Posts Tagged ‘beer’

Wet Weekend

Monday, June 18th, 2012

This weekend we headed for Holwick, in Teesdale, supposedly for a camping trip. But the weather was so bad that Alan kindly took pity on the few who made the trip, and we ended up sleeping in spare rooms and on various bits of floor in his house opposite. Thanks Alan!

Friday night beer and Saturday morning rain made for late starts all round. Debra still being out of action headed with Simon to knock down various bits of their new project in the Dales. Peter and Donal competed with each other to see who could do most damage to their bikes – it was a draw and both were soon back in Holwick for a walk to High Force. Alan did a short run nearby.

Carmen and I meanwhile went for a slightly longer run to take advantage of the weather to see som3e of the local waterfalls at their best. Gibson's Cave was followed by Low Force and then High Force, before we headed up river to Cauldron Snout. The plan from here was to cross the river and take a more direct line back, but the river had other ideas and was too dangerous to cross.

So we retraced our steps before picking up a track which should have taken us direct to Holwick Scar, but after two knee-deep wades across side "streams" we had to detour a mile u[p the next to find somewhere to cross (I waded crotch-deep, Carmen went another quarter mile and found a bridge!).

On Sunday, Peter and Donal were joined by Annie and went off to push their bikes along some old railway lines, while the rest of us opted for varying degrees of inactivity.

More photos here
and a few videos of waterfalls here

return to scugdale

Monday, July 6th, 2009

Sorry, we didnt have any cameras.

After Tuesday's rainy debacle Clare, Ewan, Kirk and I headed back to Scugdale with a mission plan to solo every route at HVD or under at Scott Crags. We estimated this at about 50 and gradually this mutated into a secondary mission plan – to climb our ages. This was all very well for Kirk, the baby of the team at 28, but somewhat pants for me at 50. We had just acheived Kirk's age when it all started going horribly wrong. Wet stuff was definitely falling from the sky. After a scurry to a cave we decamped back to Swainby for tea and scones.

Tea and scones had, we poked our noses out again. The sun was out – back up the hill went the two little cars. This time we applied a bit more urgency. Ewan's and Clare's ages were acheived (I'm not saying in what order or at what point) with only a slight diversion for Kirk and Ewan to do Pingers (VS 5a) – me and Clare, more disciplined souls, stuck to the mission plan. Finally, down to the last ten, ominous rumbles were heard and an inky black cloud loomed. All attempts at calm dissappeared in the race to achieve the magic number. With two left to achieve disaster struck – the end of the crag! Inspiration struck – race up the nearest HS then finish off in style on Pingers, a clap of thunder sounding as I reached the crux hold.

Then inspiration struck again – with 50 routes ticked it was time for pints of beer all round as the heavens opened!

Cubic Block Party

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

In defiance of common sense, me, Debbie W, Helen and Dave P looked out at the rain yesterday evening, eyeballed the met office rainfall radar and decided to head out to Brimham anyway. The narrow band of rain passed quickly and the crag was dry when we arrived. My main target for the evening was to get Debbie some more outdoor experience and impress upon her that gritstone is the very finest of rock types.

Not being sure how long the rain would hold off, we plonked ourselves on Cubic Block. Dave and Helen headed up Heather Wall while me and Debbie went up Great Slab. I offered Dave a lower off Cubic Block to save him the nasty step off, which he declined – I suspect he regretted the decision when he saw the step but he didn't use any bad language. After this team Helen/Dave did Great Slab and Cubic Corner while I did a recce on Thin Line, a slabby HVS I've been fancying my chances on (one reason being you can easily bail to the arete). Got 2/3 of the way up but then couldn't see if there was any more gear, so bail I did. Moving up the arete I could see there was actually a place to get gear, so that's now a target for next time I'm at Brimham.

By this time it had somehow got to 9.00, gloom was gathering early and little wet drops were appearing on the rock, Helen was muttering about a pint of beer, so we skedaddled.