Collected Musings of a Hill Wanderer

We have had the cold winter mixture of snow and ice for so long now that it almost is no longer newsworthy. It was there before I set off on a winter airborne crossing of the Irish Sea and remained to welcome me back on my return. That's not to say that it isn't causing disruption with travel being a casualty from time to time. It also explains why I was out on Christmas Day and the day after (Boxing Day to some, St. Stephen's Day to others) breaking ice to clear tracks so that those with older bones than mine didn't go breaking them. There was a useful thaw thereafter that allowed things to dry up before the next round of frosts and I took my chance on an afternoon stroll around by Springfield Castle in the winter sun. Traffic thankfully was light on the roads that conveyed me much of the way and most of the ice had gone. In fact, I found more of that on the back avenue of Springfield Castle than anywhere else, including the front avenue. The latter allowed me to escape from a sizeable bunch who were engaged in pucking sliotars (hitting hurling balls with hurling sticks to the uninitiated) along the road from Broadford to Dromcollogher. Apart from that collective, places were otherwise quiet with only the occasional soul encountered along the way. It was a useful escape from worrying about the effects of slips on those who really could do without a knock.

The only other trot of note was an afternoon jaunt around by Kilmeedy on an increasingly foggy New Year's Day. Though I gained some height, the lack of visibility meant that wide ranging views were out of the question so I contented myself to decent progress along largely ice-free and dry roads with little or no traffic on them. It was but an unremarkable few hours out in the cold air apart from the sight of a pair of swans in the River Deel near Belville. Even so, it was a good way to let the mind loose to lose any stresses and strains that had been collecting.

Apart from those bursts of road walking, the countryside journeying was largely virtual with some books capturing my attention. The first of these was found around my parents' house and caught my eye. Tales of canal boating do not normally attract my interest but Gerald Potterton's In the Wake of Giants kept me occupied for a few hours with its mix of modern day anecdotes and historical interjections. Ostensibly, it is a tale of someone fulfilling an interest in journeying along the Grand Canal and the River Barrow with its numerous canal cuttings for the avoidance of weirs. Naturally, this took me around by locales that wouldn't have crept too high up my list of places to visit and told me a little about them too, adding to my knowledge of the "Old Country". The tale may have stuttered to life like a marinised old Ford diesel engine that is used a power unit for a canal boat but the narrative soon got going in its own inimitable manner and went to show that there can be more to tillage farmers than meets the eye.

The second occupier of any free moments was a volume that I picked up a while back and lay on my reading list before I got around to it. Joseph Murphy's At the Edge does fit in rather better on a blog full of walking trip reports than a tome on canal boating and it has its own soul too. The backbone of the thing is a walk along the coasts of Ireland and Scotland from Kerry to Lewis made by someone who feels that he has lost a little something of his Irish heritage. Along the way, he gets to pondering Gaelic culture and the differences between Ireland become apparent with the emptiness of Scotland contrasting with an Ireland peopled with obliging folk; interlopers who fail to engage with their Scottish surroundings stick out like sore thumbs later on in the narrative. It may be that I have developed a beady eye with all my online scribblings but there were times when typographical errors intruded on any sense of reverie (I know that I'm only human so please let me know privately about any failings of my own making). Clearly, a spot of improvement on the proof reading side is needed on the part of the publishers and the author. Even with intrusions, the explorations of exile and connectedness drew me in as the journey continued; I suppose that my being an Irishman living and working in England had something to do with this though my affinity for the places visited along the way may have helped too.

Just as there are Irishmen in England, there are Englishmen in Ireland and Tim Robinson has been one of the latter since 1972. On the return trip to Cheshire, I felt the need of a book and his Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage became my accompaniment as I left the branch of Easons on Dublin's O' Connell Street. It's an intense piece of writing that needs to be savoured away from the vacant prattlings of drunken folk on trains. Quite how he can make so much of coastal explorations with only the occasional diversion inland is surprising. Until a few years ago, it was out of print but Faber & Faber brought out a new edition with a forward by Robert Macfarlane. There is a companion volume called Stones of Aran: Labyrinth that also was out of print until the New York Review of Books addressed that situation last year. More recently, he wrote a counterpart pair on Connemara with titles such as Connemara: Listening to the Wind and Connemara: The Last Pool of Darkness, both published by Penguin Ireland. The latter of these is in my possession and remains unfinished but it very typically was on the wrong side of the Irish Sea when it would have been continued. Of course, that's a human failing with my not thinking that I'd not be reading that much while ensconced in West Limerick. It's also an unusual one for me but carriage of paper items is sure to add weight that can prove expensive if indiscipline is allowed to reign. In that light, the extra purchase can be seen as a comparative bargain.

With all this reading about a country to which I haven't done justice in walking terms, you might think that 2010 is set to be a year when Ireland might see more of me. That, however, is not mine to see. The start of any year usually is like beginning with a blank slate but 2010 seems to be more wide open than other years. While grand designs are not my style, I am more inclined to avoid them this year than I otherwise might do. It is going to be a case of meeting the future one day at a time and seeing where things take me from here.

I suppose that it might be easier if I lived in Greater Manchester but early Sunday morning getaways from Macclesfield are an impossibility if you are dependent on public transport. Buses don’t move until around 09:00 and train companies must regard Maxonians as right layabouts given that nothing runs north until at least 10:30 (saying that, earlier starts are possible, again at ca. 09:00, if you are heading south). The situation may not be the best but I often contend with it in place of settling into a rant.

That reality means that I need to keep ambitions in check so as to get something from a Sunday’s wanderings; staying near to home is best. Saying that, the longer hours of daylight mean that you can gain quite a lot even with a later start and my start on the Spring Bank Holiday weekend’s Sunday was tardy. Still, my mind did turn to the idea of popping over to Baslow for a spot of northward hiking to one of the stations on the Hope Valley railway line. In the event, a late bus ensured that connections were to be missed so I popped down to Leek instead. The idea of a long stroll to Buxton became a plaything for my mind before I saw sense and decided to walk home instead, an equally long hike but any concerns about missing trains or buses home can be set to one side when your own exertions are taking you back to your own doorstep again.

The route was to be a variation on a theme taken for a yomp from Leek home on a December day a few years ago, my first proper outing in Staffordshire as it happens. That time, I got benighted on the last stretches but presence of mind allowed a headtorch to light the way and I also helped my cause by sticking to road walking rather than "fooling" around in fields in the dark. This time around, there was much less of the tarmac bashing and I was well home before light failed.

As ever with starting from a town centre, some street navigation was in order before softer surfaces were reached on Leek’s outer reaches. In places, this can require concentration by my vague recollections were enough to see me as far as Haregate where I found a public footpath. Crossing pasture and meadow, the strength of the sun was by now unmistakable. Benches with health messages were placed at irregular intervals along the way. It’s an interesting idea but I was left wondering if they were preaching about the benefits of regular walking to the converted rather than the sedentary types who could do with seeing them. Saying that, I suppose that a spot of encouragement never goes amiss.

The growing season already had been busily obscuring man-made objects like road signs but public footpaths are far from immune too and it only takes a meadow to obscure the line of a public right of way. Also, my upbringing on a dairy farm makes me feel uncomfortable trampling grassland with there being a need for it and I stuck with the obvious line of trespass. That led me among more of humanity than is usually my habit as I followed a track that hugged the shoreline of Tittesworth Reservoir closer than others that I have followed in the area. Still, that didn’t take too long and the easier terrain was no harm either though the indentations probably added to the distance being covered.

Next passing point for me was Meerbrook and tarmac was the surface over which I went from the shores of the reservoir to a public footpath making up part of the Staffordshire Moorlands Walks. The crowds were behind me at this point as I carefully picked my way to Greenlane beneath and beside the Roaches. From there, it was on past Roach Side Farm, again with some attention to route finding so as not to disturb their Sunday afternoon before I found metalled road again near Roche Grange where I found a mock fortune teller placed out on the side of the road and in the sun. Though there were other (real) folk enjoying the weather like I was, the road was untravelled by traffic until I found a right of way leading to Clough Farm. More of these were stitched together to take me to Danebridge and the late afternoon grew more pleasant. Before I crossed over the River Dane, I found what can only be described as an installation with more scarecrow-esque characters at a fake bus stop and awaiting an infrequent "buz" with humorous signs added to suit. It was all in jest, even if it was a striking reminder of my plans having been changed for me, and has set me to wondering if there was some sort of scarecrow thing going on in this part of Staffordshire of which I wasn’t aware.

After Danebridge, I was back in Cheshire and it was now into evening time. A more direct off-road option was in mind than the one that I followed but it’s never the slips that make for good navigation but the ability to correct them and that definitely the order of things. Even so, I passed through a short piece of shady woodland and reached Hammerton Farm as planned. From there, it was onto the A54 and the Wild Boar pub, which incidentally had opened up the area at its rear for camping. I left the Congleton-Buxton road for more soft surface travel near Longgutter before tarmac bashing took over again. Again, I was following a quiet lane and with good evening views of Shutlingsloe, Sutton Common and Croker Hill. That lane eventually gave me a sidewalk at Higher Sutton (they turn up in the most unexpected places in Cheshire) and my lane took me ever onward towards Sutton, Macclesfield and home. It may have cooled down noticeably by this time but there were still groups of hostelry patrons out and about, a grand evening (or night as one farming chap said to me and I thought that you only said that when it was dark; it was equally ironic given that I arrived home in daylight this time around) for it.

Travel Details:

Service 108 from Macclesfield to Leek.

I don’t know which JH Darren Christie had in mind when he included a link to here among his illustrious list of blogging TGO Challengers. What I do know is that I’d be extremely surprised if it was me and I hope that I haven’t disappointed you with that admission. For one thing, I don’t believe that I’ve ever mentioned the Challenge on here before so I suspect that the link came (many thanks, anyway) amid the last minute rush before departure. Getting ready for something like this cannot be the simplest of tasks and I wish all of them the very best in their endeavours. Doubtless, there will some tales appearing online in time and I only hope that they are happy ones.

However, the episode does prompt a question for me about the Challenge and this is its thirtieth year, after all: what about it? There is one thing in its favour, and that should be apparent from various blog postings that you find here, is that the parts of Scotland through which an itinerary would take me are among my favourite parts of the world. Nevertheless, the idea of a two week crossing adds other points to ponder. Back to back multi-day treks are something that I really haven’t been doing much since I finished off the West Highland Way and made a more concerted start on the Rob Roy Way. Then, there’s the matter of lessening dependence on serviced accommodation (well, hostelling is gaining some favour with me over hotels and guesthouses) in favour of a more independent alternative; some may use the former option for the whole Challenge but it seems to be the exception rather the rule. After that, there’s the subject of personal fitness and I very much realise that work is needed there too.

So, my answer to the question of doing the challenge is not just yet. What I am not saying is that it is not for me because many of the things that I enjoy these days were activities that I was happy to leave for other folk at one point. Apart from the whole hill wandering habit, this is true to an extent also of how I earn my living. When you ease yourself into something at your own pace, things start to happen and heaven only knows how far you’ll get.

In the meantime, the longer days of summer are now at hand. Of course, that is no guarantee of fine weather in these parts and I don’t like it too hot anyway. Even with those caveats, my mind is turning to multi-day excursions again. Having a selection of Graham Uney’s Backpacker’s Britain Cicerone Guides, I shouldn’t be short of a few ideas and the prospect of managing walks for which public transport logistics might be tricky has a certain footloose appeal. Much of Chris Townsend’s The Backpacker’s Handbook has been read and there is nothing at all to stop re-readings. Gear has been building over time up but more acquisitions remain in order. What I really need to do is decide when I am sufficiently equipped for stepping just across that threshold from walker to backpacker while not going in too deep too soon; that should keep the wish list under control. Suspicions are building that there could be some tinkering and familiarisation before I embark on anything more adventurous. A summer of exploring the paraphernalia of independent backpacking might be no bad thing, even without their being used in anger on an escapade.

It’s winter again and I for one have come around to the notion that this time of year has much to offer those who enjoy the countryside. Shorter days and colder air are part and parcel of things in winter but cut your cloth according to your measure and you may begin to think that summer is overrated. From the photographic point of view, the golden light that abounds does yield results with a pleasing glow and the golden hours of dawn and dusk become more accessible too. A lot of my usual outdoors gear still remains useful but with extra warm clothing to keep out the cold and a working headtorch for when walks broach the hours of darkness. Waiting for a bus or train home can be a cold business, especially since temperatures can and do plummet after dark, so my down jacket gets to see a lot of use.

The very mention of winter sends images of frost and snow into the mind but it isn’t always thus. In recent years, some winters have been so mild that one would be forgiven for thinking that we had been sold a forgery. As if to prove that colder winters still exist, last year and this one have seen good falls of snow in places. It’s almost as if there is a general oscillation between milder and colder winters going on and research carried out by the Met Office suggests a link with the El Niño cycle in the Pacific.

Without snow and ice, winter hiking involves negotiating wetter ground and getting back to civilisation before it gets too dark. Add in frozen ground and areas of normally soft ground become easier to cross, even if the feeling of boots not gaining purchase with the ground unnerves just a little. Otherwise, the landscape remains a familiar place but snow is another matter entirely with its ability to obscure details that are usually quiet obvious. While undoubtedly beautiful, it also presents new hazards like cornices, avalanches, drifts and blizzards for the explorer of hill country. In some ways, the door is shut on normal hillwalking with classic walks getting turned into winter mountaineering with all of its lingo. That’s a whole new arena with the various different types of snow and the various pieces of equipment like ice axes along with crampons and compatible boots.

That alien feel of the collected wisdom of exploring a frozen landscape is something that I find eerily alien with my being more accustomed to green places. The wilder places become more like what you find described in Robert Macfarlane’s Mountains of the Mind or Ranulph Fiennes’ Captain Scott. My usual outdoors haven has more in common with that of Damien Enright’s A Place Near Heaven: A Year in West Cork. That slim volume provided episodes of pleasant relief while I was following Fiennes’ tale of Antarctic adversity and I can recommend it.

My experience of what might be termed full winter conditions can be compared to standing on the threshold of that world where everything is covered in the white stuff. Until last weekend, treading on powder dry snow and avoiding slips on ice were more akin to what I previously encountered. I took matters a little further among the Howgill Fells while avoiding ice on the steep lower slopes and ploughing through deeper than I had met before when up higher. I got reminded of the need for crampons while ensure that I did not go beyond the capabilities of my boots.

When it comes to entering that world of the white stuff, I am facing something of a dilemma. Do I plan to expand my experience of handling snow and ice in the hills with winter skills courses and various pieces of equipment or do I inch forward and continue to develop an appreciation of the limitations of my skills and equipment, turning back when conditions look as if they are beyond me? Being more walker than mountaineer, the latter notion is where my inclinations lie but I have no desire to become another statistic or a news item that pads out a television or radio news bulletin.

Media sensationalism can go too far and this year’s OMM in Cumbria fell victim to this; it was never going to be helped by a few overreacting individuals and the torrents of rain that fell. Even so, those yarns can still be instructive. No one who has earned their outdoors spurs should be tackling Snowdon with failing light without the right equipment like two lads who were found on Crib Goch last winter so that’s more of a lesson for the masses but there remain ones for outdoors types. One that comes to mind is a student group with only one map between them getting separated in poor visibility while out in Highland Perthshire earlier this year. Then, there are reports of fatalities like those on Helvellyn and they can be very offputting.

There’s something to be said for staying among the foothills on the threshold of that white world, reading and learning more all of the while. Articles like that put out on grough in recent days have their place and I wish that it was published before my weekend exertions. My preference to stay on the walking side of the walker/mountaineer divide and quote a certain Alfred Wainwright comes to mind:"You are not dicing with death. You are not making a technical excursion into space. You are going for a walk". I can be corrected on the original context but what appears to be severe riposte has its own resonance for me. In a way, I suppose that it is telling me not to get technical mountaineering mixed up with my hiking but where elements of it are needed in order to stay safe, I feel that it would be foolish not to learn about them and use them in their own good time. This can be seen as another outdoors journey: getting out into that white world without going in beyond my depth and back again safely with no harm done. It’s not about conquering nature but rather to let nature help me to conquer the stresses and strains of modern life.

In order to build a picture of anywhere that I am going for the first time, I end up hitting the web as well as perusing books and maps to get a sense of the place and where to go together with what there is to be seen. Of course, any plan that results is going to be incomplete so I always feel the need for flexibility so as to explore the unexpected, the unknown unknowns if you will. Things like the stillness of the Uists and Harris’ potent mixture of stony hillsides, sandy beaches and blue seas will forever stick in my memory but it’s discoveries like the Harris Walkway that could prove invaluable on any future trip.

When I started out on my hill wandering journey, many places were new to me but there are now less locations where I haven’t been. Anywhere south of a line drawn below the Brecon Beacons fall into this category as does much of my own native Ireland and Scotland north of the Great Glen. Over time my walking trips have tend to gravitate on certain areas and it’s very easy for some places to keep you profitably occupied, so much so that there are years that I could title by the places where most of my walking took me. 2003 could be the Lake District year for instance. I remain partial to going somewhere that I haven’t visited before and that Western Isles trip falls into that bracket as do a number of trips I made in 2006 when Northumberland and Pembrokeshire saw my footfall.

Speaking of heading onto pastures new, I got the idea that my Western Isles trip needed a spot of research before I went. It could be said that the idea of heading onto offshore islands focussed the mind more than it otherwise might have done. Apart from a certain tourist overview, these were to be terra incognito to me and it might be said that I was venturing further away from the usual locations than is my wont. All of that was enough to get books lifted off shelves and mapping organised.

In fact, I didn’t even have a collection of paper OS maps for the islands even if I did possess digital mapping from the likes of Anquet and Mapyx. A lurk in the outdoors blogosphere will reveal that printing out digital maps is being done by a fair few but I retain a preference for the old style paper mapping from the likes of the OS or Harveys, if only to allow myself more options when I’m actually out there among the hills; it’s amazing what can take your fancy while you’re actually there. Having digital mapping did allow me to refine my shopping list so that I wasn’t expending any more cash than was absolutely necessary. I have to admit that I have developed a taste for OS Explorer mapping and a full collection of these for Na hEileannan an Iar would not have cheap, hence the cutting of the proverbial cloth to my measure. I might enjoy the flexibility offered by paper mapping but both the cost and the need to watch the weight that I was carrying for my week away meant that any overindulgence simply was out of the question.

While I have planned many an outdoors excursion by mere perusal of a map, books remain essential for that broader view. I am very partial to Cicerone’s guidebooks but I found that Walking in the Hebrides didn’t meet my expectations, even with the mention of "Western Isles" in its subtitle. If I had wanted to get an overview of the walking on offer across all of the islands on Scotland’s western seaboard, then it might have been fine but I was after something that was a little tighter in its focus. The fact that it did not contain route maps, even sketches, for any of the walks didn’t help either and it really needs a map open in front of you for the directions to feel that little bit more real.

More more successful in my opinion is Nick Williams’ The Islands from the Pocket Mountains stable. The scope might have been as broad as the Cicerone title but the punchy pithiness of the descriptions really did give a feel for what was there to be explored and worked far better than the often dense prose of Walking in the Hebrides. The featured walks might have scaled the heights and ventured into the wilds but a spot of map perusal picked out lower level hikes through the wonderful stuff.

Speaking of lower level walking, I spotted another even more slender title while actually on my week long outing that might have its uses yet: Luke Williams’ Walks: Western Isles from Hallewell Publications. Again, brevity might be a very prominent feature but there are a plethora of ideas here too. Speaking of mid-outing acquisitions (I can be the proverbial magpie at times, picking up things and adding extraneous weight to what I am carrying, and it’s a habit that needs careful control), I also ended up procuring Charles Tait’s The Western Isles Guide Book with its enticing photos and useful overview of things to see while on the islands.

My mid-trip book buying brings to mind a comment I overheard a few years back, in Portree’s tourist information centre if my vague recollection serves me correctly. The comment itself was the more memorable and I’ll turn it slightly on its head here: to get books devoted to a certain location, you almost need to go there. Even in these days of internet shopping, that still retains a ring of truth about it and it’s an opinion that can be taken even further. You don’t get the full feel for a place like the Western Isles simply by surfing a website extolling its virtues. It’s by going to explore that you find what else awaits discovery and that it turn provides reasons for any return; exploration and discovery begets more of the same and the role of books and maps is to get the process started.