thought.photos

occasional snapshots of thought

Blackthorn blossom

A Walk on St. George’s Day

Posted on 24th July 2021

Restrictions have been eased a little, but we’re still pretty much in lockdown. Teaching has come to an end for the year (my 26th in higher education), and normally I’d be reporting on a visit to the Lake District. Rewind 12 months, and I was saying the same thing. Back in December I had, rather hopefully, booked a week in the Lakes for April but YHA had refunded my money – ditto last year. I am, however, hoping to get up there at the end of May after the next easing of restrictions – my room is booked and my fingers are crossed.

As I did last year, I took a weeks’ leave anyway. Fortunately (or ironically, whichever way you want to look at it), the weather was perfect for walking and I did manage one day walk on 23rd April; St George’s Day.

It’s a glorious time of year to be walking out on the Hampshire downs. Most of the trees had yet to come into leaf, but below the trees Spring was happening. The woodland floor was carpeted with Bluebell and Wood Anemone, but the star of the show was the Blackthorn blossom – it was at its absolute best.

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Categories: Landscape, Life/Personal, Photography

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Small tarn at Little Stand

A Return to the Hills: Part 3

Posted on 3rd December 2020

Today would be the day. The day I’d complete the challenge I’d set myself to summit all of the Wainwright fells and all of the Fellranger fells, 235 in total. My adventure had begun on 17th June 2015 with a tentative walk to Low Pike, High Pike and Dove Crag from Ambleside. Today, it would conclude with a high-level walk in Langdale, taking in the final Fellranger on my list, Little Stand.

This walk was going to be my reward for a tough week of walking. Although I had enjoyed visiting the final Fellrangers on the list, they almost all were what Wainwright calls the Outlying Fells, and that meant they were lower and more scattered than the popular and better known fells in central Lakeland. My reward for a week tramping the Outlying Fells would be a day walking in the high fells, with Bowfell the prize.

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Categories: Fell Walking, Landscape

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Scafell and Slight Side from Great How

A Return to the Hills: Part 2

Posted on 21st November 2020

So far, so good. My week in the Lakes had started very well and I’d bagged eleven of the seventeen tops on my list in just three days. You might think I’d be confident in completing the final six with three walking days left, but I wasn’t. Some were in far-flung locations, Black Combe and Muncaster Fell were each a trip in their own right, and others like Little Stand would require (or merited) a day walk. Added to the geographic complexity was my fitness, or lack of it. Ordinarily I’d have five walking days and then a rest day but I was going to have to walk at least six days straight to get this done. As it turned out, I walked seven days straight.

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Categories: Fell Walking, Landscape

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View from Stainton Pike

A Return to the Hills: Part 1

Posted on 5th October 2020

I had pretty much given up hope of visiting the Lake District in 2020. Lockdown had been frustrating and since restrictions were eased, finding accommodation in one of the most popular “staycation” destinations in the UK turned out to be almost impossible – almost.

I had planned to return in April, with the aim of completing the Fellranger Fells. YHA accommodation had been booked back in December and I’d planned the walks that would take me to the remaining tops I needed to complete the challenge I’d set myself 5 years ago – to complete both the Wainwright and Fellranger fells, 235 in all.

With the Wainwrights completed in July last year, and a few of the additional Fellrangers already in the bag, I had just 17 tops to visit. That didn’t sound too difficult but the distribution of the remaining tops meant I’d need 6 good walking days to visit them all.

Once again, Hannah came to my rescue in finding accommodation. With all the YHAs booked out and only expensive hotel rooms available, a stay in the Lakes wasn’t looking feasible until Hannah found YMCA Lakeside, where accommodation had just been opened up. It wasn’t in the perfect location but it was good enough, so I quickly booked 5 nights – I was returning to the hills!

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Categories: Fell Walking, Landscape

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The view to Beacon Hill from Ladle Hill

Walking from home

Posted on 25th May 2020

The last time I journeyed more than a few miles from home is now almost two months in the past. On the 19th March, I pulled in to London Waterloo on my usually rammed commuter train. Just six of us stepped onto the platform. That was the point at which I realised I probably shouldn’t even be there. I travelled on to Greenwich and had my meeting. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to grab a spare webcam and a few other necessities. I watered my lovely ferns and went straight home. That was it, and the last eight weeks have been a strange mix of anxiety and comfort.

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Categories: Landscape, Life/Personal

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View from Corfa Pike with rainbow

Loose Ends and Rainbows

Posted on 16th November 2019

So I’d completed the Wainwrights and you might think that would be that. However, despite a final tick in the 214th box, it didn’t really feel like a completion. I didn’t have a complete photographic record of all the summits, and since this challenge had become mildly obsessive, that bugged me. During my early walks I wasn’t particularly focussed on photographing summits because I didn’t even know that I might be attempting a completion. And then there was the time I lost two days worth of photographs when the SD card in my camera failed. In short, I needed to return to the Lakes to complete the set.

Earlier this year, over supper at YHA Eskdale, I was asked whether I was an incrementalist or a completist. At the time, I answered that I was a completist – completing “the set” has been a big motivator for me. However, the more I think about this question, the more I realise that it’s a false dichotomy. In truth, everyone is an incrementalist until the set is completed. Furthermore, the joy of completion is sometimes exceeded by the attainment of a particularly hard-won incremental step. Nonetheless, I still wanted (needed?) a full set of summit photographs.

I’d revisited some of the missing tops in July but I was still short of 16 summit photos, mostly from the Eastern Fells, and on this visit, I was determined to fill those gaps as this would most likely be my last visit to the Lakes this year. The only problem was that the weather forecast was not good and it looked pretty wet for the week ahead.

This visit was also late in the planning. In truth, I hadn’t planned for it at all and when it came to booking the stay, it became clear that I’d missed my chance of finding a suitable room at a convenient YHA hostel. I toyed with the idea of camping but the weather forecast put paid to that notion.

I wasn’t sure what to do until Hannah, using her deep-search skills, found a perfectly located B&B in Patterdale that turned out to be even cheaper than a hostel – so I booked it and a week later, on Saturday, 17th August, I was driving up to Southport in the rain.

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Categories: Fell Walking, Landscape, Photography

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Fleetwith Pike and Haystacks from Buttermere

The End of a Beginning

Posted on 16th August 2019

Family holidays are becoming a bit of a rarity for us. With both kids now living away from home, Hannah and I had booked a week in a small cottage in Buttermere, not knowing what the kids’ movements would be over the summer. As it turned out, they both said they wanted to be there when I completed my round of the Wainwrights, and naturally I was delighted. So we booked a couple of camping pitches close to the cottage and we were all set.

If you’ve been reading this journal, you’ll know that I had just two Wainwrights remaining, Fleetwith Pike and Haystacks. Both tops are relatively easy walks from Buttermere and my priority was to bag those two; any additional walking would be a bonus and dependent on keeping the rest of the family happy.

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Categories: Fell Walking, Life/Personal

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View south-west from the Slight Side, Scafell path

Bagging the Scafells

Posted on 30th June 2019

There are a few reasons why I’ve been leaving the Scafells to the end of this challenge. First, as the highest of the Wainwright fells, in fact, the highest mountains in England, it seemed fitting to leave them to the end. Second, it made sense geographically. Broadly, I started in the east, moved round to the north and am finishing in the west and south. Third, they are difficult to get to, or rather, they are a long drive from the key centres in the Lake District. But most of all, they are popular. There would be no chance of getting to the top of Scafell Pike alone and although I don’t mind meeting the odd (in every sense of the word) traveller, crowds do not make for an enjoyable climb. However, on this occasion, I thought I might have a good chance of minimising congestion on the narrow paths. The weather forecast for the weekend was mixed, I had scheduled Scafell Pike for a Friday, avoiding the busier weekend and the quieter Scafell for Saturday. What could possibly go wrong?

I was in Manchester on the Thursday for our Web Teaching Today get-together. A gathering of a really lovely group of people who teach web design at FE and HE institutions. It’s a good forum to discuss contemporary trends and current teaching issues in a relaxed and supportive environment. We had what I thought was a very productive day at MMU and, as usual, a trip to Manchester is a great opportunity to mix business with the pleasure of walking in the Lake District.

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Categories: Fell Walking, Life/Personal

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Way Out West

Posted on 10th June 2019

Teaching is now over for yet another academic year (my 23rd!) and the Lakeland Fells once again beckoned as a curative for the increasing stresses and strains of academic life.

I’m now happy to concede that these post-teaching trips to the Lakes, which have become a regular feature of my fell-walking challenge, are now an important part of my mental well-being regime.

Under normal circumstances, planning a trip to the Lake District over the Easter bank holiday weekend would be considered a special form of madness. But on this occasion, I had two good reasons. I usually plan my Spring trip in the week immediately following the end of teaching but this year I booked late (3rd of January) and couldn’t find any suitable accommodation in that week. Secondly, I had a long-standing agreement that I would try to be there when my friend, Remco van Essen was also in the Lakes. Remco caught the fell-walking bug after his previous visit in July 2018 and had been working on improving his fitness in preparation for this weekend.

I knew it would be busy, especially as the weather forecast was good, but I figured that since most of the walking would take place out in the quieter Western Lakes, we could probably avoid the worst of the crowds.

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Categories: Fell Walking, Life/Personal

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The unbearable lightness of being (there)

Posted on 10th November 2018

The early part of August is one of the few times during the academic year when things are relatively quiet. This year I’d booked two weeks of leave during that period but I wasn’t going away on holiday. For around six years, I’ve been planning to migrate the CADTutor forum from vBulletin to Invision Community Suite. In all that time, I hadn’t managed to find the time and, in truth, I’d been putting it off because although “migration” is easy to say, I knew it was going to be a long and complex task. This year I knew it had to happen. The versions of PHP and MySQL that the old forum software relied upon were coming to “end of life” and would no longer be supported. If I didn’t do it now, the forum would come to an end. So I dedicated two weeks of summer leave to sitting in front of a computer screen while I planned, prepared and managed the migration of 16 year’s worth of forum posts to a new platform.

Nothing that complicated can ever be perfect but with only a few minor glitches, I considered the migration to be a success. So it was with that at the forefront of my mind that I set off on what was my fifth and most likely my final visit to the Lakes in 2018. I had a few loose fell-ends to tie up and a couple of big walks planned and 4 days in which to reach a nice, round number of Wainwrights before the start of the new academic year.

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