Keeping my chest down the hill....

Part of my xmas present from Claire was a day of Skiing at Chill Factor just outside Manchester. I would love to develop my prowess on ski's; to do back-country skiing and ski Munroing mainly!! so this was the perfect present.

Having previously only skied 'indoors' at Castleford and Glasgow this is a little different - it seems a little steeper for one; however it is also better organised (at least the shops etc in the rest of the complex) and is less of a rip-off in respect of the lockers as well.

I skied ok yesterday - Noel, the instructor of our group, was great with some excellent pointers indeed..the problem lay in the numbers - being the last day of the winter break the place was heaving; meaning too many queues to get back up the POMA lifts to the top. The other problem was that, after lunch, there was a group of young kids who kid not use the lifts - making the delays even worse. My skiing was ragged after lunch - I need to use my arms less and concentrate on my legs. That being said, it was a vast improvement on when I started the day - and it is an easy place to do a little practice.

Weather is still pretty wild here - hoping to get out for walkies tomorrow on the fells...

Stills breathing!!

Although after the "summer" we had barely at times. The Asthma/wheezing or whatever the hell it was has abated slightly. Claire and I are on our way back from a very windy/rainy Scotland trip, we managed two Munro's on one day and that was it for high level walking, however one of my (many) New Year's resolutions is to update the blog a lot more...

Happy New Year to all and see you in 2014

Restoration and tourism - the Llanberis quarries...

after our excursion up Ordinary Route on Saturday, Claire and I elected for a gentler Sunday morning with a trip to Pete's Eats (go if you've never been and are in Llanberis) and then a wander around the lower slate quarries...

As you come down the Llanberis Pass and see the scarred flanks of Elidir Fawr it does appear that the quarries are a hideous blot on the landscape - and to a point they are. They come from a time where no-one gave a damn about tourism and how things would look to later generations....and yet...

When you actually go around them they have an interesting ambience. The area has managed to put some great tourist trails around them whilst still keeping some of the old buildings and machinery and making everything work really well.....most interesting.

Obviously - we were also interested in the climbs; most of the climbing is up on the upper tier which we didn't get to (and is usually approached from Dinworic), however we saw enough on the lower tiers (including the seminal 'Comes the Dervish - the first and still one of the best slate routes) that we are both inspired for future visits. Slate is also climbable all year round and dries almost instantly :-); both as climbers and interested visitors we'll be back..

Weekend in Wales..

Claire and I had planned a weekend in N. Wales with Suilvan - and with the promise of a decent weather forecast we drove over on Fri night. The repairs to the Ogwen Cottage complex were done and it looked nice and shiny as we rocked up late on Fri night - it looked even better on Sat morning when we saw that the pay and display machine was not working!!! My student recollections of car-parking in N. Wales was that it was horrendously expensive; we'll have to see how this pans out.

Lliewdd from the car-park.

Waking on sat morning it was a bit greyer than we had hoped, however it was still a decent morning and we had our first decision; what to do :-). Our original thought was a long day in the hills with a walk down a minor road before heading up into a cwm to do a 4 pitch V.Diff route before continuing over a couple of summits and dropping to the car. With me feeling far from 100% (although I am a fair bit better), and a slightly iffy day we elected on a slightly gentler day. Fortunately an obvious solution was at had - The Idwal Slabs. 

The Idwal Slabs are in Cwm Idwal - a gentle 30 min walk from the car-park and with several classic routes at very amenable grades. In my past life I'd done a couple of the routes on the Slab, and very nice they were too. When we got there we decided upon Ordinary Route (Diff) for Claire's first ever multi-pitch route, and I set off up the first pitch. The pitch was absolutely lovely, it was polished but not ridiculously so, and the protection was bombproof. I could have used a lot more, however I didn't want to disrupt the flow of the climbing too much. Claire, despite climbing with a rucksack, came up very stylishly (no knees I think!!) and I was soon on my way up p2. Now, a lot of the ground of the slabs is very samey and very open, and I think I wandered off-route a little bit before setting up a belay. The climbing was certainly at the correct grade; however I don't think I belayed at the correct place...whatever.

The last pitch was a little different - I elected to take a more direct line, which led to one reachy move that was at least a grade harder than what had gone before it. The plus sides of this were that I was able to belay to two giant boulders on top and wait for Claire - who promptly pathed the route - very well done Claire...

The view from the Lunching Stone was lovely - but there was a definite bite to the air..so we set off on the exposed scramble upwards to pick up the easy way off...at the top of the scramble there are some fixed slings for an abseil down a polished groove - you could down climb it but the penalty for a slip is severe and it was also good to get some abseiling practice in as well!!

All in all  - a lovely day - followed by a superb view of the hills from the Capel Curig car-park, where we parked before a serious gear fix at the shop!!

One summer - Traverse of Black Hill...

Claire had a couple of days off and it was nice to go out for a long walk on one of them - our first decent walk for a while to be honest.

  Claire and I parked at Dovestones and set off up the road towards the Chew Reservoir. This was actually over half the ascent for the walk as the Chew is the highest reservoir in England. Once there, we set off on the path that follows the right edge of the reservoir and intersects the Pennine Way. The first bit of the path was pretty clear as can be seen from the shot - some bits were less clear. Despite the heatwave of the last couple of months there had been enough rain to ensure that Claire was able to work on her bog-leaping skills......there is quite a lot to be said for doing this in winter - although how easy it would be to find the path would be debatable.

The two paths meet at Laddow Rocks - a great moorland grit climbing area that I hadn't been to before - it certainly looked impressive enough to make a trip worthwhile. Oddly, despite being so remote, it was one of the first of the grit crags to be climbed on in the period between the wars. This was largely down to access issues than anything else, with the land around the Eastern Edges being privately owned and kept for shooting etc.

Having had lunch, we followed the Pennine Way as it climbed Black Hill. Higher up the path is paved - I had never been on Black Hill before, however all reports said that prior to it's paving it was a nuclear wasteland of bogs and groughs. The paving is pretty unsightly, however it seems essential to trying to manage the erosion as well as make a walk halfway enjoyable, rather than just an obstacle course of bog-jumping etc.

Laddow Rocks

From the summit of Black Hill, we had some options. One was to go across country on a path that was supposed to exist and end up on highpoint of the 'Isle of Skye' road (no idea why it is called that!!) From there it was a couple of km walk on the road down to a car-park where we could drop down to the reservoir and collect the car. The path didn't exactly look obvious (to put it mildly), so we elected to follow the PW to Wessenden Head, which added another 3km or so to the road walk.

The path down was actually lovely, with good views towards Marsden and the Calder Valley. The flagstones did make for some pounding on the soles of the feet - which was only exacerbated by the road walk. Interesingly, arriving at where we would have come out had we taken our original path, there was no sign of it. I must explore this further as it would be interesting to see where it starts from/finishes and how 'bad' it is in places....must be a strange form of masochism. The road walk wasn't great - however we did eventually arrive at Binn Green, from where we could descend to Dovestones and back to the car. The walk was about 11 miles, which we both needed - and it was also good that my chest and cough felt fine - encouraging at least.

Climbing by the sea....

Not quite as simple as it sounds when one is based in North Devon....some of the cliffs are a little 'adventurous' (for that read loose!!) whilst others have pretty horrible approaches...add that to the tidal part and that I am only leading around severe at the moment...


Claire and I looked at a couple of venues; however we did get one nice Diff route down on the reverse slab of Brownspear Point. The approach was by a lovely low tide boulder hop which takes you round into a secluded bay that is not possible to get to from above. The route was a lovely diff - with good but spaced gear and some lovely padding. From the bottom it looked like you could abseil off some blocks above the cliff...however when I got there there was a steep loose grass/rubble slope up to the blocks which looked awful loose....

Discretion being the better part and all that, I lowered off a perfect nut 6 and Claire could have a run up and down the slab. It would have been nice to do some routes on Lundy, however with the bird bans in place and me not feeling 100% it would have been dicey - ditto for routes on the N. Devon coast....would be nice to go back soon though...

Sunset from the campsite

Sutherland.....and the garden..

Sutherland is ours!!! We fell in love with the cottage we rented when we moved down to Ashton from Penrith and agreed a price to buy it. It has taken a while...however we now own Sutherland (as we've chosen to call the cottage). What else could we call it with Suilvan, Arkle and Foinavon all here (the latter two are our little Marmot Mammoths)..?

Having brought the place we can now do a few things to it - and one of those is the back garden. We've got a compostor and some enclosed raised beds to grow veg as well. It's unlikely we'll be self-sufficient or be able to retire in a life of untramelled luxury from growing and selling things....however it is nice to produce our own stuff.

This isn't exactly the correct time to grow most things - however we have got some Spinach, Carrots and some spud bags...a test to see what we can do before really gearing up for it next year. Along with this, we have the compostor going already - hopefully it'll produce some lovely home compost for next spring. A woodstore should arrive soon as well  - getting us ready for winter..

Spuds....with some of our herbs..

The compostor...

Maybe this spinach will make me climb better!!