Collected Musings of a Hill Wanderer

After the passing of 2010, my only wish is that 2011 brings you and yours good things. The past year saw me distracted by a change of job in the middle of it and I think that it may have reduced my output on here. However, after catching up with a few issues of TGO in recent days, I have come to thinking that I need to keep reading more from the outdoors media because my perusal certainly popped a few ideas into my head for the coming year. What's needed now is to make something of the few flakes that are littering my brain at the moment.

The recent arctic conditions may have made my Christmas travelling more adventure-filled than I'd intended but it also brought me an afternoon spent pottering around the hills beside Glossop gain. There is the seed of a post arising from that little outing but I also got to seeing how Lindow Common and the Bollin Valley look with clumps of snow stuck to everything around them too. Then, there were trots around rural Limerick in Ireland to savour what are rare conditions for the southwest of Ireland. It might be that one posting would suffice to collect my experiences on those little tasters of a whitened world.

Though I also am playing with the idea of a local wander before returning to work on Monday, there also are designs on a quick sortie by Caledonian Sleeper to see what's left of snowy coverings in the Scottish Highlands. That's something with which I have been playing for a while but it'll be a little look rather than a deep incursion. It remains to be seen if I can make anything of it.

Other brainwaves for the year include a longer sojourn in an area new to me (and perhaps others) that results in a number of posting that I can share on here. Firm ideas are few and far between at the moment but I did concoct a scheme centred on Mallaig that has me going out to the Small Isles. Maybe visiting Islay and Jura might be other propositions. Then, there's always the call of my native Éire for a fuller hill country excursion to follow up my nibble of the Wicklow Mountains nearly two years ago now.

With regard to smaller forays, there are hills around Keswick that I'd like to explore too after a few years of struggling to find a reason to go back there. That has come from the TGO writings of others and I am thankful of them too. Looking through old photos has brought thoughts of trying to better them and that could see me exploring Derbyshire a bit more too.

It's all very well making designs for a whole year when it can surprise you in a way that you cannot expect but not having the ideas at all will lead to torpor like what I felt towards the end of 2010. That is something that I'd like not to see happening again. Let's hope that all of us manage to get in some quality hill time over the coming year, even if life has a habit of getting in the way from time to time.

Yesterday evening and overnight, a white blanket arrived in and around Macclesfield. A company Christmas night out meant that I was out in Manchester to see the white stuff blanketting there and Stockport too. Again the south of England seems to have been affected too with Twitter awash with transport companies telling what services are running and where. However, it seems that hardly anywhere has escaped with Wales and Scotland seeing some too.

There was a time when this sort of weather was enough to have me out doors pottering over the white coverings but it doesn't seem to hold the same appeal for me these days. Was it last winter's snows that broke the spell? Prior to that, snow was a short-lived visitor that never satisfied my curiosity and was enough to lure me out of doors, even to pace over local paths. Now, it seems that there is a feeling of extra effort required to get about instead, not that I don't have the ability of the kit to be able to get where I want to go.

All of this has me wondering if the same sort of becalming has affected my hillgoing. It's easy to point out causes such as changing job, having busy working weeks, not getting alluring weather or being tired at weekends but there may be another cause: have I more than sated my hill country appetite? With that in mind, it might be an idea to see if there are ways around this if it indeed is the cause.

Popping up accessible little hills might be one of them and my visit to Caer Caradoc last month was very much of this ilk; the fact that it wasn't crowded either helped for enjoyment of the walk. Ironically, this months issue of Country Walking has a feature on walking little hills and Hope Bowdler, not at all far from Caer Caradoc or Church Stretton, gains a mention in there as does Ysgyryd Fawr near Abergavenny. Maybe, creating a collection of little hills on my proverbial ideas shelf for easy planning could help to overcome any present torpor. This is far from list ticking because I like to go for walks to enjoy the surrounding countryside and not to say that I have "done" all the tops on a certain list or other.

The word "little" cropped again in my reading, this time in an issue of TGO that I was perusing on the way down to Oxford for a business trip. What I spied on those pages was a review of Cicerone's Scotland's Best Small Mountains. Since then, I have acquired a copy of the said guide as an eBook and discovered that smallness is in the eye of the beholder. With Country Walking, the sorts of heights are in the 300-500 metre category but many of the "small mountains" are in the 700-900 metre range. There are other contrasts too with some of the hills featured in the Cicerone book being out in pretty wild countryside, a counterpoint to the more genteel surroundings of those in the magazine. The guide starts in the northwest highlands of Scotland and works its way south and throws up a number of options worthy of exploring, some of which I have actually walked. Here, Ben Vrackie and Morrone come to mind but there are one or two others if my memory serves me correctly.

It might that both the magazine and the book are highlighting something of which I have grown short: ideas. There also is the need for time to ponder and plan such things, particularly for those longer excursions. Then, I might be able get things going again in 2011 but my ambitions are sure to be modest. After all, I have been developing a certain dislike for lofty terms like summits and peaks and now find referring to such things as tops to be much more amenable. Whatever I call them, there will be no obsession with these because it will be the walking, exploring and savouring that will matter above all else.

Surely, this winter must go down in memory as one with an early blast of cold weather that brought with it a hell of lot of snow in places. While Macclesfield and Wilmslow came off more lightly than other places, we still have to watch our step while walking about; those pesky areas of black ice can give you a toss before you know it. Nevertheless, the B5470 Macclesfield-Whaley Bridge, A537 Macclesfield -Buxton and A54 Congleton-Buxton roads were shut until last weekend so good dumps of snow weren't at all far away.

While on the subject of places that got more snow, Sheffield comes with its having a covering of several feet of snow in places. In fact, some footways are so trampled that a coffee table smoothness is a threat to life and limb. If I lived over there, I could see my Kahtoola Microspikes being in use every day. Maybe those work colleagues who have been struggling to get from there to our place of work every day might do with something from AutoSock as noted elsewhere in the blogosphere.

Even with all the horror stories, alluring thoughts of seeing hills in full winter garb still tempt me. However, any thoughts of seeing Scottish hills have to be tempered by the recent travel chaos up there. Hopefully, it'll work out OK for everyone caught up in it. Still, Caledonian Sleeper and other train services seem to be heavily hit by the conditions. That mix of fresh snow falling on icy roads really has caused chaos. It's all very well daydreaming of white wildernesses but they have another side.

Maybe that thaw over the weekend will ease things enough to help all who have been marooned by what has been with us for a few weeks now. It even might allow a chance to make good those daydreams with whatever whiteness remains wherever I may go. After all, I quite fancy an outing given that it has been a few weeks since the last one.

After a bank holiday weekend spent expanding my explorations of the Isle of Man, last weekend allowed a getaway to a part of the world that I haven't really visited for nearly four years: the Scottish Borders. Since then, a new long distance trail has appeared on OS maps, the Borders Abbeys Way, and caused to me to look at the copyright date that was on the one that I used when I last got to sample the area around Peebles and Galashiels. With the legend "2002" peering back at me, I began whether a new edition was needed but I persevered with the older one while up there.

It was sufficient for the task of hiking from Selkirk to Melrose via The Three Brethren and, from there, the Southern Upland Way on an ever improving afternoon and evening; I left the Borders Abbeys Way with its requirement for remembering where it went for another time. The Eildon Hills were catching the light from time to time as I grew to realise the distance between Galashiels and Melrose. Very deceptively, the proximity of Galashiels, Tweedbank, Darnick and Melrose would lure you into thinking that everything is close together but the whole conurbation put together is at least five miles long!

After the exertions of the previous day, Sunday was left as an easy day before I returned home again after a stay in Melrose. That energy expenditure made for tired legs so I contented myself with enjoying the impressive sight of Melrose Abbey (yes, a camera was set into action too but it's often what gets me out and about in the first place) on a day that kept improving after a damp start. There was an uphill potter along St. Cuthbert's Way to take a closer look at the Eildon Hills but time constraints put a stop to any potentially foolish designs that may have lain in my mind.

A look at a map since then has popped an idea into my mind: using St. Cuthbert's Way for a walk from St. Boswell's to Melrose that might grant me glimpses of Dryburgh Abbey and would pass over the Eildon Hills. Those hills are crisscrossed with paths but there are other possibilities with sections of the Borders Abbeys Way allowing for sampling of the countryside around places such as Kelso, Hawick and Jedburgh. All in all, it looks as if there is plenty on offer to the passing wanderer in search of pleasant countryside with a smattering of low-sized hills.

After all, this is countryside that I should have been exploring when I lived in Edinburgh but for a combination of succumbing to the attractions of a very nice city and being blinded by attractions further north. Then, I would have considered cycling and the practicalities of getting a bike out into the Borders with no car would have raised their heads too. Until the restoration of the rail link to Galashiels and Tweedbank, that one will persist because I saw no evidence of bicycle carriage on any buses that I used over the weekend. In a way, that's a pity because there is the Four Abbeys Cycle that echoes the intent of the Borders Abbeys Way and there are quieter roads about the area too. That new railway could make things interesting but the prospect of its packing the area with visitors is hard to envisage with all of the space that there is for everyone.

One thing that struck me over the weekend was how quiet everywhere was and it is an area where you unleash your reverie without too much fear of intrusion. Of course, you still have watch where you going but that effectively is the limit of things. Those ideas that have come into my mind already should keep me returning and I do hope that it's more regular than it has been.

March should start like a lion and leave like a lamb but it seems to have got that script wrong this year. You only have to hear the stories of trains being marooned in snow drifts to be reminded of the same sort of thing happening at the end of February. In its own way, it places into sharp relief the journey that I made to Aviemore a few weeks back. Then, snow seemed to be on the retreat though I was armed with my Kahtoola Microspikes in case I met anything harder than soft snow. Now, it seems that has been well replenished just in time for the Easter weekend. Of course, there's the ever present threat of avalanches (I took a quick peek at the Scottish Avalanche Information Service website and there is high risk up high in many of the hills up there) and the matter of travel too. Both of these matters are reminders of that coach crash tragedy in the south of Scotland and thoughts are the only things that I can offer to those affected.

A decade ago, the mention of the sort of conditions that have visited us more often than usual this winter would have sent anyone to their memory banks to see when they last happened. A few years back, I remember sitting in the Bridge of Orchy hotel enjoying an evening meal after a walk south along the West Highland Way from Glen Coe. What really struck me were all the photos of severe winter conditions of the sort that visited Scotland at the end of March and of February. They dated back to the 1980's and you would have been forgiven for thinking that those would never recur with the green winters that we were having and the prevailing debate on global warming. On a separate occasion, I was staying in Kettlewell and overheard a conversation at breakfast about sheep farming in much harder winters than the ones that were coming our way at that time. All the stories of deep snow covering were very far away in time and my upbringing in a more temperate maritime climate might have had something to do with it too.

In time, the wintry conditions that ended 2009 and stayed with us for so much of 2010 will be found in the same memory area as those in the 1980's and the 1960's. It is a reminder that, even with rising global temperatures (a contentious subject for some and one whose complexity is made all the more apparent when we get colder winters), we aren't going to be denied extreme winter like what came upon Scotland this week. With the milder winters that started the century, you might be forgiven for thinking that they were the start of a pattern but I have come to the conclusion that they were part of a one (El Niño and all that) that mixes mild and arctic as time goes on. We might know more about climate than we did but times like these are a reminder that there's always more to learn.

Here in Macclesfield, it isn't warm but we have no snow. Currently, it is drying up after a wintry shower that was more of rain than anything else. That's not to say that it mightn't have been sleety snow because I have been out in one of those week. April is noted for a mixture sun and showers and it cannot be said that it isn't living up to that stereotype. In fact, a quick look at the synoptic charts on the MWIS website confirm that Easter will be accompanied by a steady queue of low pressure areas. Let's see what can be done with it.