General > Out & About

Out and about - as a pedestrian.....

(1/6) > >>

MrDavo:
Well if we are only supposed to be out for our essential daily exercise, and the sun keeps shining then we should make the most of it. The skies are especially clear and blue as there's not one contrail to be seen anywhere in what is usually a busy sky.

The bikes stay in the garage apart from the odd essential mercy dash to the off licence, but as they insist that exercise is good for us, me and the Mrs have walked more in the last month than ever before. we may have, er exceeded an hour, but that's only a guideline. It would take a real jobsworth copper to try and pin 'too long a walk' on us, and good luck with that in court, an hour is only a guideline. The wife has taken up baking, cooks me big meals, and we polish off a bottle of wine or similar most nights, so I am putting on weight. The walks make me feel less guilty.  : ;)

We have tramped every footpath for miles around in the last few weeks, we have lived here for years, but most I didn't even know existed. I found some really old maps of the area on the Francis Frith website, and although whole industries and railways have come and gone, those paths were always there.

This is just a couple of minutes from our house, the flags are on an old footpath for workers from one now vanished mill to another. At this time of the year you can see why it is known as 'bluebell wood':



Week two we found evidence of what happens if you take your satnav too literally. There was a note for the police, I think the car is still there, it will probably cost more to recover than its worth. We live on the other side of the Tame valley, just over the ridge in the background.



Once we started to get our walking legs we got further afield and way up the other side of the valley until we were on the moors, looking down towards Manchester. Swineshaw reservoir in the foreground, Walker Wood reservoir behind it.



From here we kept climbing until we were looking down on the Woodhead valley, complete with fluffy baa lambs, which made the Mrs very happy.



We have had several trips up the moors, including the site of Buckton Castle, somewhere I see up above us most days but have never been to. Saturday was another on my bucket list, Whimberry Stones, way up above Dovestones reservoir, which some of you may have visited the tea van, it is popular with bikers. This is the view looking down from the top, it was a long slog to get up there:



One reason I wanted to go up there was to see where, in 1949, a BEA Dakota going from Belfast Nutts Corner, later to be used as a bike race circuit, to Manchester Ringway, flew into the hillside in low cloud. Pictures taken at the time suggest it was behind where Karen is sitting (waiting for old slowcoach, again) but there is no trace to be seen.



Up at the top there is s spectacular view from the rocks, however what got a lump in my throat was a very poignant pair of memorial plaques fixed to the rock, which we noticed just after taking this photo, just to the right of Karen.  I assumed they were related to the plane crash (24 died) but what I didn't expect was that they were bike related, and put there by someone I know...



I met Bill Swallow, a lovely bloke who has won NINE Manx Grand Prix, many times over the years when I was racing and still sometimes bump into him at bike shows etc, he lives in this part of the world. We first met when we camped next to him at Brands Hatch in 1992, we were both racing at a classic meeting to celebrate John Surtees' 60th birthday. When I did the Manx he took me round the TT circuit in his van, always eager to help a newcomer. At the Bungalow we met his son Chris, who had ridden up there on a pushbike. Tragically both his sons were lost at race tracks, David to a barbeque that was still smouldering at night while he slept in a van, Chris in an accident racing at last year's Manx. The two plaques are memorials to his sons, I assume they loved the place, and I'd no idea they were there.



We carried on up the valley until we saw some fit nutcase running up the steep hill towards us, and went down the track into the Chew Valley. At the bottom it felt proper middle of nowhere, it could be Scotland:



We came back along the trackbed of a narrow gauge railway line built at the very start of the 20th Century to take clay up to build the dam of the Chew valley reservoir way above us, that'll be another walk for another day if the lockdown continues. No more pictures as my telephone had run out of electricity, so we didn't have a Google map any more but we could see which way to go towards civilisation.

Nurse Julie:
Fantastic Dave and such lovely photos.
Im looking forward to the next instalment already.

motty:
What lovely views. Much nicer than the walks I managed to achieve

Sent from my Moto E (4) Plus using Tapatalk

SteveD CB500K0:
We don’t have hills, mountains, lakes or reservoirs in Berkshire, but even in the crowded Thames Valley there is a remarkable amount of green space.




Agree on the contrails, although most days 06:00 to midday we are on the incoming flight path and get one every 90 seconds. At the moment there are maybe one or two per hour. We look up and wonder just how many people are on the planes.



This is Ziggy’s (Springer Spaniel) favourite park. I wonder why?




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Laverda Dave:
Fantastic scenery Dave and worth all the effort to get up there. Walking in the steps of history such as the mill path and disused railway encourages you to delve into local history and explore the internet for old photos of the areas you have discovered. What was probably a very busy area has been reclaimed by nature.
Walking is one of our favourite pastimes although we are not ‘ramblers’. We are lucky where we live in the suburbs of London having Ruislip Lido (a natural reservoir) and Mad Bess Woods less than a mile from home. If we are not walking the routes I usually run them 2-3 times a week. I've noticed how the air is much less polluted, I can breath a lot easier when I run and I'm actually running a lot quicker than I did 5 years ago including setting PB's and I'm 58, I thought those days were long gone!
Like Steve, being in the west of London we are used to having a plane fly over every 90 seconds but it’s been bliss the last six weeks, nothing at all and we can still sleep after 5:45am!
Hopefully some good will come out of all this, people will rediscover nature and their natural environment, the air remains less polluted, we get fitter and life doesn’t have to be lived at 100mph, 7 days a week.
Post some more photos if you can, who needs to go aboard when you have all that on your doorstep  :)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page