Category: Times and Seasons
A new GPS receiver
18th June 2016 Most if not all articles written about outdoors gear usually do not contain any mention of life circumstances, yet they pervade this one. To me, January 2015 brought a life-changing event whose alterations still are ongoing. My father's passing away last year and that of my mother years nearly two years before then now make for a very changed set of circumstances. Not having to deal with my father's fear of flying has meant that I can countenance overseas excursions like those that took me to Iceland and Switzerland last year, together with Austria a few weeks ago.
Motivation & Opportunity
If it were not for last year's trip to Iceland, I may never have acquired a GPS receiver. Apart from an abortive attempt to buy a Magellan eXplorist 100, it stubbornly remained on the nice-to-have section of any gear wish list since I never got to spend the outlay. It was exposure to the shortcomings of maps with a 1:100000 (1 cm per 1 km) scale on a walk around Landmannalaugar that finally convinced me to try again. Even with a subsequent trip to Switzerland and perhaps because of what I spent on accommodation, travel and other things, the acquisition that had to wait.
The deed itself was done in circumstances that one might have expected to produce a different set of priorities, for it was in the time around last Christmas. My plan was to spend Christmas itself in Britain before heading to Ireland for a few days and returning before New Year's Day. That didn't happen, as emotions just were too raw, and I rearranged the trip for sometime in January. One thing that added to my melancholy was how things went during Christmas 2014 when a neighbour of my parents went about planning Christmas 2015 when all I wanted to do was get into 2015 and leave 2014 after me. Now Christmas has lost all its child-like allure for me, I tend to want to get past it rather than bringing the next one closer.
Not travelling to Ireland at the end of 2015 meant that I could get past last Christmas and leave it after me to grow smaller in the rearview mirror of life. Doing otherwise would mean lugging too much emotional baggage through 2016 and that was why that 2014 invitation hurt me as much as it did; that Christmas was one that I needed to leave after me. The extra time at home was put to good use too, for I embarked on a tidying spree that resulted in so many bin bags of items for disposal and recycling that it took a few weeks to clear them. Aside from the last Tuesday of the year or the afternoon of Christmas Eve, the weather had not been so enticing anyway, and it felt like a pathetic fallacy that so much rain fell and the winter generally was a rain-drenched season anyway.
Having bailed out of the planned Irish trip on St. Stephen's Day, or Boxing Day as it is known in the U.K., I decided to book the purchase of the long-windedly titled Garmin eTrex Touch 25 from Go Outdoors' Manchester branch. Perusal of a newspaper on the way there revealed just how miserable some people's Christmas had been, for they were physically flooded while I was emotionally so; the Calder valley had been very badly hit by the weather, and they were not alone.
Early Testing
Time elapsed before I got to testing out the new gadget, and there is more I have yet to get it to do even now. That Christmastime Tuesday trot around Macclesfield that took in Tegg's Nose and part of the Gritstone Trail depended on my local knowledge and a paper map instead. Testing the new acquisition in earnest was to take until the second week of 2016 and various opportunities since then have seen it left at home, so I am far from developing a dependence on the device. These have included a recent walk from Tideswell to Hathersage via Litton, Foolow and Eyam as well as a subsequent one from Leek to Macclesfield that took in the Roaches as well as Tittesworth Reservoir, Gradbach, Wildboarclough and Higher Sutton.
Still, it has been taken outside a good few times. These mainly have been on trots about Macclesfield that include some soggy ones earlier in the year and drier ones more recently. It also has made it to West Limerick in Ireland, Stirling in Scotland as well as Innsbruck and Zillertal in Austria.
As the word "Touch" in the name suggests, this is a touch-screen device and my attempts to keep the screen reasonably clean mean that I use a stylus with it like I do with a phone or tablet. Starting it up brings you to a screen for one of its numerous modes. So far, I have stuck with the hiking one and there is another customised version of this that I created but there others for various forms of cycling as well as hunting, fishing, climbing and geocaching. It is only the hiking modes that I have tried so far but one of the cycling ones (bike, tour bike and mountain bike) could be a possibility yet.
In my experience, this is not a device for spot reading of where you are but one that tracks where you are going. Given that it shows a map underneath, that does help when you are unsure of things though battery usage then becomes a concern as does remembering to enjoy what surrounds you, which is what gets us out and about in the first place anyway. Going about the place staring at a small screen rather defeats the point of exploring the countryside and could cause an accident. As for battery life, my unit is on probation with disposable batteries until I can be sure that rechargeable ones are not getting discharged too quickly.
Available Maps
By default, the Garmin comes with its own maps for eastern and western Europe. For places without alternative coverage like Iceland, these are a good substitute for the walking maps that are available. In fact, having the gadget with me around Landmannalaugar last year would have been a big help for it shows that trail at higher magnification than the 1:100000 scale map that I was using at the time.
However, there are other maps available with the BirdsEye Select series offering 1:25000 Ordnance Survey data for Great Britain as well as its equivalents for France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria (including part of Italy). Holiday destinations like Madeira, the Balearic and Canary Islands together with the Azores see inclusion in this series too. Along with the OS, you get data from Kompass, France's IGN and Germany's BKG. The advantage of these offerings is that you choose the area for which you are buying maps and not the selection decided for you by a provider. Garmin offers other series, and there is a one called BirdsEye that appears to do the same for the U.S.A. and Canada.
To get coverage beyond the aforementioned countries, you need to look at Garmin's other offerings. These differ from the above in that these are preselected areas rather than self-selected ones from the BirdsEye series, and cost more for higher definition maps because of the amount of coverage that is included. For Great Britain, there is the Discoverer series and both TOPO US 24K and TOPO US 100K series just cover the U.S.A. Country coverage for the other mapping series (there is one in the BirdsEye range for satellite imagery, but I am less interested in that) is below.
TOPO PRO:
France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Czech, Finland, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Norway, Sweden, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mozambique, Namibia, Reunion, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Denmark.
TOPO:
U.S.A., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Tunisia, Hungary, Mexico, Chile, Norway, Argentina, Bolivia, Morocco, Greenland, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Ceuta, Chad, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Melilla, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Réunion, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Western Sahara, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Bahrain, Ceuta, Gaza, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Melilla, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, West bank, Western Sahara and Yemen.
TOPO Light:
U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Belarus, Israel, Poland, Portugal, Turkey, Romania, Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan South, Tanzania, Uganda, Turkey, Romania.
Aside from the BirdsEye range, where the Basecamp PC or Mac software is needed, maps can be purchased and downloaded to your device from the website. However, the browser plug-in does not work in the current versions of Firefox or Google Chrome at the time of writing because it has not been digitally signed by Garmin. On Windows PC's, that leaves Internet Explorer as the only option, and I needed to try it more than once to ensure that Basecamp registered the new map. Finding out what happens with Safari is not something that I have got to doing yet, but it is a possibility.
Storage
With all the downloadable data, it is just as well that the eTrex Touch 25 takes a microSD card; the default maps and software leave just over 2 GB free out of the 8 GB of internal storage. The slot is in the battery compartment underneath the batteries and I have added a 16 GB one. If my needs extend beyond that, a bigger one can be added in its place. It is possible to buy data on SD or microSD from Garmin, so there could be the temptation to use one of these in the same slot. A limited number of packages come on DVD and I wonder how they get transferred, even if this is a legacy format nowadays.
Software
Sessions exploring the available computer software followed suit, and Garmin's BaseCamp is what's required for managing any data. Exports to GPX files meant that routes could be seen in Mapyx Quo and Anquet's OMN too.
Not really places for exercising dogs
17th May 2016 My last post on here got my mind running down memory lane's more recent reaches and this has turned out to be another of those. During the twists and turns of life in recent years, going out for walks close to home has become a fixture. There have been spurts of cycling too, with 2015 seeing me rekindle my love of that exploit once road confidence was allowed a chance to re-grow.
Encounters
This piece though is inspired by something that I increasingly encounter while frequenting local parks during lunchtime and evening strolls: the exercising of dogs. It might have been life's other distractions, but this is something that I only really started to notice over the past year. In fact, it would appear to be a growing trend, yet that is a perception rather than statistical reality, so this is best treated with care.
Nevertheless, dog excrement appears to be a problem that at least refuses to go away with Macclesfield's Riverside Park and Tegg's Nose Country Park. Like with other things in life, it seems that some owners are more diligent about cleaning up after their dogs than others. While the task admittedly is an unpleasant one, spreading diseases that cross species boundaries is not neighbourly either and some of these afflict humanity. It is for that reason that I have seen signs on a playing pitch in Prestbury that advertise a ban on letting dogs on there.
Speaking of the nuisance that dogs can cause, I saw one person allow their two dogs chase a heron about the aforementioned Riverside Park with their not being able to catch being offered as an excuse when I stared at what was happening. It cannot have been good for the bird and it moved away soon afterwards. Would you blame it?
Disconnection
Maybe the latter incident displays a certain detachment from the task of exercising dogs and even the fact that all of our urban centres are surrounded by rural areas. The first of these manifests itself in the use of smartphones while in charge of an animal, giving a very clear hint that the activity possibly is seen as an unattractive chore, hardly a good thing if you want to retain control. You even might wonder how folk who walk half a dozen dogs at a time manage, yet dog walking services frequent the same parks that the rest of us use and seemingly without incident, though I do wonder if one should have some space of your own for such a commercial enterprise.
The second kind of detachment is a more worrying one for it affects wildlife and livestock. The latter especially affects those of us who enjoy trotting through the countryside for attacks on farm animals by dogs hardly enamour us urban types to farmers. It is not for nothing that dogs are not allowed to run loose in many places. Early 2015 saw a spate of these attacks with signs appearing all over the place. A number are reproduced with some being so graphic that I thought it to be best to keep the lot in monochrome.
The first sign was seen on a visit to Tegg's Nose on Easter Sunday 2015 and remains there as I found on a more recent visit on a recent warm sunny Monday evening. Easter Monday 2015 saw me walk from Walker Barn back home via Macclesfield Forest, Shutlingsloe and Langley, which is where the second and third signs were encountered. The attack must have been so appalling that a shocking colour image was added to a poster; to protect the tinder of disposition, all of them are in black and white here. The fourth sign was met on a walk that took in Alderley Edge and Hare Hill, which proves that cattle are not immune from canine harassment. Subsequently, the permissive path was closed for the winter season and it is not hard to see why such a restriction came to pass. There has been criticism but it shows what a careless dog owner can cause us to lose in terms of goodwill. Even now, its opening is restricted to the hours from 10:00 to 17:00 between March 1st and October 30th and that highlights the need to always keep others in mind whatever we are doing, hardly a popular message in these individualistic times. Lastly, you would like that cemeteries and gardens of remembrance would be immune, but the above sign sadly is needed. Are we also losing awareness of our own mortality too?
Farm Dogs
It is all too easy to show disapproval of what others but we do have to look at ourselves too. While I never would own a dog myself now, I grew up on a farm where dogs were allowed to run loose. My first memories are of two Border Collies, an apparently placid mother and her son. However, there were some rumblings about his having had a go at someone walking on the road, so all may not have been as well as anyone would hope. Usually though, things were uneventful and they lived until an advanced age (for dogs anyway).
On a less friendly note, a lad working with my father on the farm had an enthusiasm for Alsatians and an intrusive one was kept in the farmyard for the sake of security. The creature did not last long though, since it was believed to have found either a poisoned rat or some rat poison. Up to that point, it had been a bit of a nuisance so it was not missed like the Border Collies that I think outlived it anyway.
After a few months without any dog in the place, there was something of a female puppy buying binge with three arriving one after the other. The first was another Alsatian, but this was nothing like its predecessor and showed the type of temperament for which many of the breed are known, albeit with perhaps less in the way of intelligence.
An Old English Sheepdog came afterwards and was anything but what my mother expected. She had wanted another placid Border Collie but instead got a lively hairy affectionate creature that was as daft as a brush and often wished to jump upon us, a right nuisance if we were dressed in better clothes.
Then, there was a cross-bred that was part Labrador Retriever and part Pyrenean Mountain Dog. Even though that one was the most sober of the lot, it still did not save my mother's washing from being pulled off the line from time to time. The tormenting cannot have made the lady enthusiastic about having any more young dogs about the place.
Sadly, both the Alsatian and the Old English Sheepdog met untimely ends. The latter was knocked over by a car on the road and rat poison or poisoned vermin was the suspected cause of death for the former. That left the Labrador cross-bred, so things were quieter, though my father, a light sleeper, got enough of all night barking sessions and puppies appeared from time to time too. It will make a dog lover wince to learn that all of these were destroyed and not always in the nicest manner either. After all this, the cross-bred eventually met her end and I seem to recall canine cancer being mentioned as a cause of death in the animal's older age.
After that, there was no replacement and I reckon that I am inclined to reckon that both of my parents were weary of having dogs by this point. Farm cats became substitutes though their begging at mealtimes grated enough to ensure a porch was added to the back of the house for the sake of extra peace. There also was a comical episode when my mother chucked a dustpan brush at cats to disperse them and my brother came the same way with a mate of his.
Reappraisal
Now that I look back on it, I am amazed by how freely those dogs were allowed to roam and how they largely were left to their own devices. Maybe it was when the three young dogs were about the place that it was realised quite what was involved in having them and the nuisance that could be caused. There might have been Barbara Woodhouse programs on the television along with One Man and his Dog, but the world outside the house was far less disciplined.
That is not to say that there were no rules for there was hardly any question of dogs being allowed into the house, though the pups were allowed in on their first night. That was the sum total of any such invasion. Even an attempted incursion during a thunderstorm was met with a rebuttal.
Since those times, my views have changed to agree with those of our local "DogFather", who writes in the Macclesfield Express and AlderleyEdge.com. Dogs need training and it was the lack of that that caused my parents so much intrusion. They also need continued discipline or they could be roaming the countryside causing havoc. It was not for nothing that there were ads on Irish television promoting the locking up of dogs by night to cut down on livestock worrying.
Another factor has been my being nipped in the ankles by dogs myself. The first was done by a Border Collie when I was returning home on my bike from a visit to my aunt and the light failing. More recently, a Jack Russell terrier did much the same while I was on a walk around Alderley Edge. After both incidents, I got my tetanus status checked and updated for very obvious reasons. They also colour my current view of dogs such that I give them a wider berth than during my days growing up in Ireland. That is not to say that I do not appreciate the need for dogs to be exercised and I also feel that those in charge of the creatures need to realise their responsibilities too. Not realising those will bring you the sort of nuisance that blighted my parent's lives and could affect wildlife, livestock and other people too. It is not for nothing that there is the slogan about a dog being for life and not just for Christmas.
A change of bike trainer
17th February 2016 With all the storms that come our way over the last few months and stuff weighing on my mind, hillwalking excursions have been few over the past few months. It is at fallow times like these that you either brave the elements or find a workaround of sorts.
It also brings back my days of commuting by bike, when the short hours of daylight and winter weather conspired to make me inactive. That it took me until 2014 to realise that I needed to do something about those winter hibernations is down to an expanding waistline. That faulty brakes had stalled my commuting by bike in 2012 only exacerbated things, so I brought home a turbo trainer from Decathlon in July 2014.
Being new to this, I went for the cheapest model from their in-house brand, B'TWIN. Over time, I started looking for quieter and quieter tyres, and a slick tyre would be the next step once the current one wears out. The initial fitness was not impressive either and I, like so many, experienced boredom. The solution to the latter was to start reading magazines while on the trainer, and the former was resolved by gradually stepping up the time spent. It went from ten minutes to thirty over two months, and I found that I peaked at spending an hour a night on the thing.
Then, there was a life-changing event in early 2015 that distracted me and outdoor cycling grew again as the year wore on, so my previous rhythm was broken. Even so, I often spend a few minutes at a time well more than once in the day if a longer session does not come to pass.
All this seemed to take its toll on the trainer, and the hum from the unit itself grew ever louder and more coarse, even above that of the back tyre of the bike. Not only that, but there also seemed to be a ringing sound coming from it too. There was one occasion when it began to ring like a continuous bell, but disassembly followed by reassembly sorted it by tightening up whatever was loose in there. That failed to address the issue when I tried it last week, so I began to consider a replacement.
That came from Halfords on Sunday, and there are differences. Firstly, the new Elite trainer is more testing than the old one, so there is no cruising in top gear at anything but lower settings. If that builds extra leg strength and fitness, it will do good, and moderation is my approach to such matters. Though quieter overall, there are some settings, the new unit feeds back vibration through the bike and that is something the old one never did. In time, I may find a way to dampen this, but it is tolerable for now. The new trainer also cost less than what it replaced anyway. Anything it does for fitness and getting through magazine reading should help those outdoors outings to happen, which is a real use for these things anyway.
Wellington boot wandering
20th January 2016 Over the past two months, we appear to have got unseasonably mild weather with a succession of storms and heavy rain. The only exception was the past week of cold weather with frost and spells of snow that have affected Macclesfield's hill country more than its nearest town. Buxton , being higher up than Macclesfield also got its coating of snow as did parts of the Derbyshire Dales like Litton. In the case of the latter, this was short lived.
When it comes to the torrents of rain that have been coming our way, Macclesfield again fares better than parts of Cumbria, Lancashire or Yorkshire. The River Bollin has dug its own valley and that thankfully most homes in the area unthreatened during its states of spate. Seeing one of these conjured up images using the adjective molten and I must admit to catching myself questioning such an impression.
What is beyond question is that the countryside is saturated after all that has come our way. That conclusion was unavoidable after two muddy walks on what I now call my home patch. One was a circuit on Christmas Eve that went around by Prestbury and another followed on the Tuesday following Christmas Day when I trotted around by Tegg's Nose, Rainow and Kerridge. That last stravaig took me along part of the Gritstone Trail too and I could have done with the walking poles that I left at home on steep slippery muddy inclines, especially downhill ones not so far from Gulshaw Hollow. The fact that I made use of the only sunny day between Christmas and New Year easily made up for such obstacles and the need for boot cleaning afterwards.
Still, the muddy state of footwear caused me to make use of wellington boots that I acquired nearly a year ago in wet snow on the same Prestbury circuit that made use of the sunny afternoon that we were gifted on Christmas Eve. There also was some testing of a new GPS receiver too and more remains to be said about that in the fullness of time.
The first such circuit took along the course of the River Bollin until a change of direction near Prestbury took me towards Heybridge Lane (but not as far as that) and across the golf course at Tytherington Club, the latter of which being too wet to be playable. Then, a meandering though well known route took me around the outskirts of Tytherington to reach the Middlewood Way that took me most of the way home again.
The second excursion was more soggy with a hike along the banks of the Macclesfield Canal preceding a yomp through Dane Moss Nature Reserve that reminded me of the possibility of exploring more around there using the duckboards that have been set in place. From there, I crossed some very soggy fields before emerging on tarmac again. The latter made me pay for the lack of cushioning in wellington boots so they are best left for soft ground. Even so, I still fancy the idea of having them with me on a walk for when conditions are likely to overwhelm normal walking boots and gaiters. That unhelpfully assumes that the said soft ground is not likely to obstruct any change of footwear and that cannot be forgotten either in the spirit of being realistic.
Hopefully, things will start to dry up soon and that will need a dry month of March and even April too. Before then though, there looks to be no let up at the time of writing and those previous hopes are there to be dashed too. Such is the way with our maritime climate that it is best not to puff up one's aspirations lest they lead to despair should they be vanquished. 2015 may have spoilt us and 2016 has a lot to come yet so let us have patience for now.
Overseas escapades
15th September 2015 After playing with the prospect earlier in the year, I made good some of my designs on overseas explorations. July saw me head to Iceland for a few days. An early morning arrival allowed plenty of time for exploring Reykjavík before a day when I embarked on an excursion that took in Þingvellir National Park, Geysir and the enormous Gullfoss. On my last full day there, I ventured as far as Landmannalaugar for a day walk in its striking hill country. The weather may not have played ball then like it did on other days, but the whole visit was a good introduction to Iceland for a first-time visitor, and there are other possibilities to be undertaken if I get more brave.
Alpine ambitions also were partially sated with an elongated weekend spent in Switzerland. My base was Geneva, and another morning arrival allowed me to stroll about the place to get my bearings. A trip to Bern followed on the only totally dull day of those that I spent in the country. There were day walks in Alpine surroundings too, with one around Zermatt allowing plentiful views of the Matterhorn under blue skies. That was followed by a journey to Grindelwald that allowed a little taste of how Bern appears in sunshine on the way there. From Grindelwald, I trotted up to Kleine Scheidegg with the Eiger steadfastly remaining cloaked in cloud. Others were on show, so I was not at all disappointed. When the altitude surprised me with its effects after walking at similar heights around Zermatt unperturbed, I was happy with slow progress on the final stretch to Kleine Scheidegg's train station. With clouds overhead and a certain chill in the air, I did not dally, either. After gaining around 1,000 metres in height, I was surprised that my legs were more willing than my lungs, so that is a lesson for the future.
Both of these punctuated a year that has been a journey of spirit following the passage of my father from this life in January. The Icelandic escape slipped me out of a rut into which I had fallen and got me away from concerns about political events in Britain. Solace was a distinguishing feature of the Swiss interlude, and it felt great to stick with enjoying delightful sights in place of life's troubles. That sense of peace has returned from time to time since then, though there has been mental turbulence too. Thankfully, the latter appears to be subsiding while life is running its course.
One downside to both excursions is the cost, and I should have got myself a Swiss Travel Pass for rail travel is expensive there. That means that any future ventures beyond British, Irish or Manx shores will have to await 2016, and I am looking at the possibilities for Norway at the moment. In addition to that, there is more of Switzerland to see with Austria, Germany and France all having their portions of the Alps too. Given what I gained from this year's trips, savouring scenery in other parts of the world is something that I fancy continuing.
Another thing that attenuates foreign travel ambitions after the cost of such exploits, or the passing of the summer, is the need to find my feet again when it comes to Ireland. It no longer feels the same with both my parents gone, and it is as if an anchor has disappeared. There no longer is the feeling of attachment that there once was, even though I still have family there and there are things that need doing on a continual basis. The latter offer a chance to find my place there again, and only time will tell as to how things proceed.
Living in the U.K. for as long as I have has compounded the lack of attachment to Ireland, yet it also has not been a year for walking excursions in the country that I now call home. Around April and May, there were quite of few walks around Macclesfield's hills and August saw me reprise a walk between Monyash and Bakewell via Lathkill Dale. Another factor that may have played its part in keeping me from my usual hill country haunts has been my return to cycling local roads now that I have regained my road confidence. Cheshire has featured strongly in the various routes, and there even was an incursion into Staffordshire that took in Leek and Tittesworth Reservoir. Maybe the shortening days will draw me backing to wandering among hills again.
