I was incredibly privileged to be asked by Phil from Social Hiking to take part in his second podcast recently and the fruits of our labours have just been uploaded. I’m pretty stoked with the results , if nothing else because it’s a reminder of a fantastic weekend that was had recording it.
You can download the podcast from iTunes here, or download straight from Social Hiking here. That last link has loads of great show notes as well BTW. You can also listen to the podcast below.
We looked at walking with kids and joys and not so joys that can involve, went walking with the kids in the woods, packed in a microadventure and looked at updates to Social Hiking and our fav maps. I would like to thank Phil for doing a masterful job in putting together the podcast itself and for the fact he also uploaded some Audioboo’s of our climb up Alfreds Tower, the Tour de Dorset + Bongos that we came across and some outtakes 🙂
I’m back after a week in Bakewell in the Peak District having had a rather lovely break. There were several stand out trips from the week and rather than blog about them all, you get three for the price of one today AND they’re not even past their best before date…..
First up was a small walk from around Winster early in the week with the whole family, three generations together. Our eldest son Ifor (4 years old) led the walk using the Making tracks series of walking packs. I expected it to be great practice for reading, but the stand out aspect of the walk was seeing his confidence increase and his skills develop from leading. There was some strong emotion on seeing him check off navigation features and get a bee in his bonnet about striding on at the front. It was a joyous thing to see his outdoor life and independence start – I’ll be posting a review of the Making tracks series shortly.
One of the other family trips was just a short stroll up to Robin hood’s stride to have a bit of scrambling fun. It’s a set of rocks in the white peak near where Cath’s folks live. Ellis bounced about like a leprauchaun and I’m not sure he has actually developed his fear reflexes yet on the strength of his behaviour that day. Ifor was much more cautious, but again it was awesome to see their decision making skills coming on in leaps & bounds. If you have a spare couple of hours and fancy some easy non-scary fun scrambling, it’s well worth a look.
The final trip was a swift wild camp with Andy (AKA @mixedupmessedup). We took a Backpacking Bongos trip from a week or two earlier as inspiration and changed it around to make it slightly longer. The initial evening walk to our camp was uneventful as we headed up from Howden resevoir, but the weather looks more beautiful than I remember according to these photos. I’ll let them do the talking.
The second day was dreich as they say North of the border. I awoke to the sound of rain on the tent and it didn’t stop until the following day. We had planned to meet Martin Banfield of Postcard from Timperley fame on the second day to stroll with us. After packing away the tents, we strolled up from Grinnah stones towards Bleaklow stones where we were due to meet Martin. He had already spied our camp spot via the power of Social Hiking so we got a text to let us know he was at Bleaklow Head. Mobile signal was intermittent to say the least and whilst we were at Bleaklow Stones we began to worry as on the OS explorer maps, it is shown away from the most recongnisable rocks such as the anvil stone. To cut a long story short, we then had a joyous 3/4 hour of intermittent texts, with hill fog reducing visibility to 50 metres and the rain stepping up a couple of notches whilst we tried to find each other in amongst the Pinnacles of Peat. Eventually we found each other and it was a timely reminder of just how difficult navigation can be in crappy weather, especially in the Dark Peak.
Finally strolling on, the conversation flowed as easily as the rain did. The weather was totally crud but there are few areas in the Peak District that lend themselves as well as Bleaklow do to getting away from it all. We followed a straightforward route back to the Penine way, cutting down to Grains in the Water then up on to Allport moor for the obligatory trig photo. We then strolled towards Alport Castles before heading left down the hill back to the car. Dollops of wilderness and a sense of scale and height you don’t get elsewhere in the Peaks made for a wonderful day despite the dampness. Add in some decent company in the form of Andy and Martin and the day was over far too quickly for my liking.
Andy had been feeling pretty duff after a stinking cold so we finished up early, just in time for a swift drink in the Ladybower Inn. Whilst there, we overheard a group of farmers have a local land management presentation. It focussed on what they were doing to look after the moorland, particularly when they should burn heather. It was the most interesting 10 minutes I have ever heard on moors, of which the stand out facts for me were that Midges pollinate heather and heather only stands a 5% chance of germinating if it hasn’t been near smoke. All of a sudden the midges didn’t seem so much of an irritation. It never ceases to amaze me the balance and purpose there is in everything in Nature.
If you want to look at more pretty picture they’re here. Martin’s elegant report is here, James’ blog that delivers inspiration by the bucketful is here and our tracks in the rain can be followed below.
I think that the ugliest numbers I have ever seen are the numbers 2,4 and 5. These were the numbers my phone flashed at me to let me know I didn’t need to bother trying to sleep any more. Sean would be outside at 3 am ready to pick me up. I dimly recall thinking that perhaps Snowdonia wasn’t such a good idea, but I humped my sacks in to the car and promptly fell asleep. I woke up on the M5 and immediately felt bad for not keeping Sean company with witty repartee, but he was decency itself.
There is something about the quality of early morning light that uplifts you and Saturday morning was no different. Lots of low lying mist coupled with the pink tinge of dawn made 2:45 am feel years away. We arrived in good time at Betys y Coed and drove up to the Pinnacle cafe in Capel Curig to load up carbs. They know their customer base well , as half the breakfast was potato! Sean was up doing a Geology course as part of his SPLA qualification, and was due to meet the rest of his course at Pen y Pass. As usual though, the car park had been full since dawn, so we parked down by the Pen y Gyrd hotel, and set off to walk around the back of Moel Berfedd to Pen y Pass.
The whole weekend had nearly been kyboshed as I had picked up a decent bit of lurgy from the weekend before. As we started off up the hill my chest reminded me of this with a bubbling rasp that no amount of coughing could dislodge. It didn’t bode well. Taking leave of Sean at the top end of Llyn Cymffynnon my plan was to follow the ridge up to Glyder Fawr, heading round to Glyder Fach. I would then follow the miners track down to Pen y Gyrd, before heading down the valley towards Bethgelert and a rendezvous with Lauren for a wild camp up at Llyn Edno.
Click any of the photos to make them bigger.
I haven’t been back in the mountains for some time, and I had a certain amount of trepidation about my navigation skills and fitness. Dorsetshire is great and I’m pretty active, but nothing makes for good hill fitness except, well, you know, hills. Initially however the stillness of Llyn Cymffynnon, the call of the birds around me, and the presence of the hills made me just glad to be there. I had deliberately chosen this route as the path less travelled, and I was rewarded with no-one else around me. I spent some time just breathing it all in as I strolled upwards. It was rather claggy and the hill fog came down thickly. Before I knew it, I was way lower than I had planned to be. Not happy with myself, I began to climb sharply getting irritated with my lack of navigation nous and the bubbling in my chest. Stopping after a while I started to mentally slap myself. It was three years since I had navigated in something like this, and a year or so since I had been up an ascent as steep so I made peace with myself that it would take a while to get back in to my hill rhythm and skills. Stopping and pausing by a beautiful bit of quartz, I paused, had a bannana of justice, told myself to follow Helen’s advice to go with the flow a bit, and just enjoy where I was a tad more. I couldn’t see anything much due to the hill fog, but I could hear. Birds calling from the Llyn below and water wandering in the earth under my feet soon restored my calm and I headed upwards with a happier stride.
Topping out, I became mighty puzzled. There was absolutely no-one on top of Glyder Fawr, which was unusual to say the least. Taking advantage of the fact I was carrying all my kit, I brewed up. Blessed by the kindness of the weather, I then had quarter of an hour of cloud cover clearing whilst I descended to Glyder Fach. As the cloud cleared, Tryfan appeared , and actually made me stop. I don’t think anything has made me have such a physical reaction on the hills, but it’s manner of appearing, and that as a mountain it’s a point of kick arse rock made me come up short in wonder.
Hill fog sneaking in again, I headed down to Castell y Gwynt and started heading up over the top. My navigation and route finding were found wanting again however, so I ended up scrambling with a large sack. Feeling uncomfortable and slightly top heavy, I backed off, heading around and towards Glyder Fach. By now the hill fog was in nice and heavy and I decided to aim off to find the ridge and trickle down to the miners track paying more attention to my nav. My skills started to come back and I was pleased to hit the trail where I thought I would. Coming out below the clag, I came across an old welsh couple pausing on the hill. The moustache immediately marked them out as part of my grandparents generation and we shared a quiet word and chuckle. One thing I had forgotten about hill time was the social nature of coming across people, particularly on busy trails. Everyone is doing something they love for the most part, and is generally good company. I reaped the benefit of the encounter, enjoying an impromptu lesson of Welsh pronunciation on the hill. Despite my parents being both Welsh, I’ve never lived in Wales so my accent is shocking. They soon had me sounding like Richard Burton however and I strolled back towards the car, rolling my R’s in a manner to which Jones the steam would have been proud of.
Although the social hiking map above finishes here, my day had not, I just decided to save some of my battery for the following day as I was due to wild camp that night with Lauren . Heading down the valley towards Llyn Gwynant and Beddgelert, the transition from mountain moor to wooded valley bathed in sunshine gave a lovely counterpoint to the day. Approaching the campsite by the lake, it all became a bit peculiar for 3:30 in the afternoon. The sounds of banging techno lurched across the lake from a group of Teepees, and I encountered several groups of Scousers with cans of beer wandering randomly through the woods on the far side. Leaving them behind, I moved further up in to the woods above the lake, the mossy trees and buds of spring giving new energy to my tired legs.
The rest of the walk was a gentle meander down the valley to the car park at Nant Gwynant where I met up with Lauren. By that stage I was pretty pooped, my first full days hill walk in a while having covered quite a distance. Lauren is an MRT member for North East Wales Search and Rescue, and she had been trying to contact me during the day to say she had been called out for a search since 6 that morning. As a result, we decided to wild camp, but rather than hump up to Llyn Edno, we headed towards Llyn Llagi to find somewhere a little closer to camp as we were both shattered. The evening sun was glorious and we soon found a spot overlooking Craig Wen, Yr Aran and Snowdon, pitched our tents and broke out the single malt. A gentle evening in the company of the brightest moon I have seen in some time was a grand re-introduction to wild camping. The setting sun over mountains is something I can never tire of, and being outside again in good company put a tired but seriously happy smile on my face.
The only downer to the evening was the two chocolate deserts we had both brought along. The initial Mountain House main course was superb, never having had them before I was mighty impressed with the taste. The subsequent Wayfarer chocolate pudding was however, utterly stomach churning, and Laurens choice wasn’t much better either!
All that was left was to fall in to the shelter of the Obi 2 Person I had brought along, and give thanks that I didn’t have to see the numbers 2:45 again the following morning, but just dream instead of Tryfan’s north ridge.
