Gallimaufry

Recently I bought a Nite watch, and idly entered a competition on their website and  I won 3rd prize:

One year’s subscription to Trail

RAB Tempur waterproof jacket

MSR Micro Rocket stove

One year’s supply of Granger’s waterproofing

Nite-glow keyring

Lifeventure scales.

My only other win ever was a spot prize at a dance when I was thirteen - it was a shaving set.

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Not good news on the knee: a few nights ago, in bed, I had muscular spasms in my calf and spent a sleepless night pondering the intricacies of neurosurgery, remembering scenes from a hospital thriller film in my childhood which scarred me for life - Green for Danger. Next morning, things seemed ok, and I walked four miles, but then spasms happened all over again that night.

So it was off to my gp - he is a keen walker and winter mountaineer, and looks upon my activities with good humour. His technique was interesting - he asked about my fears, and I confessed to my morbid forebodings of homicdal surgeons, and some other things, including my theory of there being a fine line between improvment or self destruction when pushing hard with exercises.

“There” he said,

“I ask patients these questions and then often find they give me the diagnosis”.

When I told him about the exercises I was encouraged to pursue aggressively by the physio,  Dr. A. reckoned I had been overdoing it, perhaps stretching nerves (I didn't know you could do that, but it sure fits with what was happening to me). He suggested taking it easy and predicted things would settle down.

Well, he was right. I have been inert, but feeling indolent, and a bit guilty, for the last few days, but the muscles have stopped their convulsions. 

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I watched Richard11 a few nights ago and  realised it was the film I had seen in production at Whitesands Bay two days before the end of my Welsh Boundary walk last summer. Here is an extract from my journal

There was drama, literally, at Whitesands Bay. A film company was making a production of either Richard the Second (or the Third) - my two sources differed. As I arrived on the cliff top I encountered two people, the first being some sort of paparazzi who had found what coarse fishermen call "a good hole" well nestled into the long grass with camera and long lens overlooking the scene of the production on the beach. The second was an archetypal security, night club bouncer type who was trying to eject Paparazzi, but with seriously challenged verbal skill- these two combatants were really going at it as I slid past unnoticed.

The guy in the café a bit further on said the production had brought little extra business because the film company are almost self sufficient, and in fact they had been trying to prevent the public from visiting the bay.

 

I’m just going to watch the sequel now - Henry 1V Pt. 1...

... dammit! It's been cancelled because of the ****** tennis.

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Katie update:

I wonder?

Lulu self publish - Conrad Walks Wales, (and baby talk)

At last the Lulu self publish book of my Welsh boundary walk this summer  has been uploaded to Lulu.

I wrote the journal and integrated the pictures in a Word document using Lulu's template,  and my daughter Jill* has been helping me to upload the file to Lulu for publishing.

We encountered several problems converting the Word doc to a pdf in a form acceptable to Lulu, and one of these related to text embedding. I must thank Alan Rayner alanrayneroutdoors.blogspot.com for some useful advice which eventually solved that problem.

This is a drastically pixel-reduced  photo  from Lulu's website - the text in the oval frame reads "Over one thousand miles walking round the boundary of Wales"

Conrad Walks Wales will be the sixth of these books that I have commissioned and I reckon it will be the best (I am still awaiting my copy). This time I have made photos bigger and most have been enhanced and cropped to some extent using Photoshop. This book runs to 237 pages; for anybody interested it can be bought as a hardback at a net cost of £36.29 or as a pdf download for £5.00 by visiting www.lulu.com/  and entering Conrad Walks in the search box.

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* Jill - Some of my readers will know my daughter Jill, and I feel that now is the time to announce the fact that she is expecting, and I will hopefully become a granddad for the first time in October. Further relevant reports will no doubt follow.

Dickie Morsley - update on my post of 6th May (day 17 of Welsh Walk)

In the post referred to I told of meeting the widow of Dickie Morsley in Llandygai near Bangor. Mrs M told me of her husband’s connections with JHB Bell who I erroneously said had written “Mountaineering in Scotland”, the proper title of his classic opus is “A Progress in Mountaineering” published in 1950. John Proud and Tom W did some research and found some reference to Dickie, and these are detailed in the comments on the post.

In Bell’s book I have found reference to Dickie in a lively account by Bell of an ascent of Central Buttress on Scafell in September 1940 with Dickie,  Jack Henson and Percy Small. Here is a short extract describing the start.

“The climb started up a steep slab with with two rather difficult movements. At the top of the first pitch we were hailed by Syd Cross, and Mrs Cross and A T Hargreaves from below, bestowing words of advice and encouragement. Cross had led CB in boots without any combined tactics at the Flake Crack ...”

Mrs M also mentioned her husband making the first ascent of Suicide Wall which led me to The Climbers’ Club Guide to Ogwen and Carneddau (1993), and the following extract.


 "Of the characters hardened by army training Chris Preston stood out above the rest. He had been one of the party which clipped an hour off the Welsh 3000 footers, and after a day's climbing had raced up Snowdon in 48 mins. His route Advocate's Wall on the Devil's Kitchen was merely a prelude to a major breakthrough. On October 7th 1945 Preston led the first route on Suicide (WallSuicide Wall Route 1). By modern standards it is graded E2 5c, and one must remember that it was done in gym shoes - there were no runners - and it was utterly serious and committing from the moment that he made his big push. Not surprisingly there were only two repeats during the next 14 years, and the route remained for some years as the hardest route in the country. By comparison John Lawton's  1948 route Suicide Groove was far more amenable, but nevertheless it was an intimidating line and compared well with other hard routes of the day.


One pre-war push had been made when Paul Work and APG HUghes attacked the front to Llech Ddu but sadly after completing three very hard pitches they were forced to retreat. It was left to George Dwyer and Dickie Morsley to complete the Central Route of Llech Ddu in 1946. It was an inspired foretaste of what was to come in the future".

I have not been able to trace who seconded Preston on Suicide Wall, but guess this may have been our Dickie - I reckon persistent Googling may find the answer, but Climbers’ Club records are unreadable on badly reproduced pdfs. Somebody who is a member would presumably have access to the originals, which would also most ilkely be lodged with the British Library. 

Welsh Walk Preparations

This post relates to my proposed walk of approximately 1000 miles round the borders of Wales - for more details see two previous posts under "Welsh Walk" label.

The date is set. I bought a senior railcard and ticket for the seven hour journey from Preston to Fishguard departing 20th April (My daughter Jill will drive me to Preston to catch the 6:00am train). For followers not familiar with UK geography my train will be traveling from the north (see map below), and to get to Fishguard it has to go to Cardiff  on the south coast of Wales before going north again to Fishguard.

Originally I intended to go after Easter but on realising this coincides with the royal wedding and its attendant bank holiday I would not have been able to go before the beginning of May to avoid that period, so I will  take my chances on accommodation over the various bank holidays.

A saving of £5.95 has already been achieved via the senior railcard on this one journey.

A more convenient starting point, closer to home could have been selected, but I know the North Pembrokeshire Coast Path from St Davids to Fishguard as a delight of littoral scenery as good as anywhere in England and Wales, and it should provide a fitting finish. The pragmatic choice would probably be Connah’s Quay - not quite so inspiring.

Welsh Walk Preperations

I have plotted onto Memory Map all the Caravan and Camping Club CLs relevant to my proposed walk round the boundaries of Wales which henceforth will be called “WelshWalk”.

All the CLs occurring on each 1:50000 OS numbered map are listed in the club's guide. A six figure OS grid reference is given for each CL prefixed with the number of the OS map. Unfortunately Ordnance Survey have a different set of sheets in their system in addition to the map numbers.These sheets are identified with two letters. To plot an OS grid reference on Memory Map the two letters have to precede the six figure number. There can be parts of more than one of the OS’s two letter  sheets on each numbered map so when plotting from the Club’s guide you have no way of knowing which are the correct letters for the given grid reference for a particular site, and you have to proceed by trial and error. On the example herewith map number 84 includes parts of sheets NX and NY.

It took me a day and a half to plot the sites. If the club had thought to prefix their grid references with the letters instead of the map number I would probably have saved half a day. I have written to them making the appropriate suggestion. The club  don’t seem to have a facility for email  on their website so I had to use snail mail.

The maps have all been printed onto101sheets of A4 which weighed 511g, but after trimming blank areas this was reduced to 361g. I will  post half the maps  to a camp site halfway round the route. 

New Lulu books. Backpacking for next year

The journals for my 35 day GR5, and my 35 day French gorges walks are now available on Lulu either as a download or a hardback book – see details in red below my profile.


Due to an error in downloading the template from Lulu the size of the GR5 book is smaller: 6 inches x 9inches compared with 8.25inches x 10.75inches, but I was pleasantly surprised with the result.

Plans are afoot for next year’s backpacking trip. The concept is to follow the national boundary of Wales as closely as I can within reason, using footpaths as much as possible, and not being concerend about which side of the border I am on at any one time.

So far I have plotted the route on Memory Map which totals 1561km. The route is plotted in straight lines, and tries to avoid obscuring the printed  footpaths  and roads on the map, and does not follow all the twists and turns. I guess the true distance will exceed the 1561km by at least ten percent.

The next task is to re-join the Camping and Caravan Club and identify and plot onto Memory Map any of their CLs that are near enough the route to be useful. I am a member of the Caravan Club, but most of their CLs do not cater for tents whereas the converse applies to the C&CC. When that is completed I can then print the route  onto sheets of A4. I find I can get ten kilometer squares by six on one sheet which gives some enlargement on the original map.


I have just bought a pair of Inov-8 Roclite 400 GTX boots which I am going to try and save for the Welsh walk, although I will give them a try first. Some kind of review will follow.