Just a modicum of fitness… please?

In a desperate attempt to get even just a tiny but fit for the Challenge, which is now coming at me like a train crash, I extended my walk today back from Windsor through the Great Park to take in the Obelisk, the Totem Pole and the Valley Gardens. It made the whole walk a touch over fourteen miles. Thank goodness the weather was overcast; I’m not too good in the heat.

The Obelisk was fascinating – it was erected by George II, in grateful thanks to his son William, the Duke of Cumberland, who gave the Scots and their hangers on a good pasting at Culloden. It has to be said that this has not been forgotten by the Scots and they *do* bang on about it quite a bit.

The original engraving on the monument said “CULLODEN” but Queen Victoria, who was partial to the odd trip up north or two, had it chopped out and replaced with “CUMBERLAND” to soften the hammer blows of history.

Windsor Great Park 31st March 2012 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I took some snaps of the beautiful trees, bushes and dwarf daffs, all in bloom in the Valley Gardens. I am not much cop at identification, so if there are any bush lovers out there, (Ooooh!) perhaps you could let me know what they are in the comments.

On the way home, strolling across Ascot racecourse, I bumped into Jon Quirk, a thoroughly nice fellow and member of our congregation. It’s nice to put a face to a name. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of Jon as he only lives a few miles from me.

Last March: Review

The ‘”Brother with the Hair’s Better Half” excelled and sent me a collection of poems.

This beautiful book was launched this evening at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge.

“Last March” is Kiran’s first full collection and was produced in collaboration with the Scott Polar Research Institute to mark the centenary of Captain Scott’s final expedition to the South Pole. This collection examines the well told story of Scott’s last ill fated expedition; however it manages to retell it in a way that gives those events a fresh perspective.

*

The Storm

Seems to start from the sea.
The waves ride up to meet the moon
And the sky thrums,
Dissipates into a rolling grey,
Smashes itself against the water,
Cracks with an egg-shell ease
To spill out a birthing of rain and thunder
That throttles the pumps to a slow ooze.

On deck, the men plunge
As the poop sinks waist-high,
Churn their legs through the sucking deep
And chase the ends of ropes
To lash the coal bags, rescue the ponies
As they wash over,
Necks snapped by their tethers
Or lost to the grappling ocean.

Peace comes slowly.
The sea quells itself to a gentle rock
And the pumps find their bite in the submersion,
Sound out their suction and
Return the water back,
Whilst in the forenoon
The fires are laid and lighted,
The losses noted and counted –

’10 tons of coal,
65 gallons of petrol,
two ponies,
one dog,
and a case of biologist’s spirit’

*

80º S

The day was new when we arose and relearned our fingers.
Gulls skulled the wind over our heads
As we pissed.

I imagine your hands, pale as the ground.
Remembering your warmth is wrong here,
As though you exist somewhere souther still.

In this strange, whirling place,
Intemperate as rock,
I come to realise I knew nothing of loneliness.

*

from “Last March” Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Pindrop Press 2012

It’s a wonderful collection and I recommend it highly.

You can order it HERE

Scottish Renewables: A chilling invitation

This abstract below is taken from Scottish Renewables Invitation for their Annual Conference and Exhibition which is taking place on Tuesday & Wednesday of this week in Edinburgh.

It makes chilling reading:

“Scotland has some of the most stretching renewable energy and climate change targets in Europe, with ambitions to generate the equivalent of 100 per cent of annual electricity demand and 30 per cent of all energy demand from renewables by 2020. With its wealth of natural resources, comparatively undeveloped land mass and favourable political climate, Scotland will make a disproportionate contribution to UK and European efforts to decarbonise the power sector and to meet commitments on renewable energy and climate change.

However, despite spectacular progress over the last few years, and an acceleration of investment in sectors such as offshore wind, wave and tidal development, significant challenges lie between us and the objectives set out in the Scottish Government’s 2020 Routemap for Renewable Energy - not least the heated public and political debate over rising energy prices, the road to economic recovery, and the merits of competing energy options.”

I highlighted the text myself: “COMPARATIVELY UNDEVELOPED LANDMASS”

Links to the invite for the conference and the line up of the speakers (a pretty powerful bunch) can be found by clicking HERE and HERE

What does everyone think about this? Comments are welcome.

Sunburn & Statues

Another walk home from Windsor, but this time via Virginia Water.

Glorious weather. Eccles cakes in the Park Post Office’s garden. Statues of Elizabeth and Albert, mounted. Glorious blossoms and orange mivis..

Thirteen miles. The legs seem to be working properly again. Crinkly sunburn!

Hendrik Morkel’s “Theoretical” Backpacking blog post

Yesterday evening there was a short twitter conversation during which Martin Rye said he did not like Paclite. He acknowledged that there might be factors that influenced his opinion; he mentioned base layers, metabolism and regional factors. Chris Townsend chipped in with some sage advice as well. It was all very polite and reasonably brief.

I was surprised to then find a post on Hendrik Morkel’s blog “Hiking in Finland” entitled “[Theoretical] Backpacking on the Internet” It started like this:

“There is an increasing number of theoretical backpackers online – on Twitter, forums and bogs. They love to discuss gear, which in itself ain’t a bad thing- I love me gear talk as well. However my annoyance comes from someone trying to convince me that a certain thing is not good; even if I have used said certain thing and am perfectly happy with it.”

You can nip over to Hendrik’s blog to read the rest of the post, in which he goes on to say that gear performs differently in different parts of the world.

It was made abundantly clear from the ensuing comments that he was referring to the twitter conversation with Martin. I felt his post was unfair and also a little sneaky. Hendrik has history of having sly digs at well-respected outdoor commentators. I recall him having a nasty little jibe at Bob Cartwright recently, that then involved a very hasty climb-down when challenged.

His behaviour is one of the school bully. He chips away with sly digs, but never enough to get a damn good walloping in return. He sets himself up as an expert on all things to do with lightweight backpacking. He doesn’t like it when people challenge the wisdom he hands down from his self-erected pinnacle.

No one ever has the handle on absolute truth on anything. In the past I have made some glaringly awful pronouncements on backpacking, which slowly, like a rusty old supertanker, folk like Martin and Chris T have turned around. (I’m thinking trainers and tarps here.)

 

Because I felt Hendrik had been unfair of his treatment of Martin and because I felt he was also basically wrong in his assessment of the twitter conversation, I left a comment on the thread last night, which I found this morning had been removed by Hendrik.

This was the comment: 100% accurately copied down:

“Regardless of which country you are testing "Material X" in, Hendrik (and why are you being so coy about your twitter discussion with regard to Paclite with Martin Rye?) when it is peeing down with rain there is a fair chance that the Relative Humidity of the air around you will be approaching very high percentage figures (it's why it's raining... duh!) so it matters not a jot in which country you are testing it.

If it's peeing down with rain you want a waterproof to keep the water out and the humidity from inside the jacket down, to acceptable comfort levels.

All Martin said was that he thought Paclite was pants. If, of course, you enjoy wearing your Paclite jacket when it's not raining, then of course the country you are testing it in *does* make a difference, as RH values will differ appreciably. However, I think it is fair to say that in the discussion involving 140 characters, Martin was assuming that  the discussion was centred on wearing Paclite in the rain.

There are loads of experienced backpackers (and I didn't like your "theoretical" jibe, by the way - sneaky that) who agree with him.Just sayin...”

 

So: Why did Hendrik remove the comment? Why did Hendik subsequently ban my IP address from accessing his blog? Well, school bullies don’t like being shown up for what they are: Snivelling little cowards.

If you feel this is a little strong, bear in mind that this is a young, arrogant German who had the temerity to call me, a Sloman, a “Denier” on twitter, with all the nasty holocaust connotations that come with that term.

“Am I bovvered” that I have been blocked from viewing his arrogant little blog? No.

One last question: I wonder where the $10,582 he raised for his Kickstarter Ultralight A to Z has gone?

Another Great Park walk.

With just seven weeks to the TGO Challenge, I decided to have “a bit of a chat” with WeeWillyWilky. It was all about the importance of getting all the soft tissues toughened up. For Dave, this means taking the dogs out for longer walks each day.

Soft tissues – muscles, sinews and ligaments (what *is* the difference between a sinew and a ligament?) just hate the shock of a big walk if you haven’t warned them what’s coming: They react very badly and give you a rotten time of it. I’ve found that if you do nudge them occasionally with a little bit of a walk, and then a slightly bigger bit of a walk, they react positively and tell everyone what a super chap you are. They have a word with Ernie and your Premium Bond comes up. Your children all become perfect citizens and your bald spot disappears.

So Dave, being the sort of chap he is, has dragged his poor pooches all over the shop and is once more sporting a full head of hair and muscly legs the envy of Charles Atlas. On the other hand, my own pate is thinning even more precariously and my legs resemble pipe-cleaners.

The pictures tell the story of this afternoon’s walk. Windsor again, starting at the Two Brewers with a wonderful pint of Doom Bar. Well, it wouldn’t be proper Chally training without starting at the pub, would it?

Paul Griffiths: When a Planning Inspector calls…

THE ‘JUDGE JEFFREYS’ OF THE PLANNING INSPECTORATE

In England & Wales, even when the local population are dead set against the imposition of a windfarm next to their village, the Local Authorities are generally not very keen to turn down a planning application from a developer. Why is this?

Well, it’s all down to the Planning Inspector.

You can be pretty sure that once the developers has been refused permission, the first thing they will do is go to appeal. This appeal is decided by the Planning Inspector. Even though the local council kicks out the proposal, far more often than not Central Government’s Planning Inspector will overturn the decision and impose the windfarm on the local population anyway.

Invariably this means that the local authority that kicked out the proposal will end up footing the bill to oppose the project. This can run into tens of thousands of pounds.

I wondered how often this happened. A few days ago Paul Griffiths, a planning inspector, ruled that a controversial wind farm near Lyveden New Bield, an unfinished 16th century manor in Northamptonshire, containing one of the finest examples of an Elizabethan garden in Britain, could go ahead. (Dame Fiona Reynolds, Director General of the National Trust, said “It provides a clear indication that our cultural heritage is at great risk from inappropriately sited wind turbines and wind farms. If the impacts here are not such to amount to substantial harm on our nation’s heritage it is difficult to conceive where they would be.”)

So, here’s a Planning Inspector making a deeply unpopular decision. I wondered what his other planning decisions were like with regard to windfarms. That was easy enough to find out. I Googled “Paul Griffiths, Planning Inspector” and the following results tumbled from Google: In all the decisions listed below, Paul Griffiths overturned the local refusals!

Lyveden New Bield (as above)

The site of the Battle of Naseby and Kelmarsh Hall

Nettleton Hill

Teddar Hill, Yorkshire

Barnwell Manor, Northamptonshire

Clacton on Sea

Ashby Magna, Leicestershire

Roos Wind Farm, Yorkshire

Silloth, Cumbria

However, he did turn one down!

Cumwhinton, Carlisle But guess what? The developer hasn’t given up, and has submitted two more applications for the same place: Cumwhinton Again!

The above list is just one Planning Inspector’s decisions. There are loads more where he came from. It seems that the wind industry has the planning process in it’s pocket.

Red Kites and Green Parakeets

There’s nothing like a good walk to get you ready for a good walk and there has been nothing like a good walk for ages. As today’s weather was glorious, it was time to put the plimmies on and head off out..

First stop was the Carpenters Arms in Windsor for a well kept pint of Doom Bar. Second stop, just two minutes after leaving the Carpenters, was the Two Brewers for a pint of Tribute. I had a choice of either “This Bar” or “That Bar”. Difficult. I chose “This”. Two wonderful beers from the southwest and I was set up for the next ten miles to  wander through the Great Park back to home.

As it was a weekday, the Long Walk was quiet.

I cut a slight corner off my normal walk and headed off down the Gallop to be entirely free of the great unwashed and was rewarded by a flurry of green parakeets, which I am ashamed to say I couldn’t capture as they whizzed up on me from behind and shot off before I could get my camera out of my pocket… Ho hum… Still, it was at the ready for the next pair of visitors:

They were a long way up – sorry the pictures are a bit blurred! The last time I came this way there were six kites circling overhead. The Great Park is wonderfully full of them.

At various points along the way there are indicators next to trees telling you how old they are. I particularly like this one: I really like the “about”…

Then it’s a delightful stroll past some fancy gates and the racecourse to home. Ten miles and no passes.

TGO Challenge 2012: Route overview & Route sheet

I have been playing around with some new mapping software. More on the software itself at a later date, but it allows some simple to grasp features that show a little of the character of the route.

(CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

You can see the lumpy bits at a glance: Not including tops, in order, there’s a Corbett, a Graham, two Munros, a Corbett, five Munros and a Graham.

Our route sheet looks like this:

(CLICK ROUTE-SHEETS TO ENLARGE)

You can see that there’s quite a bit of work to do prepare your route to the Vetter’s satisfaction but it’s all good fun and ensures that you have a good grasp on what you have in store.

The first real chance of resupply is at Spean Bridge, four days into the walk. From what I can gather from the web, Calvine & Struan don’t have any shops, so the next place for picking up stuff is Braemar, after another four Munros and a Corbett and five days later. There will be quite a bit of food carried this year: Oh deep joy!

Update! WeeWillyWilky has bought his walking boots, so he might just have them broken-in in time; There’s just eight weeks to go now…

TGO Challenge 2012: Mapping

Most walkers like maps. Well, those who like to know where they are and where they’re going, anyway… But I bloody well adore maps!

I spent most of yesterday printing out the maps for WeeWillyWilky and me for the Challenge. (Well, when not watching the rugby.) A huge amount of care goes into this, as it’s good to have each day’s route on one sheet of A4 print-out. That way the map can be slipped neatly into an Ortleib A5 document pouch, which rolls away nicely into a chest pocket in either your fleece or jacket. I cannot abide map cases slung about my neck that get thrashed about by the wind.

I annotate each day’s map with positions of bothies, escape routes and foul weather alternatives and any other useful bit of information that I think might be handy (pubs, cafes, bunkhouses etc) I also print out my 1:50’s at a vastly smaller scale so that nearest roads / railways are shown in case of emergency. It’s never great to be in the middle of sod-all with just squiggly brown lines on your maps if all of a sudden you need to get help. You need to know in which direction to strike out for assistance, so I always carry my overview maps with me. I learned this after one particularly embarrassing episode quite a few years back when we wandered off our print-outs, inadvertently!

One of the great features of mapping software is the ability to take a 3D view and actually fly-through your route. Here’s a  peek at the chunk of the afternoon on Day 8.

CLICKABLE 3D VIEW

Anyway, a complete set of maps is now winging it’s way to Wilkinsod, all numbered sequentially, with the route in garish fluorescent colours and notes all over the shop.

A labour of love!

Save the planet: Blow up a wind-turbine!

Many thanks to Chris Townsend for pointing me at this great article in “The Register” which is the techies’ news & opinion website. Here is the opening gambit:

“Two studies published this week calculate the astounding cost of Britain's go-it-alone obsession with using wind turbines to generate so much of the electricity the nation needs.

Both studies make remarkably generous concessions that favour wind technology; the true cost, critics could argue, will be higher in each set of calculations. One study reckons that the UK can still meet its carbon dioxide emissions targets and save £140bn – but only if it dumps today's inefficient hippie technology. The other puts the potential saving at £120bn – pointing out that the same amount of electricity could be generated using open cycle gas plants at one-tenth the cost of using wind turbines.

"There is nothing inherently good or bad about investing in renewable energy and green technology," writes economist Professor Gordon Hughes – formerly of the World Bank and now at the University of Edinburgh. "The problem is that the government has decided to back a technology that isn't ready for prime time, thus distorting the market."

Hughes' study – Why is Wind power so expensive? An economic analysis – is published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation today, and simply looks at the costs. The other study, by technical consulting group AF-Mercados, specifically looks at how to reduce CO₂ in the cheapest manner – by incurring the least collateral economic damage. It's called Powerful Targets: Exploring the relative cost of meeting decarbonisation and renewables targets in the British power sector. KPMG originally commissioned the study, but then got cold feet. Both come to similar conclusions: wind is astronomically expensive compared to other sources of energy – and consumers and businesses must pay a high price for the privilege of subsidising such an inefficient technology.”

The article is in two parts and can be found HERE and HERE.

So that you can read the source material, the two papers it refers to, which are both readily understood, can be found in the links below:

POWERFUL TARGETS  and  WHY IS WIND POWER SO EXPENSIVE?

The mind boggles. We, the consumer, are paying for this economic madness!

Peatbogs, Plague & Potatoes: Review

There I was, minding my own business, when the postman knocked twice. It was a parcel! I love parcels and so raced upstairs to Mission Control to rip it open.

What a splendid chap! My ‘brother with the hair’ had managed to purloin a book from a work colleague, just on the off-chance that I might enjoy it. In the accompanying card he did say he thought it might be a “load of old pants” as the lad he pinched it from had said it was quite heavy going… But never one to look a gift-horse in the mouth, I braced myself, and dug into the book as a night-time reader.

Within the first few pages, I was hooked. This isn’t a skim-reader. It demands and deserves attention. Not a single word is wasted! Skip a bit and you are lost. Go back and re-read it if it hasn’t sunk in.

With climate change on everyone’s thoughts these days, Emma Wood has set out to write how climate change and geology shaped Scotland’s history. Most Scots, and a few English, know about the political history of Scotland, but few, I would venture, understand how massively important Scotland's geology and climate change has been in the country’s turbulent past.

The book covers Scotland from the start of geology itself, when the rocks were laid down 3 billion years ago, through the various ice ages, up to the present day. It talks of the land’s first settlers, and how the huge swings in climate affected their lives and how humans adjusted and coped with these events. It travels through time examining how these swings in the climate affected agriculture and settlement patterns.

In brief, it gives you a comprehensive account as to why things are as they are right now. Armed with this information, you will see that the modern phenomenon of climate change is just the latest in a long line of events that the Scots have had to adapt to. With all the outrageous nonsense talked nowadays about climate change, this book shines like a beacon of reason.

A ‘MUST READ’ book!

Peatbogs, Plague & Potatoes: Emma Wood, Luath Press.

Family Guy

Just a few self indulgent pictures from yesterday’s family day over at Son Number One’s place. And why not!

A splendid day!

TGO Challenge 2012: Travellin’ in Style

In these recessionary times is it still possible to do things in style on a budget?

Definitely! Happily, my experience of booking things up for this year’s TGO Challenge has shown that there are still ways to do things in some considerable style and all for not a lot of money!

A quick breakdown of costs for this year’s walk’s big ticket items:

TRAVEL: The cost of my journey from my home in Berkshire to Morar on the north west coast of Scotland is £63.00. This includes travelling on the Caledonian Sleeper Service from Euston to Glasgow with a sleeping berth.

The cost of journey home is £42.93. This includes a First Class ticket from Montrose to Kings Cross with all refreshments included!

ACCOMMODATION: The total cost Including B&B’s in Morar, Spean Bridge, a bed in Braemar and campsite fees at Northwater Bridge and Montrose: £94.50

 

So, all up, that’s a two week holiday walking across Scotland for £200. Can’t be bad!