Round the bay-Arnside to Grange over Sands

Arnside Viaduct with Arnside Knott on the left

As a walking enthusiast, living in Arnside, circumnavigating the bay is an obvious route. Walks are similar to rock climbs: one looks for an elegant line incorporating interesting features, and above all, with a walk, avoiding return by the outward route. After living here for nearly eleven years I finally accomplished this outing yesterday. The statistics recorded on my Memory Map Adventurer 2800 GPS were:

Total distance:                            exactly 17 miles

Average speed whilst walking:    3.49mph (I did stop for about ten minutes with a flask of          coffee and some nibbles)

Time taken: 5.5 hours

Average speed including stop: 3.09 mph - (my own calculation).

Arranging a circular walk can have logistical problems, and difficulties also arise with a linear walk. On occasions I have dropped my bike off at one end then driven to the start and cycled back to the car afterwards.  Yesterday the train was a satisfying solution. In contrast with 5.5 hours walking the return train journey over Arnside Viaduct took just 6 minutes.

Would I recommend the walk?  Well, I would give it about 7.5 out of 10 - it rarely rises more than 33ft above sea level and is therefore flat and  good for fit geriatrics who are capable of distance but not ascent. There are some inspiring views over the water, and marine bird life is abundant, but there is too much tarmac for a higher score.

The route is shown as a red line with blue waypoint dots

Clicking on the pics will enlarge them (well it does on my Apple).

56 - To trust the map or not?

On Mick and Gayle’s last post http://www.gayleybird.blogspot.com/ they discovered a footpath had changed on the map – they were using an older map and found the change updated on a newer version when they got home.

With route and location finding I have found  the map is usually correct. On my last trig points outing (see my Post 55) this was not true. I had difficulty finding the trig at Kelleth NY 664 067 because it was  against a high drystone wall and only visible from the side of the wall we were not on. I was trying to position myself in relation to a mature, deciduous wood that must have been there for over fifty years and measuring perhaps 200m x 200m. This wood turned out to be south-east of the trig and is not shown on the 1:50000 or on the 1:25000 maps although woods to the north of similar size are.

If I can’t make things fit, especially if hot and bothered, or if I’m being blown off my feet by the wind I try to find somewhere to sit down and think it all out carefully. It is so easy to convince yourself that you have made things fit when you haven’t, but if the map is wrong you are unfortunately thrown back onto your, hopefully, vast store of experience.

I have been playing with my Memory Map 2800. Following a footpath on the map there is sometimes a discrepancy between the GPS cursor on the map and the footpath on the map, despite the fact that you know for certain you are on the path. I am not sure whether this is down to inaccurate plotting of the path by the OS or to the vagaries of GPS.

52 - Adventurer 2800 by Memory Map

I bought my Memory Map Adventurer 2800 well before Christmas. With some difficulty I purchased and downloaded the French IGN maps I will need for my French trip. I wanted to download the whole of the UK 1:50000 Memory Maps that I have on my PC, but I found the memory card was not big enough. I purchased an 8 gb card from Memory Map and was still unable to download. I had several telephone conversations with MM, and at one stage downloaded a manual for the 2800, the existence of which had not been apparent before. Eventually I got a helpful email detailing an alternative method from Simon Jenkins (Technical Support Development & IT Team Leader) at MM and it was then plain sailing.

Another problem has now developed. When I try to view the French IGN maps on the PC they are just appearing in unreadable, pixelated format. On phoning MM again they are closed because of the bad weather. I have sent an email and am awaiting a reply.

In case anybody out there is having similar problems I would be pleased to share any of the information that I have.

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I have been looking at Mick and Gayle's blog  http://gayleybird.blogspot.com/ 
I met them when I was doing my LEJOG walk. They are planning to walk from the southeast tip of Kent to Cape Wrath starting in March. There is a link to a very detailed itinerary that they have planned which may be of interest to readers of this blog.

I admire their detailed planning which is in contrast to my slapdash approach of walking each day and starting to think of finding a stopping place somewhere around 3:00 pm.