Fred's Run

Fred Rogerson was, with Harry Griffin, one of the founders of the Bob Graham 24hr Club. Somewhat ironically neither man had completed the round. Following Fred's death last October, his family came up with the idea of a relay taking his ashes around the route.

Selwyn Wright, the club chairman, organised things for this last weekend and as luck would have it the generally benign weather broke early on Saturday morning. A deluge of Cumbrian proportions. I'd offered to help from Rossett Pike onwards, hopefully as far as Great End.

A chance encounter in Langdale with another helper - after all who else would be jogging along the valley floor in a heavy rain shower at 7am? - saw two of us climb steadily up the new path up Rossett Gill. Surprisingly we met a couple heading down, we didn't realise it until later but they were actually a support party for an attempt that day, I think the contender got round so good effort on his part!

We stood around in the mirk close to the summit trying to see the relay arrive when a voice behind shouted "Are you anything to do with Fred's Round?" Somehow they'd run right past us. So after a quick chat we set off up Bowfell. Now Selwyn had warned me that the two on this leg were by far the fastest of those helping out - "they might have slowed down a bit by the time they get to you", they hadn't! Whilst they were busy chatting away I was in the red zone, as we approached the ramps leading to the plateau I caught them up - all right they had stopped to wait for me: "fancy carrying Fred's ashes?" Not a problem, except for the occasional stumble where the bag had to change hands quickly to avoid getting split.

Eventually the plateau was reached and we were now not just in a deluge but a bit of a hoolie as well. The summit rocks were slippery and not nice to try and move quickly over but a dab of the hand on the summit cairn and Fred had another one ticked off.

At some point I'd tweeked my groin again so I decided not to continue as I'd only hold the fell hounds up but to descend back to the car. This took as long as the ascent had done and I only saw three people until I was back in the valley.

A lot of effort maybe for such a short section but it was worth it.

Apparently the weather finally cleared up as the relay left Honister and a group of around fifty, including Alan Heaton and Bill Smith, walked the last mile to the Moot Hall in Keswick to complete Fred's round.

Show Time!

A couple of days' biking at the weekend, one day on the road and one off-road. The road ride was just a quick blast with Cath to Colne and back so nothing major. Sunday we headed up to Langstrothdale for a ride over to Bainbridge and back, however someone forgot their helmet so we had to borrow one before setting off which meant driving through a couple of very heavy showers and about 90mins delay.

Once away it was a long pull up to Fleet Moss with the tarmac feeling very grippy on our MTB tyres, not the sort of thing you need on a climb. At the summit we were watching the paragliders when a stoat scurried across the track in front of us in their usual hyperactive manner. What followed was the longest (and probably straightest) descent in the Dales down the old Roman road to Bainbridge. A bit loose in places so some care needed. Then it was another steep climb to Carpley Green before heading off-road again. There was one section of the track that needed a push as it was both steep and loose, a few more steeper sections and then you are on the summit ridge with wide ranging views. Finally we descended to the road above Cray though a couple of sections needed to be walked as they are washed out and a bit technical. After a pint in The White Lion at Cray it was back to the car with the mewing of a buzzard overhead.

We went to the Great Yorkshire Show on Wednesday, Cath having got two free tickets through her work, so spent some time in queues getting to the ground. Mostly it's like a super large open air market and has little to do with its agricultural roots and a lot of the visitors seemed to be using it for retail therapy.

More interesting were the animals on show. Some of the breeds were new to me, "Lonk" for example (a sheep if you don't know), I thought they were Dalesbred from their facial markings until I caught sight of the breed sign. The rarer Scottish breeds like Boreray, Soay and Hebridean are close to the original wild sheep and compared to the modern commercial breeds are tiny, little larger than a sheepdog. On a walk around the Rare Breeds Trust tent I came across perhaps the rarest breed of all, the Vaynol Cow. Just 45 animals exist which I think can certainly be classed as rare. 

A Soay Sheep

A Blue Faced Leicester - they always look rather haughty.

A very docile Hereford bull.

With increasing commercialisation is there any place for these breeds? They take longer to grow and so get to market with all the associated costs of feed and care; they are generally smaller and so less profitable overall; their meat is less suited to the bland, homogenised palate that the modern consumer exhibits and is promoted by the supermarkets. However many of these breeds exhibit characteristics that have the potential to help modern agriculture: disease and drought resistance and the like, so allowing them to die out would be short-sighted in the extreme. Perhaps they are suited to the small-holder who has less reason to submit to commercial pressures with their choice of stock.

Our own retail therapy from the show amounted to a few specialist cheeses and very nice the first one we opened is too.

British Summer and cycling!

Despite the poor weather recently I've managed to bike in to work every day this week again. In fact I only got wet coming home on Friday night, getting caught in a sharp shower for a few minutes. Unfortunately for Cath, she got caught in a rather sharper shower as she was heading home!

It's surprising just how few times it seems to rain during commuting hours even here on the Pennines. It makes excuses for not cycling in to work even feebler than they already are (and I include myself in that group). Of course it helps to have flexi-time (actually we have core hours so it isn't true flexi-time) so you can try and time your ride to happen between showers but even this isn't truly necessary.

One thing I have noticed is that biking to and from work is becoming much easier and I'm getting home in quick times but don't feel like I've bust a gut at the end of it - it's two miles of uphill to get home so never easy.

As you may have noticed, it's the Tour de France time and fortunately we have a lot of TVs at work so we can get to watch the live coverage - you have to have some perks! There are quite a few keen cyclists at work so we can assert some control :-) It was a bit of a shock to see the Wiggins crash and there's some discussion going on on various feeds about head injuries - there have been three so far in this year's Tour - despite the mandatory use of helmets.

I think most cyclists have conflicting thoughts about helmets with many lauding their use and some jurisdictions mandating their use while others, especially older riders it seems, avoid them. I suppose in the case of the older riders it's what you get used to. The studies on cycling helmets with regards to injuries, both head and elsewhere appear confusing with little robust evidence to support either side of the argument. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting their use - the "I crashed and would have cracked my skull" type of thing - indeed I've had a crash myself where the helmet took the brunt of any impact my skull would have taken though in that case it was the rest of me that took the (big) hit.

Against this is the fact that most cyclists travel at relatively low speeds, < 12MPH, so simply falling off your bike isn't going to be all that traumatic and the main injuries are likely to be gravel rash and possibly lower arm/hand damage. Once you introduce another vehicle, invariably a car, then injuries are going to be similar to those of pedestrians and there is no call for pedestrians to wear helmets. Not an easy choice. For the record I do wear a helmet.

Ennervation

A bit of a slack couple of weeks mainly due to the increasing heat and humidity. Most activity has been on the bike and I've managed nine out of the last ten days to bike in to work so feeling quite smug about that.

It was our wedding anniversary last weekend so that took a day out, though Cath wasn't too well as it happened. We ended up having a drive round the Dales with lunch at the Tan Hill Inn in very strong wind which was blowing food around and off our plates! To be honest the food wasn't special and it felt that the inn was trading on its location rather than making any effort.

This weekend I got a long bike ride in - had a good average speed for the first 61Km then I picked the biggest hill to get home and things slowed down dramatically. Sunday was spent over in the Lakes climbing on some of the recently developed crags on Harter Fell. We'd originally intended to go to Stonestar Crag but on approaching it peregrines started crying out so even though we knew there wasn't a ban on the crag - the birds didn't nest there this year - we decided to go elsewhere.

The main problem was that we didn't have any descriptions to the routes! In general we got the grades about right though the line that we thought might be a steep E1 turned out to be E4 - we didn't actually try it though. The climbing was OK but it's fair to say that we won't be rushing back. We eventually ended up back at Stonestar to check out the birds. They were making lots of noise without us even leaving the car so we reckoned they were juveniles and there was no reason not to climb. Thus Simon got his third new crag of the day with an ascent of Columbia, E1. A quick pint in Broughton then a surprisingly quiet A65 back home.

The Doldrums

Well it took all week to recover from whatever I'd picked up last weekend, though I'm still a bit wheezy. The weather forecast for the weekend was pants so didn't arrange anything - bad move! The weather was mostly fine and would have been OK for climbing, oh well.

Somewhat strangely I went for a run up Pinhaw Beacon on Saturday, no idea what made me do it! I was fine on the uphills but ended up walking some of the downhills. My knees were fine so maybe a few more gentle runs might be in order. Went for a mountain bike ride above Wycoller with Cath on Sunday and basically I was crap :-( so I've quite a few cuts and bruises from 1KmPH unintentional dismounts!

Andy Kitts has written up his BGR report here , most of the individual parts were on his blog but here's the full gory details. Yet to see Steve Brock's report.

I've always been surprised at the number of Curlews that we get around the house. On the family farm in the South Lakes I only remember one or two pairs in the area, here though there must be at least ten pairs just in our little area. It's quite odd to sit having a bath and have a Curlew sail past the window less than 20m away! They were mobbing a Buzzard the other day which has a different distribution: lots in the Lakes and fewer the further east you go though I believe their range is extending.

Going downhill?

A good commuting week last week - biked in four days out of five. OK, it's only five miles each way but it's almost as quick as driving. Got wet on Friday going home, actually got very wet, if I'd left it for another half hour it would have almost been dry.

Saturday saw Gaz and myself at Standing Stones in the Chew Valley, a crag I'd never been to before. In fact I've done very little climbing in the Chew Valley even though Cath is from Saddleworth and I've spent a lot of time in the area. Despite the good forecast it began to drizzle as we got to the crag so we decided to stick to lower grade routes and see how the day went. Gaz had been before and had a couple of routes in mind, however by the time he got to the top of our first route, a VS, it was raining pretty persistently so seconding was "fun". Another couple of teams turned up but decided to head elsewhere so we had the crag to ourselves for the rest of the day.

After waiting a while for the rain to pass we ended up doing another four routes, nothing hard but good climbing nonetheless and jamming uses different muscle groups to face climbing so it all felt a bit different.

Sunday could have been the Roses Round but I got laid low by a cold on Saturday night and spent most of the day (and Monday) in bed feeling sorry for myself. No idea where I picked it up from but it didn't follow my usual "cold sequence" and came on very suddenly. Slowly getting back to normal.

Get the Goat

After a few weeks (well a month) of no climbing it was time to get back on rock but true to form the fine weather mid-week was forecast to head downhill for the weekend. With a threat of the Peak (yuk!) I had a ring round and Simon was up for a trip over to the Lakes and Goat Crag especially now that it's had a recent clean up. A check in the guide shows that the last time I climbed there was to do Footless Crow with Ed Cleasby, just 24 years ago! Some time after this a rumour began circulating that I'd soloed it - definitely not true!!

Heading over we passed through a series of heavy showers along with some interesting cloud formations near Kirkby Lonsdale.

Weird clouds above Kirkby Lonsdale

As we neared Keswick however the skies were definitely lighter so down to Grange and head through the campsite and flog up the steep slope that I don't remember to the foot of the crag. I was surprised to see the biggest prize in Lakeland trundling still in place.

Having not climbed for ages I was happy to let Simon lead the first, crux, pitch. There was a bit of drizzle on and off through the climb but it didn't affect the climbing too much.

Simon at the start of the steep section of the first pitch

My turn to follow and the steep crack doesn't feel like the crux, the moves on to the ramp feel far harder. My lead next and the guide talks of a blank wall but it isn't too bad, neither is the groove leading to the stance. The stance I'm not happy with: two pegs, two Friends and two wires - all between the crag and a large hollow sounding block!

A team on the third pitch of Preying Mantis

I suggest to Simon that the next two pitches could be combined but he decides to stick to the script so I get the top pitch which is pretty good climbing though I'm glad it's not raining. Then it's time to abseil off - I've never walked off from this crag and don't know anyone who has.

Lethargy took hold and rather than do another route at the crag we decided to head over to Quayfoot Buttress, unfortunately by the time we got there it had begun to rain in earnest so we decided to call it a day and head home. Still I'd finally managed to tick off the Lakeland section of Hard Rock - only took 29 years.