Monday, 4 February 2013

The best laid plans...


Thursday - 31st January

Car parking can be one of the two most difficult challenges to face on a walking day. The second, especially with Grande Randonnée walks in France, is finding where the path starts in a village or town first thing in the morning.

On my weekly jaunts with Pete down the Lancaster Canal we have become prudent. Our furthest south point on the canal each time will be our starting point next week, and we survey for potential parking. All that is somewhat against my nature - experience has taught me that such prudence can be annulled in mysterious ways, often leading to humiliation.

We had identified parking in a residential street. Just after our planned spot the street took a ninety degree bend, leading in another two hundred yards to a one way, narrow, hump back bridge over the canal and the start of the walk.

As we smugly approached our predetermined spot, at the last moment, I inexplicably decided to carry on round the bend to see if I could get a bit closer. In retrospect this was stupid, because we were on a circular walk, and wherever the car was parked would make no difference to distance walked.

Round the bend the road narrowed. There was no parking possibility and I could not turn round. I proceeded over the bridge. The route became a positively single track country lane and I had to drive on to find a turning place. I drove for perhaps three quarters of a mile, upsetting various dog walkers along the way, and then submitted to loss of face upsetting them again as I returned.


Our canal aqueducts over the River Calder (Wyre) - not to be confused with other rivers Calder.
Looking at the map it could make an interesting walk to its source on the slopes of Hazelhurst Fell
This is the overflow from the aqueduct. I wouldn't like to fall in there. I reckon a dog would have no chance.


Another posh house along the way

Man versus nature.
 A lot is being said about windmills blighting the  countryside. What about the pylons, which we now seem to have accepted? I must admit they blend in just a little bit more than the obtrusive windmills, but there are plenty of them in wild and remote spots in Scotland.



Every now and then we got a patch like this. It seems to be a persistent occupational hazard for we walkers at the moment.

It's not all pretty down the Lancaster Canal
We Spartans carried on without being tempted here

On our return journey - crossing the railway, then the M6








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I usually reduce image size of photos to 600 x? pixels (they come out of the camera at 4320x?). The theory is to  avoid lengthy downloading when the blog is opened. I have now reduced them to only 1000 and at my end there is no perceptible increased delay, and the result  now shows much larger images when  "click to enlarge" is  implemented, so it' is now doubly worth the effort.
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KATIE UPDATE


Ladies who do lunch?
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 CLICK HERE FOR A LITTLE VIDEO - Katie in the snow
Sorry - I tagged this as private, but this is now rectified

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7 comments:

  1. The Crow4 February 2013 at 12:40

    Good morning, Conrad:

    I tried to access the video, but YouTube posted that it is private. Katie has grown so much in the last couple of months.

    I've been enjoying reading about your walks. Are the windmills for electric power generation of for water?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sir Hugh4 February 2013 at 13:04

    Sorry! I've made the video public now.

    Windmills for electric power generation are proliferating nationwide, mainly located in wild and beautiful places, often on skylines. The result is a systematic trashing of everything I, along with many others, value in the landscape of this country. I'll try and find some pics to email to you, although from bits and pieces I have seen you have similar problems in the USA.

    The energy problem is insoluble. Here is a snippet from today's BBC NEWS:

    "The cost of cleaning up the Sellafield nuclear site has reached £67.5bn, with no indication of when the cost will stop rising, according to a report".

    As far as I understand, that is apart from the great problem of disposing of nuclear waste for which there is no known, satisfactory solution at the moment.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Roderick Robinson4 February 2013 at 14:47

    Proof yet again that it's the things that go wrong that are the most fruitful, the most entertaining and (an anti-Sod's Law revelation) the easiest to write about. And don't think I'm bringing down curses on all future expeditions. You can, if you like, simply imagine something going wrong. You aren't confined to the 7 miles it takes getting from A to B, the possibilities are more or less infinite. Anything to eradicate the need for using "pleasant".

    V. small correction but a world of differenece: It's "The ladies who do lunch."

    ReplyDelete
  4. Phreerunner4 February 2013 at 14:53

    1000 pixels has always worked for me, Conrad.
    Re your previous posting -I've not read Dave's book but I quite enjoyed Peter's. I did enjoy Dave's 'baggerwatch' column in TGO until it was cut. I believe the divorce wasn't entirely without acrimony...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous4 February 2013 at 23:55

    I suspect that many of us can probably recall a similar - 'I'll just try a little further on' - parking error.
    Do you think that pylons blend in better than windmills? Not sure that I agree - sadly, of course, all of those remote windfarms will necessitate a host of new power lines and their pylons....
    Mark

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sir Hugh5 February 2013 at 09:01

    RR -" We walked up a "pleasant" lane, and turned right at the top, then after thirty yards onto a footpath..." - Those days are over for ever.
    If there's nothing else to say nothing will be said. The photos can stand alone and readers can see where you went from the map.

    Thanks for the correction - it has been sorted. I was working from a source, who normally keeps me well informed with modern jargon. I learnt a new one the other day - "webtard", if you are not familiar with it see:

    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=webtard

    Phreerunner - Thanks for that. 1000 seems to be working ok for me, especially the maps.

    I have ordered Peter's book and I will post about it when it is read.

    Beatingthebounds - Hi Mark. I am certainly no lover of pylons either. Their only benefit to me are as a navigation aid as the actual lines are shown on the OS map.

    ReplyDelete
  7. welshpaddler11 February 2013 at 11:16

    Hi Conrad,

    Your outdoors are again becoming more frequent. I am now tending to keep the route description short as there is usually a map.

    I have 7 days of walking to write up having just come back from North Wales - based in Trawsfynydd. Clearly the decommissioning of their nuclear station is a long project, finishes in 2020.

    When the wind turbines started they conveniently overlooked to remind everyone that pylons would also increase.

    ReplyDelete