21st Oct – 5th Nov, America

A few observations

I’ve been here for two weeks and I’m now getting ready to travel home.

It’s been a busy visit, carrying out renovations and repairs to an apartment that my Dad and I own in Florida. It’s a trip that I need to do each year, it’s important to keep an eye on the family assets don’t yer know. Some property-related legal stuff that needs sorting calls for a return trip in the not too distant future.

This trip has seen me decorating, replacing a water heater, repairing a shower, sorting the garden and patio, fettling the air-con….plus all manner of other stuff that goes with owning a property.

The language

It’s a funny old country – to say that the UK and USA are two countries separated by a common language is no understatement. Did you know that a faucet (pr: fosset) is a water tap? There’s loads more.

Americans are often very direct, if they need to deal will a problem they’re not afraid to use unambiguous language:

One phrase / sentence that maddens me is, when in a restaurant ‘a waiter will be with you momentarily’. A momentary visit from a waiter is not what I want or expect, thank you very much. I want a waiter to spend a little time with me (more than a moment) to answer any questions I might have.

Of course the waiter DOES spend time with you, as much as is needed. It’s just a strange use of words.

Whilst on the subject of words, strange-sounding names abound in America:

That’s the name of a road – in case you were wondering.

American prices vs UK prices

Generally, although not always, the price we pay in UK is the same (very often more) than the American price, just change the $ sign to a £ sign.

A few examples from my direct experience:

Hilleberg Akto tent:              USA: $498 (=£311)          UK: £490

MFJ259 antenna analyser:  USA: $259 (=£162)         UK: £280

Flir Infra-Red camera:        USA: $1800 (=£1125)    UK: £2400 

Petrol, per gallon:               USA: $2.80 (=£1.75)      UK: £4.91*

*adjusted to US Gallon = 0.83 Imperial Gallon

Food

Food is plentiful and cheap in Florida, lots of it looks good, some of it is quite nice….too much of it can cause problems of course.

   

Those puddings were wonderful – so good I went twice. Ask Mick & Gayle about them!

There seem to be eateries everywhere:

A steak with chips and broccoli in this restaurant tasted wonderful and cost norralot, BUT…the steak was quite salty, the broccoli was served in a salty garlic butter sauce, and the chips were served ready salted.

The convenience of the car

The car is king here, petrol is cheap. These prices are PER GALLON:

$2.79 = £1.75

You don’t even have to get out of your car to go to the bank:

Patriotism / National pride

Americans are seriously proud of their country and it’s flag. Americans do not need an excuse to fly their flag. Stars & Stripes appear everywhere: in shops, fluttering from houses, in gardens, on cars….virtually everywhere you can imagine. By comparison the British appear quite unpatriotic. 

Last week’s polling day

A UK Polling Station sign, emblazoned with a Union Flag? I’ve not ever seen one - I can’t see it ever happening. It might cause offence to someone….and that would never do.

Property Repairs

It’s been pointed out to me in the past (very frequently and quite recently) that it would be cheaper for me to employ someone in Florida to carry out these tasks. Not so.

I was quoted $1000 to replace a shower that was described as unrepairable: I mended it in a couple of hours.

Replacing the water heater would have cost at least $650, I did it myself for $250.

As for sorting the Air Conditioning unit, it would have been a lot of money. Then move the decimal point to the right. For some reason Air Conditioning units are shrouded in mystery here. This I find surprising – virtually everyone has Air-Con, but hardly anyone understands how they work….so they pay lots of dosh to A Man. It’s always A Man. The only bit I can’t do is recharge the unit with refrigerant. You need a special bit of paper to be able to do that. 

I much prefer to come over here to do the jobs myself, apart from anything else I know that the work has been carried out to a reasonable standard.

Just….different

Americans do many things differently. This is the electrical bit of the water heater I replaced:

Wires are joined by twisting them together and covering the connection with a plastic ‘nut’. Not a junction box to be seen. I find this a bit frightening.

Domestic wiring installations are potentially (see what I did there?) bloody dangerous. A house frequently has both 120v AND 240v available. 120v for normal household appliances like kettles, TV etc, but 240v is used for higher current stuff like cookers, water heaters and so on. Get your wiring wrong and……

Weather

I go to Florida where it’s currently 80degF. And the sky is blue. At the end of October / beginning of November. A few years ago they had an overnight frost – they still talk about it now.

It’s hi$$ing it down in Timperley, And it’s cold.

Nuff said.

Anyroadup, it’s an interesting place once you understand the language. I’ll be going back fairly soon – more stuff to do.

18th October, Tally-Ho! from The Jug and Glass

This was a re-introduced venue for the Club. The Jug & Glass at Newhaven in the White Peak has a had a chequered history in recent years. It seems to have been closed more than open. Happily it’s now very much open and in the hands of good people who know how to run a pub, keep beer properly and look after their customers.

I arrived early at the pub, my Plan was to start and finish early because I needed to be in Dunham later that day to play at a ceilidh with Neezzup and it wouldn’t do to be late for that!

In the car park were two very shady-looking characters – one trying to flog some obviously nicked silverware to a local fence:

I set off running with Ding Dong, struggling to keep up with him. We followed the sawdust trail out of the pub car park and across the main A515 to pick up a green lane which turned to tarmac after a mile or so. The lane crossed the course of a Roman Road running roughly North to South.

Remarkably well preserved Roman Water Board sign

We headed eastwards almost as far as Middleton, keeping our shoes mostly shiny-clean. Avoiding Middleton, trail then led us on a dogleg uphill (?) close to Ringham Low – an ancient monument or something. Wisely the trail-layers didn’t take us quite as far as the site, our ancient and monumental runners might get lost in a place like that…..we’d blend in with the background too easily.

The initially easy running surface had lulled us into a false sense of security, before long we had dual battles on our hands: overgrown undergrowth (eh?) and difficult-to-follow sawdust trail…...but we weren’t to be deterred. Well not much:

  Ding-Dong tearing up the trail at break-neck speed

Next came a short dale, a section of typically White Peak countryside. I’m not sure of it’s name, there’s no name mentioned on either the 1:25k or 1:50k maps, but it runs West - East from near Ringham Low to Smerrill Grange.

A much nicer dale was to come: Long Dale – lovely it is:

It’s a shame this section was so short, it made for very pleasant running. Within a short distance the terrain changed and we left the dale behind.

  

Another short stretch of tarmac took us to the Mid-Shires Way / Pennine Bridleway…and past the picturesque brickworks at Friden:

 

Lovely

There was definitely ‘something in the air’ around this part of the route, both Ding-Dong and I ended up coughing and spluttering. It might just have been a misfire though…I don’t recall any of the other runners mentioning a problem.

A loooong, flat and straight stretch of the Way took us almost back to the pub where a quick pose (or two) was called for:

 

Unusually (VERY unsually) clean-ish shoes

This is where we wented:

Around 8.3 miles with norralot of ascent / descent…

Atcherly (and quite coincidently, I’m sure) the total ascent was exactly the same as the total descent. You’ll need to ask Ding Dong to explain, he’s good with numbers.

The food and the beer at the pub were both excellent – it was just a shame I had to rush off without being able to sample the beers properly. I was driving anyway. Ho-hum.

Thanks to David for allowing me to trot round with him. As always, he was the very best of company.

Thanks and great appreciation to Ships and Whitworth for laying an easy trail….just right for an unfit old fart like me.

16th October, A Nangreaves Recce

Rick and I needed to get out for a walk – it’s been, er, such along time since our last outing.

I had a route in mind for the Tally-Ho! that really needed checking out. It’s all very well plotting a route on the map, but it’s often a different matter when you actually run (or walk) the route.

Kick off is the Lord Raglan, home of the Leyden Brewery, in Nangreaves near Bury – where all the best black puddings come from. That’s Bury….although the Leyden Brewery might make black puddings too, I don’t know.

A short bit of tarmac up Snape Hill was endured before hitting decent footpaths and Land Rover Tracks. All went swimmingly well until we came across a ‘Private’ sign, barring our way through the Public RoW through the farm yard at Croston Close – SD820158 if you want to harass the property owner.  An additional sign offered an alternative route – a concessionary path across a boggy field. The sign pointed out that the original Right of Way was still valid – but it was quite clear that the owner’s successful deterrents had , er, successfully deterred walkers wishing to use the path.

The appropriate authorities have been informed.

 

The next ‘challenge’ was Croston Close Bottoms. This is a valley where, if the map is anything to go by, is an easy navigational exercise. Ho-ho, oh no it isn’t! We spent a long time trying to locate the path on the ground – we did eventually but it was damned hard work. And my feet got rather wet.

Around Ashworth Moor Reservoir following footpaths across what was Water Board land we crossed the Edenfield Road and began a gentle climb up to Knowl Hill – passing the thoughtfully planted windfarm en-route. The wim-wam trig point / pile of rocks at the top served as our lunch stop.

 

Rick posing, apres-lunch, in front of the pretty windfarm 

Following the route of the Rochdale Way, we descended in an Easterly direction (East is good….etc, etc) towards some reservoirs – where a pretty view was prettily presented to us:

Naden Middle Reservoir with Naden Lower Reservoir peeking out on the right (=south) 

Naden Higher and Naden Middle Reservoirs 

It’s pretty obvious that land owners don’t want you around here: barbed wire is abundant in totally inappropriate places, many paths are blocked and footpath signs just don’t exist where they really should. It’s a poor show.

 

Just for Alan:

Some of paths were dead easy to locate and follow, although the stony surface of this one may well catch out the faster runners:

More blocked and unmarked paths followed that entailed some serious map studying – much to the amusement of the audience that was gathering. Even sheep deserve a giggle sometime I suppose:

Another Right of Way difficulty presented itself at Sale’s Farm (SD818150 if you want a whinge). A Right of Way is clearly marked on both the 1:50K and the 1:25K maps – but not on the ground. There’s no footpath sign or any indication at all that a Right of Way exists. It DOES exist, and goes through a private house-type farm yard & stables. The addition of an openable (not sure if that’s a real word, but you catch my drift) electric fence gateway adds to the feeling of general path obstruction / lack of Right of Way.

Again, the appropriate authorities have been informed…..but don’t hold your breath.

Whatever, in a couple of weeks 20 – 30 hairy-arsed trail runners will be piling down that Public Right of Way – and there’s some big lads amongst them.

More blocked / overgrown footpaths followed:

 Can you spot the Footpath sign?

We eventually got back to the Lord Raglan at too late an hour to have a pint so we headed off back home – just in time to miss the worst of the rush-hour traffic. What we were expecting to take around under 4 hours actually took nearly 6 hours. I’ll be out on a re-recce next week, apart from needing to tweek the route I need the exercise.

At the end of the day we’d enjoyed (endured?) our little outing, there are some really cracking bits to the route – unfortunately there’s really crappy bits too.

This is what we SHOULD have done:

 

8.5 miles with around 1200’ of ascent.

We ended up doing nearer 11 miles after all the faffing about.

 

Reporting footpath problems

Footpath problems can be reported using FixMyStreet at www.fixmystreet.com

It’s very simple, just specify the location and describe the problem…..and your work as a responsible member of the great walking public is done.

FixMyStreet will then forward your complaint to the appropriate authority who will (hopefully) deal with it.

13th October 2014, A bit of The Dales Way

Buckden to Grassington and a Pie Lunch

Rick, Stewart, Bella and Peter have recently been doing sections of The Dales Way in a series of day walks.

Today’s section was a ‘there and back in a day’ trip and had been postponed a couple of times because of bad weather.

It was on a dry but overcast day that Rick’s Honda met Stewart’s Jeep in Grassington and a bit of car juggling later we set off walking from Buckden – north to sarf.

 

The last time I walked with Bella she was an occasionally obedient, extremely precocious and (very) energetic pup with serious attitude. Now she’s quite obedient, not quite as precocious, amazingly energetic, VERY entertaining and still has serious attitude. A wonderful doggy!

Playing ‘fetch’ with Bella helped keep her mind off the sheep – although to be fair, Stewart has done a marvellous job of training her and she nearly always does as she’s told now. Mostly.

Leaving the village of Buckden, we crossed the River Wharfe to walk south on it’s western banks. Good dry ground with norralot of muddy bits made for good progress.

Yellow painted bicycles adorned much of the area – echoes of this year’s Tour de France.

 

Lunch No1 was taken sat on a convenient bench by the bridge across the River Wharfe at Kettlewell. 

River Wharfe 

In honour of the men of Kettlewell and Starbotton who gave their lives in The Great War and WW2

My kind of walk! 

Kettlewell proved a bit of a bugger to escape from but we managed eventually.

Kilnsey Crag 

Looking back at clouds over Kettlewell 

The Yorkshire Dales, this couldn’t be anywhere else 

Cool dude Rick 

Conistone Pie – venue for Lunch No2 

This looks an ideal area for a wild camp: lovely smooth ground, delightful Dales scenery….but no water. It’s the limestone y’see.

The assembled group were forced to eat some of Annabel’s High Energy Flapjacks – they seemed to enjoy them….or perhaps they were just brought up to be polite.

 Pete, Rick and Stewart waiting for Bella to finish her lunch 

Towards Grassington 

Mrs Dale’s Dairies? Don’t blame me, it was Rick’s idea. 

This is where we went…near as damnit:

Around 11 miles with around 1100’ of the upwards stuff

Having spent a load of September in (mostly) sunny Spain it was great to get back to do some walking in England – in good company too.

Oh, and we didn’t go to the pub. Not this time.

Whilst typing this up I’ve been listening to Mike Harding here, it’s good. You should give it a go…it’s free.