Collected Musings of a Hill Wanderer

Like many outdoorsy bloggers, I share my meagre adventures with the world. Of course, they are nothing like Irishman Pat Falvey’s recently successful Beyond Endurance expedition to the South Pole. The Antarctic attracted its fair share of Irish with names like Bransfield, Shackleton, Crean, Keohane, Forde and McCarthy gracing the history of the continent’s exploration in an era where the exploits were a world away from our interconnected present where websites can convey regular news of progress in a timely manner. In contrast to the blogs of members of Falvey’s team like Shaun Menzies and Jonathan Bradshaw, the diaries of those explorers from the past were much slower in becoming publicly available. Having read Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ Captain Scott, I detect resonances of similar hardships down through the ages even in the latest stories.

The heroics of Scott, Shackleton et al. were all the more profound given that they were venturing into the unknown; it wasn’t as if they could fly back from the South Pole after reaching it, like present day explorers can do; they not only had to reach the pole but they had to return too and that sadly was Scott’s undoing. Fiennes’ descriptions of the hardships and disasters suffered on Scott’s expeditions were so vivid that I needed some gentler reading to give me a break from the grim happenings being described. Damien Enright’s A Place Near Heaven returned my imagination to a more temperate climate with is vividly pleasant observations of the activities of nature throughout the seasons in West Cork. Bemused recollections of crows breaking open shellfish by dropping them onto boreens, and puncturing car tyres with the resultant mess, certainly provided light relief. Maybe, I am not cut out for polar exploration.

Another world far away from mine is that of high altitude mountaineering, the type of thing for which the likes of the late Sir Edmund Hilary gained their fame. Names like Alan Hinkes and Chris Bonnington also come to mind. Climbing the world’s highest mountains is another activity that more than takes the human body well outside of its zone of comfort. Reading of Irish mountaineer Gavin Bate’s pulmonary oedema on Everest in a recent of Walking World Ireland certainly made me shudder (he managed to make his way back down from the death zone and is still very much with us). Stories like that do make one wonder why some people do this and that sort of wonderment brings my thoughts to Robert MacFarlane’s Mountains of the Mind. Like Fiennes’ book, that too ends with a hero encountering his goal and never returning alive; in Mallory’s case, we may never know if he achieved his.

You might be wondering what has brought this lot on. Ironically, it isn’t necessarily my wonderment at the exploits of those venturing into extreme places, though that of course plays its part. In the main, the real triggers come from a world more like that described by Damien Enright rather than that frequented by Pat Falvey and his kind. It seems that we Irish, rather than wallowing in the habitual and banal like poet Patrick Kavanagh, would rather relate the exceptional. There is a place for that but I reckon that the world is the poorer for Irish hillwalkers not relating their more accessible adventures in the Irish countryside. I, for one, would have a strong interest in them and, if I were to encounter a good blog musing over walking in Ireland as its mainstay, I’d be more than happy to give it a mention. In the meantime, I really should try to get in a proper hillwalking day over there this year. It shouldn’t demand the heroics of Scott and others…

While on my recent trek to Wales, I spotted the quarterly Walking Wales Magazine. Confusingly, there also is a brochure published by the Welsh Tourist Board with almost the same title but that is a separate entity. While Scotland has TGO, Ireland has Walking World Ireland, and England has both Country Walking and Trail, Wales seems to have nothing apart from the slim compact periodical that I bought last Friday. However, it seems hard to get; the last time that I encountered an issue was while on an outing to Abergavenny a few years ago and I hadn’t seen one again until my visit to Dyffryn Ardudwy. Here’s a summary of what’s in the issue that I picked up (2007 Issue 2): feature articles on walking in the Wye Valley, in Gwydir Forest and among the Moelwynion, a "Great Walks" section sharing walks from around Wales, and news from the Welsh walking scene among other things. With content like this and an annual subscription costing only £12.95 and I must admit to being tempted, especially when I haven’t been seeing it on wider sale.

I seem to be spreading my wings a bit further afield with a link from Tom Mangan’s intriguingly-named Two-Heel Drive. There is a lot of very good material about the U.S. backpacking scene (including a salutary tale on the dangers of infection from a blister) here and I must return and read a little more, Thanks for the link, Tom.

Having allowed it to lapse, I renewed my subscription to Country Walking, the magazine that let me in on places to walk in the British countryside, but this was not as easy as I thought it would be. These days, Emap is promoting direct debit payment for subscription to their magazines over and above credit card payment. Personally, I much rather the latter method because the idea of sending my bank account details over the internet doesn’t appeal to me, as secure as these things are these days. That said, the credit card option has become a little hard to find for Country Walking on greatmagazines.co.uk, Emap’s subscription store; in fact, I found it buried in the Spring Subscription Specials section after I had used the web address from the renewal reminder that they sent me. As appealing as the direct debit option is (cost spreading for the reader, continuation of revenue for the publisher), I still much prefer to pay by credit card.

When passing through Leeds on my Easter Yorkshire Dales excursions, I popped into Waterstone’s and spotted that Lonely Planet has finally updated its guide to walking in Scotland; the previous edition dated from 2001 so it might have been time for an update. Being easily persuaded, I acquired a copy to see what’s in the new one. There are changes to the routes featured but I’ll hang on to my copy of the first edition as there seem to be a number of changes to the featured walking routes and I might find some use for it yet.

On the surface, not much has changed with the included walking information apart from updates to the text and changes to the presentation. These include putting the walking information chapters at the back and adding glossy sections at the front containing a good supply of colour photos. But dig deeper and the changes appear. The recently enacted Scottish access legislation must surely have had an impact as walks in the Campsie Fells and Ochill Hills are now headline inclusions. New routes such as the John Buchan Way now get a mention. Some previously featured routes now find themselves in the Other Walks sections at the end of the chapters along with new additions such as the Rob Roy Way. Another fate for previous headline routes is that they find themselves in boxes sitting outside the main text. Classic routes such as the Aonach Eagach ridge or the ascent of Ben Nevis via the Carn Mor Dearg arête find themselves in this position.

My recollections of following the Pennine Way through clag on the moors around Standedge have garnered me a mention on Weird Darren’s OUTDOORSmagic blog round up. I have to say that it’s a bit strange seeing your own words appearing somewhere else and thanks are well due to Darren for this. Speaking of gratitude, it is also due to Bearded Git for his adding a link to these ramblings as well.