Navigation Gold Level

After doing the NNAS Silver course in March resulting in obtaining the award, it was just a matter of time until I did the Gold level course. So I found myself an instructor and booked it quite early on, taking place in southern Snowdonia, a place I hadn't been to yet. Perfect.

So this weekend was finally THE weekend. Drove up very early on Saturday morning to meet the instructor and the group 10am at the Ty-nant carpark near Dolgellau to spend a day on and around Cadair Idris, Infact, I made it with just 5 mins left. But I had to race it without getting into major trouble with the police.
Despite the very early start in Brizzle, I really loved driving around the countryside in the early hours. It was so quiet and peaceful and I would've stopped here and there just to have a look... but there was no time.

The group turned out to be just one other guy, which made for a nice intense two days. Thumbs up. Walked up Cadair Idris via the Fox's Path veering off the path time and again to navigate to features like little knolls or the corner of a fence. This way I got a first idea of what it's like to venture away from the paths in this area. Gnarly heather, high grass and the odd wet patch are in your way more often than not, which makes walking on a bearing while counting your steps quite a nice challenge.

The Cadair Idris ridge

Looking towards the Rhinogydd

Up on the plateau we did some more micro navigation for practice and to kill time until sun set. Spend about 30 mins in the shelter on top of Cadair Idris just to experience how cold it can get even when you're out of the wind. I had a normal baselayer, a thermal baselayer, a fleece and my rain jacket on and was still cold.
Since our instructor was also a Mountain Rescue volunteer we talked quite a bit about it, which is not just stories by the fireplace, but indeed valuable information for someone who's intending to lead a group at some point.

On Cadair Idris.

It was getting dark as we headed out again and we found ourselves soon doing the same exercises with only our torches as light sources. If you're in the middle of nowhere, away from any path on rough ground, this can be indeed a bit scary.
We still found our way back to the car park via the Pony Track and I drove over to Barmouth where I had booked a bunkbed at Bunkorama. After a day of walking more than 9 miles and staying sharp for about 10 hours, I was knackered! Put my home made chilli into the microwave and went to bed around 9pm straight after devouring it.

Sunday proved to be another fine mountain walking day. Cloudy but no rain, awesome! This time we started at a remote car park east of Rhinog Fawr. Doing mostly the same exercises but concentrating on contours as we headed up into the wilderness.
The going was laborious and tough most of the time as we fought our way up and down over at times steep ground, through heather and bushes of Bilberries. Most of the small bushes were carrying a good amount of the little fruit. Although those bushes are normally at knee height if at all, I could just lazily stretch my arm out in front of me and stuff my face... that's how steep it was in places.

The brothers Rhinog: Rhinog Fach (l) and Rhinog Fawr (r)

Rhinogs in the haze

Navigated to some more contour features without much to handrail on. So we really had to read the scenery and align it to what we saw on the map. This is quite difficult in such wild and rugged terrain, where sometimes only a little kink in the ridge is the most prominent feature.
I gained a lot of valuable experience in reading the terrain, but need to do much more of it. Pacing and walking on bearings is quite accurate most of the time. So I know what to work on. Confidence comes with experience.

After all a fantastic and fun weekend although I was knackered physically as well as mentally after both days. It is indeed quite draining to stay sharp for hours upon hours.

I've seen now a lot of different mountainous areas of Britain and once more found a new one that is very different from all the others. Similar but different. Especially the Rhinogydd has it's own atmosphere and feel to it. Stuck between the much more popular Cadair Idris and the ranges of northern Snowdonia, the Rhinogs are remote, wild, challenging but beautiful. Like an uncut diamond, you need to have a closer look to discover its beauty.
They miss the grandeur of Britain's great mountain ranges. The Cuillins, the Glydderau or Lakeland to name a few. Their ruggedness seems almost menacing, but if you're willing to embrace their raw charme, you'll find yourself in one of the finest mountain ranges for the advanced hill walker.

How to Train for Mountaineering

Why

With the Scottish Winter Mountaineering courses in March looming ahead, I've just kicked off my five-month training-regime with my first Personal Trainer session ever. I've been a more or less regular gym goer for the last 15 years or so, but never considered taking a PT. I normally do high-intensity cardio interval training and coupled with a few cycle rides and hill walks during the year I'd consider myself reasonably fit. Kilimanjaro was easy for me fitness-wise and I can walk all day up and down mountains over like 16 miles without being shattered after.

However, climbing Scottish hills in winter with the same heavy backpack, but having to use ice axe and crampons to move upwards.... that's something else. And doing the same thing at an altitude of like 5000m-6000m where you only have half of the available oxygen compared to sea level... well, you get the idea.

What Kind of Training Then?

The best way to train is, to do exactly the same thing you're training for. If you want to cycle, you cycle. If you want to hill walk you hill walk. Now, I can't climb a high mountain every day, right? Even a proper hill walk takes hours and with a full-time job you can only do it once per week.

What about indoor cycling or the treadmill? Some cardio? Rubbish I say. Have a look at professional marathon runners. Skinny as they are, put a 25kg backpack on them, stick them in thick clothing and shoo them up the mountain. They may have the breath, but they lack the strength.

My Training

So... what am I doing then??? I need endurance and strength, I need well defined muscles for core, arms and legs. Sounds like I need everything. My answer is circuit training using my body weight and free weights. This way I always need to balance myself and train the respective muscles as well, as opposed to just stimulating a single muscle on a machine. I'm just back from that PT session and my legs are wobbly, my arms are shaking and I'm utterly shattered... after a 30 min workout. Sounds like I gotta lot of work to do.

Basically, I will work out three times a week alternating between two circuits and one boxing session.

Circuit 1 - 3 rounds
Plank: 30s/45s/60s
Plank with legs hanging in loops, pulling knees in: 8/10/15 repetitions
Crunches with dumb bell weight: 8/10/15 repetitions
Knee up "running" on the spot: 8/10/15 repetitions
Squat and slam-ball: 8/10/15 repetitions

Those three rounds getting harder with each round left me resonably exhausted already, muscles burning, sweating like a pig.... but on to circuit number 2!

Circuit 2 - 3 rounds
Biceps curl 6kg dumb bell: 8/10/15 repetitions
Hammer curl 6kg dumb bell: 8/10/15 repetitions
Sumo squat 12kg kettle bell: 8/10/15 repetitions
Plank with legs hanging in loops, mountain climber: 8/10/15 repetitions
Burpees: 8/10/15 repetitions

Needless to say I was shattered afterwards, gasping for air. Did some stretching and went home. I love the feeling of muscles refusing to work after a nice session and I know I'll be hurting tomorrow. But that's exactly what I wanted and I'm already looking forward to go again.
Can't wait for my first boxing session on Monday and hope I'll see some results soon.

My Goals

Weight: Couldn't care less. It's not about the weight at all.
Body Fat: Aha! Here we go. Burn fat, gain muscle. Starting at 29.9% I want to go down to 26% by March and then see where I go from there. Ideally I'm looking at 22-24%
Waist: Will shrink with losing body fat. Want to go from 97cm down to 95 by March and eventually aim for 90cm.


So here it goes. I'm done playing around. No more cheating my diet, no more laziness regarding the gym. I'll be lean, strong and as fit as a fiddle. BOO-YAH!!!

Dartmouth and Dartmoor

Had a bit of a lazy day yesterday with a late start after some more fried breakfast. Rich was hurting and I didn't mind a chilled day. So we drove to Dartmouth. Really beautiful place and quite busy. With this now being off-season, the place must be packed with people on a nice summer day. Packed with elderly people. Almost 8 out of 10 people were elderly tourists, haha.
Is it just my impression or are many tourists quite superficial? Witnessing the typical tourist behaviour of seeing something like the Naval Academy, pointing it out to partner or friend, taking a picture and then moving on. What's the point? I take pictures myself, as you know, but mostly for things I've seen from the inside as well and read about the building, who built it or why it's famous e.g. what makes it really special. I understand if people take pictures to give others an idea about the atmosphere of a place or to remember the time they've been there. But when I think how they might show others their pictures and go "And this is the Naval Academy." And the reply "Uh, huh." Useless information in my eyes.

Anyway. Did some window shopping, but couldn't stay out of the nice food shops... We are food lovers. Especially of the handmade local kind. So the first cheese and delicatessen shop was ours. Tasted some cheeses and got away with only buying three and a nice chilli salami and a huge scotch egg which we shared while walking on.
Rich had his go in an old-school sweet shop getting all excited about the countless jars with different sweets. Had a cheeky afternoon pint at the oldes pub of Dartmouth which is in one of those beautiful old white houses with the wooden beams. Heading for the toilet upstairs I felt like I was on a moving ship or drunk... or both. No wall was straight and no floor even. Almost did a Jack Sparrow waddle there.

Hunting for a wee snack Rich had a nice pasty and I found a fish & chips shop which was a bit tucked away and at the very end of high street. Had salt & pepper calamari and it was gorgeous. Fist time I ate tentacles, haha.

Stopped by the butcher to get some steaks for the BBQ later. Seeing the rump steak he cut off, we politely asked if he could cut it in two and that was pretty much all for us. We still ended up with about 600g each.

Back home we put the steak onto the BBQ and pretty much filled all the available space. Squeezed two corn on the cob on. Wow. It was a meat fest!!!

Today we were a bit lazy again in the morning and set off later than intended. But hey, we're on holiday, right. I had quickly come up with a circular walk in the Southern part of Dartmoor, starting and ending the walk in South Brent.
Again the weather was simply fantastic. Started our 13 mile loop at 11:30am and were back at 5pm. Out of South Brent along the river Avon on some public foot paths and very quiet minor roads, then into Dartmoor proper on a small path and through high grass later as the path on the map was non existent. We headed for some old tin works and again pathless to a disused tram way before we hit the well defined Two-Moors Way.
We could see all the way to the Plymouth Estuary at some point and saw two Hercules planes roaring past us above. Quite impressive.

Otherwise we quite enjoyed the silence and utter bleakness that is Dartmoor as well as the views of Devon's green fields in the distance.

Quite exhausted after the fine walk we drove over to Totnes, where we had booked a table at the Good Pub Guide recommended Steam Packet pub. Had a pint in a proper local first, watching the rest of the rugby on telly. Then headed over to the Steam Packet for another absolutely fantastic meal. British cuisine is certainly much better as its reputation. The smoked mackerel with pickled cucumber and leafy salad was a dream. As well as my duck on sweet chilli veg stir-fry and Rich's Moroccan minted lamb burger with Harrissa mayo and cucumber mint sauce. Food heaven for sure.

Just chilled back a the house, packing tomorrow, then off to have a look at Exeter before we head home in time for the England game.

There and Back Again

Another day, another very promising weather forecast and another coastal walk. Parked the car in Torcross this time and walked all the way to Start Point. It's surely off-season since we could park up just in the middle of that little village, the park and display was deserted.

Looking back down to Torcross and its long beach

High tide meant we had to take the high route to Beesands, but the sun was shining again and it was less windy compared to yesterday, so we were sweating quite a bit climbing up and then down again. Looking at my watch it was now 11:30am. I really wanted to be back here for 2:30pm to watch the rugby so we had an hour and a half to get to Start Point.

Hallsands

Start Point ahead

One hump later we arrived at another beach - Hallsands. From there on we headed straight for Start Point and the light house there. Despite Rich hurting a bit from the walk the day before he tried his best to get  good pace going. Very much appreciated, hehe.
Made it easily for 12:30 and lingered a bit at the lighthouse before walking back. This way around we finally saw the abandoned/destroyed village near Hallsands and stopped for a bit to visit the viewpoint and read about the events that led to the village's demise. Apparently a number of storms and gales at the beginning of the last century had led to only one house remaining of about a dozen.

Start Point

Not far to Minehead from here

Arrived back in Beesands before 2pm even and had some of the best fish and chips ever at The Britannia @ The Beach - a small shack with a seefood menu that made our mouths water. Provided by a local fisherman everything was a fresh as you can get it. We were actually not in for a proper meal and thus chose the fish & chips, but the portion was hearty indeed and again we were fully stuffed.

Headed over to The Cricket, which I had picked from The Good Pub guide. Lovely but quiet pub at this time of the year and a huge TV screen showing some old photographs. We asked for the rugby and they turned it on for us after fiddling around with the remote controls since no one really knew how to switch to the TV channel,

Over a gorgeous pint of Heron cider from a farm near Kingsbridge we watched Scotland's landslide victory over Japan with more and more people joining us in front of the screen.

Headed back to Torcross then and again had to take the high path as the tide wasn't low enough to walk the beach. Drove back to the cottage and watched some more rugby with some of the farm cider we had bought the day before. Ahhhh, good times, eh? Dozing and chilling for quite some time, we eventually set to barbecue some chicken thighs which we had marinated in a nice searingly spicy Psycho Sauce all day.
9:30 pm is a bit late for a meal, but it was easily the best chicken we ever had. Hot and spicy to burn your lips off and with a jerk-like smokyness to it... it was simply the best!
Food coma and general exhaustion did it for me. I fell asleep in front of the TV within a minute while Rich watched a bit of QI.

A Coastal Walk

With the sun shining brightly we set off around 10am for another walk in fantastic weather. At least that's what we thought. After a nice fry-up with plenty of choice from our extensive chilli sauce collection we headed down to the coast on veeeery narrow country lanes. Arg. I was very glad when we finally hit the A381 at the coast.

First stop was a farm shop near Torcross. With the bag full of sausages and meat we realized, that the box to keep all of it cool was still at the cottage."Luckily", it had started to rain as we left the farm shop and we decided to risk it and hope the fresh meat would stay cool enough during the day.

It was quite busy on the road to Salcombe but we made it just for 11:30am with a bit of luck and a nose for a good spot to park the car, we found ourselves not long after hunting for a cash point and a coffee.
Somehow we just got the bus to Malborough at 12:30 literally gulfing down our coffees fearing we'd miss it otherwise.

Salcombe bay

Got off in Malborough with the sun shining again from a sky that went from overcast to bright blue again during the remainder of the day. The walk on another country lane was short, before we turned onto a public footpath towards Hope.

In Hope we finally joined the South West Coast Path and walked all along the coast from Bolt Tail to Bolt Head and into Salcombe again.

Stunning weather, a good breeze a few ups and downs... what a fine day on a British coast. Just amazing! We stopped a few times to take in the fine views. Waves coming from the blue and turquoise sea, crashing onto dark rock, blue sky and green grass.

Hope

Back in Salcombe we had a pint at the Victoria Inn which won the Best Pub of the South West in 2014 and 2015. Good selection of gins and wine but only a few ales and I'm not talking about the cider. Boo. Still nice pub and the food looked nice.
However, we were booked for the Tower Inn in Slapton, so as darkness was approaching fast we drove back on still narrow but now more or less empty country lanes. Parking in Slapton was a bit tricky. Driving through is already tricky, find a parking space even more. Eventually we parked a bit outside and walked to the pub.

What a nice one that was. Liked it much better than the one in Salcombe. Proper cosy and good cider, yeah. Spoilt for choice food-wise I suggested the mussels in a cider, garlic and cream sauce. I had never eaten mussels but wanted to give it a go so close to the sea. Rich showed me the best way to eat them and they were gorgeous!!!
Mains were Braised Ox Cheek (another first for me) with Kale and veg and for Rich Barbary Duck with sweet carrot purée. Both dishes were absolutely amazing and we were completely stuffed afterwards. Drove the last two miles home under a clear sky dotted with thousands of stars and chilled a bit at the cottage, food coma setting in.

What a day! Simply perfect from the start. Good weather, good food and the best company.

South Devon, Here We Are

Sitting by the fire, laptop on my knees after a nice warm up walk in perfect weather. Ah, the good life, eh? Rich is entertaining me with some Wurzels playing from his iPad. Only missing thing is a canister of cider, but I'm way too lazy to manoeuvre the car up the narrow steep country lane to pick some up.

Arrived late yesterday afternoon after attending a wedding in Wells, then driving back to Bristol for packing and finally down to Devon. Been here more than a year ago when I was mountain biking in Dartmoor. It's good to be back. It's such a beautiful place!

Rich's parents own a cottage near Slapton and what a cottage that is. Furnished with a good touch of what was en vogue in the 60s and 70s it is a cosy place indeed. Two master bedrooms and a few smaller ones, two lounges and a huge kitchen. Think we'll enjoy our stay here for the week.

Stayed in bed until midday today and when the rain finally stopped we decided to go for a walk. Good decision in the end. The sun came out more and more as we walked small country lanes towards Strete enjoying the views over green fields and the sea in the distance.

Some of the bramble was still with fruit so we picked some here and there. Reminded me of my childhood when we went for raspberries for hours, stuffing our faces.

From Strete we headed towards Blackpool Sands on the South West Coast Path as it was only a mile away. Brilliant views forward and back. Took a very small detour to a sandy beach which we had all to our own. Awesome.

Back to the cottage along more or less quiet country lanes. Had to hug the hedge a few times to let cars past. 

In the end we did 8.5 miles which was not the short warm up walk we intended to do, but the weather was simply too good. 

Somewhat knackered we relaxed on the couch sipping spiced Indian tea, listening to the flutter of a trapped bird in the chimney until we took pity on it. While Rich took the big pipe off I covered the end with a frying pan. Together we carried it out the back door and once I took the pan off, a yellow beak followed by a black head looked out. A few seconds of blinking in the daylight later, a fully grown blackbird emerged and flew off. Cheerio and good riddance to you.

Rich got a fire going and we're about to cook off our marinated chicken wings, yum. Weather forecast's looking bill for the next two days, so we're probably off to the coast again tomorrow.

Hello Devon!

To me it feels like I haven't really been away at all this year, to many others it seems like I'm away all the time. Looking at the annual leave I have left, I'm definitely in for a proper holiday! I've had a good deal of short trips this year making good use of the flexible working hours at my job, but I've only had one proper trip to Scotland and that's it. Same applies to my boyfriend by the way. So why not spend some days together?

It happens to be that his parents own a cottage in South Devon near Slapton so we decided to spend a week there. He's not into mountaineering or days and days of walking in the rain up and down mountains with a heavy backpack, but we found a nice middle way for us.
Both of us are exhausted and tired and need some time off, just relaxing and doing "nothing". I wouldn't be me if I just lazed about the cottage for a whole week. So the plan is to do some coastal walks, visit the beautiful surrounding villages (Dartmouth, Kingsbridge) and do a few short cycle rides.  Short but strenuous they're gonna be with all those steep ascents around.

So after work tonight I'm driving down for a wedding on Saturday, then back up to Brizzle to pack the car and do some shopping and hopefully we'll be down at the cottage some time Sunday evening, enjoying a wee dram by the fire.
Although it's not a hardcore outdoor adventure, I can't say I'm not looking forward to it very much. Been counting the days for some time now and can't wait to just rest and relax. No alarm clock in the morning, no fixed schedule, no plans to stick to other than finding a pub on Weds to watch the Rugby, haha.

There's exciting things happening next year, so regard this as the calm before the storm. 2015 - the year I lay dormant, gathering my strength, preparing for an exhilerating year 2016. My plans and futur trips are listed here on my blog. Just go to Upcoming Trips

Over and out.