I’ve started this blog in response to requests from my friends to write further about my cowardly exploits in the hills of Britain and elsewhere.
(When viewing photos in the blog posts, clicking on a photo will show it in its true definition and size)
The past couple of days when I’ve been looking out of my front window to see ‘my’ flock of sparrows feeding in the garden, I’ve noticed a sparrowhawk lurking. Now, I don’t feed my birds heavily just for some damn predator to come and pick them off so I was a bit perturbed…
Read the rest of this entry »Where have I been lately? Possibly no-one noticed but I’ve been offline now for nearly 2 weeks. BT have finally deigned to send me a mini router – it was supposed to come on Friday the 9th but they never bothered to send it. After asking again, they’ve finally sent me one so I can go online at home – no landline any more though and there was never a mobile signal in my house!
Read the rest of this entry »During one of Richard and my recent trips to Edinburgh, we got the bus down to Cramond as we could see from our map it had an interesting island linked by causeway from the village…
Read the rest of this entry »My trusty Zenith film SLR has, for the last few months, been long-term sick. That is because the viewfinder gradually became more and more blocked until I couldn’t really see to take photos. After a bit of help from Mr AI, I managed to find three places which fixed film cameras – one was in London (too far), one was in Halifax (a possible as I could stay at Richard’s) and one was in Edinburgh. In the end, I decided it would be nicest to go to Edinburgh (I had no intention of sending my precious camera by courier) – that way, I’d get to see one of Richard’s favourite cities and he’d enjoy a revisit…
I had to go to an appointment at Carlisle Hospital the other day and decided to take the bus. However, as the bus stop is a mile away and in case the bus doesn’t turn up, I sometimes take one of my cars to the village with the bus stop. This time it was the Polo’s turn and I parked him up just on the outskirts of the village on a very wide section of quiet road. Little was I to know what was to ensue…
Read the rest of this entry »While trying to get my health sorted out with a specialist, we’ve managed to cause huge problems instead! Not really his fault and he was trying to pre-empt the issues but everything takes too long in the UK. Anyway, onto the sorry news… In the last 2 weeks I’ve managed to break 2 bones – one little toe (out hillwalking) and one rib (while gardening)! This is why it happened…
Fri 20 March 26
I’d decided it was high time I did my first new Birketts of the year off my Birkett ‘to do’ list and had been meaning to do the ones on the back of Place Fell, Ullswater for quite some time. It needed to be a time of year which wasn’t too busy and also after a spell of dry weather as I knew a lot of the route would be very wet. I also wanted a clear day so that I didn’t have to micro-navigate – I’m lazy about that! This day was perfect on all counts…
Read the rest of this entry »Mon 11 May 26
I’ve been looking at this walk, a round of Worm Gill to Caw Fell and Lank Rigg starting from Cold Fell Gate, for ages and thinking it looked really nice – I am a huge fan of very isolated and desolate walking and this looked to fit the bill. I first spotted it as a potential different way in to Caw Fell when I did the Birkett of Swainson Knott. I finally got fit enough for the distance and set out for the parking at Cold Fell Gate to give it a go…
Read the rest of this entry »Just a quick post to test the new, simpler ‘write’ editor in WordPress – an alternative to the Block Editor which I really don’t get on with! The ‘Write’ version is still in Beta mode just now but looks to be much better for folk who just want to write a post and not mess around with formatting, blocks and so on!
So… on to the warning…
Read the rest of this entry »I’ve just been informed, via a contact in my climbing club, that Britain’s iconic trig points are threatened – apparently, some landowners are damaging or removing them. I personally thought that was illegal but apparently not! There’s a petition on Parliament’s petitions website calling for a granting of protected status to them – please consider signing it. To me, they’re part of our mountain heritage… The link is here
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