Local low-level walk

From http://bvhill-walkers.blogspot.com/

It was such a lovely afternoon on Saturday that Jo and I thought we'd go for a drive and a walk and we knew about the Ballater - Cambus o' May loop north and south of the river, so thought we'd try that for a change.

Here's the stats and the route:

Nice pint of Trade Winds at the Alexandra at the end too!

LD Walks 2012 - addendum

From http://bvhill-walkers.blogspot.com/

Arising on Monday morning, with nobody needing to rush - other than Ian catching a train at 12:30 pm - and feeling a little cheated from the unexpectedly short and low level walk on Sunday, a plan was hastily hatched to do a quick climb up one of the local hills - Catbells.

We checked out promptly and headed for the hills. It was a fairly sharp upward climb with, as usual, a few false peaks. Here's some of the photos we took:

Finally the stats and the route on our short spurt up the hill:

That's it for this year - probably my last. Good fun.

LD 2012 (3)

From http://bvhill-walkers.blogspot.com/

Sunday was as dire as had been feared. Rain and low clouds gave poor visibility, with roads flooding leading us to hastily re-draw the walking plans. At some stage, Dave and I had to get our cars from where we'd left them in Patterdale on Thursday night over to Keswick, where we were staying on Sunday night. The weather gave us the opportunity to do this first thing on Sunday, so Dave and I hopped in a taxi for the half hour ride over the Kirkstone Pass, via the windy road known as The Struggle.

We got back to Grasmere an hour or so later and picked the others up and headed for Grange, where we dumped Dave's car, all jumped in mine, then drove up to Seatoller to start our short, low-level walk in the rain, with the intention of stopping off to take in a bit of the Borrowdale Show - if it was on.

The fields were quagmires and the river was rapidly filling to the point of overflowing but the Show must go on - and it did somehow. Five visitors from Aberdeenshire taking an unhealthy interest in sheep on display - who would have believed it? They even had an Ugly Sheep competition:

Farmer Sharp was taking a keen interest in the One Man and His Dog sheepdog trials, but the rest of us were fascinated by our first glimpse of a Cumbrian Wrestling competition, albeit with only 8 under-18 competitors, who had to line up to have their outfits judged before the competition:

The elderly female judge (standing behind the competitors) took an eternity to conduct a fairly intimate visual examination of the young entrants - it all seemed a bit weird. Eventually they got to the wrestling - somehow they managed to conjure up semi-finals and finals in 3 different age categories from this lot - although most of them were completely unfair matches, with the largest and heaviest almost always winning out. Surreal.

Soon we were on our way again, but we were passed by the impressively fast finishes of the runners in the Fell Race. You can just make out some of the stragglers coming down the hill here:

We managed one more team photo towards the end of our walk:

Back at Grange after a couple of hours, Dave and I jumped in his car and went back to Seatoller to pick up mine before all heading back to check in at our hotel in Keswick.

Conditions had dictated a rather truncated programme for the day, but here's the rather unimpressive stats anyway:

A few beers were followed by an Indian curry, then back to a couple of the local pubs for some end of trip drams:

LD 2012 (2)

From http://bvhill-walkers.blogspot.com/

Saturday started even better than had been forecast - blue skies all the way and not a breath of wind. It boded well for the walk, but I decided, in view of my funny turn yesterday, that it was best that I dip out of the day's walk and let the others march on unhindered. I would do my own thing - Ken told me about a low level walk to Ambleside and I agreed to meet up with them there.

I sat outside our hotel, reading the papers, and watched as they headed for the hills:

After a brief session in the steam room, I set off on my walk - along the riverside towards Dove Cottage (Wordsworth's home):

Walking on, I came to a nice, but fairly busy, lakeside beach:

There are a number of trails to Ambleside but I veered away from the lowest one and took the next level up initially. Eventually it brought me to a large, apparently naturally formed, cave, with handily placed stepping stones leading to the interior:

After this, the path I was on got fairly busy so I decided to climb further to get away from the crowds who were out on what remained a glorious day. I succeeded in finding my little wilderness - so much so that I completely lost any sign of trails for a while. I did get some lovely views on the way up and took several photos, including this panorama view:

I picked up the trails again and eventually headed back down to Ambleside to meet up with the 4 musketeers, who I later discovered were traversing a hill on the other side of the water - Stone Arther. Ken took a few photos, which can be viewed at https://picasaweb.google.com/113567438842510643299/LakesSeptember2012?locked=true&feat=email

The stats and route of my walk were:

Without me to hold them back, the boys had taken the opportunity to take on a slightly bigger challenge, apparently getting up to about 2,500 feet - a little higher than we had climbed the day before, and a lot higher than I felt I could manage today.

We met for beer at the Ambleside Tavern then all caught the bus back to Grasmere, stopping for a quick one at the Swan Hotel before showering and heading out to dinner.

We booked a taxi to take us to the well-known Drunken Duck, home of the Barngates microbrewery - http://drunkenduckinn.co.uk/. We hadn't realised what a lovely, upmarket pub it was - but there were no bar meals in the evening - only the restaurant, and it was fully booked. We were stuck out in a lovely spot in the middle of nowhere with not even the prospect of a taxi for at least an hour or more. What could we do but drink some of their lovely beer then seek directions to the nearest hostelry that could provide us with food. Mine host assured us the Outgate Inn was just a mile away and all downhill, so we set off in the gathering gloom, with bats swooping round our heads. It was certainly our fastest walk of the weekend.

Dinner then taxi back to Grasmere and a quick visit to see the (2-man) band playing in Tweedies Bar. They were OK - probably a better bet than the previously advertised Banjo Joe!

Prospects for the following day didn't good - but we would wait and see.

Lake District 2012

From http://bvhill-walkers.blogspot.com/

The story of this year's return visit to the Lake District started on Thursday when we all made our way to the Glenridding Hotel, Patterdale for our first evening's stay. Ian had travelled down early by train that morning and had already put in a 7 mile warm-up walk (allied to boat trip) prior to the rest of us arriving in the evening.

After a morning's work in Fraserburgh, I drove back to Banchory to pick up Ken and Colin and drive south. Dave was last to arrive, having driven north from Reading - just 2 days after returning from his USA vacation.

A few ales were supped as we anxiously eyed the weather forecast, which, unfortunately, turned out to be pretty accurate for our first walk on Friday - up and over and through the dales to Grasmere. We were past caring, however, when the first team photo of the weekend was taken the night before in the Ramblers:

Sure enough - wet and windy it was on Friday. Not constant, but annoying enough to take most of the fun out of the walk. There were dry spells and these were used mainly for consulting the map:

Not long after this, I took a little bit of a funny turn, as a result of which I decided to miss out on Sharpy's mid-day drams ritual:

The walk down the other side was treacherous. Whoever had laid the stones out on the steep downward trail had done so at an angle - unfortunately downwards, and with them being pretty wet to boot, none of us found it easy - or safe.

We got to Grasmere safely eventually. It had taken us just over 5 hours and we had covered 14 kms, climbing over 2,000 feet and consuming over 1,000 calories each - enough for a 5 pint evening, we all calculated. Here's the stats and the route:

Some excellent LocAles from Hawkshead Brewery were consumed in the Red Lion hotel, where we were staying for the next 2 nights. We took in the nearby Tweedies bar that evening as well and noted that they had live music on Saturday night. The weather forecast for Saturday looked a little better.

Potarch to Banchory

From http://bvhill-walkers.blogspot.com/

It was a lovely morning on Saturday and, having cancelled my golf, Jo and I decided to take the bus down to Potarch, have a spot of lunch - and a beer of course - then walk back to Banchory along the new Deeside Way paths.

It's very civilised and well laid out - a bit of climbing up to the car park at Shooting Greens once you're past Dave's house, but, from there, the Deeside Way seems to peter out a bit. There's plenty of forestry trails back to Banchory of course, but we didn't see anything marked out as the Deeside Way. There's also a bit more of an upwards stretch from Shooting Greens - a little surprisingly up to 900 feet in all.

We wandered around a bit on the mostly downhill section, following our noses from Shooting Greens back to Banchory, but we were still a little surprised that it took us well over 3 hours - the distance was almost 14 kms - and we were walking at a reasonable rate considering it wasn't entirely flat. Here's the stats and the route:

A nice walk nonetheless, but one of the reasons for doing this was to figure out the route and whether it was feasible to cycle from Banchory to Potarch - as we have discussed a couple of times. Certainly the way we came back, it was a fairly steep downward section and would be a pretty challenging cycle uphill - we saw a few who tried but were pushing their bikes up. I remember many years ago cycling from Banchory up to Shooting Greens with Ken Page and, although we made it, it was pretty tough - and we were 20 years younger!