Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Category: Walks

Walking winter wonderland

Our friend Ellee has just done a great blog post on The Wonders of Walking.

Tis a pity she wasn’t with us today as Sally and I had a beautiful walk with the Cambridge Rambling Club. The leaders for today should have been Margaret & Larry. However, due to the icy road conditions and because they live in the remote regions of Cambridgeshire where gritter lorries never appear (although it has to be said Cambridge city centre pavements have yet to be gritted!) they couldn’t make the walk.

So Ron & Margaret stepped into the breech and gave 9 of us as a totally stunning walk around Cambridge starting from Cherry Hinton Hall taking in the chalk pits and the old lime kiln and thence through the Addenbrookes industrial complex onto Nine Wells and the start of Hobson’s conduit then along the Cam into the city and a welcome break of hot mince pies and coffee at Henry’s. Then onward across Jesus Green, Midsummer common, Coldhams common and back to Cherry Hinton Hall.

The weather was very cold (well -4ish) with crystal clear skies and beautiful mellow winter sun bringing out the best in the college brick & stonework.

A beautiful satisfying walk in the winter sun and a fitting tribute for a great 2009 walking year. So Ellee’s post is very apt!

Here is the walk and pictures (please excuse the thumbprints on some of the images ) on Everytrail:-

Cambridge in the snow

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Rougham Circular walk

Yesterdays walk with the Cambridge Rambling Club was a good test for our foul weather gear, mine failed abysmally 🙁

We 11 started from St Mary’s Church car park at Rougham, in very wet and windy conditions, so it was heads down for the first 9 miles to Bradfield St Clare and a spot of lunch in the shelter of the church porch, followed by a drink at the Fox & Hounds in Bradfield St. George. The afternoon cleared up a little so we started to dry out.

From Rougham Walk

Very disappointing for me in that the left boot of my brand new Scarpa ZG65 XCR boots sprang a leak. So it’s back to Open Air with them today! My RAB Bergen jacket (QWA-05-RDB) was as useless as ever with little streams inside the arms and the pockets filling with water. It’s time has now come – I will return it to RAB. A quick survey of the other 10 people in our party  showed the Karrimor & Berghaus as highly effective, the Paramo did OK too but they are really heavy to lug around on extended walks.

Here is the walk and photographs:-

Rougham circular walk

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Update 021109 – Open Air agree boots are faulty , should have new pair by Friday 🙂

Stiles and Gates on Offa’s Dyke

Finally managed to correctly geotag all the 744 images I took off the stiles and gates on The Offa’s Dyke Walk, A few stiles are missing from near Prestatyn (before the idea came to me) and some gates in the early stages are also missing, when I was undecided as to whether they should be included,. Overall stiles are becoming an endangered species due to Health and Safety issues etc.

The pictures are here now:
https://goo.gl/photos/xYnJcSvVtE8GhBGD6

 

Offa’s Dyke 1 week into the walk

Exactly one week ago I set of walking Offa’s Dyke on the English / Welsh border. I’ve been blessed with good weather so today I find myself in Hay on Wye with 139 miles walked, according my GPS and another 50.5 to do according to the Harvey Map I’m using.

The scenery is magnificent heavily wooded lush valleys interspersed with moorlands. To keep me amused I’ve been photographing every stile and gate on the trip some 700 or so I guess. When i get in front of my iMac i’m hoping to make them into a 2 minute video to play on YouTube.

In the meantime all the photographs cn be found on my Picasa account:-
Monday 14th September Prestatyn to Bodfan
Tuesday 15th September Bodfan to Llandegla
Wednesday 16th September Llandegla to Pentre
Thursday 17th September Pentre to LLanymynech
Friday 18th September  LLanymynech to Montgomery
Saturday 19th September Montgomery to Knighton
Sunday 20th September Knighton to Newchurch
Monday 21st September Newchurch to Hay on Wye

Appalling upload speeds here so will update links later.

Only one big grumble on the trip nd that is O2s appalling coverage of the area, I ld love to see the iPhone sales statistics broken down by postcode – their must be huge b lack holes in the country!