WooHoo

No, not the call of a rutting owl but a small expression of excitement - Christine and I are on the 2011 Challenge (woohoo - again).

My old mate Steve Gough, who I did this with in 2009, is number 4 on the reserve list, so I expect we'll be crossing paths at some point.

Fellow Peeb-Mofflers and bloggers, Alan, Shirl, Phil and Martin are there, as is Humphrey, who has seen us off from Peebles both times.

A few other bloggers, who I've not met yet are in the list, including Helen Fisher, also from Sheffield.  So if we don't bump into you around Burbage or tarping at Lawrencefield, Helen, we may at least see you in Montrose.

I think it's time for a small celebratory beverage and then blow the dust off the maps.

Woooohoooo!

And now for a few pictures from 2009...

Steve and I at Ratagan - the start of our 2009 Challenge

Near the top of the Corrieyairick Pass

Me at Garva Bridge

A long day on the Monadhliath

Stalkers bothy above Newtonmore where we spent a night

A miserably wet day on the track from Glen Muick to Glen Clova

When the clocks change in October it gets dark early

Every few months, things catch up on me and my body just refuses to do anything.  When this happens and if I have no reason not to, I give in to it and spend the weekend watching DVDs and ignoring the list of jobs.  So it was with this weekend just gone.  On Sunday we were wrapped in fog all day.  My attempt to cook Bara Brith, from a recipe in a book I bought last weekend in S Wales, was a total disaster.  I need to learn about yeast.  It's always given me problems.

By late afternoon, I was feeling I should at least step outside the front door.  It was quite warm.  I grabbed the car keys and a cag and drove up to Redmires reservoirs, at the end of the road. It was about 4.30 and the light was fading but I reckoned I could get in a quick walk up the track to the old shooting lodge and back.  There are two routes but my preferred one goes across some open moorland to reach the other route, a track bounded by the old water works conduit on one side and a wall on the other.

It was quite boggy underfoot.  A grouse made me jump with its characteristic cuk cuk cuk call from out of the gloom.  I was feeling disoriented - to begin with I thought it was a dog.  Dogs make me anxious.

Anyway, I reached the shooting hut, walked round it, stared in the doors, shouted hello.  The local tramp wasn't there.  Then I set off back down the track.  Hmm, it really was quite dark.  Not 'in a cave' dark but certainly 'stumble, trip' dark.  I reached the gate where the track over the moor meets the easy to follow one.  It'll be reight, I thought.  There's only one short section where it's gets a bit vague and if I veered right there, I'd meet the boggy bit and then I'd be able to follow the wall up over the hill.  In any case, if I can't find the way, I could just turn round and go back to the easy path. 

So I set off into the blackness.  Lighter patches of short grass looked like rocks and the skyline looked like walls but I used the heather to tell me when I was going off route.  Then every direction seemed to be heather.  Bother, how did this happen?  Ok, I must need to go a bit to the right here to pick up the track.  Yes, here's a wall but which one is it?  There are two around here that run parallel to each other.  Ok, It doesn't matter.  If I head uphill by this one, it will either be right or will turn towards the one I want.  After a few minutes climbing over tussocks, I realised the wall was no longer there.  I'd been following the skyline.  Bugger.  Ok, maybe I'm still too far to the left.  I headed mfurther right and then things got more serious.  I realised I might be a bit lost.  No torch, no compass, no phone.  How was I going to fix this one?

If I went north I would hit the conduit, west would take me to Stanage ultimately but I ought to recognise something before that.  With luck  I'd hit the plantation first.  South was where I wanted and it was uphill but so was west.  East would also take me to another section of the conduit or the field with the horses in and there'd be some walls on the way.  That boxed maybe 4 or 5 square miles - possibly a bit more, possibly a bit less.

I turned round and walked back in what I thought was the direction I had come from.  Hang on.  I should be going downhill and I'm not.  There was a slight breeze and I remembered  feeling this on my face on the way out to the shooting lodge.  It was warm as well, which made sense if it was coming from the west.  Great, I'll turn 90 degrees right and head north.  That should take me back to the wall that runs alongside the conduit down from the small reservoir and I can follow that to the gate and pick up the easy track.

I was losing track of time and tripping over tussocks more frequently.  I just managed to avoid a couple of face plants but it felt like it was only a matter of time before I did myself an injury.  I needed to calm down and slow down.  The only noises were planes to and from Manchester and the occasional grouse call, which made me jump every time.  I tried hard to forget it was Halloween. 

I didn't seem to be getting anywhere. The breeze was back in my face. I must have turned to the left. It seemed brighter over in one direction.  Maybe it was lights from Sheffield  but if it was, I'd have expected them to be yellow.  It started to rain gently.  I put my hood up and briefly contemplated what it would be like to spend the night out here and that the beef bourgingon in the oven would be dried out by the time I got home.  I told myself that the only things that would stop me getting off this moor tonight would be serious injury or running out of energy.  There were no big drops to worry about.  I was no Joe Simpson but then this was hardly 'Touching the Void'

Then I felt the ground dropping down in one direction.  Great.  At last I've found the edge of the hill and I groped my way down the fall line.  It wasn't long before the slope changed and went up again.  I knew by now I must have turned full circle a few times, so my only navigational aids were the breeze or the slope.  The slope still felt the more reliable choice, as down most likely meant east or north, both of which were better options than heading towards Stanage.  I wandered around some more and picked up the lost slope.  When it levelled out again, I carried on in what I thought was a straight line and eventually I found a wall. 

The wall was mostly broken down, so it had to be the one that runs east-west over the moor but which side had I come at it from?  The terrain was pretty flat here so I was back to using the breeze to determine direction but now that seemed to be blowing across the wall rather than along it.  I reasoned that I would have crossed the wall earlier if I had gone south of it, where I ultimately wanted to be, so I must be coming from the north side.  It was 50/50 but either way I should reach somewhere I recognised and as long as I didn't lose this handrail, I could turn round and go in the other direction.  I turned right.  It was a long wall, made longer by the dark and the rough ground and I wasn't letting it out of my sight.  A few times, I had to leave it briefly to get round patches of sedge and I groped my way back anxiously, relieved to find it still there.  After some time (each minute stretching into ten) I met another wall crossing at ninety degrees to mine.  Ok.  I hadn't expected that.  I'll go straight on.  And then a short distance later I reached a second wall crossing mine and some white objects moving on the other side of it.  They were sheep, not ghosts!  And there was a boggy patch with some stones lain across forming a makeshift causeway.  I was pretty sure I knew where I was now.   With guarded optimism, I turned right and soon started to rise up and the wall was on my left and I reached the stile and all that was left was to stumble down to the car.  It was pouring with rain by now.  I'd been concentrating so much on finding a way off that I hadn't noticed.  When I got back home it was 6.45.  I'd only been lost for about an hour although it had seemed longer than that.

After getting cleaned up, I went onto the Met Office website to check the wind direction. It was coming from slightly east of north, so when I though I was going north, I was in fact going east, which went to explain why I failed to pick up the down slope to begin with. 

Sorry, lots of words and no pictures.  It was dark.  No camera.  Not a lot of sense either.

A Weekend in South Wales

I hadn't intended to go to South Wales last weekend. I thought we might go to the Dales but on Thursday night my son rang me to say he'd just bought a kayak on eBay and would I go and collect it for him.

"OK. Great. Where is it?"

"Cwmbran. Is that far from Sheffield, Dad?"

"God, I wish you were doing geography A-Level!"

So I rang Christine....

"You know this weekend?" and so it went on.

We got down to the Usk valley late on Friday night with the campervan and parked up at The Chain Bridge Inn which seems to be run by folk who are a totally barking.

"Oh we're all a bit mad down here", they said.

The next morning dawned gray and cold. Don't you just hate it when the weather forecast is right? So not so much seizing the day as gently tickling it, we started with a cup of tea in bed followed by a large cooked breakfast and looked at the maps.

"Crickhowell must have a tea shop" , I said.

"And gear shops!", said Christine

So we drove to Crickhowell where SatNav girl, in one of her premenstrual outbursts, led us up a hill into a housing estate on the edge of town. I switched her off and we went 'old skool' to get to the car park. Then we set off to look for a coffee shop. So it was 1.30 before we set off up the road to Table Mountain.

"I think it's that way", said Christine, pointing up at the flat topped hill behind the car park. "I remember from the map that it had a bit of a lip on it"

"What, you mean it's sarcastic and answers back? The Basil Fawlty of mountains."

Our route took us back up the road that SatNav girl had led us on the way in, which was slightly scary. Did she actually know better than me after all?

Table Mountain












We'd just started to settle into the walk when we arrived at a field of young bullocks. I sent Christine out in front because she used to go out with a cowboy (err, herdsman). Impressively, she got the one with the most menacing look to back off and that left the rest of the group with an expression of uncertainty and wonder at this fearless woman and they just watched us as we walked between them.

It was cold on Table Mountain and the views were intermittent as the cloud, at around 650m, came and went. We had no definite objective but this seemed a bit early to stop, given there were sandwiches and pork pies to be eaten, so we headed up into the 'death zone' for Pen Cerrig-calch at 701.

Summit of Pen Cerrig-calch














After consuming the said sarnies in the imperfect shelter offered by a pile of rocks just below the summit, we walked to the trig point, took some photos in the mist and turned round. As we came back down to Table Mountain, the clouds cleared and we got some better views across Crickhowell to Mynydd Llangatwg, a region of limestone honeycombed with some of the UK's longest cave systems, and across to the south-east to a fine looking mountain called Sugar Loaf.

Sugar Loaf











Back in Crickhowell, we went the pub for a shandy and Christine got out the two 1:25,000 maps she'd bought earlier in the day, only to find she got two the same. Doh! Let's face it -it hadn't been an easy day.

Back at the Chain Bridge Inn, there was a choice of various endangered species on the menu, which included ostrich, bison, kangaroo, crocodile and zebra. I went for bison as I'd seen some in a field on the way to Betws-y-Coed last year, so I thought there was half a chance that it hadn't come from Bristol Zoo. Christine had Sea Bass, her first two choices having run out (or run off).

Stats: About 5miles and 2000' of ascent

Sunday

On Sunday, after picking up the kayak, we went down Big Pit at Blaenavon.

Big Pit













This was a working coal mine until it closed in 1980, re-opening 3 years later as a visitor centre. The main levels and shaft are 300' deep and the winding gear and cages as well as around 2000' of walking and stooping passage are maintained in good working order for guided trips. It is a proper coalmine and although I suspect the risk of explosive gasses is minimal, you have to leave anything with a battery in up top, including cameras, mobile phones and even car key fobs. You're provided with a hard hat and miners electric lamp as well as an emergency rebreather, developed for use in U-Boats apparently.

Pit head winding gear



















The descent takes a couple of minutes - it's slower than the GG winch - and the guided tour lasts about 45 minutes, in which you learn how there used to be kids as young as 6, doing 12 hour shifts without a light, opening doors, that horses were used to drag trucks underground until 1972 and the place used to be plagued by rats as a result of the horse poo, feed and miners butties. There is plenty of industrial archaeology in the form of trucks (they have a special name I can't remember now), conveyor belts and a massive chain saw known as the 'window maker'! Imagine getting that job on your first day. "Now then boy-o, you're single. 'av a go on that thing but mind your fingers, look you". 

They still use canaries to test for bad air. They have two, called Maggie and Arthur.



















There's a lot of interesting exhibits above ground also. It's well worth a visit if you're down that way and it's free to go down.

From there we drove down the road to the old ironworks dating from the 18'th century. Of the 6 original furnaces, only one is any real state of preservation and the most striking feature of the place is probably the Balance Tower, which was used to lift trucks full of ore to the top of the furnaces.

Blast Furnaces

The Balance Tower