Walking With Williams

Right, today, I took the bull by the horns and decided to advise my parents of the presents I deserved for Christmas and my forthcoming birthday. The first is a PHD Minimus sleeping bag, my first foray into down bags. Looking forward to replacing my Vango synthetic bag that ways 1.2kg, and the space saving in the rucksack will hopefully be sufficient to allow wild-camping with my 35l Deuter rucksack.

To accompany the bag, I have also asked (and ordered by proxy) a Therm-A-Rest Prolite 3 short mat which I plan to use in collaboration with a Z-Lite closed cell matt in winter conditions.

The net result will be saving of about 500gm in mild winter conditions, and from March / April, about a 2lb pack saving. The final weight based upgrades will be more optimized first aid kit (never used anything other than pain killers from this), lighter poles (only to be replaced when the length markers finally got wiped off mine), and sac itself. Oh for Xmas 09!!!!

Went up to Keldy, Yorkshire last week with the better half. Whilst not a dedicated walking holiday, a couple of walks was definitely on the cards. Getting up their last Monday saw our dream of snow come true; a good 3 inches of snow was still on the ground from the heavy fall the previous week.

Due to this, and my poor winter driving stylee, I got the car stuck the first day, thus preventing the early departure needed for the planned coastal walk. Therefore, we did a 8 – 9 mile walk around Keldy / Compton Forest. The snow was deep, I had a good few slips on ice, and had the token getting lost moment. However, we got back to base camp (a luxury hot tub / log burning fire equipped wooden lodge) before dusk. Nice. An hour in the hot tub on sore muscles; even nicer!!!

Our second walk was a more strenuous 13 miler walking from Whitby to Robin Hood’s Bay direct, and back along the Cleveland Way cliff walk. Outward bound was easy albeit nearly seeing me lose my brand new iphone:( However, the return leg was another story. Slimy mud made a relatively easy (if slightly hilly) track become a slippy mudfest. Walking poles were definitely needed, and I was surprised at the 500m or so of climbing along the 8 mile leg. Still, the views over the North Sea were amazing. The cliff views and waves crashing against them will stick in my mind for a long time, this was my first real coastal walk, and I can’t wait for the next one. However, a later than expected departure meant that we spent the last 30 mins or so walking in the pitch dark, ala head torches. Good fun, but we couldn’t wait to return to Whitby for the mandatory (and strangely hard to find!!!) cod and chips. Yum!!!