TGO Challenge Stuff Number Two

LTD RTG (Ready to go)

So, what progress towards setting out on the TGO Challenge has been made so far? 

I have a vetted route, vetted by Dr Emma, who has been very helpful. 

I have a bed booked at an hotel in Hayfield for the TGO Challenge Spring Gathering, organised by the Very Lovely Alan. LTD is also attending and we're hoping for No Blizzards as in previous TGO Challenge gatherings and maybe an attempt on the legend-soaked Robin Hood's Picking Rods via the South Couloir with a direct ascent of the Gendarme du Merde followed by a traverse of the Bad Step. This hill has avoided my gentle attentions for several years now, mainly due to snow storms, Derbyshire County Council's enthusiasm for closing the Snake Pass and a Pandemic. The expedition will be lead by the Crowthers of Hayfield. They know the way and I don't. Nothing could possibly go wrong.....

LTD dribbles over JJ's lunch.

JJ auditions for Strictly Come Hiking

After having the route vetted and approved, I booked some trains. A train to Glasgow from That Durham and a train from Montrose to That Durham. Citylinks bus has been booked to take me from Glasgow to Dornie. Accomodation at Dornie will be in a tent. And I have a B&B booked in Newtonmore, so I'm fixed on getting to Newtonmore. In between Dornie and Stonehaven I are mainly camping, mostly wild and sometimes discreetly.

Determined JJ in the Howgill Fells

 

No idea who this is

Camp near Cautley

So, the next aspect of TGO chally preparation is physical and mental preparation. I usually deal with these things by 1) Walking about a lot. and 2) Having a couple of backpacking trips where lessons are re-learned - such as not running out of food, not mistaking bright moonlight for dawn and not carrying a load of stuff that's not going to be used. And, since the first day of the 2022 challenge and a bit of the second day will be in company with JJ, it seems logical to do some of this with JJ. And so, we went to the Howgill Fells and walked about a bit for two full days and two half days.

Seems to be in a fairly cheerful mood

JJ on a damp morning

second Howgills camp

The Howgills is a cracking place for backpacking. There's loads of places to camp and nobody goes there (apart from the four or five other backpackers we saw, the two runners and the half dozen day walkers. The water is good but the hills can form wind-tunnels in the North-South facing valleys. And navigation can be a bit of a challenge sometimes. Distances, however, on this particular walk, were short.

Day 2

Also Day 2

LTD has detected somebody opening a bag of smoky bacon crisps in Barrow in Furness

Anyway, it all went reasonably well. We walked from Ravenstonedale to Sedbergh and back in a big circle. I ran out of gas and LTD was a doggy food pouch short (and he blames ME for this!). But we re-supplied in Sedbergh. Unfortunately, during the transactions required for re-supplying, LTD attacked the shop owner's puppy, although I don't believe any physical harm was done, the shopkeeper was pretty unhappy about this and we had to retreat to the Red Lion where we ate and drank and tried to light their fire, which, for some reason, was quite reluctant in the conflagration department. We spent much time sheltering from the rain. Sedbergh market provided some nice bacon and a pasty and the Spar shop produced beans and smash and more whisky for the in-tent entertainment. And it rained all day.

LTD navigating. He's quite good at navigation

JJ follows closely behind, ever alert for sudden changes of direction

Justaminnit, these pics are in the wrong order

First camp

First camp (windy)

And so, replete with Sedbergh's hospitality and extra supplies of food and gas and drink, we slithered through the mud and rain up the bridleway to Cautley where we pitched the tents somewhat out of sight. The forecast for the last half day's walk was encouragingly good. This forecast turned out to be a load of dingo's kidneys and, after a brief spell of benignness  benignity   being a pleasant morning, it rained for the rest of the journey and the Cross Keys was closed. On the upside, the bacon and coffee for breakfast was superb. The key skill, with your bacon and only a small cooking pot, is to cut up the bacon into small pieces to get that all-over tan effect with crispy bits. The results can be loaded into a wrap, a sache of brown sauce applied and the whole thing washed down with a pint or so of hot Taylor's coffee at a strength sufficient to make your hair stand up. Only then can the packing of gear begin.

I'm in the planning stages of a similar trip to Galloway for April. The planning mainly consisting of buying a map

LTD won't be allowed on the TGO challenge

February - A Train Rant and Other Stuff

Northern (Comedy Service) Rail Not Coming From Carlisle

 I'll get to the rant in a minute. Bear with me, I need to build up some steam. But the picture above of the "arrivals" board at Newcastle Central Station is a symptom. The station is using the ironic, or maybe sarcastic version of "arrivals" here in that one of the trains is not arriving at all. In fact it hasn't set off.  More of which later.

My second little rant is about blogger , which, once again, has loaded the pictures in reverse order. It fights desperately with me if I try to re-arrange them and I've not yet been bright enough to outwit it by loading the pictures into the picture-selecting box in the opposite order to which they are required. This , the first picture is Lucky The Dog admiring the carpet in the Twice Brewed Inn on Hadrian's Wall.  One of the clauses that Hadrian had written into the contract for Hadrian's Wall was that it went quite close to the Twice Brewed Inn. Mainly because the beer there is very nice and much better than anything you could get in Rome at the time. That and the fact that they don't use much in the way of fomented fish sauce in the steak pie.

LTD looking for a crumb

Sycamore Gap from the North

Sum sheep. No idea how many, I keep falling asleep

Anyway, what of February. Mainly it rained and was very windy. I think it was Very very windy on four or five occasions and at times it was wet at the same time, or otherwise, just before the windy bits. Or just after. Several of the windy bits were Atlantic Storms which had cosy names like "Fluffy" and "Graham". "Ronnie was a bastard and tangled up the wind-chimes in our garden as well as blowing trampolines on to Lane Three of the A1(M) in several places. This was Not Good for the walking. So less walking was done in Feb 2022 than as far back as Feb 2011.

LTD suspects that there may be a gravy bone inside that rucksack

But there were some highlights, apart from the sheltering and drinking tea (Yorkshire Tea, grown in Doncaster) Me and Dawn went camping to Buttermere. This was a bit muddy but we were the only campers there and it was a nice break. Me and LTD managed to bag two very small hills. We left just as it got windy again (yellow warning for severe gales)

Crook and Weardale Ramblers doing a Caledonian-style river crossing

High Force, obviously

The, me and LTD attended three Crook and Weardale Ramblers walks, one of which was snowy, another wet, I mean quite wet... and another on a beautiful spring-like day. Attendance on walks seems to be increasing a bit - specially in terms of the canines. We were up to three doggies in Teesdale. LTD isn't keen on doggies....

White Horse of Kilburn (not ancient!)

Grasmoor, near Buttermere

Buttermere camp

And so, I come to the part where I have a bit of a rant. I had decided to have a night out at a certain bothy, not all that far from Hadrian's Wall and had secreted some firewood there a week or so earlier. I decided, that, rather than abandon a car nearby, I would go on the train - noting that Bardon Mill station was only a hop and a step away from the bothy and twenty quid for a return ticket with a lift home from Mrs Pieman would be a good strategy.

So she took me to the station. The first thing I noticed was that all of the trains coming up from That London were 15 minutes late due to a "security incident" at Peterborough. I had a ten-minute gap between trains, so I hopped on one I shouldn't have been on, according to my ticket.

At Newcastle, the station announcer announced that my train to Bardon Mill was cancelled due to a lack of drivers. A nice lady in a red suit confirmed this and added that the train after it was also cancelled. So I got on a train that went to Carlisle but stopped at Hexham, but not at Bardon Mill. I got the 685 bus to Bardon Mill and arrived only 30 minutes late. This is when it started raining.

I arrived at The Bothy at teatime, got water, fed the dog, put the dog to bed (he stayed there for the next 15 hours, a record - he was clearly fed-up) I lit the fire using some extra coal I'd brought and snuggled in for a very quiet night with brews and scotch and the radio. And LTD's contented sighs snores and farts.

The morning was really beautiful - a bright, sunny and frosty start and we had a lazy breakfast sitting in the doorway in the sun-trap.

The return walk was on paths North of the Wall and then to Twice Brewed for a couple of pints and a stupidly large breakfast and then down to Bardon Mill for the train.  

At Bardon Mill, an announcement was made that the train to Carlisle was cancelled. I began to have a sinking feeling about this. The phone to customer services couldn't confirm either way whether or not my train to Newcastle would or would not run, or even that it existed at all. So I decided to get the bus, which turned up at the bus stop a few minutes after me and LTD and took us to Newcastle, arriving 90 minutes early.

My train was, in fact, cancelled. Had I waited I would have missed the connection to Durham, and you can't get on one of these trains without a seat reservation.

Get my money back? I tried the website and it's impossible to navigate. So I rang them up and they won't talk about refunds on the phone.

If I'm ever faced with Northern Rail again, I think I'll pass and see what the local bus service can come up with. Or I'll drive...

Notice the use of green. All rants ought to be in green ink. It ought to be a rule. Or it's not a proper rant. Fact.

Anyway, it's spring now and the daffies are coming up, there's skylarks and lapwings in the fields and the sap is rising....

Must go backpacking.

What Happened in January

Angle Tarn

Sometimes it's nice to look back, especially when pulling out into lane 4 on the M1 to overtake a lane-hogging Audi. And at other times too. Sometimes I like to look back and I mean really, really back. My "Outdoor Stuff" logs go back as far as Easter 1964 when I was the child victim of a school trip to Helwith Bridge where I was not only subjected to a spectacularly spectacular haunting, but I also slit my thumb on a tin of corned beef, covering the lad in the bunk below me in blood. And then there was the walk up Penyghent where my rucksack fell off and spilled it's contents across the mountain, breaking some of my precious things, including my supply of fresh milk in a bottle,  causing me to almost starve to death and giving me a lifelong hate of cold tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce. (This was quite exotic for a mill-town lad in 1964). I got into bother for chucking the tin over the wall in disgust, decorating the horns of a passing Swaledale ewe. "Who did that?" demanded Mr Harris, the teacher. "It was Knipe, Sir" came the reply, pointing in accusation. "Tidy it up, Knipe" said Mr Harris, "Squash the tin and stick it in the wall"  It's probably still there.  Then there was the wet caving trip in Calf Holes Pot and my final escape to the Naked Man cafe in Settle - a wonderful place, even then. I spent all my bus fare on a fine breakfast, followed, in short order by a fine lunch. But will January 2022 match up to this fantastic   outrageously badly organised expedition? The tip I gave the motherly waitress concerned never trying to transport fresh milk up Penyghent. 

One of Li Yang's Long Walks

On the top of Loadpot Hill

Not as such...  But what happened, I hear you ask, impatiently, tapping your digits on the table and looking at your watch (clever trick that, as it happens...)

Well, according to my 2022 log of Outdoor Stuff Wot I Done, me and LTD did 15 walks and 2 nights camping. I also untangled the wind-chime in the back garden 3 times, following Atlantic storms, removed and burned bits of ash tree from around my car, washed the car a couple of times and went shopping. This is all Outdoor Stuff Wot I Done.

Red Pike Mardale

The Moors Above Rookhope

I should add that I completely realise that I can only do 15 walks in a month PLUS some shopping because I am an Old Age Pensioner. OAP's, it would appear, at first glance, have loads of time on their hands, when , in reality, they have little time left, so the idea is to get on with stuff before it all becomes too late. Very few ancestral Knipes or Earby-based Turners made it much past my current age and, if they did, they were in no fit state to walk to the co-op, never mind setting off at dawn with a lass who has too much energy than is sensible and a dog who would have preferred a bit longer snoozing by the radiator.

Elephant Trees Weardale

Slanty path up Skiddaw

So, the bottom line is, there is a limit to the time available and I don't know what it is. In fact, even on 1964, I didn't know what it was, but making it to fifty or sixty seemed a reasonable ambition and a six week summer holiday was most of a lifetime and could be frittered away tucking into Lucky Bags under Mick Burrow's verandah on Wentcliffe Drive.

Heading for Bakestall

Straw Man by the Wear near Durham

So, I did 15 walks and 143 miles (about 150 according to various GPS devices, but they're always wrong). Four of these  walks were with Crook and Weardale Ramblers. Two were with Li Yang and LTD and totaled 41 miles in...er.... total and 9 were just me and the dog. We (me and the dog) bagged 7 new hills, although Lucky's bag was 22 since I'd done the other 15 previously. That's quite good for a dog, I think. And we climbed about 23000 feet of uphill contours. Plus, of course, two nights camping at Angle Tarn. As it wasn't on a campsite, some would define this as "wild" camping, although, to be fair, it wasn't really very wild and nothing much happened at all, although it was very nice. I sort of counted it as a pre-TGO challenge event.  

And, speaking of which, I have received my TGO challenge vetter's comments from Dr Emma, who was very gentle with me and my ideas for a route, and has pointed out the locations of various shelters and tea-rooms (never pass a tea-room) and has done some additional investigation on the likelihood of me being washed away whilst crossing a certain burn (Scotch talk for "beck") This matters not very much since JJ will be with me at that point and I'll be sending him ahead to test the strength of the flow. There's a lochan just below this beck and, I expect that JJ is able to swim reasonably well should he unexpectedly arrive in this particular pond, as opposed to the Eastern bank of the burn.

It DID snow in January

 Me and LTD are now looking forward to February.... we have camping plans and , maybe a short backpack, providing I can decide where to go and whether or not it's cold and sunny or wet and windy. We don't really want wet and windy.

Racing The Sun from Hartside Pass

Li Yang and Sun setting on Melmerby Fell

I had it on my List of Things To Do (important caps here) to do some more long walks and early last week me and Li Yang (Li Yang and I) arranged to do "a long walk" on Thursday as she was on holiday and I'm permanently on holiday. It took me a while to work out a route but the result was this little stravaig. Oddly enough, it started at the top of a hill....

Sunrise from Hartside

Li Yang and a cairn

We parked at dawn about ten minutes before sunrise in a little quarry near the summit of Hartside pass - a large number of cars and vans could get in here by the way... and headed approximately East over Benty Hill where the boggy bits were frozen hard. This made for relatively fast progress. 

As we passed along the ridge, the sun rose, apparently at some speed and proceeded across the sky at a worryingly fast lick - and us still with 20 miles to go. Would we win the race and finish in relative daylight? (Spoiler alert - not much chance of that!)

And just before the ridge drops down into South Tynedale we turned South to Leadgate and then along the road towards Garrigill for "First Lunch"  We usually have two "lunch" stops on long walks by the way. My first lunch was most of a pork pie, a banana and chocolate and coffee. LTD's first lunch was doggy biscuits, gravy bones and a little bit of pork pie. Li Yang may have donated some of her lunch as well.....

Black Fell - not really very black, in fact

LTD trying to hypnotise Li Yang into donating some of her butty in Greg's Hut

The toughest bit of the walk was the public footpath from the Garrigill lane to the bend on the Pennine Way leading up to Greg's Hut. Done Siuth to North, my view of the walk from Greg's Hut to Garrigill is that it's mind-numbingly dull, but, somehow going the other way is more interesting.  The Pennine Way gave another section of quite quick walking and we arrived at Greg's Hut for Second Lunch, in my case a beef, tomato and mustard butty and some more chocolate. LTD finished off all Li Yang's doggy biccies and my gravy bones and asked for more. The greedy bugger had also had a fair amount of snow from the remaining patches. 

Greg's Hut

As the shadow of Cross Fell began to creep across the Black Burn below, we started on the fabulous Pennine ridge which heads North back towards Hartside, still more than 5 miles distant and, with the sun with only a few feet of sky to traverse until it could dip behind the Lake District, have it's cocoa and crumpets, wind up the cat and put the clock out to drift off into dreamy snoozy sleepy land ready for another busy day tomorrow.

The conditions for walking this  ridge were ideal. The ridge is mainly grassy and wide and spacious and, generally easy to walk on and , it could be described as a romp. We made good, fast progress, on the frozen turf , passing cairns and patches of boulders, across the Maiden Way roman road and on to Melmerby Fell where the sun won the race and began to sink smugly behind the Cumbrian Fells and us with  several miles still to go.

Li Yang heads North

Cairns...

Another cairn!

LTD enjoys some snow

The sun is starting to set over the Lake District

We were treated to a fine sunset. In fact, we were bust taking pictures when it might have been wiser to press on. In the other hand, it would go dark anyway and the really wise thing to do was to witness this moment. From sunset to "lights on" must have been about 40 minutes. We came off the hill towards Alston Moor and found a stripe of yellow through the heather which marked the track of an old tramway which leads directly back to the quarry containing the knipemobile.

Yet another sunset shot

The sun has gone to bed. Zzzzzzzzzz

Inevitably, about half a mile along the tramway (which, incidentally, is not much of a path ) we put the head lights on and tramped in the general direction of the main road. Car headlights and tail lights moving along the road gave us an idea of distance and ensured that we couldn't go  far wrong.

We finished at half past five. 21 miles (this does count as "long") and 2600 feet of up.

Under instruction from Li Yang , I have to dream up another long walk for early February