Second of three holidays

For my second holiday this summer I went to France, firstly to Touvre to see Mike’s family and secondly to go back to Paris and finish sight-seeing. The weather in France was in stark contrast to the weather I had the first time, back in December, (Mike would want me to point this out). It was sunny and hot the whole time I was there.

Whilst in Touvre I went for a run and did a bit of coaching Mike on the bike as well as visiting both sets of grandparents and eating too much. Including a very nice big ice cream followed by a coffee covered in whipped cream.  mmm…

Then we headed to Paris to carry on the sight-seeing from December, this time we went inside the museums including the Louvre and Versailles. We managed to navigate our way around the gardens of Versailles without getting lost, just about. We tried to take a look at Modern Art in the Pompidou Centre but apparently it’s closed on tuesdays .

In the evenings we went out for dinner and wandered along the river and took some photos of the sunset with the Eiffel Tower in the background, can’t get much more cheesy than that!

First out of three holidays

Time to update you with my two out of three holidays this summer. The first was a family holiday to Gran Canaria where we were introduced to something called sun and heat after a very disappointing start to summer back in the UK.

This was our relaxing holiday where we lay around doing nothing and trying various cocktails, unfortunately the cocktail list wasn’t as long as previous holidays so we got through the list by the second night! We spent most of our time around the pool, which was very cold in the mornings before it had been warmed up by the sun. I actually squeezed a few runs in, by getting up early (about 8am) to avoid the heat. I haven’t done many runs where I can say I had views of mountains and the coast.

We played a couple of rounds of table tennis here and there, where I came last every time. And a few games or cards and pool in there evenings. The girls won at pool fyi!

We did one excursion to the capital of Gran Canaria, Las Palmas. Apart from a very annoying tour guide on the coach we had a good time. First we went to the cultural side and went into one of the cathedrals where I got a bit carried away with my panoramic photos (again).  Then we went to the modern side and did a bit of shopping and walked along the sea front.

All in all a very good relaxing holiday!

Froggatt Edge

Now that university has finished I have found myself with a lot of time on my hands, apart from running round the country attending interviews I have had plenty of time to myself, trying to work out what I will be doing over the summer. So far I have applied for a few more jobs and started planning the family holiday (both mine and Mike’s) to Lake District. Trying to find walks that will suit everyone is turning out to be more complicated that organising a hiking trip! I’m sure I’ll have plenty to write about after that holiday. (to be continued …)

Seeing as we hadn’t been hiking (properly) since the Scotland trip in Easter, Mike and I decided to explore Froggatt Edge and its surrounding edges. It turned out to be more of a bimble than a ‘proper’ hike but to make it seem more of a traditional hiking trip we of course got rained on a bit. After a couple of stops along the way climbing rocks and doing ‘king of the world’ poses we took refuge from one of the showers in a very nice country pub for lunch (we just had to!)

The end of the walk consisted of a very breezy stroll along White Edge, when we arrived back at the car park we were delighted to see an ice cream van and again we couldn’t say no!

It’s coming to an end!

My university life will be over in three days and 3 hours! Its both scary and exciting to think about this, some say it is the start of your ‘real life’ others say its the start of the ‘slog’. Either way I’m looking forward to it.

This blog started out during my gap year before university, when I started my travels, as a way to let my parents know I was still alive. Phone calls from Japan were way too expensive! Then, once I’d started university, it became a hiking blog as I had joined LSU Hiking Club where I travelled all around the UK exploring the countryside. Now as university is coming to an end I’m not sure what this blog will now be about. What will happen over the next year or so is unknown to me, it will mostly depend on whether/when I get a job and where.

One thing I am sure about is that I am going to keep writing this blog, the next thing I will have to write about will be my holidays: the first to Gran Canaria and then a hiking holiday in the Lake District, with the possibility of visiting France in between.

Hiking Trips 2011-2012

Seeing as it’s been a year since I have updated my blog there have been many hiking trips, almost too many to talk about, so I’ll just summarise a few of them.

Dunmail Raise Trip
The first weekend trip of this academic year was to old club haunt Dunmail Raise in the Lakes. We had plenty planned for this first trip and it turned out to be as memorable as we had hoped … but possibly for the wrong reasons. The weather was its usual cheerful self in the Lakes in that it was cloudy and rained on us most of the trip. What was memorable about the trip was the party that we had in the evening, Mark brought out his party games including a pass the parcel with a bit of a twist … I probably shouldn’t say any more as it will bring back memories some people … Sophia (cough) will not want to remember.

Castleton Trip
The next trip was a complete contrast to the weather that we had in the Lakes, it was sunny! It turned out we were not the only ones making the most of the sun as we had a lot of company out on the hills including some horses that came and said hello and some paragliders; thanks to these guys we got some good photos!

Brecon Beacons Trip
The one where we experienced all types of weather (yes I have been watching friends again). The weekend trip that we had in the spring term was to the Brecon Beacons which I was excited about because it was one of the national parks I had not hiked in.

The first day we went to the Black Mountains and did a ridge walk, just as we made it onto the ridge it started to rain on us and then hail and then wind … a lot of wind! We got some great views down the valley to the river and tarn. Due to time constraints we had to cut the walk short so we cut down the valley to the river and luckily found a place to cross and head back down the other side of the valley.

After an evening of serenading and card games we decided to take on Pen y Fan and Fan y Big. I decided I wanted to try and navigate this walk … and very quickly went the wrong way so handed back the map to Mike. As we started to get higher the weather turned on us again but this time it snowed! By the time we got towards the top of Pen y Fan the ridge was covered in snow and for me snow inevitably mean falling. On the way down off of Pen y Fan I managed to fall over three times in the space of 20 minutes! Despite this I my first weekend in the Brecon Beacons was excellent.

Cairngorms Trip
Again for this trip I headed to a location that I had yet to hike in, the Cairngorms in Scotland. There were only five of us on this trip which may explain why we decided to do a 25k walk on the first day with a 5.30am wake up call. We decide to climb Braeriach which is the UK’s 3rd Highest Peak, it is traditional for Cairngorm walks to involve a very long walk in and this one was no exception, we had to walk about 6km through a forest and the bottom a valley before we even started climbing; once we had it was quite steep. Once up on the ridge the clouds circled in and stole the view away from us and we didn’t get them back until on the way down, after we had extended our walk by another 5k. Making it 30k which took us 10 hours in total … needless to say we were all in bed by 9.30pm.

The next day me and Mike had a bit more of a lie in and got up at 8. We decided (for some unknown reason!) to go for a run in the afternoon and have a bimble in the morning around Aviemore and up to the ski centre on Cairn Gorm. We had some great views from Cairn Gorm ski centre down to Loch Morlich where we were planning on doing our run. It turns out the run was not such a good idea for me as my legs did not want to move!

Tuesday we decided to take on Cairn Gorm and Ben Macdui (the second highest mountain in the UK). This time when we got up to the ski centre we were surrounded by clouds and that was the way it stayed for the whole walk. As we got higher and higher snow began to get deeper and deeper until we got to the top of Cairn Gorm and we were sinking up to our waists in some cases. This made the going very slow so we were unable to reach Ben Macdui and had to turn our walk back early.

The last day we treated as a rest day and did a low level walk taking in Carn Ann Ailean which was out the back of the bunkhouse. In the afternoon me, Mike and Ridley headed to Inverness to have a look around and in mine and Mike’s case get a well-deserved Starbucks coffee.

This may be my last Loughborough Hiking Club trip and it is definitely a high to finish on.

TGO Editorial Internship

Right so this is me starting to update my blog…

In August and September last year (2011) I managed to get an internship with the hiking magazine: The Great Outdoors. I wrote to Emily Rodway the editor asking if they did work experience and, although they hadn’t yet had an intern; Emily liked the fact that I was interested in Hiking and Writing so I got the opportunity to be the first intern at the magazine. After the slight confusion with the location (I thought they were based in London but the editorial team is actually based in Glasgow) I found myself accommodation in Glasgow and headed up there for two weeks to help out with the magazine.

Whilst I was in Glasgow I had the opportunity to edit and proofread articles, research ideas for new articles and write a couple of sections in that edition of the magazine. I also went out hiking on a photo-shoot for the front cover of the magazine which was really interesting. It was kind of strange posing for photos whilst hiking, we had to keep walking over the same spot a number of times until the photographer was happy. One of the photos from the shoot ended up on the front cover despite the sun not making an appearance for us.

After I had done the two weeks in Glasgow I was asked to come back but this time to the London office where I did the final proofread of the magazine. I also updated the website and Facebook pages with gear reviews and news items.

This was great work experience and I gained a lot from it, I hope to eventually gain a career along these lines … getting paid for hiking and writing about it sounds pretty good to me.

Updating needed

Seeing as I haven’t updated this blog since 2011, I definitely need to start updating as many things have happened in a year including hiking trips, being chair of LSUHC, getting an internship with TGO magazine and visiting France.

Keep an eye on this space…