Blogging and trogging - May 2010
Si's general blogs on what's been going on...
Jump to: Bone Hill,... , Armathwaite, Stone... , Gouther Crag,... , The best breakfast...
May 15th 2010 Bone Hill, Dartmoor, Devon
Dartmoor - finger ripping great granite
Campervan heaven
Grey skies, gorse and granite.
May 3rd 2010 Armathwaite, Stone and Sand.
Sandstone and the Lakes, Garlic and Bread... the two go together naturally?
250 square miles of the Lake District Nationl Park and you end up at a crag by a river made of Sandstone - what's that all about? Sandstone being a form of rock that actually snaps if you pull on the wrong holds - It's always a good idea to practice testing holds gently - and here's a whole crag made of it... mmm!
Well actually it's all extremely cool - with sandy riverside bays, a nature reserve bursting with wild flowers, rare birds and two of the best eating pubs you could dream up. Add all that to south facing sun warmed rock and you get the picture... family heaven with a few exciting surprises. We weren't however the first to find the place - no surprises there then. Stone carved faces and a poetic extract from The Complete Angler carved in the rock in 1855 were however the most exciting surprises as you traverse round the rocky bays just above the waterline - small giveaway clues to previous expeditions to the area methinks.
May 2nd 2010 Gouther Crag, Swindale, Lakes
Gouther Crag - Crag of the month - no crag of the decade. It's been a good ten years since setting foot on a mountain crag. Well I always say that and it seems like it - but in reality there haver been a few others but this felt like day one of a three year crusade. Meilee dragged her willing accomplice, me, around with angelic patience as we tiptoed our way up some seriously overlooked volcanic solid rock. The Bank Holiday was turning out all right - still no rain but bitterly cold and a wind that pushed its way up garments it shouldn't. Lucy and John did some serious routes HVS to E3 in formidable style as they were photographed by Mr Glasby - nice job.
We all had a great time but in reality it was Kodo's day again. Lord Kodo of the Fells that is.
May 1st 2010 The best breakfast in Britain
After a nights VW van camping under the Bowderstone in the Lakeland Borrowdale we treated ourselves to the best Bank Holiday breakfast in Britain.
The Lodore farm in Borrowdale under Shepherds crag fries up a traditional English in traditional English style with added healthy. Apart from the overwhelming friendliness at the Farm, the position of this small piece of utter Englishness has the view you would probably have were you lucky to go 'up-there' as opposed to 'anywhere else' in the afterlife. The view is over Derwent Water to the mountains on the far side. Oh Joy! All this rustic charm, a charm that hasn't changed at all since the late 1970's when I first visited, combined with the calm, restorative lightness of being in the heart of somewhere totally healing.
We were in sunshine, whereas the rest of the country seemed to be in rain and it seemed to be one of those moments of complete frozen hapiness. Something that didn't go unnoticed by the other normally 'tick hungry' climbers around, whose reluctance to leave the café was only surpassed by their hunger for bacon butties soaked up in the bank holiday sunshine.
