Body and Mind

Pen-Y-Ghent

Started this October weeks break on Teesside with the family, just for a couple of nights, as they hadn’t broken up from school yet. Having lived the vast majority of our lives within sight of Roseberry Topping, I for one had never been up it, so Sunday afternoon we all went for a walk, bagging the geocache and trig point at the top. Teesside rescue and the air ambulance were on manuvours at the same time, which made it even more exciting for the little ones.

We had enjoyed another brief visit to the dales during the summer and still wanted more so we went back to Hawes for a few nights. We paid a visit to the Yorkshire Falconry centre and both got the chance to handle a barn owl, the barn owl is one of the prettiest of all birds. This was followed by a visit to Ribblehead viaduct for a couple of geocaches, got caught in one hell of a downpour but not without seeing the most vivid of rainbows.
The following day was a sunny blue sky day but very cold, I went on a geotrail up Pen-Y-Ghent, the first time I had listened to music whilst on a walk, always thought that it a little strange, but after my last walk on Hill of Fare which I found slightly boring with no birdsong around.

We broke the return journey up by calling in at Edinburgh, two days bagging a few caches and visiting some art exhibitions.
“Another World” was a spectacular exhibition of Surrealist art at the Dean Gallery. I have had an interest in the surrealist’s since I was at Art College, never thought of myself as any sort of an expert but I did surprise myself at how I was able to put the artist’s with the various pieces.
I am particularly interested in collage and assemblage, I was surprised at how small some of the collage pieces were, must have been reproduce large in books, there were also some works by Joseph Cornell, love his assemblages as well as photographs by Paul Nash, I feel one of his images in particular has influenced my photography in a big way.
The Edward Weston & William Wegman exhibition came as a bit of an anti-climax the following day, but I have always liked them both, the Weegman giant Polaroid’s were stunning, sure I would have thought more of it all if I hadn’t enjoyed the previous day so much.

700th Geocache

Grouse up a hawthorn bush.

17th to 24th of October.

The October break brought us our 700th cache find, on a week trip to Northumberland, a return to Hayfield and back to see the kids on Teesside.

First stop was Dunstan Hill with a very interesting geotrail around Berwick on Tweed, looking at the areas visited by the painter L,S, Lowry, it was only recently discovered that Lowry holidayed here on a regular basis, I wasn't a great fan of his work but the trail did change my opinion towards it for the better.

Berwick upon Tweed.

Decided to go back to the Peak district. Edale is a loverly valley with lots of walks including some onto Kinder Scout, I had planned to go up onto Kinder from Hayfield but as the campsite doesn't have electric hookups, we had quite a drain on the leisure battery so it need a bit of a run to recharge it. I took a little walk onto Nether Tor. Again plenty of reasons for a revisit at some point, but not for a while.

On the way home we called off to see the kids for a couple of days. The little ones are growing up fast and quite getting into the "treasure hunting for little toys". Found a nice little trail of caches along the River Weir, five in total starting at Sunderland Bridge. a village just south of Durham, chose this as they were all fairly close together, the little ones like to do a few but cant walk too far, but at just under 3 miles round trip, they did very well.

Geocache find 700.

Monifieth and Dundee

Standing stones artworks in Montieth.

Trouble with the van so we had to cut the weekend short. Took in a great bunch of urban caches around Dundee, as well as a bit of shopping. Stayed at Tayview campsite at Monifieth and for once used public transport to get into town, which proved sensible.

Had trouble starting the van the previous day but felt I had solved it but when we got to the campsite it failed to restart, a nice guy helped us out. The next episode was on the way home, stopped off at Crombie country park, stalled it and again it failed to restart, again a nice couple offered us a jump lead start.

Still working on geotagging and finally got GpicSync to work properly, I like it due too its simplicity. Will continue to work with this program and Geosetter.

The main thing is that its now under three weeks to the hollidays and six weeks off traveling.