Category Archives: travel blog

What happened to the daffodils on a Daffodil Dawdle?

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Yesterday was Sally‘s big day of walking the Daffodil Dawdle, a marathon size walk that has to be done in 10 hours or less. Her concern wasn’t the walking but the test it presented in her map reading prowess. Fortunately at the 11th hour David emailed her a gpx file which we easily managed to load into her Viewranger app.

Sally & Gina I presume?

Since she was walking with her Twitter friend Gina I decided to stay at home. However, I couldn’t let her zoom 50,000 steps ahead of me in the Fitbit leader board soi decided to walk from Cambridge to meet her. With the combination of Latitude and the aforesaid GPX file I was able to ‘bump’ into them when they were 2/3rds of the way around. As you can see conditions were less than summery.

 

The conditions were pretty gruesome all round , the most hated part for me was the ice sticking to the heal of my boots meaning I had to keep stopping to hack it off :-( plus the paths were a quagmire in many places.

Daffodils I presume?

Overall I did 51,000 steps (However Sally still did 7,000 more steps than me). No daffodils, in flower,  could be found, just a few shoots.

Overall an excellent day out. Especially the warming soup & cake at the end thanks to our new found friend Jayne and the LDWA.

All my photos of the day can be found on that rubbish service called Google+ try looking here, Good Luck!

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1-2013-03-16 Yorkshire Three peaks walk

Three Peaks & Three Gadgets

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Moves storylineLast saturday Sally and I did the Yorkshire Three Peaks walk. A great walk it was too, especially tagging along behind two members of the LDWA who specialise in 100mile non stop walks. So we moved had a brisker pace and had fewer shorter stops than we are accustomed to with The Cambridge Rambling Club :-) The weather was very low cloud with 12″ or so of freshish snow on all three peaks.

The gadgets I was carrying where an iPhone5 with the Moves app running & the route in the Viewranger app (although not tracking). I also had the route stored in my Garmin etrex 20 which was also storing our track as we walked it. Finally I was wearing my trusty Fitbit Ultra.

I’m pleased to say they all worked flawlessly and all their batteries stayed live for the 11 or so hours we were out. I was also carrying my Canon 550D with a 18-135mm lens.

Moves

This is a very nifty app that automatically works out if you are walking, cycling or just sat in a vehicle! It works by using the internal GPS (battery only lasts a few hours) and also the various internal motion sensors. At the end of the day it produces a summary and storyline (see left image). For this walk (and to and froing  before & after) it gave a result of 58,499 steps, 25.7 miles in 10hours 29mins. You can also see the times we summited and the little stops we had.

I now use this app everyday the biggest disadvantage (apart from battery life – which to me is OKish)is that you cannot easily create a database of activity.

I kept the iPhone in an Aquapac case to stop water damage & also took a TeckNeti EP387 7000mAh external battery pack with cable. (Total weight 368gm)

 

 

 

Fitbit

Fitbit data March 16th

As anyone knows both Sally and I are obsessed with this amazing device.

This gave a reading of 60,600 steps, 28.6 miles. 523 floors climbed (5230 feet in normal speak) and 5340 calories burned over about 12.5 hours .  So it agrees very closely to Moves.

 

 

 

 


GPS

Using Ascent OSX app we get the profile and speed as:Screenshot_22_03_2013_14_47

Screenshot_22_03_2013_14_45

This worked out we had walked 24.8 miles in a moving time of 8hr 45min (average speed 2.8mph) with an ascent of 5,579 feet. So the other devices had a pretty good correlation. So the Fitbit really does work :-)

All my photos of the days walk can be found here.

IMG_8415.JPG IMG_8418.JPG IMG_8427.JPG IMG_8429.JPG IMG_8444.JPG IMG_8466.JPG IMG_8469.JPG IMG_8480.JPG IMG_8494.JPG IMG_8519.JPG IMG_8531.JPG IMG_8533.JPG IMG_8534.JPG IMG_8544.JPG IMG_8546.JPG

 

 

 

 

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First Great Walk

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Tomorrow I try my first New Zealand Great Walk it’s the Tongariro Northern Circuit and goes around two active volcanoes Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe. What makes it different for me is that I have to take all my food & possible water for two nights & three days. I’ve booked both the Oturere Hut and Walhohonu hut and taxi service to take me to Mangatepopo and collect me from the Whakapapa Village Centre

The weather forecast is looking OKish although there are certainly high winds. I don’t intend on going to the summit’s so hopefully should be OK.

I’ve downloaded the relevant New Zealand Topo50 maps into the Viewranger app and will be taking a spare battery.

Should be interesting – now to pack my bag :-)

 

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IMG_2301

Arrival in New Zealand

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I left Cambridge at 9am on Sunday the 14th October and arrived in Auckland at 2pm on Tuesday the 16th with brief stops at Dubai, Kuala Lumpur & Melbourne on the way. Thats 43 hours  straight without any proper sleep.

First job in Auckland was to try and get my D550 camera fixed as it went totally dead on the way over. It wasn’t the battery and so I ended up buying a second hand body from Camera & Camera on Queen street for about $599 :-( an expensive start to the trip. Next job was to sort out the iPhone.

text from 3

Welcome text from 3

Three had kindly sent me a text  on arrival offering internet at £6,000 a GB in New Zealand. I thought that just a tad to expensive… So I went over to Vodafone where I quickly was set up with a 2GB / 1 month Supa Prepay Broadband+ package complete with iPhone5 SIM for $50 a month a saving of ££5,960 :-)

Emily Place signAfter all that excitement it was off for a well needed sleep at Jucy’s hostel. in Emily Place :-)

 

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July snow

GR10 Merens to Bouillouses

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Lac d'EtagnasSally and I have now completed the first two days of my resumed GR10 trek along The Pyrenees and even though I recently completed The South West Coast Path I’m finding it tough going.

Maybe its the altitude as we are spending a lot of time above 2000metres or it could be the backpack is heavier as we loaded up with food due to staying in remote refuges or maybe I’m just getting old :-( Hopefully, my fitness will return over the next 100 miles.

The weather has been excellent, good visibility and sunny most of the time which is in marked contrast to my previous trips :-)

The route and photographs can be found on Everytrail, The Day numbers are taken from the Cicerone GR10 guide.:
GR10 Day39 Merens les Vals to Refuge des Besines at EveryTrail

Day 40 GR10 Refuge des Besines to Refuge des Bouillouses at EveryTrail

The pics are also on Google+ Day1 here Day2 here

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GR10 map

Finishing the GR10

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It’s time for another walkie :-) This time it’s a 113mile stroll, completing the 538 mile GR10 trek from the Atlantic coast to the Mediterranean coast along the French/Spanish border.

Geoff Starting GR10 in HendayeI started the walk from Hendaye on the 4th September 2007 giving up at the halfway stage, in totally foul weather, at Bagneres de Luchon on 25th September 2007.

Last year I returned and set out from Bagneres on the 9th July hoping to reach Arles sur Tech, so that I could spend some time with Dave & Susie who had rented a gite there.

Yellow trainHowever, I ran out of time, so decided to stop at Merens Les Vals (Actually at Ax les Thermes) and save a few days by taking the train  to the Spanish border at Latour-de-Carol where I caught  the lovely open topped Yellow Train to Villefranche followed by a bus to Vernet . After spending the night. I then walked back up to the GR10 near Canigou and then down to Arles (a tough day’s hike!).

This year I’m taking Sally (previously I walked it on my own) to Ax les Thermes to sample the sulphurous waters and hot baths before starting the GR10 again at Merens. This time, walking all the way, so we should finish the GR10, arriving at the Mediterranean in Banyuls. :-) I’m not taking the tent this year so hopefully the gites/refuges/hotels are not to busy!

Not sure how much blogging etc will get done especially after reading this excellent article by Earl “Why Have Travelers Stopped Talking To Each Other?“also some of the refuges are quite remote with no regular phone line. But I’m taking the Air just in case…..

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Scarpa Terra GTX Boots at 1.5 million steps 680 miles

40 days of wear on Scarpa Hiking Boots

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Final update! I returned the boots to Open Air who sent them onto Scarpa’s UK agent (Mountain Boot Company). on June 8th they refunded me the full purchase price with an admonishment from Open Air that they won’t supply me another pair of this boot model!

This an update to the disappointing saga of my  latest pair of Scarpa Terra GTX boots, purchased from Open Air in Cambridge, UK on the 7th April 2012 for over £120.

Scarpa Terra GTX Boots at 1.5 million steps 680 milesFrom my first post you can see the heels started to wear very badly after only 127 miles and started to leak water at 307 miles.  I’ve now completed the 676 miles of The South West Coast Path. This is a pic of the boots today after about 1.5 million steps or 680 miles (1000Km) or so. As you can see both heels are totally  worn down (making them lethal in wet conditions), the toes are also close to their limits. Most of the walking was over pretty soft terrain (you can see the rubber isn’t shredded at all).

Whilst away, I entered into some email correspondence with Scarpa which turned out very disappointing. Nathan Fullwood, Ast. General Manager of the UK distributors, The Mountain Boot Company, promised to call but none came :-(   In an email to Open Air their response was:

“The wear rate of an outsole is linked to a number of factors including rubber shore. However Factors such as the midsole ( be it pu, Eva etc ) and the internal midsole ( texon, nylon internal board) will have a bearing even before one considers terrain, walking style and consumer abrasion.
The terra construction is overall designed to be light and cushioned, with an upper and sole that perform/ wear in tandem As the boot is close to impossible to resole effectivly. One could increase the durability of the sole by adding more rubber, but this would increase weight.
In our experience of the terra having sold over 50,000 pairs in the uk over the last 4 years, we are comfortable with its components and performance for its intended use. If we have seen a return on the product, it has almost always been linked to a more experienced and serious user expecting more from the product than it was really designed to do.
As such as per our initial feedback we would propose to trade your customer up into a product such as the ranger gtx or perhaps even a delta gtx. ” (my emphasis)

So they expect £120 to only buy you a pair of boots not designed for serious walking? Their website clearly says something different:

THE SCARPA® TERRA GTX WALKING BOOTS ARE IDEAL FOR HILL WALKERS LOOKING FOR COMPLETE WATERPROOF PROTECTION AND COMFORT

So it’s back to Open Air who say they will return them to Scarpa for me, maybe I should get the family Italian connection’s to give someone at Scarpa head office a call :-)

It’s amazing to me that no one seems to make boots with easily replaceable heels, I would have thought they could be made to bolt on, rather like the bindings on my snow board. then I could carry spare heels on my trips :-)

 


 

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