Collected Musings of a Hill Wanderer

While taking a look around the new Accuweather UK and Ireland website, I spotted a mention of this useful Firefox plug-in (or add-on). Having had Firefox since the first betas and now using it as my main browser, I decided to investigate further. While not an Accuweather development, ForecastFox does take Accuweather local forecast data and show it in the Firefox interface wherever you decide; personally, I keep in the browser status bar. Apparently, it started out life as WeatherFox, using Weather.com data, before the plug-in’s developers found the conditions placed by that provider to restrictive and looked elsewhere, finding Accuweather to be an welcoming partner. Intriguingly, Weather.com offers its own weather toolbar, for Internet Explorer!

To return to ForecastFox, a really feature is that you can set up multiple profiles and have a weather from different location on display in each profile, great for planning a weekend walking expedition. Nevertheless, this does have the disadvantage that settings are associated with the profiles and you cannot cascade things from a global setting. For instance, if you want to see 7 days weather (although I suspect that 15 is the limit, you can have as many days as your screen allows) for any location, you have to go into each profile and change its display settings as appropriate. Having the ability to have a single profile and change the locations would be a bonus. Also, you cannot have temperature in Celsius and wind speed in miles per hour: you have to have metres per second instead and my comprehension of Fahrenheit (with which you do get mph) is ropey to say the least. These may be areas for improvement but ForecastFox remains a very useful gizmo.

When OnlineWeather.com was replaced by Accuweather.com UK and Ireland, there were some things that were lost. Among these were maps for long range regional forecasts and regional precipitation probabilities; the latter was limited to mountain forecasts.

After something of a hiatus, maps are making more of an appearance in the new site, albeit for the whole of the UK and Eire rather than the regions as before. Interestingly, one piece of text referred to the UK as “the nation”, giving away the American origins of the forecasts. Local forecasts continue but with more description of what the weather is going to do over the whole day: a useful summary. However, the number of places covered seems to have been reduced: for example, Dolgellau is no longer recognised and looking for Keswick results in the weather for Norwich, not good. When a search request is not found, the header disappears at times but that is probably a teething problem.

In summary, this site looks more pleasing on the eye than the old (apart from the ads with which it is laden unless you pay for the service) and contains some new features such as health-related forecasting. In addition, they also have very nice feeds for blogs and so on. Nevertheless, it has some way to go before it fully occupies the niche left by OnlineWeather, which seems to be fulfilled a little better by Metcheck. That said, the site provides another perspective, if a conservative one, and is more than valuable for that.

After a wait of several months, I have finally taken delivery of the Rab Latok that I ordered in August. A Latok Alpine turned up in September but that had to go back. Having heard nothing since, I sent an email last week (admittedly, being busy at work delayed this) that seemed to get the ball rolling. Compared to the Latok Alpine (a very nice jacket that really had me tempted), the cut is definitely longer and I also wonder about the fit being closer (a good design for a cold day). I find the sleeves are a little long without being unmanageably so. Now, all that remains is for me to try the jacket out on the hill and that opportunity may arise this coming weekend. I’ll see how it goes…

There is a twice daily bus service between Dublin and Glendalough in the scenic Wicklow Mountains, a favourite spot of my parents, called St. Kevin’s Bus (it is a coach service, really). While staying in Dublin, I spotted the evening service leaving Dublin emblazoned with the address of its web presence where you can find out more. Along the 30 mile (48 km) journey, it calls at the coastal town of Bray, where my mother and father honeymooned, and Roundwood, the highest village in Ireland. Given the amount of walking on offer, Wicklow is definitely a possible destination for me but I have yet to pay it a visit. Now that I know more about bus times, maybe some day…

The naming of the Brecon Beacons National Park is a plausible source of confusion because it is named after one of the several mountain ranges occurring within its boundaries. From west to east, the mountain ranges are: Black Mountain, Fforest Fawr, Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains. The first and last on the list are another source of confusion, especially when guidebook writes get them mixed up. In addition to these, there are other attractions such as the town of Brecon (which hosts a jazz festival every year) and the Usk Valley around Crickhowell and Abergavenny.

The last of these is where I have been on my previous visits to the national park. The first of these saw me walk from Abergavenny to the summit of Sugar Loaf and back. On the other visit, I walked the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal between Abergavenny to Crickhowell, from where a bus returned me to the start of my walk.

Abergavenny has always been my entry point because of its being a stop for train services travelling between Manchester and Cardiff. However, remaining in its vicinity has always felt as if I was away from the heart of the action and tricky public connections stopped me going east until last Saturday when I visited the central Beacons, the Bannau Brycheiniog proper.

The useful X43 got me from Abergavenny train station to Storey Arms between Brecon and Merthyr Tydfil. Storey Arms is popular starting point for walkers as I discovered and that was even with Cardiff playing Australia at the Millennium Stadium: the Welsh follow their rugby closely. Next time, I might start from somewhere quieter because I found it hard to relax with people both ahead of and behind me. In fact, I have seen Storey Arms described since as a honeypot.

My walk took me over Y Gyrn on my way to Corn Ddu and then Pen y Fan, the highest hill in the national park. Cribyn was a tempting proposition but for the amount of up and down that would be incurred in order to reach its summit: I decided to leave it for another day and picked up a path on its southern slopes that took me to Bwlch ar y Fan. The steep sided Fan y Big presented itself there and I was tempted by a partial ascent of Crybin from its less steep side before returning to the aforementioned pass (bwlch is the Welsh for pass just as bealach performs the same function in Scots Gaelic) and made my way to Brecon before dark. I now realise that ascending Cribyn and descending its northern spur was a distinct possibility but I decided to play it cautious on my first visit to these hills.

After some good walking on a clear sunny day, I left Brecon on the X43 to Abergavenny with a view to returning: there’s a good deal to experience here. From Abergavenny, rail got me home by 21:00 with a train to Stockport for a connection to Macclesfield, an early finish; the start was early though with a 06:10 bus departure to get me to Crewe for the 07:18 train to Abergavenny.