Sunday 6 February 2011

Arnold Lane



Blowing a hoolie with horizontal drizzle, but this weekend is the last one before Ten Tors training and navigation courses kick in. With this in mind, my mate and I set off for a mince on the north moor.

We parked at Row Tor, the wind ripping the car door from my grasp and making a mess of my neatly stacked old petrol receipts and assorted paperwork. Although the wind was rocking my car it wasn't too bad once we got going. The first section up to the junction of the ring road and Sammy Arnold's Lane was into the wind so we ended up shouting at each other in strange tongues as the wind screamed round our ears.

Into Sammy Arnold's Lane it let up a bit and we were able to fill in the gaps before the climb up to the junction with the Dinger Tor track. On up to High Willhays through the jet-propelled clag one of the deadly bottomless bogs ate one of Martin's legs to great comedy effect.

Up on High Willhays it was time for a photo shoot out the wind as the clag cleared briefly.

From there it was the superb wind-assisted descent to West Mil Tor and on to Row Tor and back to the car.

A young-ish couple of walkers in the car beside us started kitting up. Then kitting up a bit more. Then gaiters. Gloves. Then overgloves. Then a bit more kit. Hat on, hood up, a bit more kit, a rucksac with more kit in and off into the barren, hostile wilderness. Ten minutes later they'd gone about 200 yards and looked like they were about to head back. Still, they went further than the mountainbikists who didn't get as far as getting their bikes off the car before they turned round and went home......

13 comments:

  1. Arnold Layne had a strange hobby
    Collecting clothes
    Moonshine washing line
    They suit him fine

    a fine and claggsome run/mince/walk on air - much obliged sir, must do again soon (tho perhaps a different route, less tornado, shallower bogs...?)

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  2. Oh yeah. Felt very underdressed today, should carry emergency overgaiters really......;-)

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  3. soft lads the lot of them..unlike thee and tha pooch n marra

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  4. Too true. Southern pansies.....

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  5. Bet they had a great tale to tell when they got home. Pouring rain and fierce winds, in fact they saw some blokes who had had their trousers blown off by the wind.

    Ben

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  6. Ha! was thinking along those lines too :-)

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  7. Yep...certifiable. Both of you. It was Gale Force 8 out there today!

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  8. I went for a splosh near Two Bridges today and was similarly amused by the huge amounts of kit worn and carried by the walkers I parked beside. Admittedly they looked like DofE kids, so they probably have a monsterous mandatory minimum kit list, but it was quite a contrast as I trotted off in shorts, Helly and a Pertex gilet! It was a little breezy at times, wasn't it?!

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  9. Certainly was, Roadkill. The 10 Tors/DofE kids have got no choice but to carry vast kittage. I see folk quite a lot in the summer in full-on winter Carngorm stuff. By then I'm barefoot and carrying car keys and a camera.

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  10. certainly not in the Highwayman's, anyway......

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