The Greenburn Horseshoe

Martin continues to collect his collection of Bill Birketts Great British Ridge Walks and so, me and superdawg met Martin and Graham at a slippery Little Langdale quite close to the phone box.

This walk was arranged immediately after the Littledale Horseshoe walk, so maybe the warm sunshine and snowy hills is an omen of cracking walks to come.

We set off well till we hit the steep, hard snow of Birk Fell, at which point, kicking steps and lurching steeply upwards, I managed to plunge both ungloved hands into powder snow a couple of times and by the time I emerged from the shadow of the hill, I was in some degree of agony. I couldn’t warm up my hands at all due to duff circulation and soon began to feel quite nauseous with the pain. I was considering abandoning the thing altogether till I put my fingers in my coffee and managed to put gloves on. After that I recovered fairly quickly and we continued upwards, though Martin took charge of the dog. I put crampons on, with assistance, due to inoperative fingers.

Little Langdale Edge, which climbs Wetherlam, was excellent steep, hard snow and we lunched in the sunshine on the top. Great fun. Graham put his crampons on here and Martin had his snow chains. Bruno’s enthusiasm for the little bits of snow kicked up whilst walking lead to me accidentally puncturing a front paw with a crampon spike. There was a little blood and much shaking of the paw – and a bit of limping. But this soon wore off and more thoughts of having to abandon the walk for the sake of the dog’s foot, passed without much comment on my part. Graham also managed to spike himself in the leg round about this time, so less a less determined party, not enjoying themselves so much in the snow and sunshine, perhaps, would have read the signs at this point and packed it in. No question of this today, though, so we climbed Swirl How and descended back towards the start over Great Carrs and Little Carrs.

The blue skies began to give way to a more hazy grey at this point and the warmth of the sun was missed as a nithering breeze sprang up.

Between Swirl How and Great Carrs, we stopped for a short while at the cross and cairn, containing the undercarriage and other bits of a Halifax bomber S for Sugar LL505 which had impacted here on 22 October 1944, killing its mainly Canadian crew of, principally, young lads. The rest of the aircraft rests on the scree at the foot of the hill.

We ran out of snow well down the ridge and rejoined the outward path.

Martin located a geocache near Slaters Bridge and did whatever geocachers do, before we all repaired to the boozer at Ings for our tea.

Bruno’s paw seems to be fine. I can’t find any holes and the bones feel all rights – and he doesn’t object to examination. I noticed that our other dog, Tammie, went straight to the injured foot and sniffed at it. I’ll keep an eye on it, though, but I suspect that there’s only very superficial damage.

We did 14km and 970 metres of ascent – which was, frankly, harder work for me than it should have been. My walking record for 2010, I notice, doesn’t show much in the way of contours climbed up – in relation to the distance covered. So, I think that since the option of giving up the beta blockers isn’t maybe such a good idea, and I really am trying to shed a bit of blubber, the only extra thing I can do is to do a lot more if this kind of walking. Steep stuff. Lots of brown wriggly things on the map. I’ll give it a try anyway….

Thanks to Martin and Graham for the walk, sympathy, help and patience. And to superdawg – be more careful in future…

Stop press - late announcement - Martin's partially fictional account of the same walk is here and with a link to an excellent slideshow featuring me...http://phreerunner.blogspot.com/2010/03/tuesday-2-march-2010-great-british.html

Meikle Bin

On the middle day of my three day sojourn, I decided to have an easy bag and go and get Meikle Bin. This is a tad higher than yesterday’s Fells, but seemed to have a reasonably easy approach through forestry from the Carron Valley Reservoir.
Unfortunately, I left my camera in the tent (dhuhh), so there are no pictures.
And, to make this post, and, lets be honest, me, appear more interesting, I am going to resort to the use of random inverted commas around various words during this posting.
This will make it appear that some of the things I am saying have other, more subtle meanings and make it seem that I am a lot brainier than, in fact, I really am.
Take no notice. It “just” an affectation.
So, we (that is, me) parked up next to a bored –looking coach driver counting the little holes in the leatherette cover of his steering wheel yet again, and marched off up various forest tracks which ultimately lead to a muddy path brushing through a narrow bit of tree cover to assault the michty slopes of Meikle Bin.This is The Big Bin.
There’s a Little Bin just next to it, for cans and bottles and a Baby Bin nearby for old nappies and little blue knitted jumpers fated to be covered in white sick
I could hear various raucous noises “coming” from the hill and a couple of “teachers” descended towards me, japing that I “wiz cheeten haevin ae dug tae pill yea up they hill”. These were shortly followed by a slipping, sliding crocodile of “children” dressed in various items of camouflage, pink wellies with little red lips on them, very short skirts, various other unorthodox hillwalking “gear” and ipods, mobile phones and other bits of technology not “yet” invented.
They were all friendly and, much to Bruno’s delight, incontinent of biscuits and the contents of the butties their mums had put up this morning. Bruno tidied up around the summit trig point.
Soon, “they” were gone and all was quiet and I was left to shiver and eat a banana by the trig point.
A cold and miserable day, it was, so I didn’t hang around.
I left early and went back to the shop at Kippen for more celebratory stuff.
Prolly did six miles.
There’s aircraft wreckage on the top covered in graffiti. The pic isn't Meikle Bin

Late info: Apparently, the aircraft wreckage near the summit is that of a Fairey Firefly number PP556 which was reported missing on 8 January 1950 and was later found crashed on Meikle Bin. The crew, Lt J Arthur Robertson and Naval Airman J Smith had both perished in the accident.

Pennine Aircraft Wreckage

The previous post about Whernside drew a comment from one Sean of http://peakwreckhunters.blogspot.com/ about air crash sites. Back in March 2008, I'd had a walk up Great Whernside and had accidentally come across a wooden cross and some aircraft wreckage. I posted about this on here http://www.walkingforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,1068.0.html

and there was a little bit of discussion about it which ultimately came to a sort of conclusion that the particular wreckage was most probably that of a Mosquito which came to grief on 13 December 1948. One of the posters - a chap called Pete, had talked to the keeper who had been first on the scene.

I don't deliberately seek out aircraft wreckage, but wanderers in the Pennines and, indeed on most UK hills will often come across undercarrieges, bits of wings, engines, wiress and all kinds of detritus.

One piece I found in Kielder forest was a bit puzzling, though, because it looked quite recent (pic above) It was lying on the grass in a forest ride, and the tree next to it had had it's top broken off. The piece was a couple of feet square and showed some signs of burning and, possibly, of explosion. I don't know exactly what it was, although I have some suspicions. If anybody has any clues.....

Back to Great Whernside - apparently there were at least another three crashes on it during WWII - a Halifax, a Whitley and a B17. There's also a well-known memorial to Polish airmen who died on the neighbouring Buckden Pike.

Its an awful toll. It would seem that aviation in WW2, and, shortly afterwards, was a highly dangerous business, notwithstanding anything that enemy action might add. The Halifax crash in particular was one of several that failed to return from a navigation training exercise on the same night. Its all very sad and these sites deserve respect for the people who perished.