Outdoor Discoveries

A busy spring

The continuing non-availability of Northern train services on Saturdays due to industrial action became such a source of personal confinement that their restoration produced such a dramatic effect. From February until now, I have been away most weekends making use of the increased opportunities for train travel. The promising weather helped too even if it meant that water supplies were not getting replenished as required after last summer’s extended spell of hot and dry weather.

The result was that Yorkshire got a lot of attention throughout February and March. It started with a visit to the North York Moors on a sunny day in February that felt more like summer than the actual time of year. Roseberry Topping was revisited as well as nearby hills as I traced out part of the Cleveland Way on a circuit centred on Great Ayton’s Train station.

Other circuits were followed by train as dictated by the extent of day ranger ticket areas. Two of these took me between Leeds and Carlisle so it might have been inevitable that I ended up getting ideas for walking outings as a result. The departure point for such attentions was Settle since I had not passed Attermire Scar or visited Malham and its nearby tarn for far too long. Sunshine may not have been in ample supply through my walking rounds so another trip to Malham Cove cannot be ruled out and it could see me going to Skipton on foot as well. There were two outings in total and there already is another in mind.

It has been a spring full of city visitations too. In the north of England, the tally included Newcastle, Leeds and Sheffield and Scottish cities like Edinburgh and Stirling got their share of attention too and there even was a trip to Cardiff for some wandering by the River Taff. More will be written about these below while Newcastle saw more wandering than other northern cities as I pottered along by the River Tyne on the way to Wallend using part of Hadrian’s Wall Path. That again was a quieter stroll and there was much to savour on a journey from a city centre to greener parts of its suburbs.

An elongated Easter weekend allowed for a longer stay in Edinburgh that has been in mind for some time and there was a truncated effort in 2017. 2019 saw no such intrusions so I was there from Holy Thursday through to Easter Tuesday as planned. That allowed for a lot of city rambling and there there were two visits to Linlithgow. Hill wanadering featured too and days were spent among the Pentland Hills and doing a round of the hills encircling Glen Sax. Along the reminisces and silly daydreams entered my mind but the time spent around a city where I spent part of my university years also became a chance to deal with any episodes of unfulfilled promise that returned to haunt me.

When I moved away from Edinburgh in 2000, there may have been an element of unfinished business that drew me back again and again to somewhere for which I still hold much affection. The 2019 version of the same was a suboptimally composed photo on Calton Hill so I returned on the Mayday bank holiday weekend to set that to rights. Other sights like the city’s botanic gardens and Costorphine Hill Local Nature Reserve were frequented too and the latter featured on another visit during the following weekend.

Though I was bound for Stirling, a stopover in Edinburgh did allow me to revisit the Royal Mile and Costorphine Hill in good sunshine for the sake of a little closure of what was becoming like an Edinburgh trilogy. Stirling saw plenty of sauntering with photographic pursuits in mind but the prospect of a walk among the nearby Ochill Hills remains outstanding so that could be another excuse to go back up there again.

After all those weekend forays elsewhere, it now feels as if some quiet time at home is in order and that pervaded the Spring Bank Holiday weekend aside from the aforementioned day trip to Cardiff. Others making the same journey had the attendance of a Spice Girls concert in mind but designs were far more demure as I avoided bands of cyclists to amble by the River Taff to take in the spring foliage on trees around Bute Park and Llandaff on a sunny afternoon that could not be enjoyed further north, such was the available weather. The summer awaits so only when that arrives will its roaming be revealed.

Echoes of repetition

There are times when trip ideas get re-used. The unseasonal sunny weather that dominated the second week of February became a backdrop to some of this. Firstly, it lured me up to Great Ayton for a day spent around Roseberry Topping, Highcliffe Nab and Easby Moor. This was a variation of a route enjoyed more than a year earlier when snow and ice were dominant. Then, the ground conditions added a need for extra care that probably should have precluded an ascent of Roseberry Topping that was facilitated far better in conditions more typical of late spring or early summer.

A few days later, I was drawn to Earl Sterndale for a walk that took in the tops of both Parkhouse Hill and Chrome Hill. The latter was more friendly to those whose tolerance of exposure is more limited. Some might go up and over the former but I did an out and back trip to its summit before kinder gradients were descended in a northward direction. In the autumn of 2017, I had passed both on the way from Sterndale Moor to Buxton but avoided their summits on that equally pleasant sunny day.

Sometimes, there are stronger patterns of repetition there is one shared between 2010 and 2017. Both featured trips to Sweden and Aberdeenshire as well as marking the start and end of my time with a single employer. Because of the changeover in employment arrangements, the destination pairing has a certain eerie resonance for me.

Neither the Swedish or Aberdeen trips were my first to either place but it took a third visit to the former for more of a leisure focus to show itself. September 1997 saw my first visit to Aberdeen and that was for a scientific congress while business was the main motivation for those first two trips to Sweden. Even so, there opportunities for personal exploration offer themselves too because conferences cannot occupy you for all their duration and long sunny Swedish summer evenings made for pleasant strolling around both Södertälje and Stockholm.

The 2010 sojourn in Aberdeen allowed for more city strolling and a visit to Braemar only months after starting a new job. There was no mountain walking in 2017 but Stonehaven, Dunnottar Castle, Banchory, Crathes Castle and the Deeside Way more than occupied the time not spent on city wanderings. In fact, the idea of doing some castle visiting was a seed sown during the previous trip. That it preceded my leaving the company that I joined in 2017 by a matter of months made it a kind of a bookend to my time there.

One of the motivations for heading to Aberdeen for the 2017 Spring Bank Holiday weekend was as a means of dealing with the fact that I no longer enjoyed working where I was. Together with a second trip to Norway, it was intended to salve the lack of enthusiasm that I had for what I was doing but it was not to be a long term strategy so I made the difficult decision to leave my then employer and take a career break while I worked through the aftermath of a number of life events as well as working out what my future career direction might be.

It was after starting the career break, that I then headed to Stockholm for an extended weekend stay. My previous time in Sweden preceded a departure from a then current employer and information transfer was its purpose. Only weeks later, I was going to start with the employer that I left in 2017 so there was a curious symmetry about my actions. Naturally, city explorations were to follow with even Gothenburg receiving a fleeting visit. Tyresta National Park became the starting point for the longest hike that I enjoyed while in the country. The whole experience was vastly more restive than the preceding months and it would take more than a year before I started to explore places beyond British and Irish shores.

If I have my way, such juxtapositions as pairings of trip destinations and career changes may not be repeated in the future. Though there are other places to see and experience, I also hope to continue my Scottish and Scandinavian encounters. My choice would be that they do not need career upheavals to make them happen because we need to keep making more happy memories to get us through times that are more testing.

Pairs

Thinking back to a year ago when I was in the middle of a career break, I am struck by how much reading I was doing. There were two from Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia and Songlines, and both gave me my fill of travelogue writings by the time that I got as far as January. Both contained a certain air of desolation that also came in its own way from Kev Reynold’s Abode of the Gods. It might have been a certain end of year feeling with the dull days of a passing December as much as what I was reading. After all, I found myself again detached from the mainstream flow of living much like I did when transitioning from university into the world of work.

The sense of desolation might have befallen my impressions of Tim Robinson’s Stones of Aran duology but for other distractions. Work has been among these as much as seasonal activities like sending cards and buying presents. Becoming engrossed in computer tinkering has been another factor and it certainly helped with speeding up this website. All of this delayed my completion of the aforementioned pair of books with their incompleteness of ending. The second was supposed to resolve a conundrum posed by the first but I get the impression that it may have proved to be a voyage of acceptance rather than resolution.

For all that, I now have moved onto the same author’s Connemara trilogy and there is extra life in its early pages. A quieter place like Aran has less documented history while most of the action is elsewhere so it is easy to find loose ends that never can be brought to a satisfying conclusion. For one thing, oral history can bring its own challenges with an intermingling of myth and actual events together with loss of memory as one generation hands over to another. Eve today, this remains an elemental place as I found when I was there last August.

Throughout all this recent activity, two visits have been made to the moorland around Hathersage, Grindleford and Sheffield. In fact, there is such an extensive path network that more may follow because of the possibilities that are offered. That thought popped into my mind during last Sunday’s hike from Grindleford into Sheffield during an interlude between spells of heavy rain. In truth, I should have been attending to seasonal matters but my enthusiasm for hill country got the better of me.

Anything that grants views of such sights as Padley Gorge and Higger Torr cannot be a bad thing and the area could be a fallback should all other forms of inspiration fail me. December was not much of a walking month for me in 2017 so I embarked on bus journeys that took me around mid-Wales and by the area that I walked last Sunday in their stead. It helps that collecting ideas is as good as making use of them and those from then led to one walk from Hathersage to Sheffield in November and another from Grindleford to Sheffield last Sunday. In turn, each of the duo could be the cause of return visits to the area and longer hours of daylight could allow more scope for any future explorations.

Overcoming an obstruction

Currently, an ongoing train conductor’s strike at Arriva Rail North, otherwise known as Northern Rail, has meant that local train services in the north of England are much reduced on Saturdays and that is set to continue until the end of the year. In fact, I would be surprised if it did not continue through 2019 given the ongoing stand-off.

Saturday usually was when I went out on walking trips so the reduction in train services has given me pause for thought since I do not have a car. Some feel trapped by what is happening but I have begun to think about alternative options offer by bus travel. The bus network may be beleaguered after years of spending cuts but I reckon that it still offers some travel possibilities.

One of these is the Witch Way service between Manchester and Skipton. Perhaps surprisingly, journey times are not so much longer than going by train because of layover times between different services. The fact that you are rather doubling back on yourself when travelling from Manchester to Skipton is another factor.

Last Saturday saw me try out that bus route to gain a few hours around Skipton after an absence of too many years. The town was busy because it was market day and there was a display at the visitor centre pertaining to World War I, a relevant subject given Armistice Day was near. The crowds were left too as I wandered into Skipton Castle Wood, pottered along the Leeds to Liverpool Canal and passed through Aireville Park. Occasional sunshine was overtaken by spells of rain but it did not matter for this was a break from a Saturday spent at home. That was enough for me.

There is another bus route that I like to sample and it is part of the Mainline bus network. The service goes between Burnley and Keighley and passes through countryside that I perhaps have not visited since a bunch of Pennine Way wanderings in 2007 and I fancy pottering along a missed section of the trail between Ickornshaw and Cowling, an oversight that has lain unaddressed for longer than is desirable.

Maybe there might be a chance to fill in that gap as part of a repeat visit to countryside where I found waymarking was not what it should have been. Recent years of reduced public spending cannot have helped so a GPS receiver or the OS mobile phone map could have its uses in keeping me from going astray and annoying the locals in the process. There was some of that on a walk along the Pennine Way between Gargrave and Cowling when the tapping of a finger on a window deterred me from erroneously going further into someone’s back yard. Embarrassment kept me from checking the mood of whoever was at that window and it might have been a better course to take.

There was a time a time when I was a regular visitor to Yorkshire with many a day trip featuring parts of Wharfedale with some overnight stays too. Basing myself in either Keighley or Skipton could allow some repeat visits after many years and both Malham Cove and Malham Tarn could be among them. Though very different in aspect, Brontë country is another possibility since there is many a right of way to found around there and bus services are decent too.

As I think of them, numerous possibilities come to mind to follow what I have done already. Thoughts take me around by Settle and Nidderdale in a continuing mix of millstone grit and limestone scars. Capturing some of the sights using digital photography is a bonus since I mainly used film on those earlier incursions. Also, it feels as if I need to take some notes and act upon them. After all, the reduced mobility by train could make North and West Yorkshire all the more useful and a bit of quiet strolling never did any harm.

Incidental ambles

The start of a new year can be a useful time to take stock of life. January can be a month that some find too quiet but it has its uses as I am finding out for myself. A current career break means that I have added occasion to think over what I would like to do for a living. After five years of family bereavements followed by responsibilities added through inheritance, there is plenty of reason for this. What had not been obvious to me is that my last job was not a match and the experience left its mark, one that needs to be overcome.

Throughout all of this, I am not forgetting that I am an explorer at heart. There has been time to catch up on reading and I now have my fill of travel writing so I will not be lured into book purchases as easily as before. More discernment could be the way of things for me and that cannot be so bad when finances need to be kept in check during times like this hiatus from work.

Also, I have been travelling around England and Wales collecting ideas for walking trips like Roseberry Topping and Pumlumon Fawr. Surveying the countryside about the latter brought me the added benefit of a short if muddy stroll around Llangurig. Visiting nearby Rhayader is another thought and a short stay in Aberystwyth could facilitate more than initially had come to mind. Other parts of the Welsh River Wye are ripe for exploring too and the hills of the Black Mountain in the western side of the Brecon Beacons could be another tempting idea.

City visits to Edinburgh and Cardiff have come to pass. In the middle of the latter, the banks of the River Taff offered an oasis of calm with Llandaff Cathedral feeling as if it is in a country rather than where it is. Bute Park was another delight that makes me wonder why it took so long for me to make an independent visit to the place and there is Cardiff Castle if I wanted to include that as part of a return visit. There is plenty there for cyclists too and I am not surprised that bicycle hire is available.

Those city wanderings remind me that there have been times during the last few years when energy for more strenuous outings has not been as readily available. Edinburgh has featured quite a few times and there are regular haunts nearer my home in Macclesfield. Knutsford’s Tatton Park, Disley’s Lyme Park together with Macclesfield’s Tegg’s Nose Country Park and Dane’s Moss Nature Reserve all have been places where quick visits offered respite from life’s tumult when enthusiasm for longer trips was not to be found. The same could be said for more urban spots like Buxton, Chester, Sheffield and even Manchester. Anywhere where a coffee can be enjoyed away home has had its uses.

Strolls on my own doorstep like circuits taking in Prestbury all had their uses when my head needed clearing, like on Christmas Eve during my first ever Christmas spent in Macclesfield. That was a stormy affair, as much in my mind as it was out of doors. When a brighter interlude offered, it did not need much persuasion for me to head out on a longer round that linked Tegg’s Nose, the Saddle of Kerridge and the White Nancy. It became just the breather that I needed at the time.

The last few months have been as much about exorcising hurtful memories as anything else. That included the past Christmas and New Year period when it felt more normal than others. Trips to Tatton Park, Manchester and Lincoln all broke up the flow and I also got learning that camping stoves should be used out of doors too, a misadventure that I have no relish for repeating.

Getting past that was like everything else in life in recent times. 2017 became a year when I lightened some of life’s load so I need to think ahead now. Getting an enjoyable and fulfilling work life is one thing and my zest for exploring countryside continues. Overseas excursions could restart yet since I am making my way through Kev Reynolds’ Walking in the Alps at the moment and there is his The Swiss Alps, The Pyrenees and Trekking in the Alps after that. That lot should keep me going for a while yet and I am not overlook what hill country is nearer to hand either.