Collected Musings of a Hill Wanderer

Having paid it a fleeting visit last May, I decided that it was time to pay Pitlochry another visit. Last time, I left it in rain but this time I found it dry apart from a few drops late on Saturday evening. While the rest of the U.K. was sweltering in sunshine, it seems that Highland Perthshire was not feeling the full benefit of the sun. After a warm sunny day on Wednesday, it was a case of sun versus cloud. The former is good for photos but the latter is better for walking so long as conditions remain dry. On Thursday, I was in Kingussie where the sun made no appearance while it was out and about when I returned to base. Friday and Saturday saw the sun in and out of the clouds.

Overnight coach travel got me to Pitlochry for a four night stay that saw me explore the surrounding area. Wednesday itself saw me walk from Kinloch Rannoch on the shores of Loch Rannoch through the hills to Trinafour. Next day, I took myself off to Kingussie to explore its nearby hills, particularly Creag Mhor. On Friday, I managed to return to Kenmore on the shores of Loch Tay for the first time in nearly eight years. I then walked to Aberfeldy, again through the hills. The only fly in the ointment was an unexpected no entry sign to a farmyard, understandable on safety grounds, that made the journey longer than planned, not what you need when you are making for a bus back to Pitlochry. On Saturday, I focused my attention on Ben Vrackie near Pitlochry on a walk that also took in Killecrankie and the shores of Loch Faskally. As if to prove that mountains do make weather, Ben Vrackie got covered in clag when I was there and was anything but warm and summery. If anything, it was breezy and nippy on top: and I always thought that I was overcautious, I was well prepared for this. Things opened up and warmed up later on in my walk.

Unlike the last time, I left Pitlochry basking in sunshine with a cloud-speckled sky. However, like the last time, I left it wondering about a return. Despite all that I had seen, it was just a small sample of what the area held and I felt that I had only scratched the surface. And I encountered friendly people too. For instance, from Pitlochry, it is possible to get to Balmoral and Aviemore in the Cairgorms. Dalwhinnie and nearby Loch Ericht is another possibility. Also, revisiting places that I saw under a blanket of cloud in sunny conditions could be a revelation.

Another idea also holds its attraction: bringing or hiring a bike to explore the area. It is certainly bicycle-friendly and I was cycling around Loch Tay the last time that I visited Kenmore. It is also an idea that gets around the gaps in the public transport network in this part of Scotland and allows more intimate exploration of the area. Before I took up walking, it was the bike that I used to explore the countryside but hilly country and the need to carry/hire one convinced me of the advantages of walking. Maybe, a partial return to previous ways might be in order…

As I write this, a lot of the U.K. is enjoying what has been a long heatwave. Good weather like this does have its disadvantages though. One of these is drought and the effects of the dry weather are very apparent in the countryside round about here. I was out on a ramble around Macclesfield last Sunday week (a community street cleaning project on Saturday morning kept me local for the weekend) and I encountered browning vegetation and the ground was so dry that it was dusty in some places and cracked in others. That ramble took me along the Macclesfield Canal before I followed a footpath to Gawsworth and returned using footpaths and roadways. Walking in this weather does require its precautions (some might advise against rambling in hot water altogether and that does make sense for the very young, the very old and the otherwise vulnerable): plenty of water and sunscreen. After all, sunburn, melanoma, sunstroke and heatstroke are conditions best avoided.

I just had a look at the long range forecast and it doesn’t look too bad. Yes, rain is forecast but there is sunshine also. I also learned today that we are likely to have a mild wet winter; milder and wetter than usual. I suppose that we ‘d better make the most of what we have then.

Here are a few weather websites that I use:

BBC Weather

Met Office

Accuweather.com UK and Ireland

Weather.co.uk

Hope you find them useful.

The Settle-Carlisle extension to the former Midland Railway is celebrating something of a milestone this year: the re-opening of several stations along its length in 1986 and they are organising a celebration of this. I knew that there was a fight to keep the line open during the hurly-burly of Britain’s economic fortunes and Beeching’s wielding of his “axe” but I had never realised this. The stations reopened include Horton-in-Ribblesdale, Ribblehead, Dent, Garsdale, Kirby Stephen, Langwathby, Lazonby and Armathwaite. It is hard to know what it was like while they were shut. The website of the Settle-Carlisle Partnership has more.

As I write this, the World Cup is coming towards its climactic end and a heat wave has nearly run its course. While I certainly know what has been happening with the football, I have tended to find other things to do instead of watching it. I have nothing against football but, as you might tell, I am light years from being obsessive about it. Even so, someone (a total stranger to me) was asking if I was watching Germany playing Italy and opined that I didn’t like football when he heard that I wasn’t. As it happened, when I completed my ramble last Saturday, England were playing Portugal and it was easy to sense the excitement. However, I had no inclination to watch, for reasons that may become apparent in a while.

Saturday was forecast to be cooler than Sunday so that’s when I decided to walk from Ribblehead to Sedbergh, Yorkshire to Cumbria. This area was subject to country boundary changes in the 1970’s when Cumbria was created from Cumberland, Westmoreland and parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire. The result is that part of Cumbria is within the Yorkshire Dales National Park, the boundary of which still follows the old county border. Further confusion is likely if, as has been put forward, the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales National Parks are extended to protect area lying outside of them such as the Howgill Fells (near Sedbergh) and Borrowdale (the one near Tebay). Planning permission for a windfarm in the former has recently been refused. The whole issue highlighted the natural beauty of the areas left out of the two nearby national parks.

The Howgill Fells cannot be missed if you are going on either the M6 or the West Coast Mainline. My ramble to Sedbergh allowed me a closer, if fleeting, look at them and the journey from Sedbergh to Kirkby Stephen really shows their extent. A word of warning though: don’t drive and look at the hills simultaneously for there are sheep likely to be walking the road.

From Ribblehead, I skirted around Whernside on the Craven Way (a bridleway unpleasantly rutted in places) to join the Dales Way which I followed until near Sedbergh. Part of my journey took in the lower section of the bridleway headed for Whernside’s summit (subject of an earlier day out) but these had so many out on it that it was the walker’s equivalent of the M6 but I got off it and things soon became quieter and more pleasurable, an amazing sight when you see the hoards heading a different way from less than 100 metres away from you. I was glad that I tackled Whernside earlier in the year.

After not following my instincts, I lost 15 minutes finding the Dales Way from the Craven Way (someone put a church on the map but you couldn’t see it!). From here I strode past Dent to Sedbergh (covering something like 6 miles in a bit of a hurry) but missed my bus. I was a little worse for wear after my exertions, my excuse for missing out on the football, so I waited a while before calling a taxi to get to Kirkby Stephen railway station and begin my train journey home.

This was not my first foray along the Yorkshire-Cumbria border since I was hopping over and back across the line in question while exploring Garsdale in 2004. I got some heavy showers that day, unlike last Saturday, before the evening cleared up and showed me what the area offered. If it is wild country that you are after, this part of the Yorkshire Dales has it in spades. It also means that public transport provision isn’t what it might be, so you need to be careful.

A few weeks ago, I learned of a change to the CrossCountry rail franchise that has me quite concerned: the excision of the northern portion of the West Coast Mainline from the network so that trains can be cascaded to the London-Holyhead route. Though this is not due to occur until November 2007, I still have my reservations about the plans.

The result of the change is that CrossCountry services will not run north of Manchester or Crewe. From what I read in Rail magazine, Transpennine Express (TPE) is pencilled in for Manchester-Scotland services, a backward step in my opinion. The first problem is capacity: the Voyagers are 4/5 carriage affairs. The second is train quality: so long as TPE run their newer trains, it may not be much of a problem but they usually are 2/3 carriage affairs. Let’s hope that we don’t get the older ones where air conditioning failure is a real possibility. Still, there will be Virgin West Coast trains for Glasgow or, if I really feel flush, the East Coast Mainline.