FOUR (ONE) IDIOTS IN THE YORKSHIRE DALES: Part 2

Still with me? Good! As usual you can click on the pictures to make them bigger.

The attentive amongst the congregation will be aware that three of the four idiots retreated to softer climes down south, leaving just the one idiot in the Yorkshire Dales to continue the adventure.

Me.

After hauling Rick’s wine lake from his car boot to his cellar and delivering a fridge to a chap in the village (it’s what friends are for) I set off once more for the hills. Today was a totally different kettle of fish. If you wanted a dixie full of silver-shiny mackerel with glass-bright eyes, today was the day to be outside. I set off in virtual shirt-sleeves. Visibility was pin sharp and the wind keen. Very keen, in fact so I put my jacket back on.

I had enjoyed Crummack Dale so much on Friday that I was once more strolling up into its secret charms.

You notice the little things that would otherwise pass you by as you walk on your own up Crummack Dale. Today, it was the little splashes busily cascading through the emerald enclosures; their springs bubbling from beneath glistening limestone steps at the backs of the fields. This spring water bubbles and flashes brilliantly in the sharp sunlight, tugging at the grasses on either side.

I scampered past two chaps in bobble hats, britches & boots, intent on having the views at the head of the dale for myself. I had a rucksack full of food and was looking for a grand spot for lunch, which I found as I clambered my way through Moughton Scar and into the limestone pavement.

I was working my way back over to Clapham Bottoms, as it sounded like a place that really should be investigated, over wonderful limestone moorland. It’s barely 1300 feet up but the enormous views over to Ingleborough, Pen-y-Ghent and Fountains Fell make it a fabulous spot to be, in the wild, sharp wind.

This poor quality video does give a flavour of the place and the wind:

Then it was a delightful push into the wind down into the Bottoms and the track below Thwaite, into the tunnels and down into sleepy Clapham.

The pub in Clapham serves much better beer than the one we visited in Horton and so some Black Sheep were dealt with in a confident style in front of the fire. I had then to drag my carcase out of there to climb back through the tunnels to regain the Pennine Bridleway above Austwick as the sun was slipping sideways into the secrets of the Forest of Bowland.

It was just an amble down the sleepy lanes into the village as the dampness seeped into the stone roofs and the sunset silvered the window panes.

Back at base, Rick & Lindsey again looked after me handsomely, knocking the top off a lovely Vacqueyras and polishing off one of Lindsey’s stash of single malts. A perfect end to a great weekend.

FOUR IDIOTS IN THE YORKSHIRE DALES: Part 1

(You can make all the pictures bigger by clicking on them)

Surprisingly, the four of us managed to meet at Rick & Lindsey’s in the Yorkshire Dales at the pre-arranged hour. Time was of the essence and so we all slumped into the settees in front of the woodburner in the cosy lounge, cups of tea in hand and chatted.

Mr & Mrs Grumpy, TGO legends, had come along to have lunch with Rick & Lindsey. Our departure for the great outdoors was delayed a little further as each of us are TGO Challengers and with something like seventy challenges between us, there was a lot of ground to cover.

The hand-picked team for this particular expedition comprised four bloggers with differing styles:

Martin Rye: Has a huge blog following and can invariably be found bounding along adventurous routes in Scotland and the the Lakes. There are only ever shots of the back of his head on his blog, so look away now if you are of a nervous disposition…

James Boulter: Newer to blogging but with an incredibly loyal and growing congregation who follow his exploits throughout the wilder parts of Wales, Scotland and its archipelagos. Sadly he was without Reuben, his faithful companion so I don’t know how he will manage to post to his blog as Reuben usually does all that.

Mad’n’Bad Andy Walker: The newest of the bloggers in the group, who mainly concerns himself with the TGO Challenge, having walked his first before history began.

And me.

Somehow I had been volunteered to come up with a plan for a weekend in North Yorkshire at the fag end of November, when daylight is a brief ‘hello’ before everything is plunged into stygian darkness for twenty hours or so. The weather forecast, unsurprisingly, was for wall to wall torrential downpours with a healthy dose of stormy buffeting. Ground conditions were a promising mix of knee deep gloop and greasy mud on a limestone pavement.

For four chaps who don’t bang on too much about gear it was interesting to note that we had all chosen to wear Paramo jackets  and we had all brought American shelters to sleep under in what was promising to be horrendous weather…

Within minutes of setting off, the promised monsoon arrived, on cue.

And then, quite miraculously, the weather broke into cheerfulness, party hats and fluffy kittens! Yes – the next picture shows that the horrid nasty stuff was chased away by some brightness! The ground steamed a bit under the blazing sunshine.

We made our way up Crummack Dale, a little gem of a dale between the honeypots of Clapham and Horton, wonderfully infrequently visited by the hordes cramming into the National Park at the weekends.

As we climbed out of the dale we came across huge areas of limestone pavement. Fortunately the path meanders delightfully along grassy trods with occasional natural staircases to gain height.

Lunch was taken after the little climb out of the dale, on sheep nibbled turf, sheltered by a high wall. Views over to Pen-y-Ghent delighted, but the show stoppers were the views back down into Crummack Dale: quite beautiful.

With the clock ticking we re-girded our loins (I will add that we only girded our own loins) and plugged on up the hill via Sulber Nick; the main drag up the side of Ingleborough from Horton. This was possibly a mistake: Thousands and thousands and even more thousands of walkers plug up this self-same section of path every month on the Three Peaks Walk and we are destroying the wonderful environment that we are coming to visit by making a huge erosion scar right up the side of this fantastic hillside. I shan’t come this way again.

With the weather forecast for 80mph gusts in the back of our minds we sloped off northwards to Borrins Moor to flip the shelters up on some mossy ground whilst there was still a bit of light to see by.

As I snoozed in my Wanda I was aware that the breeze was freshening, with the occasional blast of snow in the thrashing against her flanks…

I woke in the morning to a tale of woe: At around six in the morning, when it was still pitch black, one of our number had had a tent pole snap and it had torn through the sil-nylon of his tent. This was indeed Very Bad News. I stumbled over sleepily to Martin’s Trailstar, where to my surprise the team were assembled beneath its capacious canopy. In fact, the team was all packed and ready to go!

What was very noticeable was how incredibly stable the Trailstar was under very blustery conditions. James’ tent (A Scarp I) had also been very stable as he had used the cross-over poles which tensioned the fly like a drum. Of course he has the advantage of a sealed environment against the dreaded midge and two doors, should the wind change direction after he had pitched.

Wanda, a Stephenson’s Warmlite 2C, by comparison, was nowhere near as stable in the cross winds, although she did okay. Poor Wendy (a Stephenson’s Warmlite 2R) is going to need surgery – a new pole section and a repair to her skin. I think Andy is going to have a set of rear guys attached as well to stabilise the top of the rear arch, which is a standard feature on Wanda.

We decided to plod down to Horton to the cafe for cheering mugs of hot coffee and bacon sandwiches. The weather had taken a serious turn for the worse and so it was a disappointed band of bloggers who arrived at the cafe to find it closed until Boxing Day. There was nothing for it: We adjourned to the pub to have beers and bacon baguettes.

By this time the weather had taken an even more serious turn for the very worserer! It looked like firemen were training their hoses on the windows of the pub. It was Very Horrid Indeed. The forecast for tonight was even worse than the night we had just had. We were a tent down and James wasn’t feeling too chipper either. So, we did the sensible thing and called it a day. Well, not quite, as we still had to get back to Austwick five or six miles away back over the hill.

Unsurprisingly, there were not many pictures taken during this leg of the trip as it was hosing it down!

We made it back to Rick & Lindsey’s who very kindly fed us all tea & Lyndsey’s scrumptious sponge cake with raspberry filling. Martin had been soaked right down to his shreddies as he hadn’t re-proofed his jacket for a while. So, we all dried out and then Andy, Martin & James headed back home, leaving me in front of the woodburner, being royally entertained by Rick, planning tomorrow’s adventure.

OFF ON A JOLLY!

I always seem to leave packing until the very last minute.I started this evening’s panic around half past nine. As I start to write this it’s a quarter past eleven and I should be going to bed but the physical effort of finding all the gear for a wintery jaunt and stuffing it all into the pack now means I am wide-eyed awake.

Writing a blog post should calm things down: After all, it sends the congregation to sleep.

The barometer is plunging like a stone and the weather forecast for the Yorkshire Dales (for that is where I am heading) is, as they say, “interesting.” The plan was for four bloggers to meet up and camp on top of Ingleborough and Pen-y-Ghent. There was to be a hound involved as well, but he’s not so keen on winds gusting to 80mph on the tops so may do the sensible thing and stay at home, guarding the front of the fire.

So, we may well bottle-out of the very tops and camp on the sides of the things.

Like all good adventures, there will be a pub or two involved, but sadly, only at lunchtimes. It’s a long way from the top of the hills down to the pubs at the bottom and then have to stagger back up again to bed only to find that your Wendy-house has been blown away to Newcastle, or heaven forbid, Crook, would be disheartening to say the least.

As usual, my food bag weighs as much as the rest of the stuff put together. There is a lesson to be learned here; never go to Tesco's when you are hungry. But it is what it is.

The picture is of Crummack Dale. We’ll be heading up there on Friday afternoon. There will be more about this adventure when I return next week. So, for the moment, you’ll just have to be patient, and wait.

REVIEW: The North Face Apex Bionic Softshell: 1st look

“Another softshell review?” Yes. After my slight disappointment with the RAB Men’s Exodus Softshell, those awfully nice people at Go Outdoors, well, namely Adam Smith, got back in touch and asked me if i would like to try a North Face softshell without a hood as this had seemed to be the sticking point with the Rab jacket.

I ask myself, “Do bears shit in the woods?”

So with lightning efficiency I said “yes” and received an email confirming the purchase of the garment for £0.00. I can live with a price like that. After all, times are hard! I had ordered a North Face Men’s Apex Bionic Softshell, Size Large, in black. That’s quite a mouthful, isn’t it?

It arrived, as promised, within the 24 hour delivery frame in sturdy plastic packaging in good shape. You should be able to click on the picture to fill your screen.

I liked this jacket immediately. First off: No big saggy hood. The second thing I liked: The backing material behind the zip is made from a sturdy material that doesn’t snag the zip, unlike that of the Rab softshell. The third thing: The jacket is made of material that is very stretchy but it also has a smooth, slightly fleecy lining, which means that putting it on and taking it off is much easier than the Rab jacket which seemed to grip your fleece. It also has a DWR (Durable Water Repellent) finish.

In the words of  TNF  “the  jacket “features the acclaimed TNF™ Apex ClimateBlock fabric, wind permeability rated at 0 CFM for total defence against howling headwinds” So I shall find out about that later.

There is a hem draw-cord that is quite natty: See picture below:

It’s a captive chord so that when you pull it nice and tight (presumably in “defence of the howling headwinds?”) you don’t have flailing strings banging about on your thighs, like you do with my Paramo Velez Adventure jacket – incredibly annoying after a while!.

You will see from the top picture that there is a sizable zipped chest pocket, big enough for a walking guide book. One of the two lower pockets is really really good: cavernous, in fact. It extends all the way up to almost your collar bone. I have no idea why you would want to stuff tall animals in your pocket but I am sure they would fit. Both of these lower pockets suffer slightly, from a backpacker’s perspective, of being slightly low, so that a rucksack hip belt will cut across the lower part of the pockets. All the pockets are air-permeable, which means that you can use them for venting – probably not a great idea though if you have stuff inside them?

The collar is nice and snug and is fleece lined.

The cuffs are interesting: It’s a Velcro–type closer that I have not seen before (maybe I have not been looking too closely?) Velcro is a hook and loop fastening, yet the cuffs on this jacket aren’t “hooky” in any way, so they won’t snag your fleece. They are sort of rubbery stumps very closely packed together. I don’t know how it works, but it seems to work very well. A rather neat touch, I think.

The blurb on the TNF website says the jacket weighs an “average” 837 grams. Interestingly, mine came in at 689 grams. That’s a surprising difference but a very welcome one. Though, in the cooler months when I will be wearing this, the weight is not so much of an issue.

You can find this jacket on the GO Outdoors Website where, if you have one of their discount cards, they will ensure you get the best deal (which sounds a bit ‘John Lewis?’)

You can find all Go Outdoors softshell jackets by going to THIS PAGE and having a good browse. What I particularly like about their site is the fact that there is often more information about the products on their site than on the manufacturers’ own websites! A good example of this is with their selection of waterproof jackets where the information on the Berghaus jackets is far more comprehensive than on Berghaus’s own site.

Anyway! I’m going to take this jacket away with me for a long weekend in the Dales, where, knowing my luck, it will be very cold, wet and windy. When I get back from there, I’ll let you know how I got on with it.

TGO CHALLENGE 2012: PUNISHING THE GUILTY

M’Lords, Ladles and Gentlespoons

We are gathered here today to witness that these two persons here present are to be lawfully bound, gagged & drugged up to the eyeballs in whisky. They will be taken from this place to a place where their bodies will be hanged from deer fences and feasted upon by clouds of the midges. Should they survive, they will run the gauntlet of circling buzzards, waiting to peck out their eyes, livers & lights. They will trudge through wild soggy moorland with no hope of respite for a minimum of fourteen days carrying heavy burdens.

And just what have these miscreants done to deserve this dreadful end?

They have been lucky. They have had their names drawn out of a hat by Lady Sierra Manning and their fate is now sealed. They are now participants in the TGO Challenge 2012.

I shall accompany them to make sure their punishment is complete.

BLOGGERS FORM NEW GOVERNMENT!

Italy had led the way. She is now being governed by a completely unelected government to sort out the mess the elected parliamentarians have left behind. It was a logical progression for the United Kingdom to follow suit. England’s new Government has the full support of the German & French Premiers and the Bank of England.

After a bloodless coup, the New Order has taken control of the levers of power and will not be letting them go until the “Great” has been put back into Great Britain. The Cabinet Posts have been filled by the following Technocrats::

Prime Minister: That’s me. This is not a democracy. It’s my coup.

Home Secretary: Owdbum This guy talks sense.

Foreign Office: Postcard from Timperley. He spends most of his life abroad anyway.

Chancellor of the Exchequer: Blogpackinglight.. Monetary Genius.

Education: Whitespider1066 (He actually enjoys teaching!)

Health: Terrybnd. (Gets my vote – encourages a bottle of red with each meal)

Transport: TownsendOutdoors. He has been to the far corners of the planet.

DEFRA: Where the Fatdog Walks (a bit of a foodie)

Communities & Local Government: Andy Howell This’ll keep him out of mischief

Culture: The Solitary Walker. Obvious choice, really.

Leader of the Upper House: Lord Elpus, Obviously.

Energy & Climate Change: DISBANDED. No more money for turbines.

Wales, : DISBANDED (Quarrelsome troublemakers, thrown out of the UK)

Northern Ireland: DISBANDED (It’s abroad, for goodness sake! Thrown out of the UK)

Scotland: DISBANDED (Thrown out of the UK. We keep the oil and the hills)

Women & Equality: Are you dreaming?

 

We start work tomorrow, first thing, after a plate & bacon sandwiches and a few beers. You can’t rush these things. Other countries will shorlty be following our example. Mark My Words…

FOUR BLOKES & A DOG TO GET LOST IN YORKSHIRE

To avoid catastrophic failure it’s advisable that expeditions should at least have a basic framework that participants sign up to. I don’t know how I ended up with the role of “Binder” again but somehow I have been tasked with coming up with a plan & route for a madcap weekend “up north”. I think everyone else took two paces backwards.

“Up north” can be jolly cold at the back end of November and the plan is to camp two nights on top of tall places, where, funnily enough, it can be even colder.

So far, the most helpful advice I have had from the expedition’s “Burley” is as follows:

“I'll have a bottle of Ouzo my wife brought back from Cyprus for me. Saving it for this trip to share ;-) Unless of course, I end up drinking it before then but I'll endeavour to keep it safe ;-)”

So we should be nice and warm, then.

PICKING UP THE THREADS

For the last thirty years I have been living dangerously; my last seven homes all had their foundations barely above Ordnance Datum. With Global Warming threatening to raise sea levels, I was very lucky not to have drowned in my sleep.

Living at such low elevations made for difficulties when readying myself for any walk involving the physical effort of clambering up mountains. East Anglia is not renowned for its summits.

Over the years I have been fortunate in having Lord Elpus & Miss Whiplash close by: They whipped me into action every Autumn to drag me round the Suffolk Munros: all the hills 100m above Her Madge’s Imperial Sea Level. Happily, this usually involved meeting at a public house where we could slump into armchairs in front of roaring fires with a few pints of Greene King IPA, until Miss W finally kicked us out into the chilled afternoon dampness and the sludge of the Suffolk clay. This weekly fix was enough to keep the walking frame ticking over during the winter months so that when we needed to raise our game, to lug rucksacks about, it wasn’t too much of a shock.

I now live down in Berkshire. The shock statistic of my new location is that I live 250 feet above sea level on the side of a hill. This feels a little bit like cheating really as I am now Training At Altitude. With the new regime over at Challenge Control, there may well be dope tests at every start point on the TGO Challenge. I had better prepare a blood sample before I set off, just in case.

It was a sunny day today and so there were no excuses for not getting out there and going for a walk. I chose North, by North West as my direction and struck out fully provisioned with two apples and a granola bar. You can’t be too careful. And I was sporting clean pants. Just in case I was to be run over.

I left it a little too late to walk far but made a mental note to turn round at 3:00pm and see how far I would get. I was heading towards the Chiltern Hills.

I made it to the M4 motorway. What a great destination, eh? I know how to pick them! Stuff was whizzing past me at incredible speed. Everybody seemed to be in a desperate hurry to be somewhere else.

Miss Whiplash would have been pleased with the mileage and my efforts to increase her financial well-being. 10 miles in 3 hours including a stop for a pint of Greene King IPA. She’s a good girl; she has shares in Greene King. I even managed a few hills as well.

The burgeoning comedy belly will soon be a thing of the past.

REVIEW: RAB Men’s Exodus Soft-shell Jacket: UPDATE

Back in June I took delivery of a free Rab Soft-shell jacket from Go Outdoors. Rab is a brand I have bought and trusted for years – I have an excellent sleeping bag bought from them over fifteen years ago which is still doing sterling service. You can find more of Rab’s products by clicking on this link: Rab.

You can read my initial impressions of the Rab softshell HERE. I have now lived with the jacket for four months or so and so it’s time to have a closer look.

The jacket is quite robust; the material is strong, yet stretchy and so is comfortable to wear. It’s not totally windproof but it does gives reasonable protection from the wind. I suppose this is why I find the jacket very breathable when plugging away up hills. I wear the jacket a lot and it still repels water very well. It’s certainly good for short sharp showers but not for prolonged rain, when the weather seeps through. No surprises there though; that’s what you would expect. I wouldn't take a soft-shell jacket on a long backpacking trip in case it got soaked. It would be a devil to dry and it’s too heavy to carry in your pack. I think that these jackets excel for day walks.

It certainly looks quite smart and I have used it occasionally walking around town. It does look a bit ‘mountain man’ though for this use. But hey, maybe that’s okay with some.

As yet I have not found a use for the little pocket on the arm. I had thought that the front pockets were great, but after a bit more use I find that they do actually clash with my rucksack hip-belt a little but not enough to be annoying as they are quite large and so only a small amount of pocket volume is affected. I wonder if the pit-zips are strictly necessary. I have not yet had to use them as if it is a bit warm then i unzip the front zip and loosen the cuffs. They do work well and all the zips are of excellent quality. A minor niggle is that when zipping up the front zip it always seems to get caught on the thin backing fabric behind the zip that acts a weather proofing. This needs to be beefed up so it doesn’t get caught in the zip.

I still like the cuff detail: a thin rubberised Velcro tab. The only thing I would say is that there does seem to be a lot of spare loop on the sleeve that you don’t need. I have thin girly wrists and even I can’t use the last inch and a half of Velcro. You need to either have the cuffs fully open or tightly shut. Leaving them loosely done up means that there is a thick fold of material (remember it is quite a thick material used) that digs in slightly to your wrists. by fastening them up tight it flattens the fold out to be more comfortable.

My major gripe with this jacket is with the hood. When I first looked at it I thought it was splendid, but over time i have found a major niggle:

Why oh why do gear manufacturers believe that all wearers of their jackets will be going about their business wearing climbing helmets? Because they obviously do think this is the case, the hood is very large. Remember that the jacket is made of substantial material. This means that the hood is very bulky and very heavy. This is fine when it is windy and raining and you are wearing the jacket with the hood up. It offers excellent protection from the elements. So that the hood doesn’t flap in the wind, you can reduce the volume of the hood with a pull-cord at the back of the hood. But when the sun comes out again and you unzip the jacket you are left with a big heavy hood hanging on your back that tries to pull the jacket off your shoulders. It is really, really irritating.

Rolling the hood away does not really work either as you are left with a big bulky heavy collar that sags and feels very awkward.

In hindsight, I would prefer a jacket with either a smaller hood or no hood at all. If you are expecting to walk in the rain all day you would be wearing a waterproof shell rather than a soft-shell. A waterproof shell jacket will come with a hood. I would choose to wear a soft-shell when I am not expecting really crappy weather, so in these conditions I would wear a mountain cap and a soft-shell with no hood.

The million dollar question is “would I buy this jacket for myself, having lived with it all this time?”

The answer, is probably not. I would choose a soft-shell without a hood.

LONDON: BONFIRE DAY CULTURE

A lovely day out today up in London to visit the niece and ‘do’ the museums and a pub.

First on the hit list, with a very big hit, was to see Doug Aitken’s ‘Black Mirror’ at Victoria Miro, starring the gorgeous Chloë Sevigny. Here’s my rather shaky attempt, hand-held in the dark with the thundering base vibrating the room.

Then a rather tasty lunch followed by a stroll to the British Museum to try (in vain) to get to see the Grayson Perry exhibition. But it was completely full up and so a return visit will be required. That’s a hardship, then!

I did manage to get a few hand-held snaps of the wonderful British Museum’s Great Court roof (Foster & Partners) in the evening light after strolling through the corridors of ancient Egypt and Greece. I think we ought to hang on to the Elgin pieces for a while, don’t you? Otherwise the French & Germans will be having them as loan guarantees…

SCATTERED BLACK & WHITES: Elbow

Dad died five years ago now. This song sums up how life is with Mum. If your parents still have all their marbles rolling along nicely, give them a call.

Thanks to Dave Wood for reminding me of this.

Been climbing trees I've skinned my knees
My hands are black the sun is going down
She scruffs my hair in the kitchen steam
She's listening to the dream I weaved today
Crosswords through the bathroom door
While someone sings the theme tune to the news
And my sister buzzes through the room leaving perfume in the air
And that's what triggered this
I come back here from time to time
I shelter here some days

A high-back chair, he sits and stares
A thousand yards and whistles marching-band
Kneeling by and speaking up
He reaches out and I take a massive hand
Disjointed tales that flit between
Short trousers and a full dress uniform
And he talks of people ten years gone
Like I've known them all my life
Like scattered black & whites
I come back here from time to time
I shelter here some days
I come back here from time to time
I shelter here some days

“SYMPHONY” ON BBC 4, THURSDAY EVENINGS

I spent most of today in Addenbrookes Hospital in various uncomfortable positions being poked, jabbed and having various bits taken away for examination. They didn’t even give them back to me, so I am now a little lighter than before.

It did give me time in the recovery ward to listen (in headphones, full pelt) to six wonderful hours of BBC Radio 3. One of the delights was listening to Bruckner’s 7th Symphony all the way through. It was glorious.

Here’s a small snippet. It’s emotional. (No video for this first clip)

Then, I heard that tomorrow @ 9:00pm (Thursday) there will be a spankingly wonderful programme on BBC4 – “Symphony” Here’s a taster of what’s to come:

Worth staying in for!