lazyotter

This evening I took part in the “Hot Foot Up Famau” fell race on the Clwydian hills. 3.5 miles doesn’t sound too bad, but when you add the 1200ft of climbing, it makes for rather a steep gradient! There’s a map of the route here.

The route drops down from the start through thick bracken, difficult to see where you’re going. Then a sharp ascent of maybe 250ft to the fort punishes significantly. Down the grassy bank the other side, noticed my lace was undone so stopped to tie it, amazingly didn’t lose a place… Then begins the long slog of nearly 1000ft to the summit of Moel Famau, firstly through thick bracken, nettles, gorse and thistles (lots of scrapes - will hurt tomorrow!), then followed by lots of it scree. The last section is approx 1.5 miles straight down the gravel path back to the start. Noticed the same lace had come undone again here, but couldn’t be bothered to tie it and carried on hurtling down the slope with no regard for my well-being.

Finished 13th out of 57. Very enjoyable race indeed. I should really do some training sometime.

Photos from the Langdale Skyline Challenge Walk.

Many thanks to Steve for organising a great weekend. Poor weather did little to hamper two fun days of excellent walking in the Lakes.

Pictures from Sunday’s walk in Cheshire - The Peovers, Jodrell Bank and Toft. Thanks to Jay for a very good day out. Shame we finished a bit later than expected…as the supermarket was closed I had to get takeaway

A few photos from the evening walk on Saturday night. I’m afraid most of my pictures didn’t come out due to poor light.

As it was just up the road I couldn’t miss out on taking part in “The Druid” fell race, starting from the Druid pub in Llanferres. This was an “AS” race of 5 miles and 1200ft. Unfortunately for the participants (or perhaps fortunately, if like me you prefer more punishment) today has been one of the wettest and windiest in weeks. This made the going quite tough as there was a good quantity of rain, wind and mud served up.

I wasn’t particularly strong in the first half of the race and generally felt a bit listless. I also can’t remember where the route went exactly but I do recall being narrowly missed by a charging bull when we ran through his field (the chap in front of me was wearing a red shirt). Surely running on mountains is risky enough, without further threat from the wildlife?

For some time I was kept busy battling with a stitch that I picked up on the first big climb. Having successfully managed to get this under control (and amazingly without losing any places) I managed to find my legs a bit just before shrewdly leading my trailing pursuers the wrong way! This was promptly fixed by several suicidal bounds down the mountain in thick heather to the correct path. After about 3 miles the descending started and I made up a few places here and there by disengaging my common sense, and then settled in a good strong pace for the last few miles. Lots of fun, but not my best race.

Think I finished somewhere in the top 30, in about 40.5 mins approx.

(Photo courtesy of Dave Pinnington Photography)

Tonight I made a couple of big decisions that I’ve been putting off for far too long, but understandably.

Sometimes in order to move forward, any action can be better than no action.

So, within the next month and a half there’s a couple of big things I’m gonna do that will definitely change my destiny…

I’ve finally got my photos sorted out and uploaded into Gallery 2. Hence there is now a Photos page available on the links bar above. In addition I’ve trawled through a number of existing posts and linked them through to picture albums in the Gallery.

The latest incarnations of Wordpress, Gallery 2 and WPG2 make integration a lot easier than when I did it a few years ago. I seem to remember there being lots of script editing and hackery involved last time.

Pictures from the Druids Circle walk which started in Penmaenmawr (click the pic below for more).
Big thanks to Alfred for organising an excellent walk and lovely day.

My friend Ian and I just spent the weekend camping and walking in Snowdonia. We stayed at the Gwern Gof Isaf Campsite in the Ogwen Valley. Facilities were good and may consider staying there again. Shame about the couple of problematic and anti-social young groups that turned up on the Saturday, spoiling everyone’s weekend with their drunken raving and playing of loud car stereos when they should be asleep!

On Saturday we did a quite a long walk up Cnicht and the Moelwyns. The view from these mountains is second to none. It was possible to see nearly all the 3000ft peaks of Snowdonia, the Berwyns, and also right up the Llyn peninsula. Photo’s I took from the weekend are below (click the image to see all).

I may have mentioned that I’ve recently lost weight and occasionally experience periods of insomnia. Obviously I need toughening up a lot more…both physically and mentally, to cope with the worst that life dishes out (yes I am being sarcastic!).

Did two runs today, 40 mins round the Heath at lunch with my mate Steve, and a hard 5 mile training session on Moel Famau this evening (see map).

Hopefully some demons will rest, and I’ll sleep tonight!