My Mountain page

I’m still playing catch up on adding walks to the web site, the latest addition, is the walk we did last Sunday (28th February), so that leaves me three more to add before I’m up to date. We drove over to Wasdale, with Roger and Ann Hiley, to meet up with David Hall to explore the area around Middle Fell and Buckbarrow. These were going to be new ‘Wainwrights’ for us, as we’ve done very little walking over on the western side of the Lakes. Even though the weather was overcast and cold, the climb along the SE shoulder of Middle Fell gave us great views of Sca Fell and its slightly higher neighbour Sca Fell Pike. As we gained height we also got an unfamiliar view of Great Gable, from this side the top had an obvious dome shape to it. This was a bit of a surprise to me as from Borrowdale it looks to be flat on the top! By the time we had reached the summit there was a chilly wind blowing in from the north, so plans for lunch were put on hold for a while, until we could find a sheltered spot on the descent. I have to say that Roger and David did a wonderful job of finding us a great little spot on a rocky ledge over looking Greendale Tarn with views out towards the coast. After lunch the choice of route was either to cut directly across to Buckbarrow or alternatively do Seatallen first and then onto Buckbarrow. To be honest I didn’t think I could manage a direct climb up the slopes of Seatallen, so we ended up doing the easy, but slightly wet traverse. The views from Buckbarrow out towards the sea were lovely, as we could see the sun glinting on the distance Irish Sea. On the way back down to the car we made a slight detour to the magnificant ‘Joss Naylor’ cairn, before dropping down Tongue Gill and the car.

We had another brilliant day out on the fells yesterday. Went over to Borrowdale to complete the Central fells, by doing Eagle Crag and Sergeants Crag. The weather was lovely again, really warm with very light winds, but it did make the lying snow awful to walk on, it was wet and soft. Not good for descending as it slid away from you as soon as you put your foot down. The ‘normal’ ascent route for Eagle Crag goes up the crag itself, but we cheated and went via the back door. I’m still not 100% confident about my neck yet, even though it loads better. Didn’t fancy trying to get up those ledges, especially as there was still some snow and ice left on them. Surprisingly we didn’t meet that many people out on the fells, probably half a dozen at the most. We did spot a small group of deer on the ascent of Eagle Crag, they were far off in the distance on the sky line. I just about managed to get a shot of one of them before they disappeared over the ridge. I’ve downloaded and processed all of the photo’s now, hope to get the web page built up over the next day or so. But I’m still working on three of the walks from last weekend!!!!

The weather forecast was awful for last Friday, especially over the Pennines, with drifting snow forecast for the afternoon. I was really concerned about driving over to the cottage, we ended up heading over earlier than planned to try and avoid the worst of the weather on the A66. The drive over wasn’t that bad, the worst bit was over the Whinlatter Pass, through the forest, with some snow and ice on the road. That didn’t stop us having a coffee at the lovely ‘Siskins Cafe’ at the forest visitor centre.
When we arrived at Rose Cottage the weather had really started to turn for the worst, it was raining and the cloud was really down. We thought that our ‘loweswater jinx’ was going to happen again. After getting ourselves settled into the cottage we decided to have a wee wander around Loweswater, this is one of the lakes that we’d never been to before. It was a short walk from the cottage along the road to Maggies Bridge and then across to the lake. We were surprised to find it forzen, well just about, the ice was really more like slush, but it created a lovely effect on the surface of the water. The rain on the surface of the ice, gave a few nice reflections, just a pity about the cloudy sky otherwise they’d had been brilliant. The walk along the south side of the lake is through some woods, it would be a great place for a summers evening walk, not so much today though! after crossing the rather wet and boggy fields at the far end of the lake we walked back along the road to the village. The weather hadn’t improved, it anything, it had gotten worse, with the rain rain turning more to sleet at low level and definately to snow on the higher fells. We were glad to get back to the cottage for a hot bath and a glass of wine in front of the log fire, while we waited for the chicken to cook!

We’ve just got back from five wonderful days walking in the Lakes. It’s been one of those long weekends that will stay with us for a long time. I wasn’t that sure I would be up to doing a lot of walking before we set off, because of my neck. I haven’t worked out the full stats of mileage, height gain etc, but we managed to get a walk done each of the days that we were away. That has really lifted me, I was starting to think that I may not ever get back to walking the fells! I’ve got a few nights work to sort out all of the photo’s and walks details, so probably won’t get all of the walks onto the web site before the weekend. You can get a sneak peak of where/what we’ve been up to by checking out the ‘Photo a day’ project on the web site. Off for a long soak in the bath with a beer, while I wait for the curry to be delivered!

I wasn’t too sure how this develop when I started it, the idea was to get me to carry a camera with me so I could get ‘that perfect shot’ when I saw it. To be honest there have been a few of those moments over the last two months. But as I’ve quickly found out, even if you have the camera, its not always that easy to take the photo. Why? well there have been several stunning sun rises and sun sets over the last couple of weeks, which are around about the time I travel to and. Trying to get a photo from a train moving at 125 mph or trying to find a safe spot to stop the car isn’t as easy as I thought it would be.
Saying that, I am really enjoying doing the ‘Photo a Day’ it’s making me look at things in a totally different way. It’s made me move out of my comfort zone of doing ‘landscapes’ all the time, which I’ve found very unerving to say the least. I’ve enjoyed getting back to doing some of the macro and still life stuff that I did for my photography course last year. I must get some proper lighting though, it’s laughable at times how I end up trying to create the lighting for some of the shots that I’ve done recently!
I’m going to reorganize the current web page over the next couple of weeks, it’s getting far too big with all the photo’s on now. Not sure on the exact layout, but think I’ll ceate some from of gallery or slideshow for the photo’s of the past months?
Thanks to the ‘regular’ viewers of the project, and for the emails, it’s nice to here what you think of the photo’s! Here’s a link to the gallery, just in case you haven’t already seen it!!!!

more fresh snow in the village this morning, not a lot, just a light covering of very wet snow, but there’s plenty further up the dale. The A66 has been closed all night, hope they get it opened up pretty quick, we are hoping to head over to the Lakes this weekend for a wander. Saying that though the forecast for Saturday is cloudy and heavy snow showers. Sunday is looking better with sunny spells, but very cold, with the freezing level down to around 300 feet!

Well not quite, but I did make a rather silly editing error on the web site on Sunday whilst updating the home page. In my rush to get the site upated I forgot to change the caption under my latest walk. So it read … Latest walk - Low Force, a walk along the River Swale in Swaledale! LOL
I have to say a big thank you to Andy Beck, one of my regular web site visitors for pointing this out to me!

I can’t really believe it’s been over 6 months since I last updated this blog, doesn’t time fly! But since getting home from my trip out to Nepal, things have been in a complete disarray. I’ve struggled to keep up with everything because of the neck injury, some things had to be put on hold, and one of them was the blog.
Well things appear to be improving, especially on the neck front, I had another session with Richard, my physio, on Friday afternoon. I even managed to get spme gardening work down yesterday, now that’s a definate improvement. I think I may have over done it a wee bit, as I was pretty tired and sore this morning LOL. Good job the weather was lousy, as I may have struggled if we’d gone out the the planned walk. As it was, I’ve spent the day working on getting the ‘mywainwrights’ site upto date, it’s getting there, but still need to spend some time on the area pages plus I really want to get the mountain database up and running asap.
The other big project that I’m working on at the moment is setting up a new web site. This is going to be for me to showcase my better photo’s. I’ll also be doing cards and prints of some of my photo’s on there. We did a trial run with some cards at Chrsitmas, which went down really well with everyone, so first up will be a ‘Spring’ collection of cards, other collections will be added during the year!
It’s good to be back blogging, hoping to do a few posts a week, but we’ll see how things go!

Update - Monday 24th August 2009

Sorry for the distinct lack of posts on here recently,but things seemed to overtake me recently. Work has been really busy over the last few weeks and things at home haven’t been much better. Well the good news is that I’m all packed now for the trip out to Nepal, can’t wait to get on the plane. It’s going to be a long journey out there, probably 36 hours door to door for me. It’s going to be loads of sitting around in airports between all of the flights. But I want to allow plenty of time to make the connections to allow for ‘the uncertainties’ which could arise. If all goes to plan I should meet up with the rest of my team late Saturday night in Kathmandu. Fingers crossed I’m hoping to get a few update on my progress posted on here. I know there are a couple of stops along the valley where its possible to get some internet access. Yeah don’t tell me, I’m going out ot the deepest darkest corners of the Himalaya’s and still looking to log onto the net!!!!

Well the day is getting closer to when I fly out to Nepal. I had planned to do all sorts of updates on the blog and web site as to how my ‘training’ was going. Well I think the ‘training’ went out of the window fairly quickly, and planned activity seemed to stop after a couple of weeks. I didn’t deliberately mean to do this, other things just seemed to crop up which quickly put paid to my plans. I’ve done several long mountain walks over the last few months, and I can feel my ‘mountain fitness’ level has increased an awful lot. So I’m not that concerned about my overall fitness for the trip, I think I should be able to manage the trekking. The one doubt that I still have in my mind is how the altitude and lack of oxygen will affect me. This I won’t know until I get there and see how I acclimatise to the conditions. I have got some ‘Diamox’ to take with me, but planning not to use it unless I really need to.
I was at the doctors on Monday night having the first of my rabies vaccinations. I have to have another injection next Tuesday, with the final one in the middle of August, along with the final Hep B one. The only things that I’ve not had vaccinations for are Malaria and Yellow Fever, as the area I’m going to is outside the danger areas. I decided that if there was any risk of getting something while I was over there I would have the vaccination. We are going to be away from immediate medical care for several days, so any thing I can do to protect myself I will.
I’m just about sorted with all of my gear for the trek, and currently putting together a kit list which I will put onto the web site, along with a full list of all the vaccinations I’ve had. This might be useful to anyone else planning to head over to Nepal in the future.