Tuesday 23rd April, St George’s Day in Altrincham

What better way to celebrate St George’s Day than by having a leap around outside Costello’s, the Dunham Brewery Tap, in Altrincham. This little gathering in Goose Green, one of the oldest parts of Altrincham, is now a permanent fixture in the calendars of both Bollin and Thelwall Morris sides.

Thelwall and Bollin Morris join forces

The continued success of this annual gathering surely can’t have anything to do with the venue….can it?

The long-suffering Rick, more usually spotted clad in walking boots (and other stuff too)

 Showing how it’s done

No fingers were broken in the performance of this dance

A view that has only recently been revealed with the demolishing of some vacant shops

Unfortunately the view above will again disappear once the new hospital is built.

Anyway, it was good. The dancing and the company were excellent, the Dunham beers were as good as ever. Roll on St George’s Day 2014…..mind you, we’ve got May Day to come yet!

 

Ireland, Scotland and Wales all celebrate their traditions with huge amounts of enthusiasm – the English just seem to be embarrassed by their own heritage.

Some more pitchers here.

Frozen Flounderings kit review

I have a fair amount of kit, but it all gets used – I don’t like to buy stuff willy-nilly, on a whim. If I buy kit it’s for a reason – and it gets used.

 
The low temperatures endured on last weekend’s Frozen Flounderings trip in the borderlands of Scotchlandshire entailed careful choice of kit – and food, so I thought some comments on a few items of my gear were in order.

Hilleberg Akto Not the lightest tent in the world at around 1.6kg, but quite bomb-proof. I’ve had my Akto for around 8 years and I’ve been more than pleased with it. Aktos  do have a condensation problem. Correct pitching will help, proper use of the vents also helps, but it’s still a problem. One mod I’m intending carrying out: sewing a loop onto the outer door at the bottom of the zip – this is to allow another guy to be attached so the door can be guyed open, forming a sort of porch-shelter.
It’s not a cheap tent – current list price is around £425, but you get what you pay for. Interestingly (bloody annoyingly), the US price of a Hilleberg Akto is $465 = £300. This begs the question: why does a European-made tent cost so significantly less in the US than in the UK – especially when the damned thing doesn’t need shipping across the Atlantic?

Mountain Equipment Helium 3.8 self-inflating mat. Bought from Cotswold recently for the special price of £45, reduced from £80. Another heavy bit of kit (750gms) – but supremely warm and comfortable. I couldn’t find any info on this mat on the ME website which leads me to suspect it may now be discontinued. It’s a big mat, 183x51x3.8cm, I’m sure a shorter mat would be quite adequate for my 173cm frame – combined with a stuff-bag pillow, a 160cm length mat would be sufficient for me…and lighter of course. The mat is made of significantly more robust (= heavy) materials than a NeoAir and I would therefore expect it to be much more resistant to puncture damage. Time will tell of course!

A Mountaineering Designs modified Mountain Equipment Dragon II down-filled sleeping bag. An obsolete bag that has seen much action – it’s level of down has been increased making this a warm bag at a good price. Another heavy bit of kit (1.3kg), but quite warm. If you’ve got a down-filled sleeping bag that could do with improving, a call to Mountaineering Designs could be the answer.

Alpkit Gamma headtorch. At £15 these are just brilliant. Sorry about that. 3 x AAA cells power 5 LEDs giving a wide range of illumination options: a 1w white LED for ‘searchlight’ mode, red, green and white 5mm LEDs for general use, and a red LED for use as a ‘rear lamp’, a particularly useful feature for walking on the road at night.  I first used this in anger on the night section of The Woldsman, a 50 mile challenge walk last year, it did a great job. Highly recommended.

Peter Storm down-filled and hooded gillet. On special offer from Millet’s just before Christmas, at £20. Warm, light-ish…and cheap. For that price you can’t go wrong. I’m chuffed to bits with mine. I’m not a fan of getting clobbered-up to go to bed, but I wore this in my sleeping bag last weekend and it made all the difference.

Vango Compact Gas Stove Cheap and cheerful – and quite light. At just over 100gms it’s around 20gms heavier than a Pocket Rocket, but at less than a quarter of the price it’s got to be a good deal. I’ve had mine for around 4 years, it works very well. Nothing more to say.

Fire Steel Say goodbye to worrying about keeping your box of Swan Vesta (Average contents: 85 matches) nice and dry, a Fire-Steel is far more reliable way of lighting your stove. I’ve had my Fire Steel for around 4 years and I wouldn’t be without it. I keep mine in the stove storage box.

Paramo Velez Adventure Light My second piece of Paramo kit – I also have a Paramo Alta II. I find the Velez to be very comfortable and ergonomically just about right. I’ve only ever had one failure with the Velez – on a very wet Sunday in the Lakes last autumn. It was my fault, Paramo stuff is easy to re-proof and I hadn’t cleaned the Velez since May last year – lesson learned!
A couple of features I’d like to see, purely to increase ventilation because I over-heat easily: 1) Under-arm pit-zips (like on the Alta II), 2) A method of holding the chest flap open, perhaps rolled-up, when unzipped – perhaps a couple of press-studs or a couple of elastic loops at the bottom of the chest-flap? I feel a modification coming on.

Pacerpole trekking poles. Mine are the heavier alloy poles, quite robust – and VERY comfortable. No more gripping pole-handles, the “unique contoured handle is designed anatomically to integrate with the hand - for controlling the arm's stride-leverage and transferring power directly and effectively.” Well that’s what it says on the Pacerpole website – and I ain’t going to argue. They’re brilliant to use, but….
In spite of following Pacerpole’s instructions to dismantle, clean and dry the poles after each use – then storing them in a dry place, the twist-lock system has major seizing problems. It’s simply not practical to strip, clean and dry the poles whilst on a multi-day backpacking trip, but for day walks, and when they haven’t seized, I always strip, clean, dry & store them properly…..and the twist-lock mechanism STILL seizes. Interestingly, a single latex glove is supplied with Pacerpoles, the idea being to afford better grip on the pole shaft – for when they seize? That does rather suggest a known problem…
I’ve used other poles (Leki and also el-cheapo Go Outdoors poles @ £5 a pair) that use a twist-lock system that don’t have the same seizing problem, I’ve also used (and own) Black Diamond poles that use a flick-lock system – it would be wonderful if Black Diamond and PacerPole could get together and produce a hybrid pole….I don’t think that’s going to happen though! Pacerpole have offered to take a look at my poles, perhaps I’m doing something wrong. I’ll be calling in to Pacerpole the next time I go to Cumbria – Mr & Mrs Pacerpole seem very keen to try to sort the problem, very refreshing.

Obviously I took far more kit than this, but these were just some of the more significant items. I’ll wait until after my next trip before I write a report on my choice of backpacking foods.

Saturday 13th April, Coronal Mass Ejection

Don’t rely on your SatNav / GPS devices for navigation this weekend – Thursday’s large Solar Flare and subsequent CME could temporarily knock-out any such equipment. The CME backlash usually hits earth a few days after a solar flare….and that’s about now.

When a CME occurs large amounts of solar plasma are ejected from the sun, taking around 3 days to travel from the solar surface to earth. When this stuff eventually hits us the effects on radio communication and radio-related navigation equipment  are, er, interesting!

This CME may well bugger-up my radio activities this weekend. Ho hum.

Now the good news: events such as these can cause very spectacular auroral displays, the closer you get to the polar regions the more visible they become.

The time-lapse video clip above was taken from Wikipedia.

Have a read of this.

Frozen Flounderings in the Borders

It was cold…not my fault though, not this time.

That nice Mr Pieman issued an invitation to a rather select bunch of his buddies to join him on a pre-TGO Challenge wander around the Borders of Scotchlandshire. I’m not on this year’s Challenge, I had double-booked myself. I’d made an appointment with my mate Sean the barber before realising in coincided with the Challenge. Anyroadup, I’m really pleased that this minor detail didn’t exclude me from Mike’s trip. I’ve done the TGO challenge before you know. Experienced is what I am, oh yes. I’m not a leg-end, but I’m experienced. No doubt about it.

Lots of invitations had been sent out – and many accepted. As time went on some had to cancel and by the time Mike booked the campsite only six camping spots had needed to be reserved at the site in LAUDER. No need to shout….I’m not deaf.

Worse was to come, when it came to the crunch only four were able to attend. A shame that so many had dropped out – but stuff happens.

In the interests of security and safety, I travelled up to LAUDER (shhhh…) in the company of Judith (larboard gunner, keeper of the grog, navigator, etc etc) and Alan (rear gunner, engineer, curry and ale expert and appointed courier of Sheila’s rather excellent cakes).

Essential supplies (pies) were taken on board at Langholm…a serious expedition such as this needed a supply of good quality pies to ensure it’s success.

Tents were erected, 6 metres apart (Health & Safety you know), at the LAUDER campsite (no noise after 11pm if you don’t mind). Was six metres enough? There was snoring – or it could just have been nocturnal moans from Kylie.

Friday night was cold (-7degC), I awoke around 2am feeling decidedly cold. I put on my down gillet (Peter Storm, £20 from Millet’s) and that really helped – still bloody cold though. When I woke up in the morning it was snowing INSIDE the tent – condensation had frozen on the inner tent and decided it would be a real wheeze to shower me with ice crystals. What joy.

A decent breakfast was called for  - the cafe at the local leisure centre provided the necessary as we waited for our tents to defrost.

  My slighty frozen Hilleberg Akto

At 10.30am we were promptly away by around mid-day. 2 hours later, suffering exhaustion, dehydration, hunger etc etc, the Pie Supply was broken into. The sun shone brightly and warmly as we demolished our pies, drank tea (or coffee in Alan’s case) and wondered where the hell we were.

We’d had This Plan see, Plan A we called it. Plan A was replaced by Plan B (or it may have been Plan A rev2) because Alan had wisely checked out the conditions on the ground using t’interweb…and conditions weren’t too sparkling. The only problem we had was that the revised route was kept a closely-guarded secret…only Mike knew where we were going. Something about kippers I think.

In the absence of a photo of kippers, this picture of logs will have to do. 

Ground conditions varied from tussocky, boggy moorland to deep snow and snowdrifts. This all made for slow progress. Heaven knows how we’d have managed without sustenance from The Pies.

Mike, leading from the rear

Determined to keep us in the dark, Mike studies a map of Wales.

Trundling on a slightly more Easterly direction (always a good direction), a couple of interesting-looking cairn-type thingies appeared in the distance. These were the Twin Laws:

One of these structures incorporated a hollow, in which was a biscuit tin containing a log-book and a bag of sweeties. Whilst Mike attacked the sweeties, I just made an entry in the log-book. I need to look after my figure. It needs some severe looking after.

More deep snow followed, much floundering was floundered:

 Flounderinging….not

I’m not sure what time we found a suitable pitch but it was certainly getting cold. In fact we reckon it dropped to –3degC that night, cold enough for me to need to be well wrapped-up in my sleeping bag that night.

Catering on this trip was a little different from my previous backpacking trips. Normally I take my home-dehydrated meals, this time I took ‘off the shelf’ dried foods – stuff from Morrisons, Tesco etc. It didn’t work out too well. It was heavy, bulky….and not particularly tasty. Some of the commercial stuff I took was good: Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup (seductively yummy), sachets of Tuna, Savoury Rice (only okay-ish). Perhaps I’ve been spoilt in the past, but this packet stuff just doesn’t do it for me. It may just need more experimentation or maybe I just chose the wrong stuff, I don’t know. For now I’ll be sticking with my home-grown stuff.

 View from my tent at the first wild-camp spot.

Our pitch was close to a wind-farm service track. During the evening a few vehicles headed up (or down) the track – presumably having fettled a wind-turbine or two. We didn’t see them again until the following morning.

After breakfast we were away by around 9am, following the well-surfaced track. The area had certainly seen some heavy snow:

The sunshine of the previous day had gone, replaced by gloomy murk. By now we had sort-of caught on to the fact that we could just possibly be on Plan C. Or Plan D. We still weren’t sure where we were….so we blindly wandered off into into the distance, trusting in the Pieman:

Turns out we were following Kipper Street The Herring Road, an old route that was used in the 18th and 19th centuries when the herring industry was strong.  Not sure if that was just the smell though. It was used by folk bringing salted herring for winter use and also by fishwives carrying huge creels of herring from Dunbar to the markets in Lauder. Oh, and it was used by the Pieman and his daughter, Becky. But that was only a few years ago. They weren’t shifting fish though. And Mike & Becky were going the other way….the same way we were going.

It’s probably a long time since a herring has passed by this way. I was only carrying tuna.

Mike navigating using the kipper method

Alan and Judith not floundering

Today’s route was short, maybe 8 or 9 miles, so there was no need to rush. We met up with a couple of walkers who stopped to chat, and a family out for a Sunday walk, all very jolly.

Passing close by some remote farm buildings I spotted a rather cool way of getting around the snow-covered hills and moorland:

I want one! 

Our intended pitch for the night was a sheep-fold, previously used by Mike & Becky. And sheep of course. When we rolled up the ground was just too boggy to camp, fortunately there was good ground very close by. By around 3pm our tents were up, water collected, and we all retired to our shelters. It was too cold to stand around chatting outside. (Mostly) observing the 6 metre rule (Health & Safety you know) meant talking between tents was difficult. Funny how the snoring carried though….   
We were stuck in our tents for a long time, I was glad to have my Roberts 925 radio, it helped pass the hours. This radio is a cracking piece of kit – and at well under £20, a bargain. Although it only has earphone output (a loudspeaker version is available too) it’s brilliant for backpacking. It’s lightweight, has a long battery life (2 x AAA last a long time) – but most importantly, it covers the MW & LW AM as well as the FM broadcast band. In the more remote spots of the UK, FM is all but useless. Medium Wave, and in particular Long Wave, are far better. BBC Radio 4 on Long Wave is audible in most spots in the UK – although some remote, deep glens in Scotland can be a bit of a challenge!

When I eventually ‘turned in’ (I was in my sleeping bag all afternoon anyway!) at around 9pm it was obvious it wasn’t going to be quite as cold as the previous two nights. I awoke in the early hours to hear what I thought was light rain on the flysheet. I was a bit surprised to be met with this view when I unzipped the tent in the morning:
A breakfast of hot muesli (the only ‘home’ meals I’d brought with me) set me up for the day. We packed, and just after 9.15am we set off for the final leg of the trip to Dunbar, still following The Herring Road.
The going was still tough. The choice was generally either following snow-filled sunken paths or Land Rover tracks, or rough, tussocky and boggy ground. Fortunately Alan was in the lead and he blazed the trail perfectly. I felt a bit of a cheat, Alan did the hard stuff whilst those behind just followed in his footprints….what a star!

Then there were the wind-farms, loads of the damned things – they just seem to get everywhere. This particular wind-farm had around 80 turbines – all whizzing around, casting strobe-like shadows and making their intrusive ‘whooshing’ noises as the blades cut through the air.
Bogs and wind-farm tracks followed, the tracks made for good progress whilst the bogs did what bogs do best…..and hindered progress. You might think that all this whinging about the terrain was making for a miserable trip – nothing could be further from the truth. We were having a great time! A walk in poor conditions but in excellent company makes for a good trip – and this was a good trip.

This last day certainly exposed us to the deepest snow, we were regularly disappearing up to our wotsits in the white stuff. Energy sapping it may have been, but we were having fun. Honest. No, really. Well I was even if the others weren’t.

The coast soon came into view:

Dunbar in the distance

As we lost height, so the snow diminished. The terrain became gentler and we were soon walking through well tended farmland:

Our audience 

  Judith taking the opportunity to check her height

Spott – a bad place to be a witch.

The Witches Stone of Spott – site of a witch-burning in 1698

Tarmac all the way into…..

Whoo-hoo!

Next stop: the chippy for a very excellent (and not very healthy) lunch. Then shopping for essential supplies, including coal for the bothy fire. Becky’s Bothy proved to be the finest and most comfortable bothy I’ve ever stayed in….. it’s even more comfy than Ruigh Aiteachain, flush toilets too!

An excellent curry in downtown Dunbar followed – then we were back to the bothy for a wind-down and bed.

Ready to leave Becky’s Bothy before heading for home. 

This was a grand trip, just a shame that numbers attending were low. It would have been good to flounder with others. Having said that, our party of four was great – all good company, all competent (except me of course), just right in fact. We covered something like 29 miles – not a great deal normally, but in such snowy conditions it was quite enough.

Perhaps we can persuade Mike to do Plan A sometime – I’d be up for it. Perhaps those who weren’t able to join us this time round could come too.

I’m still not absolutely sure where we went, but this map looks convincing to me.

Thanks to Becky of Becky’s Bothy – a lifesaver! Also to Mike for snoring arranging the trip – and to Alan and Judith for putting up with my awful jokes. I had a great time!

Piccies here.

I had a quick furtle around t’web to try to find some info on The Herring Road and discovered this, posted by Mike – before he dropped his camera in the beck. The maps are good, at least I’ve got more of an idea where I’ve just been.

Other versions of this tale can be found here:

Northern Pies

Around the Hills

A Blog on the Landscape

Gear and maybe food details will follow in a subsequent post.

29th March, Pope visits Mobberley

Breaking News! The Pope makes Good Friday visit to Mobberley

Good Friday and Mobberley can only mean one thing:
Around 80 or so cyclists turned out for this year’s event, not bad considering the cold weather….but at least it was very dry.

In the beginning….

  Meeting at The Bleeding Wolf…which isn’t The Bleeding Wolf anymore

Then on to the first venue…..

…..and the next:

 

The Great Arrival

 

Interesting sidecar outfit

Pedant’s corner:

Meaningless statement: ‘Village Pub and Dining’. What’s that supposed to mean then? And where’s the village??

Easy way to do the ride….if you’re the passenger

 

Get some in!

Papal support crew

The recently elected Pope set something of a precedent by retiring before popping his clogs. He’s setting a further precedent by canvassing his successor:

The route from JJ Towers:

27 miles with around 800’ of up. And down.

Same time, same place next year then.
More piccies here.