hike | camp | paint
Various stuff and general musings
Rather than knocking out the usual self-aggrandizing post, going to great lengths to describe every adventure of the year, I thought this year I'd make it more of an index to the year's content (which is what I mainly use it for anyway) and keep the remarks about how the year went to a minimum. … Continue reading 2022 Index
After the disappointment of not being able to get out much last year, it was pleasing to get back to a more normal level of camps out this year. This year I racked up 26 wild camps and 9 "tame" camps. This takes my all time total to 194 wild camps - which means I … Continue reading Camp of the Year 2021 (and other matters…)
Social Hiking (shareyouradventure.com) dies tomorrow, and I spent much of yesterday backing up/saving down my tracks and routes, which took several hours. For anyone who has yet to do this, you've got until 10pm tomorrow night. A blog post by Phil explains what you can export and how. And while I was steadily working through … Continue reading Goodbye Social Hiking
Just back from a long weekend of backpacking and as my thoughts start to settle on another successful trip, I am reminded of some musings I've been meaning to set down on this subject. This weekend's trip was what many would consider a bit of countryside rambling, involving no mountains, dramatic vistas and the like. … Continue reading The Clarity of the Trail
I'm sitting here, as are many, wondering when I will be able to get out for a camp. A camp, any camp, and it doesn't even need to have much of a walk to get to. What's clear is that it won't be anytime soon. This set me to thinking about past years and the … Continue reading The First Camp of the Year
Well, this should be a short post.... We all know what happened in 2020, so I won't go into that again here, but clearly the (non-) events of this year have curtailed the camping out somewhat. Ten camps - yes a mere 10 - is this year's haul. A pathetic number that I have to … Continue reading Camp of the Year 2020
I recently took a look through my Wildcamp Gallery, which I started back in 2013 as a visual record I could look back on. The idea was to post one photograph for each wild camp done, and watch it build up over time. As the number of camps grew, the idea was that every time I … Continue reading Best Wildcamps – A Miscellany
I recently took a look through my Wildcamp Gallery, which I started back in 2013 as a visual record I could look back on. The idea was to post one photograph for each wild camp done, and watch it build up over time. As the number of camps grew, the idea was that every time I … Continue reading Best Wildcamps – Summits
I recently took a look through my Wildcamp Gallery, which I started back in 2013 as a visual record I could look back on. The idea was to post one photograph for each wild camp done, and watch it build up over time. As the number of camps grew, the idea was that every time … Continue reading Best Wildcamps – Introduction and Tarn Camps
It's been a while since I updated my Wainwright lists. And lockdown provides a good opportunity to get things like this up to date. Of course, I finished them in 2015, but I had a bit of tidying up to do. In the aftermath of the completion of the 214, I noticed that the overwhelming … Continue reading Wainwright Stats
This morning, the following photo popped up in my Facebook memories: ...and gave me the idea for this post. Yes, this was my first wild camp. Only 8 years ago, but it seems like longer. I'd intended to camp wild as early as 2007 when I went on my abortive tour of the Lakes. Back … Continue reading An Anniversary
Week 6 of lockdown, and things have settled into a pattern: alternating frenetic bursts of exercise with doing absolutely nothing. Whilst we see in the media images of people acting like twats and abusing the lockdown, the reality here is much more mundane. People are generally distancing pretty well, and most incidents of near misses … Continue reading Deferred Gratification – Part 2
A few weeks ago, I was inwardly bemoaning the fact that my calendar for 2020 was looking a bit sparse in terms of backpacking trips, with just the TGO Challenge and one long weekend on Dartmoor, inked in. No trips to the Lakes, no section of South West Coast Path. Nothing that would involve taking … Continue reading Deferred Gratification – Part 1
This year I only managed 18 wild camps (plus an additional 4 tame camps on the TGO Challenge) against a loose target of 24, falling short largely because I shelved plans for weekends away in September and November due to indifferent weather. In any case, 24 would have been well short of some yearly totals, … Continue reading Camp of the Year 2019
Before you get too worried that I'm about to bombard you with loads of pictures and ask you to buy them, I'm not. I'm just going to pick out a few instances where the outdoors and art overlapped this year. Increasingly my hikes are geared around the search for subject matter to paint. Of course … Continue reading 2018 Round-Up Part 3: Art