TGO Challenge Planning #6 - vetters Comments

I've just received the vetter's comments on the route I submitted a week or so ago. My vetter this year is John Donohue. This year, aside from pointing out the inadequacies of my gaelic place names "You are to be congratulated for your early posting; congratulated, too for your valiant if hopeless battle with Scottish place names...."

Apart from clarifying where I actually meant for a couple of places (ahem!), John has pointed out a nice route improvement for me for climbing out of Glen Feshie (I am avoiding trying to remember how to spell the name of the bothy, but it's pronounced apparently without any consonants at all and sounds like somebody found the hot water bottle with their bare bum.

I didn't protest to John that I have the same struggle with English place names and Welsh is a mystery. I am aware that many Welsh villages are Pants, though..

Anyway, thanks to JD.

So, now, the route planning bit of the ...er....planning is complete. I have to add a couple of days at the start now, and also design a little four day training walk in April next year. When I've done the first part of this - the introductory days, I'll do a food plan.

JD, by the way, is one of the funniest blokes on the planet and whenever he's allowed to do a proper after dinner speech at The Challenge Dinner, its a real treat.

Sitting in a Currick

Me and The dawg had a wander up a very icy- and a little bit snowy Weardale today, starting at the auction mart car park at St Johns Chapel. We slithered our way up the hill to the North and along various bridleways to the very top of Middlehope Moor - at just a tad over 2000 feet.

There's a complete silence on these hills just now (in between visits from the RAF) - just one bird, I think it was a Plover going "peep" in the ever-so-slightly-bored-with-it-all way that Plovers go "peep".

Very rough going on the heathery tussocky bits and attempts to walk on hardened snow failed with knee-deep plunges at the rate of once every ten steps - but in such a random sort of way that it was just too much of a lottery. Deeper drifts on the very top of the moor worked out to be more reliable.

And then we found Puddingthorne Edge Currick. At first, I thought this was just a pile of stones, but on closer examination, I found it had a built-in stone seat and a shelter, facing down the length of Weardale and quite cosy in the sunshine. Bruno dozed off. I ate a mars bar and some flapjack and finished my green tea. Just a yard away, it was a nithering minus two with an epic wind chill, but here it was toasty. Worra grand place to sit away a long summer evening with a bottle of beer - or to watch the summer sunrise, maybe.

Eventually, we had to abandon the shelter and descend to the valley. A riverside path brought us back to the start (We actually out-aggressed a farm collie who was intending to have a chunk of Bruno. I'd watched "Dog Whisperer" the night before....

A cracking 12 sunny but perishing cold miles. Fab stuff too....

Pics include the Currick and it's view...

Thomas up a tree

I spotted this chap aloft in a neighbour's holly tree this morning.

This is Thomas, next door's adolescent cat. He often comes to play, and seems to like me - but here, he has the more serious intent of killing the sparrows that congregate very noisily in my privet hedge - hence he's up high in their tree. There's about thirty sparrows in all and Thomas sees it as his job to reduce the numbers. He's not been very successful yet, but I suspect I'm going to have to change how I feed the birds. Our own tom cat, Trex (cooking fat, gettit?) has recently lost a fang and isn't too bothered about decimating the wild bird population any more. He does get a bit twitched by Thomas's stalking, or is it shadowing...?

Superdawg sees Thomas as prey. I see my job as making sure that nobody gets hurt.

No walking today, hence a post about fluffy kittens.... I'll really have to do something involving walking boots and icy snow next week... I could get me crampons out... Its a fab day for it today, dammit...

Snowday - Its grim ooop North

This post is in the key of E with standard blues changes.

Well I woke up dis mornin

An ma woman dun left me.

Ashley, she's visitin her dad in Halifax

I was intending to have a walk somewhere hilly today, but I woke up dis mornin (see above) and there was piles of snow everywhere. The lads who live next door had failed to get to work due to the road being too slippery (it goes up a big hill, or "bank" as they call hills in Crook)

The A66 and A68 were closed and a lorry had blocked the A1. Not weather for driving anywhere, so me and superdawg, and his sidekick, Robin (aka Tammy) went for a walk up the Deerness Valley Walk.

The Deerness Valley walk starts (or finishes?) in Crook and goes over the hill to the..er... Deerness valley, which it follows to the outskirts of Durham. From there other walks go to Lanchester and to Bishop Auckland. The Lanchester walk links up with the Derwent Valley walk, which can be followed to Gateshead, or if you follow it the other way, it goes to Weardale.

These are all old railway lines. The Deerness valley route is heavily wooded due to being planted for pit props which were never used. Its all quite beautiful.

We just got to the top of the hill where it we met the hill fog and a snow plough. Very deep snow which was heavy, wet stuff and quite hard work.

Its an ill wind, though - as they say - the local schoolkids were rolling snowballs, sledging and chucking snow at each other instead of being at school. As this is the type of snowfall we used to have when I were a lad, and which we haven't had for a few years now, I consider this to be good education anyway. they'll now be able to say to their kids (when they get some kids) - "When I were a lad, it used to snow up ter t' rooftops...."

Its freezing now, so the snow conditions on the hills this weekend might be quite good......

TGO Planning #5

Well, that's it, I've just emailed my TGO 2009 route off to Roger at Challenge Towers. One of his henchpersons will no doubt be sending some vetters comments back in a while...

In the meantime, this is my route:

I'm starting at Glenelg (after some initial non- challenge wanderings) and heading towards Kinloch Hourn and bagging a little hillock on the way. next day, its Westyer Glen Quoich to Allbeithe, then Easter Glen Quoich (I like to have the set) and a small peeeemple and some woods to Tomdoun where I will spend the kids' inheritance. Then to Loch Lundie - followed the next day by a raid on the shops and pubs of Ft Augustus before carrying on to Blackburn Bothy.

wake up at the back, there....

Then over the moanyminnie hills for two days to Newtonmore, where I will wash my mucky neck - then Phones to Ruighaiteachain, followed by the Cringroms to Derry Lodge.

I'll pass fleetingly and boozily through Braemar to Callater, then over Lochnagar to Shielin of Mark. Tarfside follows that, then Fettercairn and lanes and tracks to Johnshaven.

then on the Tuesday...........

Its a lowish level route and I'm going to camp, although i'll probably seek clean sheets and a roof in Newtonmore and Fettercairn. I need to think about Fettercairn a bit more.

We'll see what the vetter(s) say. (I had two last year...)