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.