks of bark harvested from cork oaks:

It was just after this that we aborted the outing, walked back past the cork stacks and down the road back into the village, to complete an outing that was perfectly pleasant, but rather short.

Saturday 9 February - PR4 at Pereiro

Until yesterday we have pretty well been hugging the water around the extreme SE corner of Portugal, firstly along the coast then up the River Guardiana, which forms the border between Spain and Portugal. Yesteray we moved properly inland, albeit only by 15km, to the small village of Periero.

At first glance, as we pulled into the motorhome parking area, there didn't seem to be anything nearby that would hold our attention for longer than a lunchstop. Then the map told me of a village just a few hundred metres walk away. By the time we'd whiled away the afternoon, variously wandering and sitting, we'd decided that we would stay over and take a stroll around the local PR walking route today.

We found the terrain near to the Spanish border to be formed of countless little lumps of hills, stretching out into the distance. Here we are at a higher altitude and the undulations are much longer and gentler. That didn't make the first part of our walk massively interesting. The land hereabouts isn't suitable for agriculture, or, well anything really. So, it's just a whole lot of stunted scrub clinging to those long, gentle undulations.

This pond was the first break in the monotony of the scrubland and I wondered whether it was going to be the most interesting thing we saw today.

A while later I spied what appeared to be the remains of either a hamlet or large farm in the distance. We later found ourselves over there and it was indeed completely abandoned.

Thing did improve. Whereas the routes we've walked to date have all been on tracks and dirt roads, this one suddenly took us off piste, for a climb out of a valley up a moderately-steep grassy slope:

There was either a failure of waymarking or a failure of attention (but we think the former), thus we missed a turn somewhere up that slope and found ourselves faced with a fence at the top. A quick hop over and a couple of minutes along the road and we were back on track ... and being snarled at by a rather aggressive dog, which was soon retrieved by its owner.

Waymarks were a bit lacking on the next section too, and it wasn't until we reached the bottom of this walled green lane that we found a marker confirming we had been right to go down it in the first place:

Thinking about it, missing or unobvious waymarks became a bit of a theme, as we missed a turn at the ruined farm/hamlet (see photo 2 above) too. That may have been a good thing, as we could see that the track beyond was being maintained by some heavy machinery, so probably best to keep out of their way. We got ourselves back on track at the next opportunity, and took a little detour to see if a nearby ruin was indeed an ex-windmill:

Yes, was the conclusion we reached.

View down to the village of Pereiro from the ruined windmill

We were soon down in the village having coffee outside of the one and only cafe there, in the company of the cafe's very handsome dog (pointer/dalmation cross was our uneducated guess; should have taken a photo).

Around 6.4 miles were walked with somewhere between 150-200m ascent.

Thursday 7 February - by Alcoutim

We arrived in Alcoutim yesterday, me on foot from our previous nightstop, Mick in Bertie. After a couple of hilly runs this one looked easier, being downhill overall, but it had enough undulations that I was happy to take a micro-breather for a quick photo when I got my first view of the village of Sanlucar, with its prominent castle, just across the water from Alcoutim:

The water in question, the River Guardiana, forms the border between Spain and Portugal; Alcoutim is in Portugal, Sanlucar in Spain.

Today I rested my running legs by going for a walk. The signed Petite Randonée route in Alcoutim didn't look particularly interesting, so instead I chose a route I'd downloaded from Wikiloc.com, which turned out to use sections of the PR2, the GR15 and the GR13, as well as some forest tracks that aren't on any marked trails.

Here are a few snaps:

Looking downriver on our outward leg. Alcoutim is on the right bank, Sanlucar on the left.

Trying and failing to capture the extent of the green lumpiness of the landscape and how it contains a whole lot of nothing.

Apparently we were following in the footsteps of smugglers during at least part of our outing.

This info sign, located in the town, gives a bit of history relating to that smuggling.

After the wide tracks and dirt roads of the GR15 then the GR13 we took to lesser used tracks, some more overgrown and eroded than others. This one was very slightly narrowed by overgrowth, but had a good surface.

In the foreground are the scant remains of Alcoutim's old castle. Beyond is Sanlucar's castle. It's a pity there's not a position from which one can capture both of these and Alcoutim's 'new' (14th century?) castle.

The outing came in at 6.3 miles with 850' of ascent - short enough to be back in time for lunch, but long enough to justify our break half way for elevenses.

(Conrad: a bit of an aside, but I think you would have been as entertained as we have been by the German caravanner that arrived this afternoon and who has spent a good two hours trying to find the absolute ideal position for his caravan, finally setting everything up completely in one spot only then to decide that six feet to his left looked better and to restart the whole exercise over again. The drama when something went awry with the positioning of a wheel chock was something to behold!)

Sunday/Monday 3/4 February - PR4 by Odeleite

In my last post I mentioned the PR4* which runs close to where we are currently parked, a few kilometres away from the village of Odeleite. I've now almost covered the ground of that route twice and, between those two outings have covered its entirety once.

Yesterday, before the sun had started to pour warmth into the day, I donned running gear and set off along it at a trot. This is not a flat area and we are parked on top of a hill. I was thus a bit alarmed to see quite how much height I dropped in the first 3 kilometres, and by the time I started hitting the riverside undulations on the path I'd hoped would be flat, I was wondering if I'd bitten off more than I could chew. The route was a few miles shorter than I'd intended to run yesterday, but I'm not accustomed to tackling hills at more than a walk. However, I surprised myself and only had to walk a couple of minutes of the biggest and longest incline.

The one bit of the route I didn't see yesterday was the tour it takes of the village of Odeleite, which I omitted purely because I thought the chance of dog encounters would be lower if I skirted the village (there are dogs *everywhere*; most are tethered or behind fences, but two got their paws (but fortunately not teeth) onto me as I ran).

Mick, still struggling with his long-term calf injury, wasn't able to join me, although he did run a shorter circuit later in the day. It would have been a shame for him to miss out on what is a very pleasant route, so today we approached it at a brisk walk, omitting a short distance at the beginning (because we'd already covered it during a previous stroll) and adding on the bit through Odeleite that I'd missed yesterday. We encountered no loose dogs, but also encountered no good reason to climb right up to the top of the village to then descend all the way back down the other side.

Here are a few snaps taken across the two outings, which came in at 10km with around 250m ascent:

(*Petite Randonée - a French walking route classification which has been adopted by Spain, Portugal and quite probably other European countries.)

Occasional Iberian Relics (1)

I can't really claim that this afternoon's walk was A Walk. We just went out for a little look around our new surroundings and found ourselves walking three miles or so on a loop using the GR15 and the local PR4.

We will likely see more of the local tracks over the next few days, but for now I'll just leave you with a couple of snaps.

The downside (quite literally!) of being parked on top of a hill is that any walk involves quite a bit of downhill, followed by equal amounts of up. This was a section of the down. We turned back towards our start point just before we got to the village.

They're hiding behind one another, but there were two 2CVs and two Renault 4s in various states of decay in this small holding. Seemingly the owner was a fan of French cars in the 1970/80s!