Walking Dartmoor 3 : Red lake China Clay Works

It turns out Red lake China Clay works is my destination for this bit of the walk.

As we rejoin my dartmoor break, I have yet to realise this.

Having found my campsite, actual setting up was a breeze.  Rolling out the bivvy bag I was looking forward to a good nights rest.

It soon became clear “howling” was just the right word for what had initially been considered a mild wind.  My camp area had seemed large enough when viewed from a standing position, but lying down it shrank.

Once inside the bivvy bag and wriggling about to find the sweet spot which was going to allow sleep I was very aware I had camped on a needle of rock with sheer sides.

As an aside, when I woke up in the morning and regained my feet the campsite became benign once more.

Finding the sweet spot for sleep is important.  Once my eyes close there is a remote chance I could be mistaken as a corpse.  As a small child the chimney next door burst into flame, the fire brigade came screaming around bells blazing and then flooded the area, I slept blissfully.  I’ve since much improved my ability to sleep through events.  The downside of this being if I happen to nod off with a damn great lump of sharp granite stuck in my back I know all about its presence in the morning.

Dog Two disappeared into the bag and settled down.  This was a weight off my mind, the wind was significant but Dog Two cared not a jot for all the noise it created within the bag.

It arrived not a moment too soon, 6am, up and out.

Packing was fiendishly complex.  In a few days time I will be wondering what all the fuss was about.

I need not have worried about the great houndini bursting free of the sleeping arrangements.  As far as could be told (and he was not saying anything) there had been no movement at all let alone energetic bursts for freedom.

There was a need for a walking Plan B as it was obvious Plan A was not going to be feasible.

Plan A involved a good deal of visiting prehistory in this area of Dartmoor.  Having not visited it before, there was a lot of things to go and see.

The Butler series of books had fired my imagination.  However I was all too aware one hut circle had a tendency to look like just about any other.

The remains themselves are not actually important, but they make “sense” of a landscape in which you can simply roam.  They represent destinations, points on the map to aim for, achieve and understand the sense of “I am here”.

So the wonderful efforts of Jeremy Butler were put to one side.  At times it seems as if he has described every stone prehistoric man moved.

Prior to leaving I had read The Industrial Archaeology of Dartmoor by Helen Harris and it had fired my imaginings for this aspect of the moor.

Seeing the disused Red Lake Railway line sealed Plan B for me.

This would be about the discovery of Dartmoor as an industrial landscape.

A near perfect compromise, I get to walk on old railway tracks and a lot of what my quest was about would be close to hand and usually within eyesight.

It did not reduce the weight on my back, but it reduced its impact.

The day promised to be a good ‘un.  Actually the weather forecast for the next 7 days was promising, with but the merest hint of mischief in the form of possible rain at the end of it.

Take nothing for granted on Dartmoor though. (BBC report of rescue needed March 2008 near Red Lake)

Before leaving I had discovered a bit of software which combined my gps data with my camera to accurately geotag my photo’s.   This was an exciting development for me.

Walking the Red Lake Railway had the additional advantage of the navigation done for me.

The disadvantage, underfoot it was consistently flinty, but this is of marginal consideration given anywhere on Dartmoor has a certain element of surprise when it comes to footing.

This area of Dartmoor is not the “tor fest” I have grown used to around Moortown, it has more of a rolling aspect.

Piles Wood came into view and it was a pleasure to see it.  Broad leaf woods are always a welcome sight. Coming from a part of the country nearly devoid of gradient the novelty of looking down on treetops is a pleasure.

The main thrill though was it connected me to R.H Worth, one of my Dartmoor heroes.

Perhaps an odd thing to say as I was literally connected to R.H Worth with every step I took as he was the chap that surveyed the rail route I trod.

The difference was, that was essentially dead and gone, I was walking on its’ decaying remains.  The wood though, those trees were the very ones Worth had seen and more importantly they had seen him.  It’s an important distinction in my mind.

I would have liked to have visited the wood more closely but contented myself with putting it on a list of things to do, which meant another trip to Dartmoor at a future date.

My goals for this day was Red Lake China Clay works, the whole purpose of the railroad.

I gazed about me in happy wonder, the sun beat down, the skylarks made light of gravity and to prove the mastery sang happily of their achievement.

Sheep appeared at regular enough intervals to keep Dog Two on his toes.  He was curious enough about sheep to actually detach himself from my heel and take a few strides forward to investigate.  A handy test of his mood, if he lost this interest in sheep it would most certainly be time to give him a rest.

That was his entertainment taken care of and there were enough industrial remains dotted about the track to keep me happy that the “purpose” of the Dartmoor visit was moving forward.  The pipeline associated with the China Clay works could be seen from time to time as it made its way back towards Ivybridge.

GORP and dog biscuits kept our energy levels up and the camelbak supplied the liquid to wash it down.

We met a number of others enjoying the day, all with lighter loads and bigger dogs but it was no hindrance to happy greetings and a quick chat before moving along.

Where the two moors way meets the railroad we saw two healthy people joining the track.  Dog Two looked out on the moor from whence they came and for a mad moment I envisaged us striding along the Two Moors Way, ticking off a long distance walk.

It was madness, it got put on the list of “one day”.

I am not sure when it had last rained on the moor, but there was not a lot of water running in the smaller spontaneous streams but the next bit to Red Lake made up for it.  It was muddy and there was standing water in deep ruts.

The Red Lake hill is conspicuous for considerable distance and with its squat volcano erupting appearance, distinctive.

There is a good deal of industrial remains here, at least at ground level.  I wondered how deep that cool, blue water was.  Deep enough for trouble.

A trangia moment. Curry Pot Noodle, with noodles on the side washed down with a mug of tea sweetened with honey (my much more versatile sugar substitute for hiking).

I contemplated the wooden post in the distance, marked on the OS map, too bleak and lonely for my liking, even dead tree fragments should not be that desolate.

Time to turn around and find a less windy, and hopefully flatter bit of terrain to spend the night in repose.

Exploration – it’s all in my mind

 

The golden age of exploration is no more.  People are not going to discover great landmasses and put them on the map.

In one of Benedict Allen’s books his gives thought to this, and looking over his website the other day, I noticed he still gives thought to it.

Benedict is an explorer in a manner I will never be, but now it is about scale not absolutes.  His scale is simply larger than mine.

There are places in the world where the maps lack a certain detail but more often than not it is because there is not a lot to map.

It might be possible to tread where no human has trodden but it is now on the micro not the macro level.

In England the OS mapping service ensures every square inch is accounted for and often named.

Via google earth I can zoom pan and pry, retracing expeditions of yore and following adventurers today.

It is all very cozy but it divorces me from the reality, I can be lulled into the delusion I have explored these places.

The truth is, someone else has, not me.

The Royal Geographical Society will not be handing over any gold medals when I reach my walking destination.  There will be no biding war for my journal.

Even when the world was composed of blanks filling them in was an occupation of a very few, and a good many of them lost their lives in doing so.

It was never a mass participation sport.

Some people push back the boundaries of human achievement, some increasingly ludicrous such as the “firsts” Everest seems to endlessly attract (I await the first ascent by pogo-stick).

I will never climb Everest, but I will reach my highest point and in almost every significant way that is more important to me than any number of Everest ascents I will never do.  I believe Benedict considers these adventurer’s athletes, not explorers.  Certainly it is what he considers the people trekking to the Poles etc.

It is an interesting viewpoint and has merit, but the term exploration can be expanded and contracted to cover and exclude almost anything you wish.

Benedict would not consider me an explorer and really you have to agree on almost every level but one.  I am discovering things for myself in a continual exploration of the world and the people around me.

It is a mindset and one that should be nurtured and expanded upon.

Until close enough to touch something and gain an understanding I cannot really say I have begun to explore it.

To say there is nothing left to explore is to confuse someone else’s achievements with your own.

The Essex Way walk 3 Part 1.

 

I continue my Essex Way walk.  The idea is to go from Dedham to Great Horkesley.

I am not sure why I feel the need to say Great Horkesley in a North Country accent and add “like” onto the end of it, but it is only significant efforts at restraint that stop me.

Don’t treat this blog as a guidebook, it’s not going to work like that.  This is me, my impressions and recollections as I amble along.

Back on the walk with mixed emotions. 

Dog Two is fit and well, so I am back to full walking compliment, Dog Two and Dog Three.  It is a reason to be cheerful, even if they impose slight restrictions on events, they are part of the reason I get out of the house in the first place.

The second Ashes test is going on at Lords.  England look capable of forcing the follow on and with it a very real chance of beating the Aus at Lords for the first time since 1934. Still it’s not going to happen today, they can go on without me.

The weathermen, overcautious since Michael Fish, were predicting dire things once again.  The internet weather sites were predicting 60% chance of rain, it was called sitting on the fence/guessing in my day. I was heading to Dedham.

There is nothing wrong with Dedham but this is Saturday in the height of credit crunch summer, when everyone is holidaying at home.

Dedham is in the heart of “Constable Country”, Flatford Mill is just up the road (thankfully I don’t have to go there this time, I am not old enough to appreciate its gentle charms, I think you have to be frightened of anyone under the age of 60 before you can feel at home there).

Dedham Vale and the views he painted are all around you.

Actually this turns out to be not quite true, a few years ago someone tried to pinpoint the exact places Constable sat when painting.  It turned out to be a good deal trickier than expected, the problem was the quantity and size of the trees we have now.  Not the lack of them you understand, but the profusion and growth of them.  To return to Constable original vision a lot of trees would have to go.

Any websearch of John Constable is worth the effort (here is a starter for ten)

Dedham is built on a small scale, its a village that was neither built for car or “improved” for car.  The roads are so narrow the double yellow lines in the streets appear to be something done by school children with crayons.  Actual size double yellow lines would turn the streets into a wizard of Oz set.

So parking was an issue looming in my mind.

I need not have worried, there was a sizeable and free parking area tucked just outside of the main village area.

What I was not expecting was Dedham sits on a personal mental fault line.

It started quickly, the pub had changed its name, this was a scandal.  Nope it had not, this is a second multi-hundred year old edifice I had forgotten existed.

Then a jumble of memories started flooding in with no apparent order.  I had visited Dedham a lot more times than imagined and with a whole cast of people.  This movement of building was a common feature, but the fabric and tone of the village had not altered one jot.

The butcher was carrying the woman’s shopping to the car, just like he was last time I was here.  The bookshop owner was still smiling at me just as she did 20 odd years ago when I walked in to sort out my original walking materials for the Essex Way.

Is this village an English Westworld, set in motion just for me as I got out of the car?

I scuttled through, head down, please dogs don’t defile these streets.  It was genuinely unsettling for someone that usually has a grasp of most memory and in the correct order.

Past the church, bigger than I remember, but all churches around this part are bigger, the one in East Bergholt seems to have eaten the village.

Past a sign to the Munnings Museum (wiki link).  I am not a fan, I like my art radical and the landscape reality “chocolate box.”  Over-familiarity with Constable has caused me to sour on this chap as well but really it is just the endlessly reproduced middle-class art appreciation of “The Haywain” I rebel against.

The welcome sight of an old cement signpost with the trail blaze on it guides me out of this jumble of memory.  Back on The Essex Way.  My last sight in Dedham is a expensively dressed fatty in running shoes clearly soaking up culture as long as its within 100 yards of his parked car.

When is the govt going to ban the sale of "trainers” to anyone over the weight of 16stone?

No sooner had I started the trail than an unofficial official looking sign greeted me.  You know the sort, red circle, diagonal slash from top left to bottom right cutting through an image of the thing being prohibited.  This DIY signage is growing as people try to add their own level of pettiness on a growing obsession to nail a sign to every vertical plane in the UK.

There was a wind blowing, and it brought the noise of a fearsome future.  In the not too distant future The Essex Way crosses over the A12.  The noise of this much road traffic reminds me of the noise the wind makes as it rushes down of the tors of Dartmoor on its way to giving my shelter a beating.  It is simultaneously comforting and un-nerving.

Just before the crossing of the A12 I say a final good-bye to the River Stour on this walk.  Here the River is more clearly a river, everything at a more human scale.  For some reason this feels more significant than it actually is.  I will see the River again many times just not on this walk.

A little further on I make an odd discovery with regard the trail itself.  It presupposes you walk in the “correct” direction and I am not.  Therefore many of the signs tell me where I have come from, not where I am going too.

I step back onto the road, its busy without a lot of forward vision and cars travel along it at a rate of knots.  I pick up my dogs, one under each arm, there is not a pavement.  It is not a stretch but it does fray my nerves a bit.  The dogs are content, but one person driving a little too fast can change this picture in a hurry.

Almost the instant the A12 is crossed the traffic noise has gone, there is not going to be any repetition of the noise pollution of the last stage.

I never like walking on tarmac and this section of the walk has its fair share, albeit single lane tracks, but they always have the potential of a car travelling too fast with a driver not paying quite the attention needed.  My dogs are about the size of the roadkill we go past.

If you look carefully at the photo it has the disappearing figure of the one other non-farmer I met on this entire walk.  It is the back of the same fellow I met last week (he of the dental work).  You expect to see people on a walk in the densely populated England but so rarely do. To actually meet the same person seemed improbable.

The chances of seeing another human being falls exponentially as distance from a fast food outlet grows.  It was good to see my friends face had returned to more human form.  I call him my friend, I don’t know his name but in two weeks have shared more words with him than I have most people in my hometown for the last few years.  Sad perhaps, but as I have no desire to sprawl drunkenly in the streets shouting expletives to passers-by I do not have a lot in common with most dwellers of my hometown.  The other option of being a single-mother is denied me by having been born male.

The section of the walk between Dedham and Boxted is about the views.  No surprise, we are in Constable Country in the Dedham Vale, it looks a lot like Constable country, only with industry.

Constable clouds were much in evidence during most of the walk.  He liked the open skies and devoted plenty of canvas space to them.  I might have something in common with John Constable but it is not immediately obvious what that might be.

There is evidence of harvest, huge rotund bails of hay fill fields in the distance.  As tall as a person, they look capable of crushing you, not the picturesque wheatsheaf of yore and its more human scale.

I see two farmers on this section of the walk.  They are wandering in their fields with view to harvest time.  I am on the well defined footpaths they have kindly left me, in many places two or three people could walk arm in arm along them.

I wave cheerily to them, they wave back happy.  We fall into as much conversation as the distance will allow.  Crops not so good this year, rain at the wrong time.  Surely it was ever thus.  Dogs are praised for their good behaviour.  So many people come out with dogs barely under control, causing mischief in the margins set aside so carefully for the use of wildlife.  Commonsense prevails, sure I ignored the signs telling me to stick the dogs on a lead but only the most fastidious of jobsworths would wish them to be on leads when they never get more than a foot or two from my feet. 

No farmer has ever requested it, it is nice to be in civilised company.

It’s my birthday

So another year has slipped its moorings and sailed for good.  A new age for me begins.

Feels very much like the last one, but don’t they all.

I try not to do the reflection thing.  The past is a pit of misery, regret and clearly defined opportunity missed, the future is uncertain but it is just a path set by past errors so cannot be expected to be anything more than a calamity waiting and philosophers have argued the present doesn’t really exist.

Does not really leave a lot of room for manoeuvre.

I might sound a little depressive, it is my nature, but I learn to cope with it and exist within the moment.  The idea that this might not actually exist I find very amusing.  Not in the sixth form common room type philosophical way, or the intense proto-beard stroking of University hothouse way either.  It is more the certainty that exist or not, it works for me and I cannot alter it so will try and accept it.  Someone else can tie (or pretend to tie) their brain into complex knots and get nowhere in the process.

Birthday pressies comprise some walking items I have wanted for a while, or replacing things I have had for a while and now not functioning so well.  The compass which is more air bubble than fluid is finally being replaced.

There will be few surprises as I have bought most of the things myself and just told people how much they cost and they choose what to “buy”.  Saves them racking their brains as to what to buy “the bloke that wants nothing”.

Remember when you always got socks as a present and had to make efforts not to hurl them across the room in disgust.  Now I buy socks for myself and get them wrapped up so I can open them on my birthday.  They are nothing clever or technical, just some polyester socks (black) but I am looking forward to getting my feet into them.  15 pairs actually.  I like the certainty of restricted choice.  If all you have is 15 pairs of identical socks the choice of what socks to wear becomes redundant.  The trick is making the initial choice from the myriad available.

Still I am enjoying it, all the presents are stuff I want, everyone can relax in that knowledge.  It has removed all the stress of wondering if I have to grin and bear some “wacky” present someone has racked their brains to find.

I took the day of my labours with the intention of going outside and enjoying the summer.  It is raining so now I feel slightly annoyed about taking the day off.  Afterall my birthday could have always waited for a sunny day.

Slow down you’re going to fast

You have a bit of time before I continue to write this blog entry so head out into the garden and go and scoop up some earth.  If you have concreted over your garden, just pretend you haven’t marginalised the planets fragile wildlife just that bit more.

I’ll wait.

Good, put it on a plate.  Not got a plate?  Go get one, I’ll wait.

Good, that’s done, put it to one side for a moment we have things to discuss and think about.

When I plan a walk, and I am guessing I am as typical in this as I am everything else about me, I have a destination is in mind.  Where I intend to go and how far I intend to walk.  Primarily the focus is a point on the map.

With experience I know how far I will walk during a particular timeframe and this is the basis for the destination decision.  It means I have to walk at my normal pace with my normal breaks (not many) for the duration of the walk.  If I get held up for some reason, I have to pick up the pace a bit if I wish to reach my destination.

Inevitably I want to reach my destination, its the goal of the walk, it is what I have set down.  When I get to the point chosen on the map, I turn around and head back, perhaps after a short rest to “catch my breath”

If I carry less, I can travel faster for the same expenditure of energy, its one of the sales pitches of lightweight and you cannot deny the simple logic of it.  I just choose a destination further away.

As we close in on 40 years since Man first set foot on the moon “and the other things” (never quite sure what they were and it seems such a lame moment in the speech) it is time for reflection.

There were no little green men, it was dead.  And as it turned out there are no Martians either when we sent probes there.  Indeed we have yet to find a lifeform in our solar system, or in fact anywhere other than Earth.

We were in a hell of a hurry to get a boot on the moon, it will be forever called “The Space Race” but probably the most influential and far reaching moment of The Space Race were the pictures taken of our home planet.

Global awareness and the need to conserve what we have really entered the average person’s brain right then and there.  It is still a very powerful image today.  It gave us a whole new perspective.

That handful of Earth you have there on your plate in front of you has more life in it than the rest of the known Universe combined.

Don’t be in such a rush to get somewhere, the most important moment of your journey might well be right where you are, right now.  Take the time to enjoy it, that point on the map is just that, a point on the map.

We are too goal orientated for most of our lives.  A walking destination gives us a superficial motivation for the journey but to focus in one what is a tiny fraction of the total experience is to miss almost everything.  Afterall, the footprint on the moon is the least important thing about “The Space Race”.

Brecon Beacons is the plan.

Rain is flopping out of the sky right now, it makes a change, it is usually being driven into the ground with some force.  Every day seems to bring its share of rain at the moment.

Having spoken to the local farmers it seems this year was a close run thing.  General agreement not enough rain when they needed it earlier in the year.  Not sure they are too pleased to see it this time of year either.  Will make an effort to find out, I will be seeing a couple of farmers this week for sure.

Rabbits ate the allotment so rain was irrelevant for me.

It is against this grey backdrop I am currently making plans to visit the Brecon Beacons.  It has been a long time since I went to Wales and on that occasion it was a motoring holiday.

From a weather perspective there never seems a good time to visit Wales.  It is all about the rain whenever I think of the place.  If you work for the Welsh Tourist Board don’t bother telling me any different, I am immune to statistics.

When I think of it in summer I imagine the hills crawling with day-glo tourists their voices too close for comfort.  Currently the fashion trend seems to be for “look at me” colours.  I don’t need to see most of them, I can hear them.

I am not a people person.  Not quite true, you have to be the right sort of person, it happens most are not and people in any number are never going to be the right sort.  Sports events and pubs are the places for crowds and I like them there.

Anyway the plan is September, children back in the low security prisons I once remember being schools.  Parents will be retied to their children’s shoelaces.  The days will be drawing in and the weather potentially less predictable.  This combo reduces crowds considerably.

And on the subject of weather, here is my tired old two-pence:

Summer in the UK seems to be more a race memory than an actual season nowadays though.  “Summer’s aren’t what they used to be”, “In my day…” etc etc, but for some reason every year we expect/plan on the assumption somehow the clock will spin back to those distant summers of endless sunshine and are continually surprised when they are not.

It might be because we simply forget having spent the winter complaining how winter’s aren’t what they used to be.

Summer not sunny enough, winter’s not cold enough.  Spring earlier every year, Autumn seems to have disappeared of the seasonal landscape.  All because of global warming.  We are all experts in the weather because we can nod our heads wisely “its global warming dont-cha-know”  Weather patterns have to behave erratically otherwise we could not talk about global warming.

In the 1970’s we were heading for a new ice-age, that was the thing worrying us then.

Regardless of all this, or because of it, Brecon Beacons is pencilled in for September. 

I need to get planning these things have a habit of being months into the future right up until the moment you are leaving tomorrow.

Fear is the bag filler

I must not fear. Fear is the bag-filler. Fear is the extra-weight that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see my path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Apologies to Frank Herbert fans, but who can resist.

It has oh-so-slowly dawned on me, packweight is a function of fear.  A stroll to the shops means I have enough money in my pocket to buy what I intend.  The further I move from this comfort-zone, the more comfort I seem to need strapped to my back.

We all know this is self-defeating.  The comfort I need if the weather does fall to –20C for some reason on the South Downs in July is crushing the fun out of my hike.

It’s clearly an example of absurdity but looking back at some of the things taken in my ruck over the years its not out of the realms of possibility.

And modern Britain is a Britain of fear, everything and everyone is out to get you.  Hanging baskets of flowers which once greatly enhanced the look of your high street are in fact earthy death dangling by very thin threads over your grossly under protected head.

The countryside is so dangerous Health and Safety dare not even venture. OS maps should re-introduce “here be dragons”.

As an example, running stream water.  We all know it’s got nasty stuff in it.  Modern pollutants run rife in it, bacteria and viruses would probably leap out at you if they could and do ruinous things to your interior.  Every time you look at it, you can imagine that bloated, fly-blown animal carcass seeping hideous fluids into this bright sparkling water.

The open sewers of 18th century London would be fitter places to drink from.

With all this in mind, I am prepared.  First off my pack has plenty of water in it in the first place, 3 litres of the stuff, woefully inadequate of course.  Apparently we are all terribly dehydrated, even in our own homes we don’t drink enough water (oh these fears are endless).

So avoiding dying of thirst on my weekend hike will require more skill.

There are limits to how much water I can carry, especially given all the other fear-induced crud filling my pack to bursting.

Right, water filter, that’s the answer to it.  In the pack it goes.

But this thing only kills 99.9% of all known beasties.

The 0.1% must be the superbugs which will kill you stone dead within four paces.  And what’s this about “known”, the unknown is even more terrible.

More fuel needed, time to boil the hell out of the water as well, better be safe than sorry.

And so it goes on.  Fear is good for sales and keeping a populous in check, it does not add a lot of fun to life, but that is not it’s function.

My pal knows the place well, trained here, army, different set of fear values.  He has a tin mug, dips it in the water, slurping noises, smacking of lips.

He is on his second mug full of this liquid death before I can untangle myself from filter tubing and try to hurl myself between him and the stream.  He may not have consumed a lethal dose if we can get him airlifted to civilisation.

Of course no harm came to him and you feel impossibly feeble telling a bloke between Afghanistan tours that the water might not be safe.  Yeah, like that’s his main life concern. 

He had less weight on his back and less iodine and meth fumes in his system.

Of course I don’t recommend it (the water is full of death you know).

And that is just the water, lets not start in the 3 hats and all those extra mid-layers and clever technology I am humping about in case it gets unseasonal out here.  The weather has become fearfully unpredictable with this global warming thing don’t you think?

Dartmoor 2

The Long Drive.

Previously I have woken up at a gawd awful hour, often before I have fully realised I am asleep, and set off.

There is good and bad to this plan, but the bad is outweighing the good, or is it the good element is shrinking.

The good was a clearer M25 to travel.

The bad was everything else.

Last time I travelled though the commercial traffic at 2am was considerable and driving a car at night sandwiched between two 18 ton(?) objects going along at literally breakneck speeds failed to appeal.

Add the fact my body clock told me I should be asleep and when the sun does eventually peep above the horizon it glares straight into me, its a recipe for fail.  And fail on England’s motorways can be terminal.

So this time I travelled in a more civilised manner, daylight.

Armed with a route map provided by google for some reason I will never fathom I took the northern route of the M25.

20 years of driving this hellish road has taught me you never get past the m11 junction without delays because of accidents.

I will save you the tedium of the journey we all know so well, but lets just add A LOT of roadworks on the M25 into the mix.  A lot of the motorway miles were done in second and first gear.  I travelled at the sort of speeds which would have tried the patience of a Georgian in a sedan chair.

Eight long, long hours later I arrive at Ivybridge.

Dartmoor

Google Earth (oh blessed be thy name) had highlighted a few places I might be able to park and get onto the moor in double quick time.  Zooming in as close as I could and then some searches through online image banks it appeared double yellow lines were unknown to the area.

So unlikely to my mind, I refused to believe it, and spent considerable time worried about exactly how I was going to park the car.

I need not have worried, it was as the techno-gods had promised.

Parked, it was time to start.

The sheer spine crushing weight of my ruck hit home in that instant.  Well in the instant I tried to actually get it on my back and having done that rise to my feet.

This was not going to be easy.  But, I reasoned, this was the first day of course it was going to be the most difficult.  I would get used to it.

Off I set.

Oh mighty google earth why have thou forsaken me.

It looked easy from my armchair at home, drawing lines on the map, shovelling them into the gps as waypoints.

“just follow the track up Piles Hill” I remember saying to myself, my minds eye filled with green and pleasant vista’s as legs Spring-heeled Jack would have been proud of ate up the distance.

Well now it faced me, it was a lot larger than a 21inch monitor and it most definitely was no flat screen.

The initial climb up to the moor was outrageous, it was the fag end of the Two Moors Way.  Time proved it was actually the most difficult bit of walking I did on Dartmoor.

I was walking up a rubble strewn ravine, sweat not so much rolled off me as burst from me as the days heat seemed determined to boil all the moisture from the earth and myself.

At least Dartmoor itself was green and pleasant when it swam into view.

Western Beacon might as well have been the South Col at that point.  Still in denial I began the ascent.

My initial walking plan had been far to adventurous.  I planned on burning that chair when I got home and use a one legged milking stool as a computer chair, never will the comfort of my surroundings blind me to the discomfort of my plans.

As I made my way up Western Beacon walking Plan B was being organised.

Time was now getting on and really I had to sort out my sleeping arrangements.  I need extra time to get back into the swing of things and so the first patch of semi-flat ground was needed.

Everyone that has wild camped knows the earth is not flat.  There might be an 8 foot by 4 foot flat piece of ground occurring naturally on the earth’ surface outside of a saltpan but it does not exist on Dartmoor.

Fortunately I can pretty much sleep anywhere and as tiredness increases this happy ability increases exponentially.  The wind was rather lively but, I reasoned, once lying on the ground things would not be so bad.

I had arrived in Dartmoor, safe and sound, the next test was keeping the Houndini in the bivvy bag.

Walking the Essex Way 2 : Bradfield to Dedham

(and back again)

Looking back along the Essex Way:
Walking the Essex Way Part One Great Oakley to Bradfield

Looking forward to walking The Essex Way:
Walking the Essex Way Part 3. Dedham to Great Horkesly, coming soon.

Essex Way Route (kml download)
This is my initial kml routeplan.  In essence it is the route I follow, in practice there can be small detours.  However it allows you to follow my strolls pretty accurately.

Starting off in Bradfield I head west towards Dedham.  Its a one dog stroll (Dog three), as the other (Dog Two) is still recovering from a bad back incurred during a game of tag.

There is a certain amount of "old soldier" going on, as he is running around hurling his toys around the house and playing up a storm, but get him outside for a walk and a pained expression passes across his face and it seems like he has one, maybe 3 tin legs.

So its going to be another week or so before that beast is back walking.

A third dog, my most faithful companion is heading towards 15 years of age (Known on this blog as Dog One).  Fit as a fiddle but deaf as a post, so he remains at home for anything other than well worn routes.  There is only so much hollering I am prepared to do at a 10lb dog five feet from you.  It tends to draw attention from everyone but the dog.

This part of the walk takes me through Manningtree.  The idea of a walk is to get away from it all, or at least have a pretence of doing so.  Walking through anything larger than a quaint village is basically tedious.

If I want to walk to the shops, I can stay at home and do that.  So I rebel somewhat and choose a different route on my map, to use a green way, rather than the "official" walk.

Manningtree itself has considerable age and parts of it are very nice.  I think it has some sort of claim to being the smallest postal code in England and is one of the smallest parishes.

However there are a good many new developments with cheery names like Bluebell Walk and Meadow View.

Well perhaps before they built sodding great ugly housing on it, it was.

Manningtree, Mistley and Lawford are becoming joined at the hip, and it will just create the usual sprawling mess created by planning committees that will never see the place and vested interests selling the locality down the line in the name of progress.

Look at other villages that have enjoyed progress, there are plenty of examples of what eyesores are created. Generally stuff Manningtree and any other area of “overpopulation”, thru’ walkers might have to suffer these grey and dreary pavements, I don’t and as far as possible wont.

There is a time and a place for urban, this is not it.

The one noteworthy thing about Manningtree and surrounds is a number of relatively long distance walks start (or end) at this point.

Most certainly I will be exploring these walks from this jump off point, at the same time as walking along the Essex Way.  There is no reason to be a serial hiker, its the pleasure of not thru' hiking, you gain a good deal of flexibility.

I am not a slave to someone else's idea of what a walk should be, this detour cut out quite a bit of pavement and added rather than took away from the walk.

This does not detract from the walk, or the sense of accomplishment, whatever that might be, when I have “completed” the Essex Way.

The Rover Stour remains my companion on this section, although somewhat more aloof than on the last bit of the walk.

I go through some interesting wooded area and some of the trees looked to be a ripe old age, they were good to see.  Furze Hill on the map, not exactly the Amazon, but it does have a clearly marked Secret Bunker close to hand.

I often wonder if I am looking at "the grandfather" tree in any wooded area.  Certainly the specimen with the split trunk most have been a contender.

Given this is July in England, they provided useful cover as it rained on and off through the day and it was always threatening to rain during the whole walk.

We had to cross a "red road" Cox's hill, which I was not looking forward too.  My dog is nervous and any traffic noise tends to upset him.  It turned out to be nothing really and a quick look right and left and it was just a stroll across it, nothing to be concerned about at all.

I like the peace and quiet and I imagine any walker does really, its part of the reason to get out there.

Well today I was unlucky.  There was one of those jolly hockey stick jimcarna things going on.  A tannoy system broadcast a matronly voice of a certain age and pitch over a vast distance of countryside with what amounted to a running commentary that went on for hours.

Awful, and I was glad to eventually get out of earshot, but it certainly meant a lot of the walk that could have been done in relative peace was done with this woman filling my ears with her prattle.

Lawford Church sneaks into view, its patched walls speak of history and its squat somewhat formidable tower seems slightly out of keeping with the rest of the building.

This was not the time (but it was the place) to search out "the grandfather" stone.

An interesting way of spending a bit of time in an old country graveyard, looking for the first person to be buried there who still has a recognisable grave marker.

Old graveyards are fascinating places which take you back into country life with astonishing immediacy.  I think most of us know the sorrow of standing by a grave, and if you don't, you will.  Its a pain which is common to us all and throughout time.

Around it are some fine old houses which look much more interesting that the exterior exhibited by the church.  All the things this little grouping has seen.

The next thing of note is a railway crossing, and its busy.  In 30 minutes, 5 trains went past, which included a good sized freight train heading towards the Harwich/Felixstowe docks.

The reason I was there so long was it was a water stop and I happened to bump into another walker.  This poor fellow was recovering from 1.5 hours of dentistry and it looked painful.  A root filling and a wallet extraction had taken place.  500 quid.

Lets skip the politics of privatisation and exactly how history will treat the Thatcher years (I hope with a big bloody stick).

This encounter put me behind "schedule" whatever that might be, but if you don't have time to stop and stare or stop and chat then I hope your getting paid for walking coz it is beginning to sound like work.

To that end I basically just walked into Dedham along a tangle of footpaths which leave you wondering if you are actually in the right place at the right time.  There are no shortages of footpath routes in some bits of the walk, but only one is going to get you where you should be going.

Having achieved that to my own satisfaction, although perhaps the stricter of judges would claim there is more than an element of "fudge" that went on, I turned for home.

Happy to have struck off another bit of the walk, reached a relatively civilised place from which to start the next assault and not got soaked through.

As ever the walk home underlined the places I had seen on the outward leg but always give a surprisingly different viewpoint.  There is something to be said for walking like this rather than just following your nose for 130km.

There were a number of fields with livestock within them.  A herd of cows were wandering about the place, fat and happy, near the aptly named Dairy House.  A number of fields contained horses and some foals.  The foals could be seen testing their legs and running about for the sheer joy of doing so.  Most ran to their mothers and watched us go by from safe vantage but one insisted in running around us and involving us in the sheer fun of life.

Butterflies were out in profusion as we walked through nettles.  Perhaps there were more "when I was a nipper" but I don't really remember that being the case.

My little dog kept up with me all the way and seemed to rather enjoy reeling off another 20-22km on his paws.

This seems to be the sort of distance I am currently gravitated too, it fits into a walking schedule that means there is life before and after the walk during the day and it is not some sort of route march.

I anticipate the mileage walked will increase because of the nature of the walking ahead.

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I am English, its meant to hurt.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes will buy a Huntley and Palmer biscuit found by Scott’s body in 1999 for £3,900 to save it leaving Britain.

A noble gesture, but I think even Sir Ran now accepts the chances of a biscuit escaping three starving men tent bound for days on end is marginal to say the very least.

Scott was probably the last man to die in that tent.  So close to food, so far from everything.

The two corpses of Scott’s companions are lying either side of him composed, he had made sure of that.

Oates had staggered out of the tent previously and in doing so gives us one of the memorable quotes.

Had Oates feet fallen off, were his hands actually capable of opening the tent on his own.  Those are the questions of a more cynical age.

Scott dies presumably as broken as just about anyone can be.  He slogged to the pole to discover he had been beaten to it by Amundsen.

Dying elevates him to iconic figure.  He battles against nature and rather than yield prefers to die.

A useful lesson for young Englishman facing the first global conflict.

Amundsen clearly cheated, keeping his intentions to himself, he also knew how to ski and used dogs.  It was just not “British”.  It smacked of professionalism.

Man-hauling, misery and waging war against nature that is what defined the British approach.  Knowing what you were doing seemed to be considered an actual hindrance.

Sure Amundsen got to the South Pole first, but dogs hauled him there and as reward were killed and eaten on the way back. Anyone that has to be dragged to the Pole isn’t fit to be there in the first place.

Scott’s stock has risen and fallen over the years and continues to fluctuate to this day, was he a good leader, was he an idiot.

The tale of his heroic failure will be forever told, it’s mother’s milk for an Englishman.

Psychologists forever debate the influence of nature and nurture upon personality development. What hope have we got.

The English might well be naturally driven towards man-hauling, but if we are not then nurture can ensure we will be.

At heart we are a nation of man-haulers at war with nature. The first nation to industrialise we built an empire on the back of industrial might and machines.

Physically its great to go lightweight, mentally its near torture.  I still have to stop myself strapping on a huge great pair of boots the moment I consider a walk.  Leaving behind the foul weather gear, even in the height of summer is a wrench.

I have an 18lb packweight for the most simple of day-hikes (I don’t take cooking equipment now).  It is needlessly heavy but I excuse myself on the basis it keeps me in training.

There is sense in that, but it is a cover story for the real reason, Scott, Wilson and Bowers would spin in their icy grave if I took less.

The Real Heroes of Telemark - Ray Mears

 

The heroes of Telemark first entered my life with the US film (The real heroes were not impressed with Hollywood).  I was young, no doubt it was Christmas and it wasn't as exciting as The Great Escape.

Leap forward in time and Steve McQueen and that baseball is really getting on my nerves, the motorbike was written in for the twinkly eyed Yank and a stuntman did the barbwire jump (Steve blew his own cover on this fact, the studio was not impressed.  Top Marks for integrity Steve).  As they say in newsreels now in terms of the real Great Escape, “no Americans were involved” a fact bad for box-office, as has so often been the case with Hollywood tinkering (did I say tinkering) with history lusting for the dollar.

I digress (not for the last time, might as well get used to it), Ray Mears does a 3 part series about the REAL heroes of Telemark for TV.

This is the stuff.  A re-creation of what the chaps went through in WW2 along with a good dose of history lesson and reminding us it wasn't just the John Wayne that won WW2.  It is all too easy to fall into the trap that "your" country is the only one that actually makes the world turn round.  That attitude means you miss out on a lot of what is actually happening.

Ray Mears is simply a great brit and to date his body of TV work has been pretty close to flawless (slightly worrying moments when to promote some BBC series he had to make an appearance on Ready Steady Cook or some such crud).

A while later I got the spoken word book out of the library, but these are never successful.  I pretend it means the book has been read, but reality is, it goes in one ear and out of the other.  Often times it never reaches the first ear.

So finally I set about reading the book, and I am glad I did.

First the TV series barely gets a mention, there is no talk of the recreation of events.  This is all about the events of the Second World War team.

I got lost a times with a blizzard of foreign names and codenames, but that is me, not the book.

What did I get out of it?

Beyond all the boy’s own stuff, the sheer courage, bravery, guile and patience of these people living in improbable conditions.

Well, the sheer waste of people's talents the world accepts.
These young men had opportunity to be really pushed and they raised their game accordingly.  We can do more than shove fries into bags.  The world would be infinitely better if potential of the population was released.  Perhaps it is only possible in war.

That’s not a good enough reason to have a war of course, but we rarely get a choice in the matter.  Whomever we vote in is hellbent on keeping us safe, which usually means a foreign war and more surveillance at home.  Imagine if we lost our freedoms and were spied on 24/7 and asked to report on each others misdeeds. 1984 has been and gone, we were not told how we would cheer each time our liberties were taken from us.

Also there are lessons to be learnt in maintaining harmony in small groups under intense pressure.  You don’t have to sit in a hut, starving and under threat of capture/torture/death while the temp. dips to below -30C to try and apply those lessons.

In one instance, desperately hungry and with no clear evidence food was coming their way anytime soon, one of the party shot a reindeer, having stalked till the hunter was near incapacitated with cold.

Getting this meal to the hut took all his reserves and the team were looking forward to a cracking feed.

As the steaming pot of stew was carried over to the table, the handle slipped from the cooks hand, the whole lot went on the filthy cabin floor.

The team spooned it up from there and into their hungry stomachs.

70 odd years none of the men would say who it was that dropped the food, they were a team.

It does give you pause for thought when that idiot in the office is annoying you.  It's not their fault, they are not annoying themselves.  They are annoying YOU, adjust your attitude as much as possible to avoid it happening again.  Or show a lack of imagination/brains and let it get under your skin.  It will not make you feel any better, and the idiot is not changing.

It is too glib to make such comparison, but that is what the modern world is for most of us.  It is not stopping Hitler’s nuclear programme for us, its trying to remain cool while the fat mouth breather in the next cubicle bores on about the report deadline.

Remember the stew on the floor.

Dartmoor 1

Earlier in the year I once again took a break on Dartmoor.

Its difficult to call it a holiday as I usually return half a stone lighter, a good deal fitter, and require several days rest and recuperation to recover from the break.

So it is more a break from routine than a holiday, but as I have gone for many years now, its almost become a routine in itself.  It is always a joy though (looking back).

Over the next little while a series of blogs will catalogue and explore this venture, partly as a mechanism to ready myself for the next "holiday" which weather/economics permitting will be end of September time.

I avoid claims that returning to Dartmoor amounts to repetition, at least to myself, by exploring different areas of Dartmoor and different facets of it while there.

This time it was the area around Ivybridge and Princetown with special interest in mining activity.  Previous visits have been to more interested in prehistory around Tavistock region of the moor.

There is a balancing act to this repetition avoidance thing.  To broad a definition of a subject and everything is repetition, walking for days on end is repetition perfected.  Too sub-divide too much, and nothing is repetition because each step has a unique nature about it.  So like everything a sane balance has to be struck.  At what point you consider you have attained sanity will determine exactly how sane others will judge you.

Modern society with all its "freedoms" seems to be ever stricter concerning the amount of personal leeway it gives its citizens.  Perhaps the way in which we live our internalised lives is freer than it was, or it might not be, but there does seem to be a march towards outward uniformity in which we all have to be wearing the right sort of shellsuits to not be stared at.  This weeks fashion is not next weeks.

I am drifting off course, its another topic for another day.

Dartmoor fills my imagination and exerts and almost tidal force upon me.  Earliest impression of the place being Hound of the Baskervilles.  It’s a place as easy to picture in black and white as easy as colour thanks to the movies.

On a short walk a person can pretty much navigate through human history, or at least from the point at which we started altering our environment.  Rude huts, carefully constructed graves, complex “ceremonial” sites, vast land management schemes from pagan past vie for attention with Christian crosses and the broken remains of considerable industry.

The man made s tuff pails to what nature has sculpted over the millennia.  Bleak, bleak moor where the unwary can still feel the thrill of fear, will the Dartmoor mist roll in?  Will you end up neck deep in a bog?  Towering impossibly balanced granite tors, seemingly timeless, but you know time has worn them, and continues to do so.  No man made construction is so daring.

Dartmoor needs a dog, not exactly a fiery eyed hell hound but a Yorkshire Terrier.  He has a low carbon footprint and is ecologically sound.  If needed 20miles a day, every day is within his scope.  It’s not going to be needed, because 20 Dartmoor miles is outside of my scope.  This is a place I wander, inspect, consider, it’s not an A to B route march.

Dog Number Two was going solo.  Dog Number One having got to an age when pipe and slippers was more his thing.  Dog Number Three was still to young to go.

Dog 1 had taught Dog 2 everything he could in a previous trip to Dartmoor, time to apply the lessons.

This time, wild camping was also on the agenda, again something new.  Getting closer to the moor itself (and saving a few quid in the process, it never hurts)

There were a number of concerns with regard this.
The first being will the dog escape the bivvy bag at night.  Tests at home had been conducted and the hound did not mind sleeping in the bag but there had been occasion to wake up early in the morning on a cold floor to find the dog had got out and taken the more comfortable option of the sofa.

The second more mundane, could I park the car safe and sound.

The third, I should have taken more consideration off, the sheer damn weight of the rucksack.

Weeks before returning to Dartmoor I began getting into moor shape.   I am relatively fit but my life is lived on a flat plain, my legs are simply not used to the ups and downs of an undulating existence.  The first few days are a culture shock and so getting into shape is about reducing the shock to a minimum.  I was also aware everything I required was going to be on my back.  Previous visits had been with daybag which had eventually been  reduced to a packet of peanuts and a couple of litres of water, along with dog biscuit.

My initial rucksack had failed to hold all the necessary, rather than think harder I took the easy option and dusted off the 75L bag from days gone by when my stupidity was at least counterbalanced by a younger more driven self.

Ego plays a part here, "I have still got it" and if I hadn't I was prepared to half kill myself trying at least to prove I had.  The rucksack bulged, I hefted it onto my back a few times.  I idly mused how this might work out in the wilds but I was more concerned with not breaking my wrists at the time.

All thoughts of "lightweight" had rather gone out the window because of the new challenges of keeping the dog in the bivvy and the need to be "comfortable" on the moor.

As the time approached I was as fit as boredom with cycling and running was going to allow.  Fit for fitness sake does not interest me at all, fit for a purpose is my only motivation.  There are only so many miles you can do on a static exercise cycle and only so many times you can run the same mile loop, the spectre of repetition looms.

The day was fast approaching and the myriad ways my venture could be defeated added more to packweight, the "just in case" weight.

Next time will see me driving down there and taking my first shaky steps on the moor itself.

Technorati links: walking hiking dartmoor national park wilderness

Walking in blogland.

You cannot fail but warm to a chap that describes himself in terms we can all understand.

Mike Knipe forgets jokes just at the point of delivering the punchline and combines this with a potential weakness for too much pie and beer.  His woes do not stop there, apparently he is a Yorkshireman born in Lancashire.

I follow a great many blogs covering an almost endless range of walking/hiking exotica.  People live on mountains for a year, others do feats so far never done in human endeavour.  A good many can tell you about the relative weights of waterproof bags.

All this is beyond my physicality or my mental capacity but Mike is pitched just right.

Currently he is describing a sectional walk along the Hadrian's Wall.  This I can relate too, even have pretention of one day doing it myself.

He even uses the word repetition in a bit about the Brecon Beacons (I have an idle plan to go to the Brecon Beacons later this year).

Not wishing to put the chap down, but I can relate to him.

All this means Northern Pies is very much a fixture on my google reader.

On Thin Ice.

BBC 2, Sunday 21:00

Polar regions have a fascination for me.  The environment is so bleak and alien it's difficult not be fascinated.  Add to that a layer of British boys own adventure from the heroic age of exploration and it's all over bar the shouting for me.

So I was anticipating greatly this series charting the efforts of Ben Fogle and James Cracknell in the first ever race to the Pole.

I am not a fan of celebrity adventurers and when these two suggested Gordon Ramsey as their 3rd team member the program looked like it was heading South a hell of a lot faster than expected.

Fortunately the foul mouthed boiler of eggs was in far too much of a social whirl to plod to the pole (only 1 day off that year, which I can now reveal is not so he can attend my birthday).  There might have been some amusement in watching him suffer, but unless he regularly fell through the ice it would not have been compensation enough.

As the episodes progressed the sheer misfortune of Ben Fogle unfolded in front of us.

Now I have always considered this chap a bit too foppish but that is to do the fellow serious dis-service.  He is made of British steel in an old fashioned way.

Flesh eating diseases seemed like a pretty major blow and the cure was only marginally less likely to kill him than the disease.  Missing out on vital training the chap kept his chin up, even if there is a distinct lack of stiff upper lip about him, Ben blubbing seems to be a stock feature of his pieces to camera.

Then his wife miscarried.  Devastating stuff really, but Ben kept his eyes on the goal originally set.

He clearly must have had serious misgivings and doubts about this venture, its not a place to go underprepared or with too many thoughts elsewhere but the team must have been relying on him to some extent to keep his end up, and so he has.

At the end of Episode 4 the teams have yet to actually get to the start line.

Call me a cynic but there is not a lot of the series left for our lads to get to the Pole victorious.  Methinks there might be some noble failure in the air.

Psychogeography

Words: Will Self
Picures: Ralph Steadman

I have enjoyed the wit of Will Self (a link is worth 1000 words)  for years.  He seems to have a unique turn of phrase and a great comic timing.

Lurching into the public eye because of his taking of hard drugs on John Major’s campaign bus (points for style right there).

He is not everyone’s cup of tea.

Psychogeography might need some explanation so follow the link. Self is the one author I read which can still send me to dictionary corner (a comment on me, or authors?)

The book itself is a collection of the best bits of his column in The Independent with a story of his walk to New York leading us into it.

I had to read the book because when flicking through the internet, as I do, it transpired Will Self walked The Essex Way.

The man really does find walking appealing, although in this book it is largely an urban pursuit for him (given the title of the book and its central premise it’s what you should expect).

More than once this was laugh out loud funny, “Kate Moss or Moss?” I found difficult to get through, reading some of the lines for a fourth or fifth time I was still cackling with glee.

I simply zoomed through the book, the chapters so short because of the original format that it was almost impossible to stop turning the pages.

I do not think it is possible to look at the world in the same way having read this book.

Maybe it will help fill my head with a more positive outlook when forced to wander the urban landscape.

I might even try urban walking as pleasure, in which case this book would become a gateway to a whole new world for me.

I wonder.

Anyway here is the book on Amazon, or do as I tend to do, support your local library.

Repetition.

For a long time now I have had to live with the realisation life is too short.  Indeed it is too short for just about anything.  This first entered my consciousness in regard books.  There are far more books I wish to read than I have time left to read them.  This goes hand in hand with the fact there are books I will have wanted to read but never even heard off.

What is worse?

Failing to read a book you know existed or, failing to read a book you never knew existed?
Clearly you cannot be held accountable for not acting on something you had no knowledge of, but there is a sadness all of its own that you never even knew it was there.

This runs through everything though, there are more films than I am going to have time to see.  Basically more experiences and knowledge than ever I can hope to cram into my head.
"Live everyday as if it was your last" is something said often, but its ludicrous, live your life like it is your last that's more important.  Each day is precious and it should have got you closer to some goal you cherish.

However there is a flipside to this.
 
Some activities are just so good, despite the fact you know there are alternatives yet explored you go back to the same paths trodden.

A perfect example was the meeting I had the other day with another walker.  Usual greetings exchanged and then "Going far?" "Not far, just got 4 hours between things to do a bit of walking, the only 4 hours I will get this week"  Knowing nods are exchanged.  Then he says, "I love hill walking though, this place is a bit flat for me...The Dales, thats for me".

I say "Dartmoor, that's my place to be".
"I've not been to Dartmoor" he says, its a place I want to visit.
"I've not been to the Dales, its a place I want to visit"
 
We both agree Scotland is a place we both wish to visit, but the two day drive there and 2 days back means the actual foot time in Scotland is not going to be enough.

And then the truth of it is out, we both go to the places we know we like because time is too short to go to a place we don't know if we are going to like.  There is only so much foot time you get a year (or only so much you give yourself with all the other stuff you claim needs to be done, but when you look back on it, looks like a total waste of time and effort).

But to return to a place you know because you like it means you just don't give yourself a chance to like something better.  The worst that can really happen is you experience something you like a bit less.

Unless you set yourself the task of walking over broken glass in bare feet, walking is essentially walking.

If this chap likes the Dales more than anything else why on earth shouldn't I.  There is clearly something to appreciate here.

The lure of what you know is so strong it can over-ride almost everything else however mundane or quantum the leap in experience is going to be.  There is something within our makeup that constrains us.

Just think how many people go to the same holiday destination year in and year out.  I know plenty of people that go to the same holiday destination their parents went too for gawd sake.
I am going to break out of that pattern as frequently as possible.  Sure the lure of comfort/pleasure known will outweigh the unknown plenty of times but the desire to explore and sense something knew should be encouraged within yourself before your on your deathbed looking back on a series of years which are at best interchangeable with one another.

Expedition Africa

A bold recreation of HM Stanley’s traipse through Africa in search of Dr Livingstone.  History Channel, Thursday 21:00
3 Americans and 1 Brit.
3 Chaps 1 girl
3 experienced adventurers 1 novice.
3 sane 1 idiot.
Interestingly each person in the group gets to be the minority instance only once.
I was looking forward to this mightily having read a good deal about Stanley after my non-classical education had left me lacking in things interesting to think about.

The Brit is perhaps my favourite explorer, Benedict Allen.  The Mr Magoo of exploration, he just “keeps it real” and I mean both as complements.   He was my first introduction to “alpine style” TV exploration.  Just him and a camera at arms length, Les Stroud perhaps being the more well known, but he approaches things in a different manner.

Benedict Allen is more a writer of books who happens to have a camera.  His explorations are often calamitous, rocketing to popular fame by eating his dog in one particularly unfortunate expedition.

I remember reading/hearing his publicist gets the blame for the Indiana Jones hat which seems to be welded to his head, but our Benedict seems to spend far too much time in it for a mere publicity stunt.

The 4 team members are well chosen (if you want conflict and probably in today’s TV it’s exactly what they want).

Pasquale is the nominal leader.  He will not fail to remind you he is the leader at every opportunity in that peculiar way of mouthing words he has, his upper lip goes up and down like a portcullis.

Benedict and Pasquale are always at loggerheads.  Perhaps it is because I am English I side with Benedict here.  If you are crossing an arid wasteland zooming ahead and losing sight of your water supply being carried by a rather dodgy looking donkey does not seem a good plan of action.

For Pasquale it seems the donkey and water are just distractions from the real business of getting from A to B as fast as possible and if a few people die of heat stroke along the way and the rest die of dehydration it’s but a small price to pay for such ripping speed.
In the latest episode the team of 4 have rather split into 2 teams of 2.

Pasquale has a supporter in the shape of an American journalist who has very little experience in such adventure.  A rather painful character that has over-identified with the native porters (these people with heavy bundles on their heads are the actual backbone of the expedition, this is no lightweight jaunt, this is siege mode travel).

Whenever this journo opens his maw something along the lines of “We have to consider the porters” drops out.

Often though the word “me” would appear to be interchangeable with the word “porter”.  The whole porter thing seems to be something by which he projects his own anxiety.

With Benedict is the woman in the team.  She brings increased ratings and presumably woman-le-ness to proceedings.  She is an expert on things creepy-crawly which so far has limited her to saying “watch out that snake is poisonous”.  I certainly would need an expert to point this out to me otherwise its possible to confuse it with the other sort of snake you run up to and hug affectionately.

Part Six is coming up tonight, Benedict is going to have a brush with Malaria, this puts the whole project in jeopardy in more ways than one.

Tutor Influence 2.

Country dancing was on the school agenda. Not a manly pursuit, for one thing, girls were involved.

Girls very much being a quite separate species and exactly what they were doing on the planet was a puzzle, they were somehow related to your mother but how that worked was unclear.
I was not anti-girl, I sat next to one in class (Rachel) and read her copy of Bunty
(which Wiki informs me is a comic no more, along with an alarming quantity of titles I remember enjoying. They say life is just one long lesson in loss).

Thankfully a kindly teacher had organised an escape route for all sane thinking chaps with an aversion to dancing. Chess club.

This was more like it, hand to hand combat over 64 brown and white squares. A severe beating in a game of chess could scar a chap for life.

I don't really remember much formal tuition, but there must have been some coz I learnt how the pieces moved about the board and in what sort of order they should be moved. Given we were all about 7 that was no mean feat for the teacher.

Eventually I would play top board on school chess teams, right up to Uni.

Cries of "I could have been a contender" but girls/beer/life were catching up with me fast and would eventually turn my head with various siren songs.

That is all in the future, back to the little lad chuckling to himself in the room next to the country dancing hall. I could hear the teacher giving the school piano a healthy workout and the herd of classmates stamping on one another's toes and tying each other in complex knots.

Some of those chess pieces were a bit amorphous having lost various lumps which may or may not be vital to initial identification. The pieces were wooden and lovely to behold.

The one bit of advice I remember the teacher imparting was, "find a move and then look for a better one".

It is as good a bit of advice as you can get in life.

Saving my world one Kwh at a time.

Just lately I have been on a re-examination of electricity consumption. Done all the usual stuff, as the traditional bulbs have blown more energy efficient ones have been put in. It made me feel all warm and cozy saving the planet.

But recently it struck me just how much stuff is left "on" when it actually is not benefiting me at all. I am not even in the room, the TV and DVD is working away, the lights are on, the computer running.

I walk into another room, settle in front of that TV (if you get the impression I am some sort of luddite shunning the modern world dismiss that thought now).

This isnt standby stuff, this is on stuff.

So just recently an effort to religiously switch off items as I leave the room has overcome me and its had a number of effects.

Firstly, my sanctimonious score has risen, I am saving even more of the planet now.

My electricity bill will be falling which is no bad thing, but they will shove the price up again soon enough to combat this drop in revenue I don't doubt.

But the most surprising thing is how it has actually affected my habits.

No longer do I throw myself into a chair and stare at the TV, coz its on (its always on) but now I have to make an active decision to put it on.

There is no planet saving thinking about the decision, nor cost cutting. My efforts to save the planet mean absolutely nothing, the industrialisation of China and the sub-continent is going to make our current efforts to destroy/save the planet so much pissing in the wind.

Cutting the electricity bill means nothing, its pennies being saved, I've always been able to afford it, I will continue to be able to afford it.

What has really happened is "Is there anything on TV that is worth watching?" is a question being asked seriously for almost the first time. If I cannot think of anything then it does not get switched on.

So often over the last year or so I have had to admit the TV is on 24/7 but I am never actually watching anything, or if I am, its stuff I have seen before.

Indeed the Wimbeldon fortnight was a form of visual torture. I watch it because it is a sporting event but when it is over I am so glad that banal activity is over.

There might be about 5 hours of TV (beyond my beloved sport) which I will watch in a week and maybe an hour of that is adverts I cut out by pre-recording everything.

I have discovered the TV is like being at a party where people just basically talk to you constantly about stuff you barely have an interest in without letting you get a word in edge-wise. Its worse, the TV does not even acknowledge your existence.

I am of the generation that first grew up with TV, its been a constant companion, a great educator at its best but something akin to a brain rotting drug at its worse.

That on/off switch has cut down the signal to noise ratio of the idiot box beyond any measure I would have imagined. Its given my ears a rest and me time to think for myself.

Ashes - Test One.

Its taken a few days to actually recover from the stress of it all. They describe war as hours of boredom and seconds of terror. The first test qualifies as war on that definition.

It seemed to be days of total inactivity. Englands recovery from a poor start in the first innings seemed to have achieved a decent enough score.

The Australians seemed to make little headway in the run chase on the second day, but equally our bowlers seem to give their batsman no concerns.

It looked to be a tedious pitch growing more tedious by day 3 and then it all started to go horribly wrong.

Australia mounted the sort of score which meant a draw was the best option for England.

Still that was no worry, the pitch was clearly a batting paradise, the Aus were making it look easy.

How many times over how many years have I started stupified at the screen when it comes to Englands turn to put on a performance. Suddenly this batsman's pitch had untold demons in it. Wickets fair cascaded.

Oh blessed rain, I'd be happy if it rained for the next two days if it meant a draw.

This was not too be. England were going to have to get this most tedious of results by their own skill.

Collingwood stood like a rock against the Aus mighty tide while the rest of the top order were quite honestly crap.

When Collingwood got out by the most unfair of catches (the chap deserved better) Monty was "the hope of his side".

We were well and truly sunk. Monty, bless him, is not a chap to put a wager on to survive six balls, let alone 60 odd.

However ball by ball, moment by moment, the impossible was happening. The crowd cheered every ball that failed to get a wicket. The hands of the clock crept towards the magic minute which would leave Aus no time to fight back.

The tension was hideous, every ball was going to be the one that knocked over the stumps, but Anderson and Monty showed batting skills some of the top order better start developing if we have any hope of winning this series.

The most incredible of draws was eeked out in front of my disbelieving eyes.

And a tedious test match was elevated into something incredible by a few hours of desperate play. We have survived the technical whitewash of 5-0 at least.

Off to Lords, not a ground filled with happy English wins. We need to play a hell of a lot better to give ourselves any chance of victory.

Essex Way Part One. Great Oakley to Bradfield

Next:

Walking the Essex Way Part Two Bradfield to Dedham

Looking back:

Walking the Essex Way, the motivation and the plan.

I am going to start at the Harwich end.

On the other two occasions I started at the Epping end, and I did not want to repeat that.

Actually I missed the real end of the trail. I have no desire to walk through Harwich. I know what an economically depressed town looks like. Its easy to conjure up images of trainers and baseball caps, fat fools in jogging pants and hard faced youth giving you "the stare". All very boring, I will leave them with the stink of territorial pissings in their nostrils.

So I started off a few kilometres from this point. As it is not a sea to sea route there is no real motivation to bother with the last bit, unless you are a stickler for "finishing".

So Ramsey is my start point. Its a small village where the pavement is barely a curbstone wide but soon all that is left behind and we are in fields.

A windmill is what catches the eye here. It retains its sail but they dont look to be functional. Its still good to see the old gentleman though, not so many left really. It reminded me somewhat of the Norfolk Broads where you do still see the shells of so many pump houses.

Across some fields and paddocks we go. I idly wonder if the owner did have to pile all that horse dung right by the stile. Given the answer is almost certainly no, it seemed a bit of a cheek.

Past a broken down barn, is it really the last remnant of the farm marked on the OS map? No other building is in evidence and the pond is now so weed choked you could miss it.

It is clearly reaching the end of a long lifespan and nobody has cared enough to tend it for considerable time. Not wishing to dwell on such things I take the picture, hope it has more life in it than it would appear and move on.

There are a couple of wooded areas up ahead but despite there being perfectly adaquate footpaths through them the EW studiously avoids them, and so avoids walking through the woods. It prefers the coastal setting of the River Stour.

Thats fine, the trees are only a few yards away and the views across the Stour are really wonderful. Coastal erosion is a factor all along this stretch, its a fact of life in this area.

The EW is nicely signposted and easy to follow. There are more trees than the OS map leads one to believe, all fine by me.

Especially so this day as a couple of times the clouds unzipped and the water just fell out of the sky.

The modern EW trail sign is a Poppy, and there are certainly a good many of the real thing to be seen along the walk. The Poppy seems to have made something of a comeback in farmers fields over the last decade or more, a change in pesticides perhaps.

After 2 km or so of walking along the shoreline you turn inland, due in part because of coastal erosion and head to Wrabness .

This is not so much a place as a name on the map. Its certainly a village, but village "life" maybe not. Its a long time since I have been here, came by boat once, a lifetime ago.

Beside the church is a large barn of a building being held together by plastic sheeting by the look of it. A real mess. This is Wrabness Hall and it is the place you plant a tree in memory of a recently departed loved one. I presume this venture is linked with Remembrance Wood the EW skirts as it continues its way westward.

Strolling through the nature reserve nearby my memory was jogged as to a secondary purpose of this walk, butterflies.

One can do these walks in a mindset of tunnel vision, the destination being the only reason to begin. To snap myself out of this mindset a simple task.

To take a picture of as many different butterfly species as possible as I stroll along.

A good deal easier said than done, there are butterflies in profusion, but getting them to pose for the camera is no easy task at all.

It could be anything really just to make you aware of ones surroundings more, naturally while stalking butterfly you see a lot of other things you would normally charge by. It just adds another element to a walk.

Soon we are back on the coastal element. And by the look of things actually on a high tide mark of it. Although prolly a storm tide or the very least a spring tide. This is a place for bird watchers. I know nothing about birds, so strolled on wishing I knew more.

Turning back inland, the path was making its way towards the village of Bradfield, under the railway bridge we went and through a field of peas.

A field of peas is something of a novelty as far as I am concerned. Oil seedrape, barely, wheat, potato, beets, all common fair, peas are a little out of the ordinary. It made a pleasant change.

Bradfield attained, it was time to head back. Some 20km round trip will have been done, and its a fine start.

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