Outdoor Discoveries

An arctic feel

Surely, this winter must go down in memory as one with an early blast of cold weather that brought with it a hell of lot of snow in places. While Macclesfield and Wilmslow came off more lightly than other places, we still have to watch our step while walking about; those pesky areas of black ice can give you a toss before you know it. Nevertheless, the B5470 Macclesfield to Whaley Bridge, A537 Macclesfield-Buxton and A54 Congleton-Buxton roads were shut until last weekend so good dumps of snow weren’t at all far away.

While on the subject of places that got more snow, Sheffield comes with its having a covering of several feet of snow in places. In fact, some footways are so trampled that a coffee table smoothness is a threat to life and limb. If I lived over there, I could see my Kahtoola Microspikes being in use every day. Maybe those work colleagues who have been struggling to get from there to our place of work every day might do with something from AutoSock as noted elsewhere in the blogosphere.

Even with all the horror stories, alluring thoughts of seeing hills in full winter garb still tempt me. However, any thoughts of seeing Scottish hills have to be tempered by the recent travel chaos up there. Hopefully, it’ll work out OK for everyone caught up in it. Still, Caledonian Sleeper and other train services seem to be heavily hit by the conditions. That mix of fresh snow falling on icy roads really has caused chaos. It’s all very well daydreaming of white wildernesses but they have another side.

Maybe that thaw over the weekend will ease things enough to help all who have been marooned by what has been with us for a few weeks now. It even might allow a chance to make good those daydreams with whatever whiteness remains wherever I may go. After all, I quite fancy an outing given that it has been a few weeks since the last one.

Revisiting the Scottish Borders

After a bank holiday weekend spent expanding my explorations of the Isle of Man, last weekend allowed a getaway to a part of the world that I haven’t really visited for nearly four years: the Scottish Borders. Since then, a new long-distance trail has appeared on OS maps, the Borders Abbeys Way, and caused me to look at the copyright date that was on the one that I used when I last got to sample the area around Peebles and Galashiels. With the legend “2002” peering back at me, I began whether a new edition was needed, but I persevered with the older one while up there.

It was sufficient for the task of hiking from Selkirk to Melrose via The Three Brethren and, from there, the Southern Upland Way on an ever improving afternoon and evening; I left the Borders Abbeys Way with its requirement for remembering where it went for another time. The Eildon Hills were catching the light sporadically as I grew to realise the distance between Galashiels and Melrose. Very deceptively, the proximity of Galashiels, Tweedbank, Darnick and Melrose would lure you into thinking that everything is close together, but the whole conurbation put together is at least five miles long!

After the exertions of the previous day, Sunday was left as an easy day before I returned home again after a stay in Melrose. That energy expenditure made for tired legs, so I contented myself with enjoying the impressive sight of Melrose Abbey (yes, a camera was set into action too, but it’s often what gets me out and about in the first place) on a day that kept improving after a damp start. There was an uphill potter along St. Cuthbert’s Way to take a closer look at the Eildon Hills but time constraints put a stop to any potentially foolish designs that may have lain in my mind.

A look at a map since then has popped an idea into my mind: using St. Cuthbert’s Way for a walk from St. Boswell’s to Melrose that might grant me glimpses of Dryburgh Abbey and would pass over the Eildon Hills. Those hills are criss-crossed with paths, but there are other possibilities with sections of the Borders Abbeys Way allowing for sampling of the countryside around places such as Kelso, Hawick and Jedburgh. All in all, it looks as if there is plenty on offer to the passing wanderer in search of pleasant countryside with a smattering of low-sized hills.

After all, this is countryside that I should have been exploring when I lived in Edinburgh but for a combination of succumbing to the attractions of a very nice city and being blinded by attractions further north. Then, I would have considered cycling and the practicalities of getting a bike out into the Borders with no car would have raised their heads too. Until the restoration of the rail link to Galashiels and Tweedbank, that one will persist because I saw no evidence of bicycle carriage on any buses that I used over the weekend. In a way, that’s a pity because there is the Four Abbeys Cycle that echoes the intent of the Borders Abbeys Way and there are quieter roads around the area too. That new railway could make things interesting but the prospect of it packing the area with visitors is hard to envisage with all the space that there is for everyone.

One thing that struck me over the weekend was how quiet everywhere was, and it is an area where you unleash your reverie without too much fear of intrusion. Of course, you still have to watch where you are going, but that effectively is the limit of things. Those ideas that have come into my mind already should keep me returning, and I do hope that it’s more regular than it has been.

Going out with a bang

March should start like a lion and leave like a lamb but it seems to have got that script wrong this year. You only have to hear the stories of trains being marooned in snow drifts to be reminded of the same sort of thing happening at the end of February. In its own way, it places into sharp relief the journey that I made to Aviemore a few weeks back. Then, snow seemed to be on the retreat though I was armed with my Kahtoola Microspikes in case I met anything harder than soft snow. Now, it seems that has been well replenished just in time for the Easter weekend. Of course, there's the ever present threat of avalanches (I took a quick peek at the Scottish Avalanche Information Service website and there is high risk up high in many of the hills up there) and the matter of travel too. Both of these matters are reminders of that coach crash tragedy in the south of Scotland and thoughts are the only things that I can offer to those affected.

A decade ago, the mention of the sort of conditions that have visited us more often than usual this winter would have sent anyone to their memory banks to see when they last happened. A few years back, I remember sitting in the Bridge of Orchy hotel enjoying an evening meal after a walk south along the West Highland Way from Glen Coe. What really struck me were all the photos of severe winter conditions of the sort that visited Scotland at the end of March and of February. They dated back to the 1980's and you would have been forgiven for thinking that those would never recur with the green winters that we were having and the prevailing debate on global warming. On a separate occasion, I was staying in Kettlewell and overheard a conversation at breakfast about sheep farming in much harder winters than the ones that were coming our way at that time. All the stories of deep snow covering were very far away in time and my upbringing in a more temperate maritime climate might have had something to do with it too.

In time, the wintry conditions that ended 2009 and stayed with us for so much of 2010 will be found in the same memory area as those in the 1980's and the 1960's. It is a reminder that, even with rising global temperatures (a contentious subject for some and one whose complexity is made all the more apparent when we get colder winters), we aren't going to be denied extreme winter like what came upon Scotland this week. With the milder winters that started the century, you might be forgiven for thinking that they were the start of a pattern but I have come to the conclusion that they were part of a one (El Niño and all that) that mixes mild and arctic as time goes on. We might know more about climate than we did but times like these are a reminder that there's always more to learn.

Here in Macclesfield, it isn't warm but we have no snow. Currently, it is drying up after a wintry shower that was more of rain than anything else. That's not to say that it mightn't have been sleety snow because I have been out in one of those week. April is noted for a mixture sun and showers and it cannot be said that it isn't living up to that stereotype. In fact, a quick look at the synoptic charts on the MWIS website confirm that Easter will be accompanied by a steady queue of low pressure areas. Let's see what can be done with it.

Now that an arctic visitor has departed

One night last week, after I had tired of trying to break up ice on the footway outside my house, I finally got to watch my copy of the BMC’s Winter Skills DVD. That act may have brought a wealth of information my way but I have no intention of launching a full-scale incursion into hill country whenever weather like that which we had for the last month arrives. What I am planning to do with the information is to use it as a stepping stone to more learning experiences. Knowing the basics regarding crampon and ice axe usage along with a smattering of avalanche and winter navigation awareness is only ever a beginning. While winter hillwalking is my interest, there was climbing content in there too but I’ll give that possibility a miss with my head for heights not being what it might be.

In among all the expected winter skills stuff was a discussion of winter weather trends. The DVD was made a few years back and the winters at the start of the century were of the milder variety. With the wider awareness of global warming, some of us were beginning to think that cold winter weather, like what we had recently, was set to become a memory. At this point, I have to say that included me, but these things now look cyclical after the last few winters having longer spells of snowy weather and it appears that it has been like that for a while. There was a mention of the green winters of the 1950’s and they were followed by much colder ones in the early years of the next decade. This was all before my time but I do remember cold snaps during the winters of the 1980’s with my being unable to get to school for the most of a month one winter and the water to my parent’s house being frozen for a similar length of time during another. The last decade of the twentieth century wasn’t one with much in the way of snowy winters if I recall correctly and I was living in Edinburgh at the time.

It seems that every time that hefty snowfall visits us, travel chaos results and a whole cacophony of media comment ensues. That may amaze those from places that have cold weather every year such as Montreal or Berlin, but the maritime climate of Britain and Ireland must mean that we see such things less frequently anyway. Not only does that mean that it is difficult to justify investing in measures to deal with the sorts of conditions that prevailed from last year into this one but it must also mean that we are not so practised when it comes to dealing with them either. This thinking also sets me to asking question of my own skills and experience. Spending my early years in the milder rain-soaked part of the world that is the south-west of Ireland would mean that I wouldn’t get to sample as much of the white stuff as others do elsewhere. One consequence of that is that I only recently took a bicycle for a spin on snow, an act that taught me the importance of maintaining good contact between the tyres and the road through any skids were arrested by planting a Hedgehog-shod foot squarely on the ground.

In a way, I suppose that what we got was a rare experience for many of us. An Irish television meteorologist was heard to opine on air that a retreat to the record books was to see how the length of the cold spell was compared with previous forbears. In Britain, many were cut off by a covering of several feet of snow with an excursion for a Christmas turkey in the far north of Scotland taking a month longer than expected. The hills of Cheshire and Derbyshire were so plastered with snow that many were cut off by closed roads and I know a few of them. In the middle of all this, I got to read Joe Cornish’s experiences of walking in deep snow in the Lairig Ghru without skis or snowshoes. Whatever I may have made of his exploits, his latest book, Scotland’s Mountains, is well worth a look and the images in there amaze me with their lighting and sharpness. My own attempts are pale reflections in comparison. All of this was causing the usual questions regarding personal preparedness to bubble up in my mind.

It wouldn’t be the first time because I penned an entry on the subject over a year ago after another snowy visitation and recycling of content is not really my style if I can help it. This winter’s arctic episode, it was on with a semi-retired pair of Scarpa boots for getting to and from work, a job that they did with aplomb until everywhere became icy. Before that point, I made good use of what lay on the ground for confidence building and I am not just talking about a certain pre-Christmas constitutional. Well, there was a lunchtime amble about Nether Alderley and that piece of reconnaissance that took me to Buxton and Bakewell, both in the first full week of the year. It was because the snow on the pavement outside my house had become packed and even turned to ice that I was out with that spade.

Now that I have come to thinking of ice, I am minded to add a set of Kahtoola Microspikes to my gear collection because snow usually doesn’t stay long and the customary icy aftermath is always both a danger and a nuisance. In fact, they even might come in handy for low-level trips in hill country too; I feel the need to add to my experience of snow-covered terrain but without rashly putting myself in the way of danger. On the same subject, there’s also Icebugs’s Trail BUGweb with steel carbide studs for gripping on ice and they do footwear with the same type of thing integrated into their soles, an interesting innovation though I see it having more use in their home country of Sweden.

It’s all very fine talking about walking on level ground, but uphill gradients are another matter. It’s then that the sight of ice really does concentrate the mind like it did when I went exploring the Howgills near the end of 2008. After all, you don’t want to slip and end up careering downhill towards a stone wall or worse. Though noting the amount of effort expended in travelling over about a foot of snow played a part in my rethinking of plans on that outing, it was the ice lower down that really constrained my upland wandering. Walks over some hills between Buxton and Macclesfield when snow lay underfoot haven’t troubled me as much, but that may be down to local knowledge and experience as much as anything else. However, on the whole, I think that a certain glimmer of confidence is creeping upon me with regard to winter conditions. The acquisition of an ice axe is being pondered though I don’t intend going beyond the softer snow of lower reaches for now. That isn’t going to make the ideas of having an appropriate boot/crampon combination go away or do the same with the idea of getting in some training. The recent conditions may have added to my level of experience and that DVD supplied me with additional information, but there’s a good way to go yet. Quite how the desired experience is going to accumulate is a journey whose course is as yet unknown.

Alterations

Those of you who are regulars may note a certain change in the colours around here. Another bit of electronic fiddling was the cause of bringing the background colour to my notice. The new year has yet to see a proper piece of outdoors action. That’s not to say that I didn’t inspect the recent snow, especially given how much of it was plastered on the hills between Macclesfield and Buxton. That viewing took place on the second Saturday of the year from the confines of a warm bus rather than in an attempt to flounder through fields hosting feet of snow. Hearing and seeing how much was up there, thoughts were attuned to the need for snow shoes in such circumstances. It’s little wonder that folk took to skis and going downhill on unexpected slopes like those of Kerridge Hill near Bollington. Drifting snow was starting to impede traffic while I was on my little excursion and it later closed the A537 Cat and Fiddle road almost completely. Buxton looked very pretty in its white coat on a bright day, but things were duller by the time that I reached Bakewell. It all made for an enjoyable spot of reconnaissance but a fuller bout of hill wandering is in order now that things are calming down, though there is more snow on the horizon for the middle of the week. It would appear that 2010 is getting an interesting start.