Pies Over Scotland – TGO Challenge Cutlery..er.. Challenges…

Eventually, there comes a time when the blogger, refreshed and suntanned and with only slight liver damage has to write up his (or her) experiences on the TGO Challenge and, for me, the time has now come.

This, however, will be no day-to-day account. Oh no…  One of the reasons for this is that my home PC has been having wobblers whilst I have been away and has completely lost all it’s passwords, links, shortcuts, disc space, car keys and TV remote and (this may or may not be linked) when I downloaded the 122 photos and 1 video of Kylie arriving in Glen Avon on a white charger, it lost 48 pics and the video. This caused me to make several very rude exclamations at the time but, bearing in mind that the fat nurse will be checking my blood pressure in the next few days, I’ve decided to calm down and do some DCC reccies up Teesdale to cheer meself up and also sort out the dawg’s cabin fever.

So.. Day 1. ………

was followed, in numerical order by another 12 and then another two sitting around in the Montrose sunshine eating hot smoked salmon and getting a tan.In between it was, the proverbial Game Of Two Halves.

Half One started with the crowing of the Strathcarron Hotel’s magnificent cock, sometime before dawn. The hotel let me camp with a good view of the cock and the drizzle sizzling on the tent overnight was, perhaps, an omen. I left at the same time as Tony (Pennine Ranger) Bennett but walked with him only as far as the first path junction where I turned left and he went forward. I never saw him again. In fact I didn’t see anybody up close all day.

The weather was, frankly, duff. My route took me to Bearnais bothy where it should have gone up Sgurr na Feartaig but I was feart of Feartaig due to the low clod and driving drizzle and , instead plodged over a bealach designed by Tolkein and down to the River Splodge or some other gaelic name nobody has heard of.

Its an area called Pollan Buidhe and there, on a flat and slightly soggy bit of grass was the second omen – a desert spoon stuck in the grass. (Actually there’s been a desert spoon stuck in the grass at Strathcarron too, now I think about it and I’d presented this to Carl Mynott, or , at least somebody who claimed to be Carl Mynott – but the point is, the spoon-based omens had started to build up.)

Another TGO-type arrived and put his tent up but was unable or unwilling to chat. I discovered later that he was from That London, so that probably explains why, in all the vast space, he put his tent up next to mine, but still pretended I wasn’t there. Funny buggers are those from That London.

In the morning I joined up briefly with Andy Howell and his pal and we sauntered down the Dale in sunshine. A nice discovery was the garden shed at Glenuaig which is open to hillwalkers and has light and heat. Its very small, though – only big enough for two or three, so not ideal for a party.

I crossed the beck in the wrong place due to a small time/space continuum discrepancy and plundered over another bealach to the Loch Monar Reservoir where I found Andy again. The night settled in for wet and windy. And so it remained for the whole of the next day. This was the Notorious Sunday. I wandered along the fine path alongside the Loch and down the long road along Strahfarrar dale to Struy where I followed Les and Issy into the Cnoc Hotel to get drunk. This was successful.

During the evening we got a call from control asking if we’d got room for Roy and ? who where having difficulties somewhere close. The bar staff sent out relatives in landrovers to find them, which they did. Several  bedraggled Challengers arrived and were squeezed into the technically full hotel. There was a distinct smell of socks. I did notice, however, that at breakfast, may sausage was pointing East. I took this as a positive omen and ate it quickly before it could alter it’s orientation and then left for the notorious Eskadale Triangle where the shortest heather is up to yer nips and the bogs are full of horses and carts from olden days – indeed, I believe I did stand on the peat-stained hat of a coal merchant from Drumnadrochit who went missing in 1926 and was presumed to have run off with a bus driver’s daughter.

The trial starts at Maud, where a deer fence’s wire is interrupted for a few feet by a fence of wood. This is assaulted using a bold approach and leads the hiker into a jungle of wet birch and dripping sitka. A brief rush through a back garden, keeping an eye out for huge, slavering dogs, leads the now hypertensive potential stroke victim up a very steep track where, in summer, the black flies will  be an additional torment. This eventually leads to a small lochan where the real trouble begins.

A couple of miles of soggy bog and vicious tussocks follows to a second small lochan or tarn, where a good road leads off in entirely the wrong direction. The beck (burn) is crossed sans boots and the most jungly and tick-infested part of the crossing now ensues. I heard distant drums……  prolly from Drumnadrochit (arf) – and more lochans follow in short order. it wa shere that I met John Enoch who had been walking on a similar course and knew where there was a road. We headed for the grid reference containing the road and there it was. It lead to the road a few miles West of Drumnadrochit where we joined the popular route from Tomdoun and eventually staggered into Drum, scratched, wet, bruised, twisted and with a raging thirst for fine liquours of the type only served up in the very best public bars. I had a B&B and scoffed a huge steak pie and chips in a nearby hotel, along with one or two hearty libations which my cardiac nurse better not hear about if you know what’s good for you.

I’ve had enough of this excitement for now. I’ll continue later. But just to say that this was the first Monday – 58 miles and 8600 feet of up. The weather so far was fairly typical for  early TGO – cold and showery with new wet snow on the hills – but also some sunshine too.  More adventures up the Monadhliath and Cairngorms will follow inabit. Food-based omens were positive, but I was just a little worried about the cutlery. What was it trying to say, I wondered?

 

Interval

There will now be a short hiatus of a couple of weeks - maybe a bit less if I fall over or something.

I will shortly be enjoying the childish pleasure of being alone and small in a big landscape

Here's a video which seems to be looking forward to the future with a certain amount of abandon:

"I don't know my future
After this weekend
And I don"t want to."

TGO Optimism

Quite a few people are about to launch themselves on a journey,  and many of those are blogging (and probably tweeting, twittering and, possibly, wittering) about their forthcoming attempt to walk a couple of hundred miles or so across the middle, relatively wild bit of Scotland. Readers of blogs who aren’t about to set off on this particular trip may well be excused for the glazing of their eyes at the constant stream of lists of equipment and what it weighs and so on and so on.

TGO challengers, particularly those chosen few who’s privilege it is to make their first attempt can be empathised with if they have the odd qualm or even the occasional butterfly about it. (If they haven’t then they’re idiots, frankly and probably won’t be at Montrose at the end)

Those of us who are about to make yet another attempt – in my case, my eleven-and-a –halfth (sic) – may also be aware that the outcome is in doubt.

But we set off with nervous optimism. We are optimistic about the weather. We are optimistic that if the weather is dire, that we’ll cope well enough. We’re optimistic that when we meet other challengers on the way, somewhere, perhaps in a remote and unlikely spot, that the meeting will be friendly and positive and that new, cherishable memories will be formed.

And we’re optimistic that our puny, or otherwise fat and failing bodies will be cajoled into carrying us and our listed gear over all those tussocks and across those difficult streams.

It’s good to be optimistic.

It’s a bit late for Beltane, but here’s a short late-spring bit of optimism (maybe a bit too fast for traditionalists – but at least it’s cheerful) I’ve done my packing. The pack is resting now, waiting for the addition of a few forgotten items, suddenly remembered at random times.

Here’s my best wishes for everybody about to set off on the TGO Challenge, and also for those friends doing something else.

Deer Gallows, Crookrise and Rylstone Crag

I did a very similar route to this walk with Martin Banfield a couple of years ago and I seem to remember that the two resulting blog posts – on Northernpies and Postcard from Timperley – were almost identical and with the same spelling a grammatical errors, almost as if they’d been written by the same person…..

It was different, though, this time.

Yesterday, I pinched the very last place in the village car park at Embsay, read the Craven Herald and Pioneer whilst waiting for the nephew, and, after he’d arrived we marched off to have a look at  Deer Gallows Crag. This place is a small but perfectly formed gritstone outcrop in the middle of Embsay Moor. It has a few memories for me – we used to climb the rocks here and, I believe that Deer Gallows Chimney may well have been the first named route I ever climbed. DG Chimney is a narrow slit containing some chockstones. Its not really climbed as such. What you do is you insinuate yourself inside and wriggle upwards for about thirty feet and pop out of the top like a cork. The last time I did this must have been in the early 1980’s , and without the additional frictional benefits of a huge beer belly which on this occasion, acted as a safety device, preventing me from sliding down inside the chimney should I lose grip. It’s graded “Difficult” and, it’s a fairly easy difficult. I think you’re supposed to climb it outside the chockstones. I’ve never done this, always enjoying the cosy embrace, which turns slowly into a desperate upwards thrutchy struggle of the innards of this crack. I tried it again yesterday. I did get to the top eventually. There was much huffing, groaning, puffing and heaving and one hand lost a bit of skin. Phew. Its like potholing, but without the darkness.

So, after admiring Deer Gallows’ rocky pinnacle (also a Diff) – we continued to Crookrise. Crookrise was another stamping ground and I haunted the place occasionally from the mid 1960’s to the mid 1980’s, climbing the rocks, a night bivi  where Neil’s brother set fire to a tree, and , generally mooching around the place. This crag has a rich history dating back to the times of Napes Needle, and it has secret howffs, one of which I only managed to find once, and then never again – a huge boulder with an overhanging capstone, underneath which there was a space, big enough for six or seven people to shelter and containing hurricane lamps and old bits of climbing gear. It’s whereabouts are a complete mystery to me, but sometimes I like to try to see if I can find it. 

And then, after crossing Waterfoot Gill (misnamed on OS maps as “Waterfall Gill”, ) and lunch, when a few snowflakes fell, we wandered along to Rylstone Crag with it’s cross teetering on the edge -  and Cracoe Fell, where more boulders were found to be too attractive to miss the chance of a little unthreatening mountaineering. You could have hours of happy fun floating up and down these rocks. They are beautiful, grippy and friendly……..

A long march back over the moor brought us back to Embsay, and so to Skipton for our tea.(Which was excellent by the way – ta, Bev.)

We’d done about twelve and a half miles with about two thousand feet of up, which is not bad for a walk we made up “on the hoof”.  Bruno, unfortunately, is not allowed on these moors under the terms of the access agreement with the Duke of Devonshire’s estate. Boo! Wuff! Growl!

 

Lead Mine Trails Little Victories Around Blanchland and Edmundbyers

I have this little trundle on the Lead Mine trail and a few other paths around Blanchland and Edmundbyers which I do twice a year for the purpose of reporting to the Council rights of way peeps on the state of the footpaths. Its a very useful walk to have just before setting off on a TGO Challenge (only ten days to go!) as it’s fifteen miles. OK, its fifteen fairly easy miles… 

Unfortunately, superdawg is not allowed on this jaunt due to what is basically a ranch containing suckler cows, one of whom once knocked me over in her attempt to get at Bruno, who had, wisely, buggerred of over the wall..  There’s also lots of sheep who are producing lambs just now and panicking ewes are contra-indicated for a responsible volunteer wot like I am.

Part one of this jaunt is a six or so mile wander through some nice woodland, a few lambing fields, a bit more woodland, a bit of moorland and some more woodland. The path issues are usually about fallen trees, but there’s a steep path where the shoring is falling to bits and a stile which occasionally rejects the walker and chucks him over the wall, a bit like a trebuchet. And I’ve mentioned a place which needs a waymark.

The naughty stile’s bolts have rusted up now, so it no longer exports ramblers into the sitka over the wall, so that’s good, but the steep path is still falling to bits, although it doesn’t really look any worse than it did last September. And a waymark has appeared in just the right place. Time for lunch.

Part two is a nine mile walk up the Lead mine trail – a route heavily used by mountain bikers which is getting a bit frayed in parts. The walk returns by a footpath through the cattle/sheep/horse ranch through Pedam’s Oak. This is usually OK, apart from the occasional manic heiffer but here’s some gorse slowly closing the path at one point (I did notice a gorse-cutting day in the working party lists, though) and there used to be a handwritten sign on a gate informing walkers that they were going the wrong way. This needed another waymarker and – one has appeared. OK, so they’re only little things, but it seems that somebody is taking notice of what the adopt-a-path volunteers are saying.

Perishing cold this afternoon by the way. Somebody in Denmark seems to have left a fridge door open. Fifteen miles, though…..