Archive for 2007

Mountain Safety Man blogs!

Posted by on March 20th 2007 in Rambling on...

Well, last night we watched Wainwright's Walks 4/4 Scafell Pike on BBC4. The web blurb is as follows: In the last in the series exploring the work of Britain's most famous fell-walker, Alfred Wainwright, Julia Bradbury attempts to climb England's highest peak.

JB did the walk from Seathwaite, starting out at what seemed to be an average time in the morning after having a chat with Joss Naylor. The route took her over Stockley Bridge, up the Gill, a scenic detour around Sprinkling Tarn, back up to the true Esk Hause then via Calf Cove and the Ill Crag / Broad Crag massif to Broad Crag col and then the final pull up to the summit. A fine route, and, as she says, a long route.

Now, she was atop Scafell Pike quite late, after walking for over ten hours, so she said. The sun was lowering and the sky was turning a hazy reddish colour. Let's assume that she left Seathwaite at approx 8:00 a.m., that would put her at the summit at 6:00 p.m. Then bear in mind that she says that she's not a very experienced walker - according to her, Haystacks (programme 1/4) was her first Wainwright.

Doesn't leave much time for the return, especially with a camera crew in tow, does it? And it's not as if you can get back to Seathwaite easily without either retracing the route or dropping down to the Corridor Route - there's no short-cut back to base on any map that I've ever seen.

I'm more than a little bit concerned that armchair/novice walkers will be inspired by JB to tackle this route, arrive at the top knackered in the late afternoon, think that it's OK because they saw it on the telly, start back and then get benighted before ending up as MRT statistics.

Overall, the series has been excellent - varied routes and objectives, good scenic shots, and chats with notable characters such as Joss Naylor. The trouble is, it's all a bit misleading and it could tempt the unwary into more trouble than they can cope with.

Discuss.

Another weekend slips by

Posted by on March 11th 2007 in Great Escapes, Rambling on...

Well, what with all this slide-scanning and Six Nations going on, and with intensive periods of decorating and gardening slotted in between, this weekend passed by as usual - no proper outdoors activities.

On the plus side, the scanning is progressing well - I've done all of the ones I took in the Faeroe Islands (Note - the link is to a .pdf file that I found online). The finished quality isn't brilliant, but that's down to the slides, not the scanner. My pics will be uploaded to my photohost within the next few days, when I've found the correct spellings for the captions (not as easy as it seems on a UK laptop keyboard!).

 

 

Oh, and we booked a Family Activity holiday at Okehampton YHA, so the kids are quite excited. Not sure whether I want to do a rock-climbing & gorge-scrambling day, or do the climbing wall and then kayaking. Decisions, decisions...

After much procrastinating, we bought a new scanner

Posted by on March 6th 2007 in Shiny new kit

The honeymoon slides have been languishing in a file for over a decade, viewed only occasionally when we've been able to borrow a projector. Last year, we tried to scan them with our ageing Plustek scanner but it really wasn't up to the job, so I asked for opinions from places various then we did some sums and decided that it would be cost-effective to abandon the self-scanning option and get them done by a lab. A good plan at the time.

Recently the situation changed. Lots of old family photos have surfaced and the need to preserve lots of images for posterity has forced our hand, so we ordered a cheap (<£60) scanner that would handle negatives and slides - a Canon CS 4400F to be precise. I must admit that I thought that it would only give mediocre results with our old slides, but I'm happy to report that it's a little cracker. Now I can look forward to spending hundreds of hours converting our family images to 1s and 0s.

 

Fish Risotto the easy way

Posted by on February 25th 2007 in Dehydrating

Who says that microwave meals are crap? This is a really good recipe for healthy, tasty and filling food - it’s easy to prepare, quick to cook, dries well and rehydrates fast. It’s one that I’ve adapted from the BBC Good Food magazine, just thought that I would mention that before Aunty Beeb and her publishers come knocking on the door brandishing writs! Anyway, ingredients are as follows:

  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
  • 1 stock cube (veg or fish)
  • 850ml / 1.5 pints boiling water
  • 250g / 9 oz risotto rice (risotto, arborio and carnaroli are best, long-grain will do at a push but the results aren’t as good, any other rice just doesn’t work)
  • 250g / 9 oz smoked fish, skinned and cut into chunks (cod or haddock are recommended, but I’ve tried pollack and mackerel and they work too, I’ve yet to try a mix of fish but that’s on the cards)
  • 1 large cupful of frozen peas
  • large knob of butter
  • 1 pinch of salt (optional)
  • Some freshly-ground black pepper (optional)

Nuke it as follows:

Put the onion and the garlic in a large microwaveable bowl, add the stock cube and ½ a pint of boiling water. Stir it up, cover it (cling-film is OK for this, or use a casserole dish with a lid) then microwave it on High for 3 minutes.

Stir in the rice and another ½ a pint of boiling water, cover it again then microwave it on High for another 10 minutes, stirring after 5 minutes.

Stir in the fish, the frozen peas and the last ½ pint of boiling water, cover it again then microwave it on High for another 4 minutes.

Check that the rice is cooked (nice and soft), if it isn’t, another 1 minute of cooking should sort it out.

Leave the bowl to stand for 1-2 minutes for the liquid to be absorbed, then stir in the butter. Add the salt and pepper if desired, and stir it all up.

You should dehydrate it immediately to prevent bacterial growth in the rice. Drying usually takes about 8 hours. After you’ve bagged it, freeze it.

According to the blurb, this lot makes 4 servings as a standard meal. I divvy it up to make 3 x 125g bagged meals.

Approximate dietary content for the whole lot:

1292 kcalories, 80g protein, carbs 224g, fat 16g, satfat 8g, fibre 12g, salt 12.4g.

 

Rab VR Climb Jacket

Posted by on February 13th 2007 in My reviews

This is what Rab say about it:

The Polartec® Classic 100 lining in the Vapour-rise Climb Jacket makes this the warmest garment in the Vapour-rise range. The Vapour-rise Climb Jacket is worn over a base layer as an effective 'soft shell' in all but the very worst of mountain weather. By balancing wind resistance, warmth and breathability the jacket creates a comfortable operating environment through a wide range of temperatures and activities and excels for mountain walking and mountaineering. Weight: 570g

  • Pertex Equilibrium® with Polartec® Classic 100 lining.
  • Shield water resistant treatment.
  • Three zipped chest pockets.
  • Drawcord hem and venting Velcro cuffs.
  • Full length 2 way zip.
  • Stretch Pertex Equilibrium® shoulder and arm panels.
  • Wired peak hood zips into collar.

This is what I say about it:

It fits me well as a baselayer or, if it's sub-zero, over one. I've worn it in some good and some fairly foul weather, it has resisted driven rain and snow but at no time have I either overheated or chilled. It doesn't ride up at all even when at full arm-stretch, and it doesn't slide about under a pack. Others have commented on the length of the arms, and yes, they are longer than expected, but the Velcro closures at the wrists are gusseted, so you can form comfy thumb-loops with them or you can roll them up. The lined zip-away wired hood is surprisingly good and easy to deploy without taking off the jacket. The fabric is durable, the only weak point that I can see is the stitch-work - everything is single-stitched, which means that a pulled thread could result in a gaping seam (double-stitching would have been better and wouldn't have upped the weight by much). I like the pocket arrangement - very pack-friendly.

 

 

 

 

 

A busy week

Posted by on February 8th 2007 in Rambling on...

Wahey, I've actually started gutting the bathroom in preparation for the refurb. A couple of days of destructive DIY have resulted in all of the old tiles being hacked off, only to reveal that the plaster underneath is in a bad state and needs replacing before the re-tiling can commence. Oh, what joy, more plastering, I just love plastering. NOT!

Had a telephone chat with Weird Darren yesterday about blagging tickets for the OS Outdoors Show. I had to decline his kind offer of some potentially free tickets, as I've already got ours printed out and sitting on the mantleshelf. He let slip that Podcast Bob might be pointing his mike and videocam in my direction (he's checking out the Blogger Scene, man!) so I might have to go in disguise (maybe I'll wear a false beard, lol).

Anyway, it snowed today, so lots of the local schools were affected. Typically, the junior school was open and the high school was closed, so my attention had to be split between walking Annabelle to school (see * below), attending to Elanor during her day off, chipping away at the bathroom and keeping everything quietish while SWMBO worked from home (the roads were too bad for her to drive to work, plus this weather isn't good for her asthma).

(* - just to clarify, it went like this... walk to school, take her in, get told that she needed a swimming kit, walk back home, get kit, get suckered into walking Ella to her friend's house after dropping off the kit, walk home, work a bit, tidy up, walk back to school, pick up Anna, walk back home. Turns out that it adds up to over 7 miles. There's a certain irony about the situation - I've been known to drive hundreds of miles and camp out in ridiculous conditions for whole weekends in order to walk 7 miles in the snow... maybe I've been doing it wrong all along, eh?)

 

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