The Fat Lady Sings

With a couple of backpacking trips on the horizon - to Dartmoor with Robin and the Northern Pennines with a Clutch of Daunderers - my feeble mind has been gripped by an urge to wrench me from my backside and go for a walk.

I'm not too concerned about the pace set by the ageing Daunderers but young Mr Evans is quite a different kettle of fish; The chap fairly scurries along, weighed down only by a shelter spun from fresh air and fairy dust, and kit that never troubles the digits of his digital scales.



Should the fancy take you, it's possible to click on all these pictures to make them extravagantly large.



This ManMadeGlobalWarming is a complete bastard as the weather for the last few days has been frabjous, leaving me no excuse to not get out there and enjoy the Great Outdoors.



The pictures are from a walk taken yesterday, encompassing the northern clays and the eastern heathland of my local patch.



In a little under three hours it's possible for boots to accumulate huge clods of clay and then be coated with a dusting of fine sand. A bit more sunshine at Regulo 6 for another hour or so and your boots will resemble a couple of Flettons.



This particular stroll takes me past the sites of two gruesome murders; One took place a hundred or so years ago - the brutal drowning of a young boy - and the other only recently; The discovery of a man's body in a ditch - still unsolved as far as I'm aware.



I narrowed the choice of footwear for the Challenge down by one yesterday; My beloved Scarpa Nepals won't be coming as they're just too much hard work. This has come as a surprise to me as I have happily skipped along 3,000 miles in them. But at the end of yesterday's effort I finally realised that they are not for me any longer. The end of an era!



Late afternoon dog walkers around these parts mostly comprise middle aged women with absolutely no control over their charges. Ladies: If you're not the pack leader and you cannot recall your dogs, put them on a lead.

For the avoidance of doubt this also applies to men, but I have not yet met a bloke walking his dog around here who didn't have that control.



This post is being written using an 'app' (I do hate that word) called Bloggeroid. It seems to work jolly well apart from one major disadvantage; you can load the pictures where and in the order you want them, but once loaded it is not possible to see them as you write the text. I have no idea what image is displayed above or below! They are displayed to me as 'image 7' and 'image 8.'



And so, dear reader, you have the drop on me, as I've no idea what lies above and below this screed of woe.



I enjoyed snapping away because as any older hill walker knows, the more photographs you take the more rests are taken on the sly. Phil takes twice as many pictures on the Challenge as I, as he is older and wiser.



So, if young Mr Evans publishes more pictures on his write-up of our trip to sun-soaked Dartmoor you now know that I will have worn the young man out.



There is always an exception to the rule. On the upcoming PreWalkDaunder to the Northern Pennines our Senior Citizen will be the newly refurbished Peter Shepherd [Morpeth to his Challenge friends]. Peter recently underwent a triple heart bypass and although quite a few years older than Lord Elpus [my benchmark for decrepitude] he is never seen taking a sneaky photograph. He is always camped up before everyone else and eating his pudding as we arrive, or finishing a nap sprawled out in the sunshine.



And so, as the sun sinks below the pine trees and I hobble home in the gloaming, Peter gives me hope that the Fat Lady hasn't yet started to sing.

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