Winner! Britain’s Best Walks Christmas Raffle

I have been informed by The Powers That Be (The wife) that the raffle for the copy of Times Britain’s Best Walks by Christopher Sommerville was drawn yesterday evening by our next door neighbour and that the winner is one Debbie (Joan’s) daughter a customer/visitor to St Catherine’s Community Centre and that the book has been delivered, probably to her Mum within the last hour or so.

Congratulations to Debbie and I hope and trust that it will provide hours and, indeed, miles of happiness.

Thanks also to everybody else who bought tickets. The raffle made £32, which is just £2 more than the retail price. It’s a small sum, but a lot better than a smack around the head with a wet fish.

If anybody would like to buy a copy of this crackin tome, then clickhere . Prolly too late for Christmas now, but in plenty of time for action on those New Year’s resolutions, specially the ones about getting more exercise, getting out more, losing weight and doing more things together.

Yule Wander At Barbon

In Alf (whats that girl doing in my soup?) Wanwright’s Walks in Limestone Country, there’s a little ramble over Casterton Fell and Easedale and so on and all very nice, too. Apparently, on 28 August 1975 ( probably quite a warm day), I bagged the Barbon Low Fell top and went on to visit various holes in Easedale, but failed to get to the top of it’s neighbour Hogg’s Hill, probably because Uncle Alf’s route didn’t go there and there’s a wall with wire on the top in-between.


So me and LTD met the bro in the outer suburbs of Barbon and climbed Hogg’s Hill, followed by a clamber over the wall and a re-visit to Barbon Low Fell’s 438 metre top. It was nithering in the wind even though the sun had come out and, by just after lunch, it was starting to go dark again.



We returned to Barbon via Fell Lane and some parkland, which was all very nice and quite a lot warmer than on the tops. We did notice several stone “boxes” along the sides of Fell Lane, each one having access only by a stone stile and each one containing a large boulder and nothing much else. Suggestions that they might be sheefolds are countered by the fact that they’re much too small, have no access available to sheep unless they leap over the wall and, are mainly occupied by big stones. Does anybody know what they are?

Back in Kendal, LTD amused himself by barking at himself on the telly.
We did 9 miles.
Happy, and, indeed, Merry Yule to all Piebog readers. I do mean everybody by the way. No, really….

Trespass Blog Awards

Katie from Trespass marketing dept emailed me the other day about this. I’m uncertain as to who made the nomination (it wasn’t me, the wife or the dog) and ever since the TGO Magazine blogger of the year fiasco a couple of years ago, I’ve generally been a bit cynical about these things – at least till being nominated by Old Mortality himself with his tongue stuck firmly in his cheek, bless him (how he managed to order a pint with his tongue in his cheek, I’ll never know). Then I thought – well, its harmless, innit and, maybe I could use and fallout for my loadsa work for charriddeeees (don’t like to talk about it).

Click on the logo below to vote, or on the link below.

vote for pies!

Driech But Relaxed Days in Borrowdale

The idea was to try Dawn’s idea of putting a lightweight tarp thingy (sorry to be so technical here) in front of her tent to stop it raining in when cooking or coming and going when the tent is being used with a full inner and not the normal half-inner which is used when camping solo. Me and Dawn and LTD were involved. JJ had been invited too but he was busy having a “see how long you can wait” competition with BT.

So we went to the Chapel Farm campsite in Borrowdale where the weather was warm for December but with a broken but very low cloud-base. My hope was for a walk along Knitting Haws – High Spy ridge, but a driech morning of low and fast-moving cloud indicated that the fine views offered by this ridge would not be very fine at all. So we had a little trundle up Castle Crag by way of consolation.

Castle Crag, for it’s size offers a small adventure, lots of nooks and crannies and a smashing view of Borrowdale. We poked around quite a lot, had lunch in a sun-trap in the quarry, well furnished with propped-up bits of slate when the sun briefly appeared. And almost crushed LTD under two huge boulders which slipped as we descended and stopped only inches from his recently vetenaried legs.

After this, we wandered along to Holm Crag – a small knobbly top just by Grange campsite. Holm Crag doesn’t have much of a view as it’s heavily wooded, but for entertainment, it sports a number of moss-covered slabby rocks which provide hours of fun, twisted ankles, broken limbs, interesting blasphemy and graceful uncontrolled but short slides.

We survived this and went to the pub.

It rained a bit. Then it rained on and off all night and got quite windy. The tarp experiment was successful. I must say that the best thing about camping in December is the opportunity it provides for outrageously long snoozes. Mine and LTD’s record on this trip was 16 hours. I’ve no idea what Dawn was doing during this time as I was mosty in dreamy snoozy snory land… It was mainly dark most of the time.

Relaxed….

The walk was about 6 miles… 

More Notes From The Standby List

So, me and The Lad moved 17 places up the standby list. Should the 2017 TGO Chally be postponed till next September, it’s likely that we’ll get a place. But in fact, the email sent to The Lad about this (I didn’t get a copy!) has encouraging words in it, so, maybe all is not lost.

I think we’d better get on and design a route. This used to take me an evening but all my relevant maps are out of date and/or falling to bits, so Task #1 will be to get a new set. We intend to start at Dornie (should we get a place) and we’d like to travel via Braemar, Callater Lodge and the Lambert and Sloman Cheese and Wine party.  I missed all the previous ones, having already produced a route when the invitations came out, so such an encouter will be interesting. I did get fairly close to one but it was at the end of a long day involving at least two public bars and instead of partying, I erected my tabenacle and went to bed. I was probably three or four miles short.

In the meantime, we’ve been renewing a floor here at Pietowers, plus other works and LTD has had a foot infection and has been on beanbag rest, hence a lack of walkies.
In the other meantime, many (I mean a lot of) successful participants on the 2017 TGO challenge may well have the pleasure of encountering the first-timer who’s blocked them all on Twitter for expressing views which run in the opposite direction to those which said Blockette deems appropriate, whilst at the same time crying “Troll!” and “Bully” and so-on. That should prove interesting. Running in the opposite direction would be my first idea, but , as I’m on the standby list, the opportunity may not arise and I’m not all that good at running anyway. I am blocked, though. Not to be blocked would be a slight on my TGO chally kudos. Comments mentioning names will not, of course, be published.
I’m off to Borrowdale tomorrow, though with Dawn and, possibly, JJ, so , if the weather is kind, the missing mileage may be rectified. I’m not taking spikes.  I am taking a couple of pies, though.
Pics show LTD generally getting in the way during flooring operations.

Around Grayrigg

The only instruction given to The Bro was that Dillicar Knott needed bagging and that a walk should include that. Afterwards, there would be sweet biscuits for a demonstration of “snarly snarly” for LTD. Snarly snarly is LTD’s habit of threatening titbits if he’s not given them straight away. Its quite funny, really.

So, we met in “The Layby”, just South of Dillicar Knott and climbed it in short order. Dillicar Knott has some masts on the top and a fine view of the Lune Gorge, complete with the M6 and the West Coast railway line. Unfortunately, there’s no easy direct way through to the start of the Grayrigg Forest ridge , so we had to back track a bit.

After, we climbed Grayrigg Pike, which has an even better view of the M6, followed by Grayrigg Forest, a Marilyn which I’d previously bagged on 16 November 1975, but which was a new tick for LTD. I must say, that despite me leading him around all these fine hills, he’s showing very little interest in his tally of ticks and hasn’t even got his own pencil. He’s going to have to go to baggerdog classes…

Anyway, we used the access road to the repeating stations stations stations to leave the hill and work our way back on a complex route through farmland and bits of soggy moor to the Old Scotch Road which eventually brought us back to our cars.

The sun came out, it got a bit warm and we saw three or four deer and a flock of white geese in a scrapyard…

LTD then went to Kendal for sweet biccies and episodes of the snarly snarly game.

10 miles and 2100 feet up up and there’s a map just a bit below this sentence..