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a muted colour pitched late in the day could well go unnoticed normally i like to take in a mountain when i go walking there are no mountains to be had in gloucestershire so i had to settle on the mount inn in stanton instead it s very slightly off the route back up a short steep climb but it s worth a stop good beer good food and ample beer garden to enjoy it in other hostelry stops could include broadway and winchcombe there s no shop in stanton so the only other resupply point would the shop at hailes abbey which has a small selection of drinks and sweets stanway house i hope that is of some interest there will be more information posted as i work my way south over the coming weeks i never really gave the cotswold way much credit but my eyes have been opened and i am thoroughly looking forward to the miles to come posted by kenburg at 17 39 5 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday 19 september 2011 seven of one half a dozen of the other september rolls around and a young middle aged old man woman s thoughts turn to the tgo challenge entry form there it sits taunting or tempting you from the back of september s tgo for some there is no hesitation they fill it in write a cheque for 30 and send it off post haste to john manning others dwell on their entry maybe they ve never done the challenge and are apprehensive about whether they are up to it or maybe they did it last year and never want to go near it again of course there are the challenge old timers not necessarily that old but veterans of many a crossing the challenge for them is an opportunity to be in a place they love doing something they enjoy with like minded whiskey drinking chums i leave it you to decide which camp you fall in to what camp do i fall in to well i m 42 so i obviously fall in to the young man category and i ve never done the challenge so i think i fall in to the apprehensive section too i am also going to fall in to the not posting an entry form in category it feels a bit strange and final to type those words the decision not to enter next year s challenge has been both tough and simple to make explain please i hear you ask i will it s tough because i love scotland i have not visited or walked there as often as i would like and the challenge seemed like a perfect opportunity to spend time in a wonderful environment i have also come a bit late to the backpacking wild camping aspect of enjoying the outdoors and a chance to test myself doing it is one i really wanted to take of course you can t discount the opportunity to by new lighter shinier kit and this is a major driving force in too many of my hobbies so many things in the plus column if i love all these things so much then why am i not entering as i mentioned in a previous post i really miss my wife when i m away and two weeks is just too long even if she came up and met me a couple of times i m not sure that would help i m self employed so we don t always find it easy to take weeks off for holidaying purposes so for me to take two weeks off and spend it doing my own thing seems a bit selfish that also links to one of the more mundane reasons to not enter wonga taking two weeks off during these straitened times just isn t going to be practical i thought i had made my mind up that i wasn t going to enter then the entry form turns up and i go back to planning thumbing through guidebooks and browsing blogs but ultimately in my heart of hearts i just knew it wasn t going to happen so where does that leave me in the hiking backpacking scheme of things is this the end of my backpacking dream well no i need something to aim for some reason to keep my fitness levels up over the winter some excuse to buy that vital titanium carbon fibre aglet and some challenge to look forward to so to that end i have been casting about for something to do and i have found it i won t go in to details here just yet but suffice to say i ll be away from home for just four nights i ll miss only three days work i ll walk 100 kilometres and climb over 7400m maps have been bought and routes plotted on grough chris and pete have expressed their interest in joining me so wheels are creaking in to motion so there it is i am genuinely sad that i won t be entering the challenge next year although never say never however deep down i know it s the right thing to do of course not entering does make a mockery of my site s address and my twitter handle kentgoc2012 but i m hoping you ll all just over look that posted by kenburg at 17 41 5 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest wednesday 24 august 2011 a last wild place i have just finished reading this excellent book by mike tomkies and can thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in scotland the highland flora fauna and preservation of wilderness i don t intend this to be a book review so you ll have to find a copy yourself and read it i found that his thoughts from the last couple of paragraphs struck a chord and here they are in nature s teeming world the animals and birds are working hard to fulfil their destinies the feeling came strongly upon me that we who evolved from original creation to become the dominant species with unique gifts of intelligence foresight and the ability to love spiritually beyond ourselves have an inherent and inescapable duty to act as repsonsible custodians of the whole inspiring natural world we are the late comers it can only be ours on trust if we let it down then we also let down its creator and if even if we don t believe in god conservation of the natural world and its ability to inspire our finer thoughts for only thought can change the world is without any doubt whatever a necessary ethic for our own survival the kingdoms of the wild evolved in creation not for mere man to plunder to satisfy greed under the guide of progress and to finally destroy but both to enjoy and enhance if we fail to learn from the last wild places we may yet create a hell on earth before we too pass along the road to extinction the fate of all dominant species before us spiritual unease has long been mainfest the lessons will not wait for ever to be learned whilst we may have differing philosophies i think the sentiment contained in these words is one most people will agree with if you want to read the book then i suggest checking out amazon posted by kenburg at 07 51 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest tuesday 23 august 2011 poe peak elite ac blues back in april i bought a poe peak elite ac from backpackinglight co uk i had looked at the other options and felt that it had the best spec for the money it was light packed down pretty small and generally looked like it would do the business when it arrived i was super impressed by the pack size i was switching from a tar based sleeping system and with the best will in the world you are not going to get a prolite wrapped up that small and the weight i duly unrolled and inflated it and had a lie down it seemed reasonably narrow but not unusable what made it unusable was the fact it wouldn t hold air after the bath test it became apparent that one of the seams between the tubes had a leak after a quick email to bob and rose at bpl i had a new one which has now developed a leak after four nights use a further bath test has not revealed where the leak is coming from but there is definitely one somewhere searching round the internet it did not take long to discover that i was not the only person to have experienced this problem for example mark s walking blog details his experiences i emailed bpl and got a reply from bob who was most sympathetic having had the same problem on the first day of his tgo challenge this year four nights sleeping on two sit mats does not sound like a great start to a 200 mile hike bob has offered a refund replacement with the 3 4 length poe peak elite ac or change to tar neoair i m not sure which option to take so here s my appeal to the outdoor blogosphere help any suggestions or recommendations are gratefully received things to bear in mind i already have a couple of thermarests prolite and standard so i can t really justify having loads more mats so this one will have to be it i don t want to spend a tonne more money pack size and weight are important but comfort and reliability more so here s a list of some of the contenders that i m considering poe peak elite ac 51x183cm 396g r2 5 69 99 my leaky one weighs 354g with stuffsac and repair kit tar neoair 51x183cm 410g r2 5 94 99 exped synmat ul 52x183cm 460g 4c 67 50 kooka bay luxlite 51x183cm r1 55 not sure how easy this is to get hold of and the price excludes shipping and taxes alpkit numo 49x180cm 468g r2 5 40 out of stock currently it s hard to see past the exped although it is heavier than i would like particularly compared to the peak elite anyway over to you update update update 29 august 2011 well i went with the neoair in the end i really liked the look of the exped synmat ul but there appears to be no stock in the country and won t be until mid october so i popped over to malvern to see bob and rose at bpl and swapped the peak elite for a neoair excellent service as always from bpl thoroughly recommended initial thoughts on the neoair i think it is a little bulkier than the peak elite but not awkwardly so it feels very comfortable comes with a stuff sac and patch kit and seems well made maybe a little run out next month to test it in the wild posted by kenburg at 07 37 4 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday 28 july 2011 a day on the black mountain i rearranged my work this week so i could take advantage of what looked to be a decent weather forecast for wednesday i shot over to the western side of the brecon beacons national park and spent the day on the north eastern fringe of the black mountain possibly the coolest name for a mountain it was a fairly straightforward route up the escarpment edge of fan hir to fan brycheiniog then west along the edge to bannau sir gaer down to the llyn y fan fach and back to the start underneath the cliffs i d previously been on top of it is a stunning place view from fan hir llyn y fan fawr picws du llyn y fan fach bannau sir gaer llyn y fan fach below bwlch blaen twrch fan hir one other thing what a difference a year makes i was striding along viewing the landscape with a wild camper s eye and hatching plans anyone want to join me on the inaugural brecon beacons three peak challenge posted by kenburg at 07 48 3 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest tuesday 12 july 2011 i like the phrase neolithic hippy the phrase wind farm provokes more of a reaction from the u k outdoor community than almost any other being eclipsed only by shall we stop here for a pint and how heavy are your titanium underpants are they the right solution for renewable energy should they be stuck up all over the beautiful wild parts of the country how can i get a slice of the enormous pie i m back to wind farms here not titanium underpants all good questions none of which it is my intention to answer here thinking about it i may come back to the second one we ll see no actually what i was going to muse over was the human impact on wild landscape generally this was triggered in part by my walk in the cairngorms but also by a number of things i have read recently we like to immerse ourselves in wild places to camp walk sit in these places and soak up their unspoilt beauty when we re not out there we like to talk about our experiences and to read those of others to pore over photographs and maps to plot and plan our next escape yet how many of the places we go to are as unspoilt as we think i found it surprising when i was in the cairngorms a national park at just how obvious the hand of man was on the landscape chris and i walked to derry lodge up a wide well surfaced track when we arrived we found four buildings the bob scott memorial hut the lodge buildings and the mountain rescue post to get over the rivers there were bridges heading north we found fenced off areas of trees and then the refuge of avon once we reached faindouran lodge two buildings we picked up another wide vehicle track in places where there presumably had been a need for gravel to level the track great scoops had been taken out of the hillsides which now were eroding away we passed more lodges tracks bothies and bridges and a truly spectacular mess of rock pipes and tracks where the allt an laoigh joins the avon then when you look up many of the hills are zebra striped with controlled heather burns certainly not unspoilt travel to other mountainous areas of the british isles and if it s not bothies and bridges then it s sheep grazing hydro schemes and hard surfaced paths to the summits of popular and convenient peaks screen grab from google maps showing the pattern of heather burns north of braemar i m not knocking these things the tracks bridges and lodges made our journey much easier than it would have been without them the heather burns and other landscape management are vital so we re told for the ecology and economy of the area but what struck me then and has been emphasised since in my reading is that these are simply the latest in a long list of landscape exploitation i found a copy of the shell guide to reading the landscape by richard muir which is a fascinating and comprehensive discussion of human interaction with the british countryside one of the points he makes early on is that the deforestation of the british isles commenced in neolithic times 2500 b c e and large inroads were made in to the blanket coverage of woodland that existed prior to that i m picturing in my head some sort of neolithic hippy railing at the axe wielding proponents of advancement as they levelled great swathes of the forest richard muir suggests that by the time the romans rocked up they would have found england a land largely cleared of forest with pockets of tended woodland interesting i thought in his a history of scotland neil oliver describes the move to farming in the highlands 4000 b c e which resulted in forests being thinned and eventually cleared one final reference that i recently came across is found in hamish brown s hamish s mountain walk in the chapter fada fannich he mentions the much later ironworks at letterewe local oaks were felled to feed the furnaces seven of which were burning at one point in history how much fuel would an iron smelting furnace require a year hamish says that each one would consume 120 acres of oak woodland in twelve months this leads me to the following two part conclusion one that the landscape we consider to wild unspoilt inspiring is largely that way because it s been exploited like mad then managed then exploited etc etc and the other point is that when progress or financial gain is involved it s very difficult...