September 2015 part 1

And so we arrive at September….

It was a busy old month. The early part of it was lined up for a couple of day’s hike and wild camp along the Southwest Coastal Path (this was the hike with HBX that got postponed from August).

We planned to drive down to Swanage, park the car and then get the bus back up to Poole harbour to pick up the start of the path. We reckoned that over the space of a couple of days we could make it down to Lulworth Cove before getting the coastal bus back to Swanage.

However.

After executing the first part of the plan flawlessly (driving to Swanage, via the glass & chrome monument to money that is Sandbanks, and parking the car) we hit our first stumbling block. Delivered in charming fashion by a cheerful pensioner at the bus stop in Swanage, she told us of 2 issues with our plan:

A) The MoD firing ranges at Lulworth would be closed to the public for live firing exercises. We needed to cross them towards theend of our route, so this translating to a circa 8 mile detour before hitting the Cove.

B) The coastal bus wasn’t running.

Bugger. She smiled the smile of an old lady who still knows a thing or two, we thanked her, got on the bus and rejigged plans. New plan: Walk as far as the ranges, turn round, walk back. Not ideal, but when your coastal path is a coastal path you’re pretty well directionally limited to ‘forwards’ or ‘back’.

The bus ride back up to Poole trundled along without incident and we ambled down to the start point near the chain ferry. The first part of the route runs along the beach so I spent the first few miles hiking barefoot through the ebb and flow of the sea, boots dangling from my pack. The sun shone and it was glorious.

After a pretty short walk we had to stop and wait whilst an air ambulance landed on the beach to pick up some unfortunate soul. As we waited the realisation dawned that we were midway across a nudist beach. The commotion from the helicopter piqued the interest of our fellow beach dwellers and they started appearing in the dunes like naked wrinkly meerkats. I wouldn’t say it was a particularly scientific study, but based on that day’s observations I would put the average age of a south coast naturist at about 60.

If you look closely you can just see the chopper (fnarr).

We walked on. Eventually the beach ran out and we climbed to the top of the cliffs. At Old Harry’s Rocks we sat for a while and watched dogs and schoolchildren get alarmingly close to cliff edges, before setting off towards Swanage (again). More cliffs and prickly bushes came and went before we descended down to another beach and a short walk into the town to find fish and chips and water.

After eating we pressed on again, past lighthouses and climbed through woods (the woods eliciting such a moan-fest from HBX that I briefly considered pushing him into the sea at the next opportunity). Eventually we cleared the woods and emerged into the last of the day’s sunshine. It was low on the horizon, making the sea glitter hypnotically and generally making everything right with the world.

As the light started to fade we started looking for a good spot to camp. After a short clamber down a bit of a ridge to a small plateau in the cliff we found our room for the night.That’s HBX rifling through my tent for food.

We sat on a big rock with whisky & hot chocolate and watched the lights on the shipping moving across the horizon before calling it a day.

After a night punctuated by owls, rabbits and snoring the sun rose to this

That’s our ship-spotting-whisky-and-hot-chocolate-drinking rock.

We carried on for a few more miles stopping off several miles short of our intended destination at a ruined military emplacement to eat lunch before heading back the way we came.

So, coastal paths. The views are amazing but I love the mountains more. For a start there’s more than oneroute to most destinations. There’s less nudists too.

August 2015

Alternatively – two hikes and a jolly.

Some time ago The Boy Wonder joined the Scouts (he’s a Cub at the minute) and had, earlier in the year, been on his first weekend camp. He enjoyed it hugely (I know this because he told me so during a very stinky journey home when I collected him), so we hatched a plan to go hiking and camping on our own. I thought that August would be a good bet so that we had a chance with the weather.

So, according to the rules, we found ourselves pitching a tent in The Peak District in torrential rain one Saturday evening in August. I can confirm that a wildly enthusiastic 9 year old does not speed up setting camp. On the plus side, the constant tripping over guylines was a never-gets-old source of amusement.

Once everything was sorted we headed off on a short, rainy walk to the nearest pub to get some food before heading back for hot chocolate and sleep.

The following morning dawned to surprisingly clear skies and I got a breakfast of eggs & bacon going whilst we planned our route – as it was TBW’s first proper hike I thought it best to keep it relatively short with plenty of opt-out routes. A short walk across the Edale valley and up Mam Tor, along the ridge to Hollins Cross, before heading back to the car and home.

As we started to pack the tent away the heavens opened and before we’d even set foot on a hill we were soaked. I asked if he wanted to carry on or just head home in the car. I was quite surprised, but we headed up the hills into the rain. He had an absolute hoot and so did I. Here’s a pic of him hooting.

You’ll note in his right hand a mini babybel cheese. This was his last piece of food and we were only an hour or so in at this point, after I’d made the mistake of getting him to carry his own lunch. I think we both learnt a lesson there.

A week or so later I was due to be heading off to tackle part of the coastal path in Devon with the HBX, but he had to call it off at the last minute so I decided to return to Edale, on my own, to tackle the full Edale Skyline Route. By this time the weather had improved, the heather was in full flower(?) and it was glorious.

I was planning to wild camp up near Brown Knoll but due to equipment issues and general ineptitude on my part I ended up slogging through peat bogs in fading light in order to get back off the hill. Fun it was not and sweary I was. Very sweary. Never has a man been so pleased to see Jacobs ladder.

A few weeks later I was heading north again with Mrs A for a weekend in Harrogate at a very swish hotel called West Park, on a cheeky weekend deal that Mrs A had ferreted out. The hotel itself was a really nice boutique affair (part of a small chain, but very very nice) and the deal was great. We arrived on the Sunday and the deal for Sunday was this: Spend £100 or more on dinner in the restaurant and the room is free. The bill can include drinks.

Challenge accepted.

After starters, a very nice steak for me, a good risotto for Mrs A, a really nice bottle of wine and a couple of desserts the bill came in at just over the magic £100. Which is a good thing as we couldn’t have eaten another thing. The meal was even more entertaining as we had a the most obnoxious bloke sitting on the next table and sharing his views on the world at top volume.

The next day we went out for a wander around Harrogate, which we loved. The sun shone and we walked for miles, it was ace. As lunchtime rolled around I was thinking ‘pub’. Mrs A was thinking ‘Betty’s’ and after a half hour queuing and sitting watching crumblies eat cake, we were served with two legendary Fat Rascals.

The Fat Rascal has been served at Betty’s since the year dot and is something of an icon. It is also, unless we were unlucky enough to pick the afternoon when they let the work experience boy have a go with the oven, crap.

Having been suitably mugged we wandered through some more parks which cheered me up mightily before returning to the hotel to take advantage of Monday night’s deal. Free cocktails.

This was ace. None of your “here’s-the-cocktail-menu-you-can-only-have-one-of-the-crap-ones” restrictions with these boys and girls, oh no. Any cocktail from the extensive menu was fair game.

That’s Mrs A with a Pornstar Martini. Mine was a Smokey Old Fashioned which I thoroughly recommend if you ever get the chance.

After the drinks we headed of into the town to find some dinner (considerably cheaper than the previous night’s food) and stopped off on the way back to the hotel at a boozer that had been renamed as Nobb’s Retreat. It had, apparently, been the local of David Nobbs who was the writer of (amongst other things) Reggie Perrin.

Apparently he’d died a couple of weeks earlier and the whole pub had been decked out in memory.

The following day we headed home via York, which was not as nice as I remembered it being. Perhaps it was just that Harrogate had been so good.

July 2015

July was a good month.

We arrived back to sunshine and a lack of the 6am alarm. Early doors in the month was sports day for TBW, I arrived in plenty of time and mooched around waiting for the athletes to appear. I’d learnt my lesson from last year’s experience and had been deliberately cagey about the parents race. Imagine my joy when I spotted my name on the whiteboard (clearly TBW had a plan, mine was first on the list). As the afternoon wore on someone had added Usain Bolt (didn’t see him myself but I suppose he moves pretty fast). Later, odds were added. I’d been listed at 5/1 so I took that as a compliment.

There was a tree in the garden that needed removing in order to make room for a shed and as our eldest daughter was home for a couple of weeks she offered to help. Here she is. Helping.

There was no need to climb the tree, I just wanted to see if she could. There’s an access to the neighbour’s house that runs just behind the fence. Next door’s youngest (who is TBW’s bestest mate in the whole wide world) was wandering past and stopped to say hello. This is how the conversation went:

TBW’s mate – “Hello”
L –  – “Hello”
“Why are you in a tree?”
“Mr A bet me a biscuit that I couldn’t”
“Oh. Ok.”

I’m not really sure what to make of just how easily he accepted the frankly ridiculous explanation of how a 24 year old primary school teacher came to be talking to him from halfway up a tree.

I also got bitten pretty hard by the mountain bug again. My self and my Hiking Buddy eXtraordinaire had been plotting a trip for a very long time and finally the planets aligned and we found ourselves in the shadow of Scafell Pike on a gloriously sunny day. It was as close to a perfect day in the mountains as I’ve had, sunshine and crags and views all coming together on God’s big checklist.

After we’d got back down in one piece (something I usually insist upon), we headed off to the campsite for my first night under canvas in *ahem* years. I wasn’t sure how that’d go, given the several addition years of wear and tear on me since the last time I’d spent a night with only a thin layer of foam and down between my arse and the grass. I was expecting the worst but wanted to see how things went as a precursor to persuading HBX to go for a full-on wild camp hike in the future.

We set up the tents while the beers cooled in a small river just behind us, sat down and planned the next day’s route (Haystacks, one of Wainwright’s favourites) before heading off to a nearby pub for another beer and a burger. The burger was rare, just as I like them. Cue ominous music soundtrack.

The next day, after a surprisingly good night’s sleep, I woke early and got breakfast on the go. HBX appeared, we ate and packed. I started to feel rough and then started with the vomiting.I continued with the vomiting on the drive to Haystacks and eventually, in the carpark at the foot of the mountain, dehydrated and shaky, I had to admit defeat. HBX offered to call off the hike and head home but I told him I’d just wait in the car.

He disappeared into the wilds and I threw up again before falling asleep in the car, waking several hours later to find the car surrounded by sheep. I have no photographic evidence of this so it may have been a hallucination. We drove home. I ate a pie.

Mrs A and I also went to see Kevin Bridges at a local(ish) venue. We’d been to see him before in Nottingham, just as he was starting to hit the big time and he was hilarious. We had high hopes.

The gig started really well and there was a bit of good natured and quite funny heckling from the audience, but this seemed to really throw him off his stride. Self doubt crept in and the gig went downhill rapidly. It was a real shame.

Also, I bought an old apothecary jar that I was intending to use as a whisky decanter. Through a combination of stupidity and physics, I managed to convert it to this whilst cleaning it, by means of explosion:

The flying glass took chunks out of the plaster, dented the spaghetti tin on the other side of the kitchen, sliced a nice neat hole in my T-shirt and put a dent in Mrs A’s beloved Smeg fridge. I was not popular but miraculously uninjured.

June 2015

Last June was a month of high drama.

The incredibly lucrative (but infuriatingly bonkers) consultancy gig that I’d been embroiled in since the previous October came to a rather abrupt, if not entirely unexpected end. A major rejig meant that there were going to be staff redundancies so if course anyone subcontracted had to go.

The plus point of this was that I got chance to get the flat finished. I’d been busy refitting a run down old place whilst trying to put in a full week at the WTF factory and it had been tough. The last few licks of paint went on, the carpets went down and Mrs A made it look like a showflat, using all the best stuff from our home (our place looked like the syle burglars had been through the place).

We made a run for the sunshine.

A couple of weeks in at the villa put the world into perspective and the waiting for a buyer game began.

Voyage

Back in May Mrs A and I took TBW over to Brittany to add France to his list of countries. We’d decided to drive as we we staying in a chalet (read big caravan) on a child-oriented site in the wilds of Dol-de -Bretagne. As the ferry crossing was an early morning affair we spent the first night in a Southampton Travelodge learning just how noisily a nine year old can sleep.

The following day we set off (adults knackered, child well rested) for a nice easy crossing and a couple of hours driving on beautifully quiet French roads. In an unusually forward planning manoeuvre we ferreted out an ace supermarket (Super-U, fact fans) just up the road from the campsite that stocked live crabs (fascinating for TBW), an ace wine aisle or 5 (for Mrs A and I) and a bewildering array of stinky cheese (for me). We loaded up on everything except the shellfish and headed off to check in.

We arrived at the site 10 minutes later and after a further four hours we were still not in our chalet (caravan). The cheese got stinkier as time passed.

Eventually, after haranguing and cajoling we were finally in, the cheese was safely left outside in the barbecue to limit the stink, the wine was chilling in the fridge and the boy was in bed.

The week passed in a blur of moulin rouge style “children’s” cabaret (this is not a joke – evidence below), beaches, castles and further disinterest from staff at the campsite about many tedious problems. Eventually it was time to come home and after a long and fraught journey we were all glad to be back.

We loved Brittany and will almost certainly be back at some point. It will almost certainly not be in a chalet (caravan).

u

u

Heath Robinson

Here we go again.

Depending on how this particular phase of “trying to get the interwebz to bend to my will” activity goes you may well see this on two blogging platforms:

Blogger, my spiritual home and haunt of a number of good friends (but slowly being ignored-to-death by Google)
http://ift.tt/22S6jG8

And the shiny, updated and mobile-world friendly but not quite home WordPress platform
http://ift.tt/1TLF0aq

Hopefully both, possibly neither.

If it’s successful, future posts will be in stereo (and there’s a bucket full of postdated travel posts looming). If not I will fight with the blogger app and stay at home on blogger.

We shall see…..

NDC

Breaking The Surface

Well well well...Friday 13th March was lucky for the world at large, as it was the last time I posted. There's been a huge amount of stuff that has happened in the meantime and I have been a busy, busy boy.

This is my excuse and I am sticking to it. Shut yer face.

Anyway, in order to try and grab a few of the salient moments that have been and gone, heres a bunch of photos....

NDC