Pictures and Pondering

My next written post will be most probably of epic proportions, due to the nature of its contents. So in the meantime please gaze upon my latest photographic offerings. I have picked the best from each new Flickr set and then provided the link to the rest of the sets for your enjoyment.

From the Parkgate set

From the New Brighton set

From Local Churchyard set

From Door with a view set

Please remember if you are desperately missing more regular blogging from me, I am blogging daily on my photo a day blog, which is linked in the sidebar! I am currently on Day 91! Time certainly does fly.
So that should explain why I am taking so many ruddy photographs at the moment, if you didn't know that already. The main motivation for the photo a day project is preparation for the wedding of the year in May. Not my wedding, but the big little sisters, who is letting me take the photographs.. poor girl!

Moonshuffling to the end

Where was I? Ahh yes temporarily I had buoyed my spirits with freeze spray, painkillers and tunes! Thus making miles 13 - 17 my fastest to date.  During this time the sun also came up, glistening over the water and twas a lovely site to behold. I was seriously tempted to run into the sea and drown myself stick my toes in the water, but decided that would be a bad idea. So I used my camera phone to snap a few shots and plodded on.
Well I should say it was lovely at first, then it started to get bloody warm! Where was the rain? the clouds? a bloody breeze? Hot, lovely sunshine is all well and good for larking about in the park, but not when one is shuffling power walking like they have never power walked before! Thank goodness I have a sunny disposition, otherwise it would appear that I was a total miserable sod. Sunny disposition in my case was plenty of water, fresh orange slices at mile markers and happy smiling faces (not mine). On approaching mile marker 19, I met up with some girls that I know from the walk the walk forum, so plodded on with them. They were decidedly in better shape than I and were excited to be approaching mile marker 20.

 Supposedly at Mile Marker Twenty a sense of uber calmness and elatedness descends upon you like a thousand angel wings providing a cool breeze. I may of ever so slightly exagerated the wonderment that is mile marker twenty, but it was definitely a woop woop moment for a lot of people. Why not for me? The pain and tiredness due to severe lack of training was screaming in my ear. My nasty inner voice was whispering "You still have 6.2 miles to go! still not just! you lazy sod!", my nasty inner voice is a right sod. Luckily for me,from deep within my being a competitive streak was sparked just ever so slightly at the prospect of keeping up with people.
The last 6.2 miles seem to take an age, heading back into the city of Edinburgh with the sun blazing and seeing all the sights that had been shrouded in darkness hours before. Edinburgh is truly a lovely city surrounded by greeness and beautiful architecture. Of course I was not really paying attention at the time because I was concentraing on putting one foot in front of the other. The cheeriness and enthusiam of the volunteers that are spreadout throughout the course is really a nice boost when you are flagging, even though they lie about how close you are to the next mile marker (cheeky buggers). They might not of actually been lying but boy did one mile feel like ten towrds the end! Oh and the curbs! Stepping up and down curbs is like torture towards the end.
Not sure when it dawned on me that I was actually going to finish the challenge, I think it was only as I recieved my medal, sat on the floor and took off my trainers!

As I sat on the grass with my medal and bare hobbit like feet, I felt like shedding a tear or two but was not sure why. I felt emotional because I had finsihed it , but also because I hadn't had enough faith in myself that I would finish it. My fears were not unfounded, because I had been so poorly prepared for it, with excuses abound from the mumborg to college work.  So after a moment of melancholy I popped my blisters, squirted blister juice in my face (yuck), used the glorious freeze spray and felt at one with the world. Then I tried to stand up.......

Drinking, sleeping and twitching the new year in.

I shall hop on the bandwagon (well get lifted on) and say "Holy Fuck Shit its 2009" or in other words "Happy New Year and all that stuff".
Yep I am foul mouthed, uncouth slob.

I bet you thought I had drowned myself in that bowl of soup..... Or that I am a lazy sod.

There will be no resolutions for 2009 for me, as I already have enough to do on my 'lists' and you should realise by now, how bloody well I do with them. If you by chance do not know how I do with lists and resolutions, here is a clue 'SHIT'.

New Years Eve was spent with Rob and Emma, the real life versions of Blow Up Rob and Emma.Wine was drunk and merriment was had. I normally dislike New Years Eve mainly because its over rated and in recent years it serves as a reminder that my grandma has shuffled off this mortal coil. As it was her birthday on that day. Don't worry I am not going to burst into a rendition of 'Grandma, we love you' (click that link at your peril). Anyhoo I had a good time, with good friends.

New Years Day was spent sleeping, eating, sleeping and erm eating, not the best start.

New Years Day mark two, Jan 2nd was spent twitching with the dad and having a stroll round the local nature reserve. Its a lovely place, ideally situated next to a.....Landfill Site. The gulls love it anyways.

The obligatory review of 2008 post is coming soon!
(ish)

Happy New Year!

Ominous clouds

Cant be arsed writing

Yes I have turned into a lazy just throw up a picture blogger, MEH!

More photos from this hike here 

Wooden

When I go hiking, I am always in seemingly treeless places. There are in fact quite a few trees but when your going up a mountain the trees tend to disappear.
So when it was decided that this week in PhotoHunt the theme would be Wooden, I thought what better than to post my favourite tree photos.

*Remember to click on my face to see more hiking adventures*

Hike Two, hot, sweaty but not muddy.

Yesterday was another glorious day in the world of hiking, I know its annoying to those of you surrounded by snow (haha). It was actually icy, but the sunshine took away the chill factor and well to be honest, the hiking gear and thermal undies helped too.
I have not been to Wales since we attempted this walk the first time round last year and I am definitely heading back to this corner of the world soon. The walk was from Llyn Geirionydd & Llyn Bychan to Llyn Crafnant. I cant pronounce it (its Welsh) without sounding like a Klingon.
To start the walk you have to find the car park which in itself was tricky and you have to force others drivers to reverse around corners in order to let you pass. Once at the car park, we discovered it was deserted, not many brave folks out today.
If you look at the mosaic above you should see a building, that was part of a disused mine which you will see in the video below. It says 'keep out', but of course I ignored that. It was a lovely spot to start the walk. The video is not the best quality and due to my naturally clumsy nature its not safe for me to walk and hold camera for any length of time. Hopefully you get an idea of the lovely scenery that we walked through.
The walk was 9.5 miles / 15.4 km graded as Moderate. The ascent was 1900 feet / 576 metres, but we may of added on a wee bit too that (due to incompetent map reading, again).
Although the hike was beautiful, it was not complete success as yet again the damn five bar gate alluded us twice! this happened last year too. It is mentioned in the directions, but we have never spotted the ruddy thing, so therefore must not have completely gone the right way again. That means we will be going back again to conquer it once and for all.

Notice in the title it says 'hot,sweaty but not muddy' this is in fact a lie. I was a bit muddy but I did not fall on my arse this time.

Click the link below to see the rest of the hikes photos over on my flickr page.

*More Pictures HERE*

Hiking is worth it.

Free Willy!

Quite a few of you witty/mad/perverted and crazy folks have jumped on the I Love Willy bandwagon and proclaimed him to be a free willy when he is out on hikes with me. I can't tell you what my hiking buddies think of me bringing willy, because it involves a lot of swearing and exclamations of WTF!!! They don't understand the world of blog and that everything in life is bloggable. I know what your thinking, WTF! am I doing hanging around with these people for? Its a good thing they can drive and make me nice sandwiches.
Today I am off hiking again for part two of the great getting it right this time challenge. This is where we attempt to not get lost when on previous attempts we have, today's second attempt is in Wales, this one.The previous attempt, so while I am off conquering the hills you can gaze at this photo from last week.

So while I am foot loose and fancy free in the hills , check out the others from this weeks PhotoHunt.

A few blisters popped later....

As you can see from the photos, yesterdays hike was indeed worth it! Even the pus filled blister i have just popped, hasn't diminished how beautiful it was yesterday.
I shall start from the beginning of this adventure so you can appreciate the full wonder of it, as i forget that people actually want to know where i have been and not just stare at my awesometriffic photos ( i am rather chuffed with them).
I awoke about 2 minutes before I was getting picked up and had to drag my still asleep/dead body around the house, legs half in pants, half out, whilst brushing my teeth and making coffee. My chums arrive on time, the buggers, so i open the door and use various hand gestures to communicate that i was running late.
Once i finally got my shit together, i dumped my stuff in the car boot and onto Sedbergh we went. Sedbergh is located in North Yorkshire (England) and its not the first time i have been to this particular spot. Every time we, as in Aly, Chris or me, pick a walk its normally a random thing guided by where has the best weather. This walk was a return to conquer a past failure, Sedbergh had defeated us on a previous adventure, due to bloody fog! (Previous attempt). With this in my mind, i wasn't looking forward to this walk at first.
This is the roughly the path we followed The route, sometimes we go slightly off track. It was a ten mile/16.3 km slog , graded moderate (my arse). The ascent was to the dazzling height of 2300 feet / 697 metres.
As yesterday was my first hike of 2008, you could say i was a wee bit out of shape, okay a bloody lot! Aly and Chris both have kept up with fitness like stuff, i on the other hand hibernate for winter. So while the start of the hike was great, i was even happy. The towards the middle bit where we had to ascend up the side of that bloody waterfall, I could of quite happily died. Aly and Chris wanted to kill me because I apparently had a face like a toddler about to throw an almighty wobbler. I hurt so I could feel like that if i wanted, don't get me started.
To combat the pain and well basic unfitness, I took many a photo stop. Taking photo's is a great excuse to stop and get your breath back.
Humour was restored once we reached the top and everything was downhill from there literally.

Funny notes of the day: I fell over twice, both times landing on my arse in mud. The first time was early on in the hike so my pants had dried and Chris fell over whilst laughing at me (Ha!). Unfortunately the second incident happened at the end of the walk and i had to walk through the village of Sedbergh looking like I had crapped myself.

Watch the video to see a wee bit of what it looked like on the way down, it is set to some lovely music.

PS: Willy was there but he will have his own post :)

Hot, Sweaty and covered in mud.

I am back from my little hiking adventure, hot, sweaty, tired and covered in mud. Did i mention pain? pain all over my body.
Was the pain worth it?I will let you know tomo when i feel like updating this post. Here is one of many shots I got today.

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Photo Hunt - Flexible

Hello this week in PhotoHunt the theme is flexible. I seriously wracked my brain to think of something, as me and flexible don't normally go together. Then whilst I was sorting out more of my hiking photo's to put on flickr, I found these ones. Boy did i have to be a bit more flexible to get myself and two dogs up that waterfall! Not as flexible as the guys we saw rock climbing in the cove at the end of the hike.