ARKLE BECK & FREMINGTON EDGE

11:45 am, Saturday: The Red Lion @ Langthwaite.

Okay ~ haven't got too far yet ~ but safely in the womb of this excellent little pub before stepping out up the hill.

We came back over the roof of the world via Tan Hill this morning in the pin sharp air after a hearty breakfast at Keld Lodge.

So it's a pint of Black Sheep and a coffee and then its out there into the cruel cold world. It's hell, captain, but someone's got to do it...

5:15pm, Saturday: The Charles Bathurst Inn;
What a splendid walk ~ we started with a stroll along Arkle Beck as far as Storthwaite Hall and then made our way up through the old lead mine workings and onto Marrick Moor. It was glorious up there ~ pin sharp air with sweeping views over to the North York Moors in the east and the broad summits of the Dales to the West,

Heavy clouds were mustering over the hills to the west and the wind was freshening as we skipped along above Fremington Edge. We met quite a few walkers all heading in the opposite direction; all were smiley and wrapped up warmly.

Above Cuckoo Hill the showers started - nothing nasty - it was warm and blustery ~ the showers adding to the experience as trailing curtains brushed across Arkengarthdale.

Strolling down above Reeth there were a few handily placed benches; perfect for a light lunch. Then we strolled back up the Dale through pastureland and alongside the busy little Arkle Beck. Bracken now a pale rust, meadows a heavy emerald, with vibrant sunburst orange birch leaves all making for a perfect Autumnal walk.

Langthwaite is a little crush of heavily slated roofs all huddled together for protection. Peeping through the cottage windows, mothers were busy in the warm glow of their kitchens and televisions flickered in the sitting rooms. A beautiful little hamlet.

Back at the car we both felt we had done enough for the day and had earned our supper. A grand day out!

KELD LODGE

What a splendid joint this is ~ but most of you will know this already; either from the Coast to Coast (most likely?) or the Pennine Way or just plain ol' common sense staying at a cracking place.

Arrived here via the Wetherby Whaler (standards seem to have slipped lately) and Richmond. Now there's rum ol' place! All I wanted was a Harvey's map of the Yorkshire Dales (North), but that was beyond their ken. Happily we liberated a copy from the tourist information office in Reeth. Last time I was there was twenty years ago on my Coast to Coast! Doesn't seem to have changed much apart from getting a bit posher.

Had to pop in to the Tan Hill Inn ~ what a lovely drive up from Reeth! It's like stepping back fifty years to open roads and Standard Vanguards...

Last time at the THI I was on my LEJOG and spent quite a few happy hours in the company of a couple of new-born lambs and quite a few pints of Black Sheep. This time around I am driving so the Black Sheep was rationed and instead of the lambs we had a couple of new-born kittens.

So ~presently holed up in half the old common room of Keld Youth Hostel with a pint of Ragwelter and dinner ordered.
Not a bad place to be....

OOTNABOOT!

This weekend I am off to the northern Yorkshire Dales for a bit of a cushy break - aiming to spend two nights in nice hotels.

No! Not for me the thrashing of Wanda's flanks in the wind and rain or the boggy paddle though the marsh-grass at five or six in the morning to answer the call of nature...

No. Not this weekend anyway. I shall be living it up in a bit of luxury for a change. I shall be taking the plimsolls for an outing as well to see how they get along as the weather forecast is, shall we say, "mixed"...

I stayed at the first hotel, Keld Lodge, of this weekend's trip back on my LEJOG in 2007, when it was newly opened and they still had carpenters and decorators in, finishing it off, and always promised myself a return trip. It will be interesting to see how it is now - it was lovely when I stayed there before. It used to be the Youth Hostel, but amazingly the YHA couldn't (or wouldn't?) make it pay (at the junction of the Coast to Coast and Pennine Way!) and sold it off to fund a huge gap in their balance sheet following the Foot & Mouth epidemic and years of mis-management of the Association.

The second hotel, in Arkengarthdale, will be a mystery break - I have not stayed there before but I am going there almost as a 'hotel inspector.' I have been offered a free night's Dinner, B&B package to 'test it out' and let everyone know what its like. It's The Charles Bathurst Inn and from their website it looks really good and is set amongst some lovely Dales scenery - so it looks like an ideal place for a break.

I am being given free rein to write whatever I like about my stay, so I thought it would be a great idea - so I am thoroughly looking forward to the weekend.

So - you will hear more upon my return! Have a good weekend, everyone.

THE FAT ENVELOPE

It's that time of the year again.

But this year, in the midst of the deepest recession this country has seen for fifty years. the Posties and their bosses have decided to really screw things up even more.

Yes - Instead of Uncle Roger's wonderful plumptious envelopes landing heavily on our doormats, this year four hundred and fifty prospective TGO Challengers have been anxiously peering at computer screens to see wether or not they have been accepted for the Chally.

No longer the heavy thud of the fat envelope on the coir doormat or perhaps the thin skittery clatter of the thin missive dancing through the airy space of the hallway to land against the emulsion of the far wall. No; this year, it is just a soft 'pling' from the computer's speakers that lets you know that an email has landed in your 'inbox'.

For me an anxious day started at 11:24 this morning when JJ emailed to let me know that he had been emailed by Uncle Roger. And was safely 'in'.

At this point the internet almost melted. Wires, cables and keyboards took a hammering right across the world as 450 anxious applicants began their scanning of the world wide web. Emotional support groups sprang up as despairing applicants learned of their fate or even worse, had not yet heard their fate. It was life and death stuff.

By half past four in the afternoon, I knew exactly how Eeyore felt at about two or three o'clock in the morning in his boggy place with snow behind his ears. I had not heard from Uncle Roger and Lord Elpus was in the far north west of Scotland on holiday in the torrential rain, away from t'internet.

But Miss Whiplash is made of the right stuff. She whipped his sorry arse all the way to Fort William where he tried to log on to his webmail account in the Public Library on one of their terminals.

But he couldn't remember his password! AAAGGGHHH!

But Lord E is nothing if not a resourceful chap. He hooked up a link via Saturn or Venus or somewhere pretty remote to link up to his email and.... Hey Presto!

Five minutes later there was a soft 'pling' from my computer's speakers.

The Fat Envelope Had Landed.

MENDIP MAGIC

This weekend I was to be found down in the West Country in the Blue Flame in West End, near Nailsea.

Mendip Magic: Highly Recommended and the pub is a little honey - a sort of bothy/pub cross if you can imagine such a thing, with pickled eggs and cheese and onion rolls. Threadbare carpets, peeling wall paper, an odd collection of books and an eclectic furniture style and a very happy clientele all make it a fascinating boozer. It seems to be in the middle of nowhere when approached from Clevedon along a bumpy fen road with deep dykes either side. Fun in the pitch black of an Autumn night.

Then it was off to the south coast for a nephew's 18th celebrations - well done Jack. Somewhere in there, there was also a trip to the theatre to see Rod & Rachael's Best Man in Fiddler on the Roof, fish and chips, pizzas and a curry.

Lots of driving but all very good fun. I just need a weekend off now to recover.

GETTING ON WITH IT

Procrastination. It's what I do well.

You will have noticed a few lulls in the blog recently, but it's not for the want of something to write about; more the choice of what to write about and then the moment passing. Life can be a little bit like that for me at times.

There's been a trip to the Yorkshire Dales to see John, Steph & Sierra a few weeks back, that has totally passed this blog by; a trip to the Lakes last weekend with Lord Elpus to support Shirl and various momentous personal bits and pieces that would otherwise have been hinted at or alluded to.

But sometimes life gets in the way and the time to sit back and think about events flies by at break-neck speed. For me, my blog has been a 'Pause for Thought' oasis of calm, when I can sit down and gather my thoughts and carve out some semblance of order from the chaos that sometimes masquerades as life. My blog can be a place for me to distill what is worth having, and conversely I suppose, to decide what needs to be discarded.

It needs more care than it is getting at the moment as without this care it is possible to career onwards at dizzying speed, blundering blindly about.

So - I promise to spend more time with you all - if only to sort stuff out in my own mind. You may not have a clue what I am talking about as I am sure that I am pretty confused about it all as well.

Anyway - You will be seeing more of me from now on - that's a promise. There's a whole heap of stuff coming up that needs sifting, sorting and organising and it's going to be done right here. It should be fun - there's some good things to think about.

In the meantime, here are some lovely pictures to act as a bit of a 'catch-up' for the last month.

Yorkshire Dales

From Loughrigg Fell (a Wainwright, don't ya know!)

Wild evening on Black Crag (another Wainwright)

Oh - and thanks for being patient with me; I must do better! Now I must write that out a hundred times....

NOW WE ARE THREE

My two boys will recognise this book as their favourite bedtime storybook. Perhaps it was the delivery, but usually after ten minutes or so they were as good as gold and fast asleep.

Anyway - today, the blog is three years old. Happy Birthday Blog. We have been through some good times and some bad time in those three years as I am sure some of our congregation have too. But life isn't so bad you know.

Well, now the boys are all grown up I thought it was time that they realised that there is a real life out there: Everyone has problems - Even their boyhood heroes. This table was pinched unashamedly from Wickipedia.

In December 2000, a Canadian medical journal jokingly "diagnosed" characters in the books and films with various mental illnesses:

	Conditions	Additional factor	Cause	Drug (brand / common name)
Pooh	inattentive subtype (ADHD); cognitive impairment; possibly Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) (ADHD impulsive subtype excluded), if so he may have Tourette syndrome	Obesity and poor diet	"Shaken Bear Syndrome" (dragged down stairs by Christopher) resulting in microcephaly, ADHD: cause unknown	Stimulant (Ritalin/methylphenidate)
Piglet	Generalized Anxiety Disorder	Bad enviroment	emotional trauma from trapping heffalumps	antipanic agent (Seroxat/paroxetine)
Eeyore	chronic dysthymic disorder or Major depressive disorder	Housing problem	Unknown	antidepressant (Prozac/fluoxetine
Owl	dyslexia (very bright)	Housing problem	see: Theories of dyslexia
Roo		statistically high risk for Poorer Outcome (single-parent household (overprotective unemployed) aggravated by Peer influences, i.e. Tigger as a Role Model)
Tigger	hyperactivity and impulsivity subtype (ADHD)		unknown	Stimulant (fluoxetine) + sedative (clonidine)
Christopher Robin	possible Gender identity disorder in children (from illustrations),	overactive imagination (though delirium is not speculated in article), complete absence of parental supervision and educational problems	Unknown
Rabbit	Narcissistic personality disorder (God Complex)		Unknown

DANCING SHOES: First Impressions

As regular members of the congregation will be able to tell you, back in June I decided to go all 'lightweight' with my feet.

I invested in a new pair of lightweight slippers - my lovely Salomon Quest 4D GTX's and saved quite an astonishing half a pound in weight on each foot from my old faithful leather Scarpa Nepals.

They have been serving me well and have taken me on various trips up hill and dale with no ill-effects at all. Indeed, there have been no nose-bleeds and contrary to expectations, my feet did not fall off and I did not turn into a girl.

This set me to thinking. Now that 'thinking' thing is a rare thing if you live inside my head and so I was loathe to ignore the results of my (very rare, it does have to be said) thoughts. It sort of went like this:

"Those light-weight slippers were quite comfy, even on the rufty-tufty bouldery stuff. Even on the rufty-tufty bouldery stuff, wearing my rucksack... my feet were slightly less tired at the end of a walking day... (Mind you my body was still totally knackered as per usual, but that's just age and not getting out enough.) I just wonder if I went a bit lighter and try for some of those plimsolls that all the Hobbits on the Challenge like so much....Perhaps with a Gore-tex lining to keep my tootsies warm and dry?"

And at this point I woke up and it was all a dream... Or not, in fact!

I was then approached earlier this week by a splendid chap called Adam from fitnessfootwear.com who asked me if I would like to choose footwear from the North Face page of his online emporium to test. I thought this sounded like a very sweet move.  And - I would get to keep them after the test.

Now that sounded even sweeter! The reason for this wonderful bout of generosity is that Adam wants to get his web-site 'out-there' amongst the online outdoor community and so he has also approached other bloggers as well with this very generous offer. That seems like a pretty good way of doing things to me.

So I browsed his pages very carefully and just happened upon the answer to my earlier thoughts. Yes! They had a pair of North Face Hedgehogs GTX XCR in a rather natty colour-way of Charcoal Grey and Sage Green. So - sartorial standards will be kept up to the mark. - After all said and done - you wouldn't want to see me dashing about the fells in anything garish and luminous, would you? Surely not. No indeed not!

Well - I finally agreed to all this and sure enough, one day later a pair of the said shoes have arrived at Mission Control! That's pretty impressive, I thought to myself!

So - to vital statistics:

Old Scarpa Nepals: 966 grams per boot. Salomon Slippers: 701 grams per boot. North Face Hedgehog GTX XCR: 454 grams per dancing shoe!

That's a whopping great weight saving of.... 512 grams per foot! That's 1 lb and 2 ounces per clodhopper in old money! Hey - I am now uber-ultra lightweight! I'll be living under tarps yet - you just see! Ooh - I forgot - I am - my house's thatch has a tarp covering a leak!

They look very well made and have a substantial sole-unit that is torsionally quite stiff - which I like a lot. There is ample room in the toe box and they feel quite snug. I like the lacing system - and I will probably play around with the lacing. First impressions: I like them. A lot. So thank you, Adam. I will let everyone know how I get on with them after they have been out for a few walks and then later on after they have taken a bit of a hammering.

In a richly deserved and blatant plug, you can find Adam's online emporium here:

FitnessFootwear.com

OLD MEN DON'T DANCE

It all went swimmingly. The groom was handsome and the bride quite, quite beautiful.

So; meet the new Mr & Mrs Simeone.

And my left calf hurts, because I went dancing. Old men don't dance.

RACHAEL & ROD

All appointments; cancelled. International statesmen; put off. Billion dollar presentations; scrapped. Flags; unfurled.

The crew have been given a celebratory flogging. Full sales are set. Extra oarsmen drafted in. Troops are straining in their landing crafts. Gunboats put on full alert. A statement in the House. Telegrams from Elizabeth. A fusillade of canon-shot!

Shoes polished, teeth cleaned, hair combed, washing behind the ears and full immersion bath tubs fetched.

Extra pinching of housemaids' bottoms...

 

For tomorrow morning, I am off down to Bristol, for my daughter Rachael's wedding to Rod.