Shanks' Pony

Easter Walking (fighting the weather)

shanksponyuk — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 21:10:00 +0000

I know it’s a bit late but here is a report on our training walk on Dartmoor which took place on the Thursday before Easter. The plan was to start at Okehampton Camp, and walk via a 20 mile route to the campsite outside the Plume of Feathers pub. After camping overnight we were planning to carry on to Burrator Reservoir, a total of 30 miles.

Well, the thing about well laid plans is that they sometimes come undone. This time the infamous British weather had a hand in our fortunes.

Arriving at Okehampton the weather was very windy and driving rain made the start interesting, but at least we could see, as the Dartmoor mist was not down at the time.

A brisk walk up the side of West Mill Tor warmed us up a little, and in the mean time, the mist started to descend and when we got to the top, we could not see much at all, but we were on one of the army roads, so navigation was not a problem. The highest point on the walk (High Willhays at 621m above sea level) there was no visibility or shelter, this was a completely bleak and miserable place in these conditions.

And then the real fun started…

The next leg of the route, to Dinger Tor was 2.4km across country on a straight bearing. The visibility was so poor at this point, bearings had to be taken every 20 paces, and this section of the route took around 1 hour to achieve.

When we got to the objective, it was decided to abandon the walk and return to Okehampton, since we would have been short of time to get to our campsite before dark.

Of course, Murphy’s Law said that the weather started to clear, so I could get this picture

So instead of camping we ended up doing 12 miles instead of 30 and a warm bed instead of a tent, which was nice..

More walks later, hopefully better weather.

Formula 1

shanksponyuk — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 18:38:42 +0000

The formula 1 season has now got underway in fine style in Australia. Surprisingly, defending champion, Lewis Hamilton was at the back of the grid after a poor practice and qualifying followed by a gearbox failure forcing him back to 20th place…

The good new is that Jenson Button of the new Brawn GP team headed by the great Ross Brawn, former technical director of Ferrari, is on pole position for tomorrows race.

Nice to see the coverage back on the BBC – no ads and some people who actually know about F1, such as Eddie Jordan and David Coulthard.

Early start tomorrow, as the race is at 07:00 BST, so I’ll be off to bed early

A charity appeal

shanksponyuk — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:31:45 +0000

As I mentioned in my last post, I will be doing a walk across the country in aid of Help For Heroes, a worthy charity working for the interests of UK servicemen injured in conflicts around the world.

If you could visit my Just Giving page and make a small donation it would be appreciated a great deal.

http://www.justgiving.com/h4h-coast2coast

Over the next few months I will be talking about my training and preparation for this walk, starting with a 30 miler across Dartmoor at Easter.

Welcome to my blog

shanksponyuk — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:25:46 +0000

Hi, welcome to my blog, another addition to the growing blogosphere…

The aim of this blog is for me to talk about some of my hobbies and interests, but don’t let that put you off, I will try to be interesting. Also, I will be using this space to talk about the preparations for a long walk I will be doing in September.

We (my wife and I) will be doing the Wainwright Coast to Coast walk from St Bees to Robin Hood’s Bay, but more of that later on