The fruitful outdoors

Today, I literally mean 'fruitful' because my early morning walk took me past some local allotments, and I was amazed by the size of the area given over to growing an enormous variety of fruit and vegetables.











I was also amazed by the beautiful floral displays on some allotments, I don't associate allotments with flowers for some reason.


I'd like to think this is for me, but I know that in real life I wouldn't make it happen, for now at least. My home-grown tomatoes have been pretty fruitless, maybe a kilo in total from about a dozen plants, and I await the peppers in hope, although slugs seem to have got at quite a few of them. Maybe next year I'll stick to herbs!

Teasel time

What a fantastic sunny day. For some reason, I feel it's the last summer day of the year and am keen to make the most of it. Maybe someone else feels the same:

This balloon passed very low over my house this morning and stayed surprisingly low as I watched it move off across the town.

A leisurely stroll felt like a pretty hot prospect, so a shady route seemed favourite, and took us past the teasel walk with some terrific architectural specimens in evidence.

The abundance of berries on the rowans came up in conversation; we debate what makes this happen some years and not others. There is a story that says that lots of Autumn berries means a bad winter to come, but how could the trees know that? I read that in Newfoundland, this is a common folklore, but the opposite  applies in Sweden. Certainly there doesn't seem to be any scientific evidence for either, as the berry crop depends on weather conditions earlier in the year.

Fond memories of the Pennine Way (1994)

Gosh, was it really 19 years ago? A lucky gap between jobs provided the opportunity to spend 19 days walking from Edale in the Peak District to Kirk Yetholm, just over the Scottish border.

A trip to visit family in Weardale took me through Bowes, an overnight stop on the route. I had forgotten the wide open spaces of County Durham, one of the quietest stretches, where the relative rarity of other walkers offers a real sense of wilderness.

There's even a village called Wideopen near Newcastle upon Tyne.

One day, I'd like to do it again, but for now I can savour the memories. 

A taste of the outdoors when it seems far away

Sometimes there are days on end when it seems hard to find time for being outdoors. Although lately I've spent a fair bit of time outside juggling various forms of accommodation to try and optimise the living quarters of two new rabbits, as well as watching 'rabbit TV' - it's fascinating to observe their behaviours. They're so curious and lively, it's inconceivable that so many 'pet' rabbits get left to languish alone in small hutches. The RSPCA and Rabbit Welfare Association are working to educate owners and potential owners about why 'A hutch is not enough', and a very good thing too. Purpose built year-round quarters for these two are under construction and will make things rather easier.

But outdoor inspiration and vicarious pleasure has come in the form of Richard Askwith's book, Feet in the Clouds, a combined account of his own affair with fell running and the history of the sport.  I now know that I am not cut out to be a proper fell runner, my pain barrier is not high enough!

Autumn in mind

A lovely fresh morning with a mild wind called me out for a short run. Looking back over the last few months, I realise that there hasn't been any other kind for a good while. Thankfully the physio exercises seem to be sorting out my niggling calf problem, in fact there was no sign of it at all today. 

But there were signs of Autumn: I can't remember when I've seen the Rowan trees so thick with berries:

And blackberries almost ready to pick too, in fact next time I'm out, I'll try to remember to take a bag and get enough for the first crumble of the season. 

Now that's what I call an amazing photograph...

The entries for National Geographic's photo contest 2013 can be seen online.

I am amazed, wowed, in awe.

I may never take another photograph again - or I may take lots more!

Back to reality...

... at home in Cheshire. It is not nearly so tempting to get outdoors here as it is in Cumbria (or Westmorland, as I still think of  it, as it was before the county re-organisation. Such a shame to lose that lovely old name).

Still, it's fine and dry, and a gentle 3 mile run was pleasant enough, taking in a nearby disused railway line and paths through a former landfill site. There are some benefits in these post-industrial landscapes, including the haven they offer to wildlife; the purple teasel flowers are almost over now but have been a boon for bees and other insects. Even the nettles are a feast for butterflies and last year's grazing sheep seem to have reduced the thistles to manageable levels so that other plant species can thrive too.

However my usual warm words about butterflies have come back to bite me. My kale seedlings are like doilies, those retro paper things often seen in olde worlde cafes. The culprits turn out to be the tiny green caterpillars of, I assume, those lovely Cabbage White butterflies. Dilemma: to squash (and preserve the kale as rabbit food) or not to squash (and leave the kale to feed next year's Cabbage Whites)?

I haven't decided yet...

The finale (for now): Red Screes

Today's walk, the last of this brilliant week in the Lake District, set off from Ambleside after a late and hearty breakfast, heading towards High Sweden Bridge and up into Scandale.

Although Ambleside is packed with visitors in August, it only takes a few minutes walking to leave the crowds behind. The track leads along Scandale Beck, past a long series of steep waterfalls which struck me as the kind of location in which a hydro-electric plant might be sited in a more sustainably-minded country. Oddly enough, it turns out there is already planning permission for exactly that, in the form of a 900KW high head plant. I'll be interested to see how the valley looks in a couple of years time when (I imagine) the scheme will be up and running.

The views from the path, of the Eastern side of the Fairfield Horseshoe to the left, and of Red Screes itself to the right, were tremendous. (This picture is looking backwards, so reverse those descriptions!).

The total absence of other people seemed astonishing, but not unwelcome. A lone sheep seemed to claim its territory:

The path turns right at Scandale Pass to head up the screes, taking in a slanted slab of stone reminiscent of Great Slab on Bow Fell.

The last few hundred metres were across rough boggy grass and scree (not red, oddly), but the views opening up gave ample excuse to pause, admire and catch my breath.

St Sunday Crag underwent a remarkable change in the space of just a few minutes as clouds passed overhead, turning it from black to sunlit:

Wainwright eulogises about the views from Red Screes, and I can't disagree.

This one is looking down Windermere towards the sea and (I think) the North Wales coast.

This one is towards the Scafell range:















It was a very fitting end to this hugely rewarding week, nicely rounded off with a pint in The Golden Rule on the return to Ambleside. Already planning the next trip...

Pike by name...

... and pike by nature. Wansfell Pike is a pretty steep climb, rising out of the centre of Ambleside and leading over to the small village of Troutbeck. Last time I did this walk, there was snow on the ground (it was Easter) and people were 'sledging' down the Western slope on their waterproofs. The walled lane on the Eastern slope was completely filled with snow drifts so that I walked at the height of the tops of the walls.

Today it was fine and dry, although in lots of places there were small streams trickling down the hill after Monday's rains. Earlier in the week, I was spooked by reading the local Ambleside and Langdale Mountainn Rescue Team's yearbook; around half their call-outs were caused by a slip or a fall resulting in a lower leg injury. As I dread having to call on their services, and the idea of a broken ankle would mean problematic time off work, I took this to heart and started thinking about how I could reduce the risk of me being listed in their 2014 yearbook.

As a first step, I decided to try out some walking poles, which are claimed to increase stability on ascents and descents. This was my first proper outing with them and I did feel more secure on difficult terrain. I also felt like I'd taken a step towards infirmity, and at times they did get in the way, but on balance I think they may be a good idea.

The big fell in the centre of this picture from the top is Loughrigg Fell, scene of a walk earlier in the week; the town is Ambleside.

Part of the appeal of today's walk was the excellent Troutbeck pub, the Mortal Man, apparently the winner of the best pub garden award, and I can believe it. The view towards the West flank of the Kentmere Round is tremendous. As an added bonus, the garden was full of handsome dogs.








I also like its quirky sign... look carefully...

 This fell is Red Screes, the planned walk for the last day of the holiday tomorrow. The aim is to go up the valley to the left (West) of it, to climb the shoulder to the summit and then to head South down the ridge back into Ambleside.

The route back to Ambleside today is by Robins Lane, a gentle amble on decent tracks, some of which is through tranquil woodland past Jenkyn's Crag, a popular viewing point.

Altogether today's walk was around 8 miles (I forgot to turn the monitoring app off at the end, duh) and it was a terrific day.

The wild swim!

Today was a big day: I swam in Rydal Water along with a group of other (relatively) new open water swimmers, in a session organised by Head for the Hills in Ambleside.

Regular readers will know this has been booked for a good while and I've really looked forward to it. The grim weather forecast for the week was slightly concerning but thankfully the weather picture changed and it turned out to be a dry day with sunny spells.

The session began an introduction to some of the key points of outdoor swimming, including a safety briefing. Given the recent spate of deaths in open water in the last couple of months, this felt important; I was reassured to know that the buoyancy of the wet suits we were loaned meant we would float even if we were unconscious.

We headed off to Rydal Water and a handy little 'beach' at the Eastern tip, where the fish is on my OS Mapfinder image:

After the inevitable challenge of getting into wet suits, we ventured cautiously into the somewhat brown water. Apparently it was around 20C, near the top of the temperature range, thanks to recent warm weather. In our very snug-fitting wet suits, we were well insulated from it and even a 'nesh' person like me, who is very susceptible to the cold, didn't feel cold for well over an hour. Without a wet suit, I think 10 minutes would have been my limit.

One coach swam with us and the other was on kayak duty. This was very handy when a tired swimmer wanted a tow!

After some short practice swims and some coaching on stroke technique and sighting, we swam over to the island and back, altogether swimming perhaps 1km during our 90 minutes or so in the water. The water felt pleasantly clean away from the muddy beach. It was a completely new experience to be in the lake with the ducks, looking at the surrounding fells from a different perspective.

One surprise for me was that the snug suit actually felt quite constricting which was not very comfortable when I was puffing and panting after what felt like a long swim. Of course I could breathe adequately but at times it felt like quite hard work! A few moments of sculling on my back looking up at the clouds gave my breathing time to slow down.

The session has given me the confidence to try open swimming independently, although I would always want to have someone with me, either swimming or nearby to rescue me if I got into difficulties. It was a fantastic experience, thanks to a great group of fellow newbies, the friendly support of Pete and Claire, and a lovely fine day in Rydal. I couldn't have asked for a better introduction to a new activity.

Loughrigg truly explored

Loughrigg Fell, a modest 1100' at its peak, sits close to honeypot villages like Ambleside, Rydal and Grasmere, and hence is often climbed by people who might not venture further afield. For me, it's often a first day/last day/part of a day fell, an 'up and down in about an hour' kind of fell. It's not uninteresting, indeed Wainwright called it 'pre-eminent among the lesser heights of Lakeland', boldly claiming that 'everybody likes Loughrigg', but I'd never built it into a longer walk, and now seemed a good time to address that.

A circular walk in 'Best walks in the Lake District' (an assertive title for sure) includes Loughrigg and Grasmere in a 9 miler. To make life a little more challenging, I did the walk in the opposite (anti-clockwise) direction so that the directions were no use at all. This meant a good excuse to try three new navigation aids:

1. a super large scale map - 1: 16,000, covering a handy area and ideally designed for those, like me, with poor eyesight. Being compact also gets round that annoying tendency which maps have to turn into flags in high wind, so at £4, this Yellow Walk Map seemed an excellent idea. 
2. An app, Tom's Grid, for my phone which shows the grid reference in relation to the map, and works without a 3G signal. This felt important given I'm never quite sure where I am on Loughrigg, and Wainwright lets me off the hook here by saying its top is 'confusing' with 'a maze of paths which needs careful unravelling', such that it would be 'difficult not to go astray'. Phew, that's alright then.
3. Another app, this time from Ordnance Survey, the kings of UK mapping (for me, at least): OS Mapfinder. It had very mixed reviews so I was sceptical and resisted paying the £40 for the whole Lake District mapping. I bought a 10km x 10km square for £1.99 to test it out.

It's worth saying up front that using the apps did drain the battery of my phone so that in six hours it went from full to 20%. To rely on these apps, I'd need to carry a back up battery, and as my great dread is being lost, having to call out Mountain Rescue and having them sneer at me for relying on poor equipment, I would definitely do that in future, and also carry an actual map. In fact (1) and (2) above worked well together, with the app giving me the grid reference which told me where I was on the map.

However, the real test was whether (3) would do both jobs in one app. I do have a dedicated GPS unit but I find its screen awkward to use and it too eats batteries, so I was pretty keen to find out if the phone app would do the same job, and... it did. It provided grid references (as did (2) and a clear, bright 1:25,000 OS map which I could stretch on screen so that even a tricky route was easy to follow. There were a couple of awkward moments as it's not exactly intuitive, and walking companions are not too keen on tech try outs slowing down progress, but now I've worked it out, I think the OS app and an actual map will save a lot of time, effort and befuddlement.

So, enough of the tech, on to the walk... Loughrigg turns out to have much more to it than I'd explored to date. I hadn't really known this, but it turns out that my forays had never reached the summit, so it was actually a new Wainwright for me today. It was busy, inevitably, but the top is so extensive that there's room for all. I often wonder what some people make of the 'beautiful' Lake District when they only walk along the busy pavements in towns and villages, so hats off to those who make it up a fell, especially those with smallish children. What they find up there is pretty varied, with lots of mini-summits, bracken and small tarns:

Looking down on Loughrigg Tarn

Looking South along Windermere

After plenty of note on the top, there was a swift descent towards Grasmere (the lake) and, at the far end of it, Grasmere (the village - not included in the book's route but an important deviation for lunch). This view is of the lake, towards the village:

I think of this (below)  as 'Grasmere beach', I love the fact that people are out and about here, enjoying nature's adventure playground, skimming stones and mucking about by the water.

This beautiful waterfall is full of yesterday's 24 hours of solid rain! But not a drop today.

After a lunch which felt well-earned, the better path back to Ambleside ran along the Rydal coffin route, and what stout fellows the coffin carriers must have been. It wasn't hilly but it wasn't flat and it wasn't wide either.

A hugely enjoyable day which left me feeling I'd really got to know a fell which I'd thought was familiar. Sadly the calf niggle was back with a vengeance but it didn't get in the way of a brilliant day. Tomorrow, I swim...

After the run, the walk... and being lost.

A magazine article about lakeland tarns mentioned a walk to Moss Eccles Tarn, near Far Sawrey of Beatrix Potter fame. It began near the west side of Windermere where the ferry lands, and set off along the lake shore towards Wray Castle. Here were families splashing about in the lake with or without various kinds of canoe... even an ice cream van doing good business.

Unfortunately the directions turned out to be vague in the extreme. The fact that the map had been last revised a long time ago meant that the forests on the map bore no relation to the forests on the ground, which made navigating even trickier. This meant that much of the afternoon was spent 'lost'.

Fortunately however, the countryside was so lovely, with such far-reaching views, that this turned out not to be a problem. I can't quite explain why but in some way, it was quite different from what I think of as Lakeland, so it was interesting and surprising.

The lake here is Windermere, looking East towards Waterhead.

In the far distance are (is?) Crinkle Crags.

 In the end, the goal of Moss Eccles Tarn came into view, and very fine it was too. A cormorant sat by the water's edge, before working hard to launch itself into the air and flying past very close.

The amazing part of this walk was that once the lake shore was left behind, so were the crowds. At the tarn was nobody else at all, and this on a dry August day within a few miles of Ambleside. Arriving back at the car as the heavens opened, I felt blessed indeed.

The Lakes at last! First run...

Hurrah, the Lakes at last! After the ups and downs of getting here and settling in, I could hardly wait to make the most of the sunniest part of the day and get out for a run.

Skelwith Bridge to Elterwater is a familiar easy walk and it seemed perfect for testing how well my niggly calf was responding to the physio's advice. 

Answer: pretty well actually. It took 25 minutes before the niggle intruded, and a pause for some stretching almost completely dispersed it. Here's the view on the outward leg:

The Langdale Pikes in the background had me skipping along with a very big spring in my step. And on the way back:

Now to plan today's (probably wet) walk. Bliss. 

Close up and personal at Arley Hall

In the glorious gardens at Arley Hall in Cheshire, so many of the plants are magnets for bees and butterflies. For once I can post photos which don't require you to use your imagination to work out which insect is featured. This one is, of course, a Peacock:

 The butterflies were pretty obliging and sat still on this flower whilst I got them in shot and in focus. I think this is a small tortoiseshell:

And the high point for me was these little chaps under the eaves, cheeping away as their hard working parents circled round picking up insects to feed them. I think they're House Martins; they have no red on their chins so they're not swallows, and the RSPB website says that if you can see the nest, it's not a family of swifts. Thank goodness for a 10x optical zoom.