Planet Bods Blog

A Coast to Coast Walk Day 5 - Bampton to Orton

2010-09-01T21:11:34Z

"A man with a flat cap. That's made it into a proper pub now!"

There's nothing worse when you're walking than waking up to yet another miserable day of rain. And that's what I woke up to. At 3am.

In contrast by the time we left around 9:30 the rain had stopped and it was looking like a reasonable day as we strolled out of Bampton.

Bampton's not actually on the Coast to Coast - it's about a mile north east of it and taking a look at the map we worked out we could cut off a corner. If we headed down the road, south east, we'd meet up and just miss about a mile or so of the "official" route.

Given we'd be mostly missing walking over farmland and Wainwright himself was quite in favour of making your own route (hence why he called it "A Coast to Coast Walk" rather than "The...", although it is a slight contradiction with the incredibly detailed, prescribed routes detailed in his books), we didn't feel too bad about it. And as we strolled down the road ready to meet Wainwright at the village of Rosgill, there was a spring in our steps. It was warm, it was dry and we had a pretty easy day in front of us.

Indeed we had a pretty easy itinerary ahead of us. We'd left the difficulties (and bad weather) of the Lake District with its high fells and rocky paths, and now most of our days would be sensible 11-12 mile trips without too much up and down.

Walking over dry and pretty looking farmland we arrived at Shap Abbey, the ruined remains of a medieval abbey with its striking 15th century tower which, given the bad state of the rest of the place, has remained almost intact since old Henry VIII had his tizzy with Rome and went after the monasteries with a vengeance.

Leaving the atmospheric abbey behind us, we left something else behind us too - the Lake District. At long last we left the National Park, and given how badly the weather had treated us during our visit, frankly I was glad to see the back of the place as we walked on to the village of Shap itself.

For most people Shap is the end of a hard days slog from Patterdale and the beginning of a 20 mile trek to Kirkby Stephen. In contrast when we arrived around half eleven, the place was pretty clear of walkers. We stopped off at a local newsagents, bought sandwiches and had an early lunch sat on a bench on the A6 reasoning we should eat whilst we could and whilst it was dry! Doing so almost inevitably that meant the rain would stay clear of us for a few more hours, and we could have had lunch in far nicer surroundings...

Wainwright considered that the Coast to Coast was split into three parts by the M6 motorway at Shap and by crossing the A1 near Richmond. With my public transport agenda I preferred the idea of using the nearby West Coast Mainline as my third-way point, and in celebration a train load of groceries passed us by bound for Tesco, hauled by a train branded as "Stobart Rail". On the motorway shortly afterwards an Eddie Stobart branded lorry proclaimed it was "delivering sustainable distribution" and we both looked at each other and wondered what on earth that meant when linked to lorries thundering up the M6.

Passing into a field on the other side of the motorway we gained a procession of horses who were either inspired by us to walk the same way, or just happened to be passing in our direction.

They had a good sized field, shared with some sheep, but seemed keen to cross at speed via on our path at a time that just happened to coincide with our arrival.

Half expecting a stampede to form, we edged closer and closer to the stile, just before which the horses broke off their pursuit, suddenly content to graze at some grass under a tree. It was no doubt an act they put on for all the walkers.

Leaving behind views of Shap's quarry, cement works and the noise of the M6 we headed on to the moorland of Crosby Ravensworth Fell, although its heather lined ground was never too far from more grassy pastures.

From a superb limestone pavement just off the Roman road of Wicker Street, we were presented with fine views of the North Pennines and worked out a gap in the hill line up was the mighty High Cup Nick near Dufton, a fantastic place we'd visited a few years before on the Pennine Way.

The views were so fine, we sat down and enjoyed them before the buzz of our mobiles distracted us. Having been in mobile free areas for several days, suddenly a batch of messages and missed calls came in mainly relating to Catherine's brother and his wife who had also happened to be in the Lakes whilst we were there and had wondered if we'd be able to meet up. Naturally they took our radio silence as a no.

After a nice sit down and some chocolate, we headed on once more passing by a large mound of stones known as Robin Hood's Grave - the second time Sherwood's famous son had supposedly made appearance on our walk, although why he'd be buried up here is frankly anyone's guess, and to most modern eyes the place would just look like what it was - a large, oversized cairn.

It had been relatively dull but dry most of the day but now the heavens opened as we met a minor road a few miles from our destination of Orton and we quickly donned waterproofs and headed off the moorland and over the farm fields that would take us there.

A sign invited us to visit Scarside Farm for refreshments and whilst tempting, it was on the alternative route that bypassed the village and our room at the George Hotel was waiting for us. After quickly admiring the limestone tower of the local church and detouring into the village shop to stock up on bingbags (for lining our rucksacks) we arrived at the pub to see the depressing sight of the doors bolted, the lights out and a doorbell rather missing.

Blu-tacked to the door was a note telling us to ring a phone number to be let in however once more mobile reception had departed us and just as I was about to dash across the road to the phone box opposite, two walkers appeared out of the blue and nabbed it.

Given payphones across the country are under threat due to lack of use, it seemed incredible to be in an old fashioned pay phone queue. It was a long wait. The phone call went on. And on. And on. So long that one of them wrote "Help me" on the steamed up glass. Yes well, I thought. What about me? It was agonising to be so close to our room and yet to be so far. We were stood on the pub doorstep for nearly twenty five minutes before I managed to get in to the box where I promptly discovered the confounded thing wasn't taking coins leading to more faff of trying to enter debit card details on a malfunctioning number pad.

It seemed rather excessive to pay £1.20 just to get inside, but eventually we were shown to our room which was furnished with a four poster bed, a wobbly floor that made you feel drunk every time you walked across it, and radiators that were on full blast even though it was a mild July day. Such heat was glorious given it meant we could finally dry our boots out, and we set about filling the room with laundry and wet leather.

Feeling more refreshed (although wondering why a room with a four poster bed didn't come with any shampoo) we adjourned to the rather chilly bar for a few hours before making our way back upstairs and letting the floor do what the beer and wine hadn't as we stumbled on to the king sized mattress and sank into a rather warm sleep safe in the knowledge that, if nothing else, our clothes would be very, very dry the next day...

Tomorrow it's day 6 as we get to the edge of Cumbria in Kirkby Stephen. And over on flickr you can see all the photos from day 5 including lots of photos of Shap Abbey. Cool!

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A Coast to Coast Walk Day 4 - Patterdale to Bampton

2010-08-31T21:59:32Z

"I'm sorry. We're a bit wet..."

I'm not sure I can say I've stayed in a truly awful youth hostel however Patterdale YHA must be getting close. It was cold, damp, grubby and just seemed to be corridor. I'm convinced there was more space reserved to corridors than there was to beds.

Built on stilts in some sort of Scandinavian style, the place clearly needed a lot of work to bring it up to some sort of reasonable state. The gents toilets were half flooded, reminding me more of a campsite toilet block. Ironwork and metal girders sat rusting, drops of rain getting through. The paintwork in our room looked like it was covering damp. Oh and when I put my boots on in the glass windowed corridor near the front door, I got a lovely view of a rotting, long dead bird in the outside courtyard.

But in its favour YHA Patterdale has two vaguely redeeming features:

it has probably the most comfortable and widest bunk beds in the whole of the YHA network
it has a truly amazing drying room

Given how wet our stuff was after the previous day, and how full the room was with residents clothing, I was astounded that our possessions were all pretty much dry the following morning. Indeed just before breakfast I found a t-shirt and some socks that I'd somehow missed the night before and popped them in. An hour later they were in a pretty good state. It was like some sort of miracle working drying room and given the room didn't feel particularly warm AND had a window open, I've frankly no idea how it did it.

Packing up and hitting the road, we surveyed the drizzle in Patterdale before heading to the village store for some provisions.

Patterdale Village Store is like some sort of Coast to Coast heaven. As well as selling groceries to the locals, it caters well for the walker from its range of freshly made sandwiches through to walking equipment including boot leather waterproofing stuff that I later regretted not buying.

Outside the shop is a C2C notice board featuring a photograph of the new patron saint of the path, Julia Bradbury, who had presented a TV series on the Coast to Coast for BBC Four. Many a pub conversation seemed to turn to Julia's name and how easy she made the whole thing look...

Julia had, naturally, visited the shop as part of the TV programme as it has another important Wainwright connection - it was the first store to agree to sell Wainwright's first pictorial guide. And from those humble beginnings, a legend was born...

Wainwright's decision to route the Coast To Coast may, or may not, have been related to that first purveyor of his wares, although it's far more likely it's because he really loved Patterdale. Either way there's no doubt the Coast to Coast has treated Patterdale well. Unlike the weather which hadn't.

"I've just got back from Sunny London and found a river running through my back garden!" proclaimed a rather over the top posh man in his best Queen's English, who had arrived in the shop. He might as well have added "Wot ho!" for good measure.

It was a stiff but not too bad a climb out of Patterdale up to Boredale Hause and we walked along a well made path which seemed to have no major ambitions of providing water flow. Despite it being a Monday the climb was full of walkers, most of whom dispersed in different directions at the top of the first ascent and many of whom seemed to be clutching copies of various Wainwright guides.

We'd now entered into the cloud and the light drizzle had turned almost imperceptibly into showers. Having not put on my new, shiny and well fitting waterproof trousers, my legs were soon wet once more and a good stiff wind meant that trying to put them on would have been at best a futile message and at worst, a good slapstick comedy routine for anyone watching. Cloud cover meant that the views were limited and by the time we reached the beauty spot of Angle Tarn, we were seeing very little at all around us. The tarn itself was almost invisible in the gloom until we were almost right on top of it.

The rain was biting, almost whipping our faces and a good walk had quickly turned into trudgery. The higher we got, the worse the rain and wind got.

Passing by the putrid remains of a dead sheep (cause of death presumably drowning...) we found am almost miraculous gap in the cloud. All of a sudden we could see for miles around. The wind had gone, the rain disappeared. Down below Hayeswater glistened. Then, all of a sudden, the views were gone, the rain back, the wind trying to blow us over once more.

Wet and wind weary we clambered over the soggy rocks of "The Knott" and passed down to the almost Tolkein-esque sounding Straits of Riggindale., before abruptly turning north east towards Rampsgill Head.

For a moment it seemed like the direction change would reward us with better weather however by now we should have known not to get hopes up too far. As we approached the highest point of the "normal" Coast to Coast walk (normal being the version where you didn't take any insane high level alternatives in the Lakes) at Kidsty Pike (780m above sea level), the weather was at its worst.

It was all downhill from here but our boots - now letting in water like there was not only no tomorrow, but no day after either - were sodden; our socks like sponges, just letting it all in.

I was already fed up and miserable, but now I had to contend with a steep descent as well and I was having real trouble. My feet were slipping and sliding around inside the boots and I was having serious trouble regulating my speed. I'd try to come down slowly, then my socks would slip and I'd find myself coming down far too fast, with little to no control over my speed - seriously really not good on the steep, slippery rocks. I had images of trying to come down slowly but somehow finding that my feet were forcing me down at running speed. Oh hang on, that DID happen, and it took an almost Herculaneum effort to do an emergency stop. Oh and one of my walking poles had broken.

Damp, cold and fed up, I slammed my rucksack on the grass and sat on a rock. Struggling in the rain to take my boots off so I could wring out my socks, I lost my rag and ended up shouting my frustration across the valley. The two horrible days of rain and the constant rain on the Pennine Way earlier in the year had taken their toll. It was summer. The country was in a heatwave. There was a hosepipe ban. Yet here was I removing half a pint of water from my boots. We later found out that the Lake District had had a whole months rain in two days. And we'd been out in every minute of the worst of it.. If someone had turned up and said "Helicopter to London for Mr Bowden", well I would have gone straight back home and no mistake.

At least the sock de-watering session had helped. My feet were still cold and damp, but I could at least make it down hill without slipping, but as we made it to the valley floor at Bowderthwaite Bridge I was in extremely bad mood. Wainwright's name was cursed under my breath. He'd written "A Coast To Coast Walk" after experiencing the "horribleness" of the Pennine Way, but after the last day and a half I was seriously wondering what the difference was. This was a nightmare of walking and my mood didn't lift much as we attempted to eat our lunch in a soggy wood just off the trail.

The driving rain - which according to the forecast should have been, at worst, drizzle by now - penetrated even the dry plantation floor. We'd barely rested all morning and even here there was no shelter and little rest for two weary walkers.

From thereon in the walk was alongside Haweswater Reservoir. Created in the 1930s to supply water to Manchester, it extended a smaller lake and drowned the village of Mardale.

There was a hosepipe ban in force and the reservoir level low but water was streaming down hill as fast as it possibly could. The winding reservoir side path was a huge stream - every step making our boots wetter and wetter.

For me, the salvation at the sight of the end of the reservoir was much appreciated. Most people press on another four files to Shap - a fifteen mile day followed by 19 the next - however we'd spotted that we could break the two long days up in three more comfortable ones by stopping at Bampton and then Orton before arriving at Kirkby Stephen. The reservoir end meant our turn off and the simple trek up a main road to the pub we were staying in.

My gloom began to lift, raised even more so by the odd sight of an old signpost marked MCWW - Manchester Corporation Water Works - which had somehow lasted all these years even though the MCWW had been absorbed into North West Water in 1973. Something about this long surviving sign amused me. And to cheer me up even more, a sight that would raise the spirits of even the most drenched walker. For there in the middle of the road sat a very relaxed looking red squirrel! We abruptly stopped. It looked at us briefly then scampered into the undergrowth, it's work done.

Maybe it was that we were on the home stretch. Maybe it was the squirrel, but even in the non-stop rain, I felt invigorated as we passed through the model village of Burnbanks, originally built to house the workers building the reservoir in the 1930s, and as we arrived at the Crown and Mitre in Bampton, there was a spring in my step - even more so when we found out we'd been given a better room than the one we'd expected.

After the best shower we had on the whole trip, we had the best meal too as we ate some absolutely amazing food. It was so good that we had three courses. Any place that can make me enjoy baked figs had to be credited and my sea bass in prawn and saffron sauce was amazing. I'm not even a fan of Brûlée but the Raspberry Brûlée they served was divine. And whilst the other two handpulls were off, the Black Sheep was extremely well served.

You get used to "pub food" on long distance walks. It can be good, it can be awful. But it's pub food. And usually served with chips, chips and more chips. Well here in the middle of Cumbria, on the edge of the Lake District, was a pub with the most outstanding bistro style dinning, big portions and great prices to boot. It was like manna from heaven. It's so good I wholeheartedly recommend making a HUGE detour just to eat there. Hey, 100 miles should do it!

And hey the place was so good that we went to the expense of having our sodden clothes tumble dried. And that was probably the best £5 we spent on the whole trip...

After two days of posts about rain and including lots of use of the words "sodden", "soaked" and "damp", you'll be glad to know that on day 5 things were a bit drier. And that's after the bank holiday weekend. Photos from day 4 are available on flickr.

Patterdale Mountain Rescue

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More blog posts about: A Coast To Coast walk, Cumbria, Lake District, walking | Comment on this post, and read other comments

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A Coast to Coast Walk Day 3 - Borrowdale to Patterdale

2010-08-27T18:34:53Z

"I think the YHA should do a butler service. Someone who will sort out all your drying and stuff for you. Yes okay, I know it's not in the true spirit of hostelling, but I'd use it!"

Little is recorded on what clothing Wainwright favoured for walking in. Well okay, it might be extremely well recorded but I couldn't be bothered to do any research. It wouldn't have improved anything I'd written, so frankly I'll stick to the assertion above.

In my mind I always have him in tweed although it's far more likely he wore a grey anorak, flat cap and had a flimsy blue plastic pacamac for when it rained.

In contrast the modern walker is spoilt rotten. Outdoor clothing companies offer everything from high tech waterproof jackets which clouds will take just one look at before promptly moving elsewhere... QUICK!, through to antibacterial, sweat-resistant t-shirts that you need to wash less often and also look pretty stylish in the pub in the evening to boot.

But even the amazing feats of the hiking boot with Gore-tex in it is never going to keep you dry if you put your foot down and suddenly find yourself up to your knee in a fast flowing, ice cold stream that's been swollen by heavy rain.

Ah yes, rain. If the wetness of the previous day had felt bad then the next two were to be horrendous. The forecast promised light showers, maybe some drizzle.

The forecast lied.

It all started reasonably enough as we left Borrowdale hostel and headed down the road to Stonethwaite. Wainwright's "official" route actually does a little loop round the village of Rosthwaite, but that seemed to be more for accommodation purposes more than anything else so we headed down the road to join the path on the other side of Stonethwaite Bridge. The sun of the end of the previous day had gone, the fells were covered and the rain was coming down gently. Even so it was a lovely start to the day.

I was in familiar territory having walked up this stretch in the opposite direction the year before whilst doing The Cumbria Way, albeit in much nicer weather.

When we arrived at Smithymire Island we stopped to admire the waterfalls. The rain showers and early time of our arrival (we'd left the hostel at 8:20) meant it was a quiet spot compared to the crowds on my last visit, and I longed to linger but we had a long trek ahead of us.

The exact distance from Rosthwaite to Patterdale seems to be a bone of contention. We'd seen estimates ranging from 14½ miles from our guidebook, through to 19. Wainwright himself lists it as 17¾ but the exact distance varies on which routes you pick - this one simple day contains three points where you can pick between different options and the exact distance depends on whether you make a diversion into the village of Grasmere.

Leaving Smithymire Island (and the Cumbria Way) behind, we started the steady climb up along Greenup Gill.

Recent heavy rains meant the water was crashing down the valley and seeking out new routes to get there - one of which was our footpath.

The further up we got, the more flooded the paths became and things got especially fun as we approached Lining Crag.

A steep, rocky outcroft jutting out by itself, some kindly footpath engineer had made some lovely stone steps cut into the rock. However their very steep path had naturally taken on a new use as a most pleasing waterfall.

The thought of slipping was not a particularly good one given the rocks below, but in many respects it looked far worse than it was and we soon reached the summit and headed towards Greenup Edge.

Up high and deeply in the clouds the weather was getting steadily worse and we were getting a good soaking. My shorts were drenched but even so I was filled with optimism that as soon as the weather cleared, I'd quickly dry off. The forecast had promised heavier rain in the morning before easing to light showers and drizzle in the afternoon. It would be fine.

However the weather was just one of our problems. Our path required us to ford several small streams however in the rain they'd swollen and dramatically expanded.

Shallow stepping stones were suddenly inches below water and several points required huge leaps in order to cross. At Birks Gill even that was impossible and we resorted to huge detours in order to attempt a safe crossing.

After seeing a large party with a dog appearing from the opposite direction, we hoped for some local knowledge to help guide us to the other side. The dog proved it was possible, making a big leap. It almost didn't make it, having to fight the torrent of water to avoid being washed away before eventually climbing onto our side of the bank.

However any hopes of humans giving us a handy tip were quickly dismissed as we heard the cry of "Come on dog! We're not going that way" and the poor hound had to make its way back to join the walkers who strode off in a different direction.

Still if a dog could cross, so could we. Taking a huge run up we just about made it with only a minor soaking.

However the crossing lead us on to Grasmere Common and that resulted in yet more rain and sodden stone paths getting us more and more soaked. When we should have seen the mighty sight of Helm Crag, all we got was grey shadows in the gloom.

By the time we arrived in the valley near Grasmere we were drenched and hungry and we had some shopping to do.

Earlier in the day I'd idly wondered if I could get away without any waterproof trousers however the weather had persuaded me otherwise. After eating our soggy lunch on a soggy bench on the village green (the local burghers having clearly decided that having benches in their attractive stone bus shelters might attract the wrong kind of people) I got my wallet out and marched into the local branch of Cotswold.

In my soaked and muddy state trying anything on would be difficult and I'd prepared myself mentally to pay an insane amount in order to get a decent pair of breathable waterproof trousers, purchased without even trying them on. Which is why I was more than happy to walk up to the shelf and instantly spot the exact same type as I'd accidentally left at home in London and for a reasonable cost. Standing in the doorway I clambered into them and instantly felt a lot better. And warmer.

Many people break for the day at Grasmere and from experience I'd recommend it - even in good weather the next stretch to Patterdale would see us going more steep climbs over tough terrain.

But with thoughts of the weather forecast telling us that the worst of the weather should be behind us we headed off up alongside Tongue Gill. Catherine had walked the same path the year before and believed it to be good and well made. An easy traverse. Mind you, she'd done it in blazing sunshine...

The low lying cloud had refused to budge and the rain was coming down harder than ever. The paths were horrendous and as we neared the top the streams we had to ford were getting worse and worse.

Water was literally pouring off the hillside by any route it could find. Several new streams had formed and on one outcrop a new waterfall was merrily flowing down over the peat.

The streams we had to ford were mixed with very slippery rocks to scramble up and any pretence my boots gave at keeping out water was well over as I slipped whilst fording and I suddenly found myself up to my knee in the strong flowing water.

My only hope as we reached the top and the Grisedale Hause pass was that going over into a new valley would see an abrupt change in the weather. Our guide book proclaimed it to be a strong possibility and it was right. There was a major change.

The weather got even worse.

Howling winds greeted us as we tried to pass Grisedale Tarn, and the descent down to Grisedale itself was truly horrible. The wind felt like it could pick me up and blow me off the rocky path and crash down onto the beck far below. These were no conditions to be out in, and the weather forecast had left us completely mentally unprepared for it. There was no option but to keep on going. At times I had to resort to crawling on the ground just to try and keep myself from falling. When we finally made it down hill and out of the cloud, all I wanted to do was collapse.

Alas there were still several miles to go - most of which seemed to blur into nothing as we marched as fast as we could for shelter. It was past six and we still had several miles to go. By the time we reached Patterdale I was beyond running on empty.

Exhausted and sodden, we eventually arrived at Patterdale hostel, dripping puddles everywhere we went.

It was 7:30 when we had finally arrived and as such had missed out on the hostel evening meal. The warden told us we'd be able to eat at the nearby pub but they stopped at 8:30 leaving us with just under an hour to sort out our rucksacks, stretch and thrust everything we could into the drying room before rushing out to the White Lion.

Everything was drenched. We'd lined our rucksacks with bin bags and had had our rucksack raincovers on but the sheer amount of rain had worked its way past every barrier. My notebook was a big mess of soggy paper and the notes from the day before, extensively written in fountain pen, had just washed away. Catherine's drawings had faired better but had smudged. A sodden and broken iPod I could have coped with. But this was a heartbreaking sight.

We trudged to the pub and collapsed on a bench. I was mentally and physically exhausted. When our food came I was merely eating as a refuelling exercise - taste just didn't seem to come into my thought process. The beer was good but whether the lamb shank was excellent or awful, well I just can't tell you. I just sat, ate and shook my head at the thought of what we'd just been through, thanking our lucky stars it was all over; that we'd made it safely and were alive.

Thoughts of being winched up to a helicopter on a stretcher had filled my mind half the afternoon. We'd probably never been in any major danger - we were both experienced walkers - however it was by far the worst weather we'd ever walked in and all it would have taken was one small accident.

On the bar top was a donation box for the local mountain rescue team. I dug into my pockets and found as many pound coins as I could.

Back at the hostel the weather forecast proclaimed that there would be more heavy rain overnight, clearing in the morning. And sure enough as we headed to bed, the heavens were doing their finest outpouring. Damp and tired we headed for our cold room, collapsed on the bunks and slept... slept... slept very well indeed.

On Day 4 the bad weather continues as the Coast to Coast goes up hill, along a reservoir and to a fantastic pub. And all the photos from day 3 are available on flickr.

Patterdale Mountain Rescue

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A Coast to Coast Walk Day 2 - Ennerdale Bridge to Borrowdale

2010-08-25T22:38:05Z

"Eeeee, welcome t'mine..."

A few weeks before we were due to set off walking on the Coast to Coast, Britain was in the midst of a major league heatwave.

Newspaper headlines screamed about "scorchers" and hosepipe bans, whilst middle aged men in suits and ties dabbed their foreheads with handkerchiefs.

Travelling to work in a sweaty tube carriage so hot that the windows of the train were beginning to melt, I muttered a silent prayer.

"Urgh. I hope it's not this hot when we're walking the Coast to Coast..."

It was an utterance perhaps best left unspoken. As we awoke for our second day of walking, rain was hitting the tarmac on the street outside.

"We've only had to dry walkers clothes three times since Easter" added the B&B owner helpfully as we surveyed the situation.

Squeezing once more into Catherine's tiny, three sizes too small waterproof trousers (I mean, would it kill her to put some weight on?!) we trudged down the road to Ennerdale Water, certain parts of my anatomy regretting every move.

As it happened the rain had stopped as we reached the waters edge and I quickly decided to adopt plan B. I was going to dispose of the trousers, unzip the legs off my walking trousers and do the day in shorts. If they got wet, well frankly they'd dry out. Eventually. But at least I'd be bloomin' comfortable.

Ennerdale Water has two routes around it. Along the north shore is an easy, day tripper friendly version whilst Wainwright chose the more challenging path on the south.

Initially easy, we soon found ourselves clambering over slippery rocks, "admiring" the sharp drop down to the rocky waters edge below. There's nothing like a nice gentle start to the days walking, is there?

And then there was the rain. On and off showers did indeed get my shorts rather damp although thankfully the plan was working and half an hour after the rain stopped my shorts were almost always dry. Just in time for it to start again normally...

It was a difficult route. Every time you thought it was getting easier, some more wet rocks to scramble up and over suddenly appeared. The end of the lake couldn't really come soon enough, and we got there as the rain finally stopped meaning we could rest there awhile whilst watching the lake's waves lap gently on the shore edge. The view seemed to make all the effort suddenly worthwhile.

For all its toils in the damp weather, it felt a wrench to leave Ennerdale Water and cross some fields and join the road running on the edge of Ennerdale Forest which ran parallel to the River Liza without actually being close enough to provide a view of it.

Passing by YHA Ennerdale, the first of four youth hostels we'd see on the day, we headed on along the winding road which seemed to delight in going up and down and being enclosed by trees. Every now and then there'd be a gap and we'd be able to glimpse out and see the mighty fell of Pillar over on the other side of the dale, but most of the time it was just us and the leaves.

Still the rain had gone and a little sun had even come out - so much that we parked ourselves on a convenient log and ate our packed lunch whilst putting the world to rights. Well, okay, we discussed how much better we'd be able to run the Shepherd's Arms Hotel compared to the current management. First step would be to get the locals on board - after all, how can a rural pub/hotel really make money when there's no tourists around.

The world sorted - and our stomachs filled - we headed towards the end of Ennerdale and perhaps the finest location of the whole day. A location that also managed to house youth hostel number two - the isolated little hut that is Black Sail.

Wainwright describes Black Sail as "the loneliest and most romantic of youth hostels" and it's not hard to see why.

Completely isolated with no public road access, it has just three dorms and sits looking tiny and insignificant whilst surrounded by the mighty fells of Great Gable, Green Gable, Pillar and Haystacks.

Whilst the beauty of the setting could not be beat, I was more concerned with popping to the loo and I scouted the building to see if there was one.

But the place seemed locked up tight lest non YHA members managed to infiltrate the hostel the facilities, and instead we rested on a bench outside as an army of local chaffinches hopped over in the vain hope of picking up something to eat from us. Given I was eating an apple they didn't have much choice, although days later we found out that the hostel was actually unlocked but had a very stiff door, and inside there were tea and homemade cakes for sale which, no doubt, the chaffinches would have enjoyed!

It didn't matter too much as the birds were better fed by some other arrivals who sat down to eat their belated lunch. The two walkers who had joined us were the same two we'd met the day before and who had pointed out the bagpipes. A mother and daughter, at the time I'd assumed the younger one was in her teenage years but in the pub later that night I'd realised she was in her mid 20s with the year difference seemingly accounted for by the bandana she wore whilst walking.

Noting the miraculous age reducing effects of such headgear I resolved to wear my own as often as possible in the hope of being mistaken for a 20 year old once more. Even if was a 20 year old with a slightly podgy belly...

Rested and relaxed it was time to tackle the next challenge - the climb the steep ascent alongside Loft Beck.

It got off to a good start with our guidebook directing us to ford an insanely busy stream. Quite why our otherwise excellent guidebook decided that was a good idea, who knows. Wainwright's original took a higher path and as we struggled across we could see a steady stream of people taking the far easier "proper" route.

Just as we'd finally made it to the right place, having had to leap over the wide stream, the heavens opened and the rain began once more. A good path had, at least, been made with steps cut into the stone, however once more they were made fun by the wet weather.

Then, almost as soon as it had started, it stopped just as we got near the top. Clouds began to part and a view... oh what a view... Amazing views of all around. Of Ennerdale. Of the mighty fell of Haystacks. Of Scotland and the Isle of Man in the distance. And of the divine looking Buttermere valley in the distance. It was as if the rain had had a tantrum on us, then felt rather embarrassed so resolved to make it up to us...

"Well you've been through all that pain... I'm sorry... Here, have a moment to rest... And enjoy..."

It was a beautiful spot. Almost everyone who made it up near us ended up just staring almost in disbelief - that there really could, shouldn't, be such beauty. As we walked on, I regularly had to turn round and admire it some more, until we finally came to the point of no return - where we'd have to turn away and leave it for ever and head to Honnister, walking down on the old dismantled tramway that used to send slate down from the hills.

The tramway was a strange sight. Raised on an embankment it initially remained resolutely flat whilst the land around it gradually sloped down. It looked like it was about to abruptly end in several places, almost like it just stopped. Eventually it headed downhill, heading steeply down to the slate works near the Hostel 3 - YHA Honnister.

Our guide book perhaps hadn't prepared us for Honister Slate Mine. It informed us "great joy awaits you here" and that if the place wasn't busy we'd see the sign inviting us to take tea for a voluntary donation. It put in mind of a small operation - a tiny hut with someone handling the slate and occasionally chatting to interested tourists.

Instead we found a full on "slate experience" with a full car park, slate experiences, an invite to fill your boot with slate for £20 and a petition calling for support for a new zip wire!

It all seemed so strange; so wrong. So odd that we felt compelled to endure the tourist trappings of a heart shaped chocolate chip shortbread with our cup of tea from the bustling café.

Resisting the lure of a "I walked the Coast to Coast" slate coaster, a slate picnic table and the chance to put a load of slate in our rucksacks, we set off once more down towards the valley floor - Honister only being a mere staging post on the long descent down hill.

The path meandered gently down hill - far more gently than the main road which passed nearby. Compared with the business of the paths from Black Sail, it was quiet now and we saw few people bar a couple of cyclists heading upwards.

Our route eventually went down hill with a vengeance on a descent that boarded on the near vertical in parts to take us near the village of Seatoller. From there we were on the home straight and a wooded path to Hostel 4 and our destination - the beautiful Borrowdale hostel.

There was just one last obstacle - an extremely narrow section of path along the side of the busy River Derwent. One section was so narrow that a chain was provided to hang on to and after safely negotiating it and setting foot on the fractionally wider path on the other side, I mused on how many people have traversed the whole day safely only to believe it a trivial section before falling and slipping.

No sooner had I thought that and I slipped on the rocks, falling heavily on my left side, my rucksack trying to drag me towards the river whilst I clung on to the stones for dear life.

Despite the hard landing, thankfully nothing serious happened bar my knee getting a trifle muddy and we made it safely along the remaining hundred metres to the busy hostel where the warden promptly spent several hours going through the many food options available to us during our stay. What would we like for the evening meal? Three course or just one? Porridge for breakfast? Vegetarian sausage? Beans or tomatoes? Packed lunch? Large or small?

Each meal seemed to have its own checklist of options to consider and it was a blessed relief to finally have filled them all in so we could shower and change before actually eating. Still the warden was a very friendly and nice chap and gave us the hire of two towels for free, so one mustn't really grumble.

Hostels have changed a lot since the old days. We'd recently watched a documentary about hostelling of old, full of spotty oiks sarcastically singing "We love you warden, we do" as he tried to impose lights out.

I don't know if hostels did meals then but if they did they no doubt involved a big vat of stew sold at thruppence a bowl. But only if you did your chores and had cleaned the toilets before hand.

Whilst contemplating that thought, we munched on marinated olives, chomped on homemade bread and enjoyed a freshly cooked vegetable curry and Cumberland sausage respectively.

And as we retired to the lounge and supped our bottles of locally brewed, bottle conditioned ales (well Claret didn't seem quite right really), I pondered starting a good old fashioned sing song, handing round copies of the YHA songbook and shouting "Come on everybody!"

Times change and somehow I didn't think the large group of supercool looking teenagers doing a jigsaw puzzle would have gone along with the idea. With a heavy sigh I did the next best thing and ordered another bottle of beer and checked on my laundry.

Next time it's time to get very wet and to buy a new pair of waterproof trousers that actually fit... I know. It's a mad idea. In the meantime, the full set of photos of day 2 (and there are some lovely ones) are available over on flickr

More blog posts about: A Coast to Coast Walk, Cumbria, Lake District, walking | Comment on this post, and read other comments

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A Coast to Coast Walk Day 1 - St Bees to Ennerdale Bridge

2010-08-23T20:47:03Z

"And so it begins..."

In walking circles Alfred Wainwright is a legend. His little pictorial guides are truly treasured by all who go walking in his favoured "Lakeland" - now more commonly known as the Lake District.

Wainwright never seemed happier than when he was out on the fells and in the late 1960s he set off to catalogue what was perhaps the best known walking route in Britain - the newly created Pennine Way.

To say Wainwright hated it may be an understatement. He found it a serious trudge. So much was his despair at the thing that he decided that anyone completing the thing in full deserved a pint. On him. Until he died he paid the bills at the Border Hotel in Kirk Yetholm, and although his money has long run out, the tradition is maintained by brewing giant Greene King who provide Morland Original for the purposes, although in the slightly smaller half pint size.

Wainwright took it upon himself to create a more pleasing walk. A walk where the intention was about enjoyment, interest and variety rather than merely following some geographical feature like most national trails.

Detailed in his book, "A Coast to Coast Walk", it has become one of the most popular walking routes in Britain. An estimated 9,000 people set off on it every year. Scores of books are written, and plenty of maps sold. Many villages en-route benefit hugely from the walkers that pass through.

Yet the Coast to Coast has no legal status and very limited signage. It just is, and remains just is over it's 190 odd mile length.

It was this legal non-entity that we were about to set off on - extremely tight waterproof trousers and all (what you do you mean you skipped the introduction?)

Our B&B landlady thought we were mad, but that was mainly because we turned down her kind offer of a lift to the village. We'd had trouble booking anywhere in St Bees to stay, and the only bed we'd found had been at Moorclose B&B, a mile up a steep road out of St Bees proper. But we thought there was little point - we'd come here to walk and what difference did a mile and a half extra make?

Down in the village we stocked up on supplies in the local store, passed the Queens Hotel we'd frequented the night before, and headed for the sea.

There's two traditions associated with the Coast to Coast.

To view this video you need Flash installed. If you have Flash and still can't see this video, you can watch it via flickr

Wainwright encouraged everyone to dip their boots into the Irish Sea before setting off, and again in the North Sea at the end.

And then there's the pebble. You pick one up at the start and leave it at the beach at the end. It's a tradition which frankly gave me images of fleets of lorries carting stones back across the country to fill the gap left at Robin Hood's Bay.

Our pebbles dutifully chosen, our boots suitably soggy, we headed for the hills but not before I gave up and decided rain or no, wearing waterproof trousers three sizes too small was not good. But then it had stopped raining anyway.

The Coast to Coast starts in style, rising high up on the cliffs and walking around them towards Whitehaven, providing amazing views on a good day, which thankfully it was. In part.

Whilst the rain had gone, the winds that had howled around our B&B the night before, had remained and was doing a sterling job of trying to blow us to the floor.

The waves crashed into the rocks below as we came along the headland, past St Bees lighthouse, with Ireland, the Isle of Man, Scotland and more just visible in the cloudy distance.

Passing by a quarry (with some portable toilets provided by the amusingly named "Borderloos") we headed inland, passing a boat with a bizarre mannequin dressed in a sow-wester, and a huge St Bernard dog parked on a wall who resisted any attempt to stroke him by gently batting my arm down with his paw so that he could lick the sweat off it.

From here on it was relatively flat walking, skirting the sights of Whitehaven in the near distance to pass down into the village of Sandwith.

Away from the coastal wind, things were hotting up and we took the opportunity to park ourselves on a handy bench and strip off layers of clothes, adjust our boots and re-apply the inevitable factor 50.

From there on we passed alongside fields and walked down lanes before going under a railway line and into a soggy field swelled by heavy rain a few days earlier.

Our route now seemed to take us along a wooded, sheltered road - the kind that looks like no one has used in years. The kind adventurers find themselves on whilst on a quest. The kind where epics are born.

And maybe they were. But if they were, well we sure weren't supposed to know.

We'd gone the wrong way. A sign next to the gate told us so, complete with directions of how to get back on track. Whilst a useful, thoughtful measure - and a mistake no doubt many made if someone had gone to the trouble of putting up a makeshift poster - notice a little earlier might just have been a little more useful!

It wasn't a huge detour and we quickly joined the cycle path that now runs along the dismantled Egremont Extension railway which now provides an alternative to Wainwright's original route (and wild raspberries - yum!) along the roads and village of Moor Row before gently depositing the walker near a sewage works in Cleator.

Cleator is perhaps best known for its red sandstone church, but for us it will be forever known for its sign outside...

Clearly it's a place where you can get your bread, your milk, your papers, your potatoes, your fruit and your veg (cos potatoes aren't veg). You can get your drinks and your sandwiches too. But not your pies. No. For there are no pies. No. None at all.

Clearly lack of pies is a big thing in Cleator. Why I can't say? Are they truly amazing pies? Do people come from miles around to buy there pies from there? Either way lack of pies is clearly such a big deal that they have an interchangeable sign outside informing you of pie status, so that instead of going in to the shop and finding there be no pies, you can find out on the street and be disappointed there instead.

These must be amazing pies. But I wouldn't know. Because there were none.

Cleator now gave way to the main, and indeed only challenge of the day - Dent Fell.

Its lower slopes are forested and a steep but firm logging road zig-zags its way up to just before the top where the Coast to Coast walker must turn off to get to the sheep grazed top.

The reward for your effort is most gratifying with a huge cairn to celebrate the achievement, and an amazing view to boot. An amazing panorama was revealed - Whitehaven, St Bees, Sellafield, Scotland and Ireland on one side, and a fine introduction to the Lake District it on the other.

Viewers were not all that we were treated to. As we stopped to say hello to two women resting on the hillside, they invited us to stop a minute and listen.

"It's either bagpipes of an ice cream van" proclaimed one.

"Well I would prefer the ice cream van - I could murder a 99!" extolled the other, and with that, who could disagree.

"There's a man who plays, fully dressed in the full kit up around the border" she continued, however further playing drifting through the hills we did not hear. Almost as if the player knew they had an audience, the pipes stopped a playin'. Normality - the sounds of birds tweeting and the wind blowing - was restored.

Such rewards of great views and live music almost inevitably come at a price and the descent downhill was a serious one. Incredibly steep it was the kind of hill that a hiker with a full pack on their back dreads - especially on the first day. We were carrying everything on our backs and the weight really distorts your centre of balance. Bending down too much has the potential to see you go off tumbling down the hill before finally getting to the bottom dizzy, dusty and, most likely, in a big crumpled ball.

The cartoon style birds circling our heads thankfully never came, bit it was a relief to get to the bottom of the valley and walk the four or so flat miles to Ennerdale Bridge where we'd be staying for the night.

By now we'd caught up with a plethora of other walkers and following the crowd we almost missed the Kinniside stone circle. There are many such circles on the Coast to Coast and this must be the finest and best looking, although there's a good reason for that - unlike its ancient brethren, it's actually a relatively a relatively modern re-creation built by an archaeologist. Still, it's power was still felt. By someone. Somewhere...

Ennerdale Bridge was now in sight and we headed into the village, passing its two pubs and knocked on the door to our B&B before heading out again for food and an enchanting night at the Shepherd's Arms Hotel. Despite it being a Friday night it seemed to be catering solely for walkers. Not one local person darkened its doors for a pint of Ennerdale Copper or a bite to eat. But then given they microwaved a homemade steak and ale pie with suet pastry - a major travesty - perhaps they all knew better.

Maybe it was the microwaved pastry. Maybe because the landlord had alienated all the villages... Well who knows. If you're thinking the second pub might have been better - well lets just say the same person runs it. Maybe it was busier. Who knew. Either way by half eight on a Friday night the place consisted of two customers and a woman behind the bar. Doing my bit for the rather depressing local economy, I ordered another pint...

Next time it's off to Borrowdale via a slate mine, an old tramway and a zip wire. Bet you can't wait. In the meantime why not check out the photos from the first day over on flickr.

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A Coast to Coast Walk: Walking Wainright's Walk

2010-08-16T20:48:35Z

There are ways to begin a long distance walk. Things that must be done. It's compulsory. It's written in the rules.

First you must stride purposefully to the starting point. You must fill your lungs with a deep breath. You must have a photograph taken next to the sign, monument or obelisk that marks the beginning of the trail. And you must proclaim loudly and clearly to all who will listen... "And so it begins!"

Of course it's best to do all that whilst there is no one else watching. And preferably whilst not wearing waterproof trousers that are three sizes too small for you.

I scored a win on the first one...

It had all started so well. The day before we'd set off from Lancaster on a packed one carriage train plodding along the Cumbrian coastline. Catherine had bagged a prime lot at a table in in the middle of the carriage and on the left hand side, meaning we'd get a great view (meanwhile I'd been getting the teas in - well a two hour train journey with no buffet facility? You just have to...) despite being on a hopelessly overcrowded train.

"It's always two carriages this train in the winter, yet as soon as the tourists turn up, they take one off!" declared one local woman on her way back home with shopping bags groaning on the luggage rack above her head whilst we were busy admiring the view of the Irish Sea.

It was as if she thought there was some mad maniac at the heart of Northern Rail cackling "Tourists? Tourists! I'll make them suffer... SUFFER YOU HEAR ME!". Although that said... just where exactly did the other carriage go?

At Barrow on Furness the packed train almost completely emptied before instantly refilling with commuters heading home. Then we passed Sellafield - that mighty palace to nuclear energy - and before we knew it, we were at our destination. The small, unassuming village of St Bees.

But St Bees holds a special place in the heart of the true long distance walker, for it is the place that one Alfred Wainwright decided to start what is perhaps his masterpiece - "A Coast To Coast Walk".

A walk of nearly two hundred miles across the north of England from St Bees on the west, through Cumbria and North Yorkshire all the way to Robin Hood's Bay on the eastern coast.

It was a walk Catherine had always wanted to do. So we decided to do it. We planned our an itinerary to split it over 14 days, booked accommodation and waited, oh how we waited, for the off.

And now it was here. Soon we'd be setting off. Soon we'd be on our way. We'd arrived, had a good nights sleep and were ready to begin.

There was just one problem. It had been raining all night, and was still going as we prepared to set off. We dutifully prepared to don our waterproofs in our B&B room when disaster struck.

My nice, shiny new(ish) breathable waterproof trousers seemed to have gone AWOL, replaced instead by an old, redundant, non-breathable and rather small pair of Catherine's.

Left with no option but to squeeze in, I walked the mile and a half from our B&B to the beach, the tightness of the trousers frankly leaving very little to the imagination...

Next time we set off on Wainwright's 190 mile trek from one side of the country to the other. And if you want to admire the photographs, you'll find some them in my Coast to Coast flickr set

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The music of early 6music

2010-08-16T11:39:31Z

Photo by Geordiekid. Creative Commons licensed.

Pretty much ever since the station launched I've been listening to 6music and lurking around its message boards, with the occasional post here and there.

One of the threads that caught my eye was a thread about the Guardian's article on former breakfast presenter Phill Jupitus who just happens to have a new book to promote about his time at the station.

Naturally the thread's got a bit of reminiscing about the good old days of Phill's breakfast show, mutterings of disgust about former managers of the station and mutterings about the quality of The Guardian's research.

One reply really caught my eye though…

I didn't listen to 6M at the start, so was interested in the book to find out more about that period. I was amused by some of the comments on page 191, where Phill noted early on that "the same classic tracks kept cropping up on the playlist". He was arguing that why shouldn't they play lesser known tracks from well known artists (e.g. Jam, Costello etc). This point has been raised here a lot recently.

However some of the earlier comments on this thread suggest all was better in the early days. But reading Phill's book does not give that impression. Are people remembering through rose tinted hearing aids?

cookingwith 7 on the BBC 6music boards

I put a rather lengthy reply which I won't bore you with (unless you really do want to read it) but the jist was, in those early days they were trying to work out what 6music was and should be. They got there in the end but some would undoubtedly prefer the original version whilst they were playing around.

And I pondered what 6music was actually playing back in those early days. Was the music mix radically different? Was it more commercial or more unique than now?

Funnily enough I don't have a batch of 6music tapes from those early shows however I did find one thing to help me - the Internet Archive had copies of the 6music site from 2002 and in October 2002 it archived a copy of the playlist page.

A couple of things stood out instantly - David Gray for starters. He's certainly not a name you'd expect on the modern 6music playlist. Then there was the Streets and then Big Brovaz with Nu Flow which I'd completely forgotten about but which meant hip hop was represented on the station from the very early days. Interestingly they playlisted older tracks and even whole albums back then.

But what did it all sound like together? Well I put together a Spotify playlist of as much of it as possible (there were just a handful of tracks I couldn't find) - if you've got Spotify yourself, you can
have a listen to it.

Putting it on at work whilst doing some documentation, it was certainly very heavy on the guitair based indie sound, compared to the playlist I'm looking at now which seems a bit more varied in styles including Laura Marling, the wonderful Steven Mason and frankly bizarrely named !!!.

Of course the playlist is only part of the picture and doesn't take into account the older music that the station that pops up and the presenters free choices - both past and present. I remember one of Gideon Coe's morning shows where he seemed to play nothing but 1990s BritPop one Friday morning (thus making me very happy), whilst now you'll hear an increasing about of classic soul and disco (which also makes me very happy.) On a station like 6music they add as much into the mix as the playlist does - more so at weekends and in the evening. Listening to the playlist doesn't sound like 6music because it is only a part of 6music and what it does. A better way of representing the station would probably to take a days worth of show tracklistings and bung them all in Spotify. The Internet Archive certainly has some.

However that's just a bit more work to do and ultimately playlists are usually about representing and establishing a station sound, and 6music certainly seems to have been more guitar based indie back then. Hey, it's what attracted me to the station!

6music has undoubtedly changed over the years. It's grown, it's more varied and it's now a lot more confident now that it's future is secure. It won't please everyone, but hey, modern technology does at least enable people to take a trip to the past… in a little way.

More blog posts about: BBC Radio 6music, music, radio, Spotify | Comment on this post, and read other comments

Links for 13 August 2010

2010-08-13T13:47:40Z

Hmm. Methinks this is less Daily Links and more monthly links!

Giant Chinese 'straddle bus' drives over traffic

Bonkers idea or genius new way at tackling congestion? You decide.
Call to improve password security - BBC News

Apparently we need to make passwords longer because shorter ones will be easily cracked. But frankly sod the cracking - people already struggle with passwords and if we make them longer, then people are going to struggle to remember them. Case in point - me. Halifax recently changed their online login requiring brand new "memorable data". They then pick three letters. The data they had me use is so long that to get the three letters I have to write down the password on a Post It note... It really is time the password died and something easier to use took its place.
Why the US keeps minting coins people hate and won't use - BBC News

Apparently in the USA they're making dollar coins people won't use because they prefer notes. Personally I can't imagine still having a pound note in the UK - my wallet would just be full of paper...
What makes a place worthy of World Heritage status? - BBC News

"In most ways it is an underpass like any other. There are discarded shopping trolleys, the sound of cars overhead, and the less than fragrant smell of urine. The idea that anyone would mark this underpass in south London's Collier's Wood as a place of worldwide significance would merit a smirk at first glance. But behind an inconspicuous black door, near the entrance of the alley, lies a completely different world. " Yep, it's the Merton Abbey Chapter House, the ruins of which were built over by the local council in the 1980s!
BBC News - Wine vending machines launch in US

Bonkers wine vending machine which only really exists because Pennsylvania seems utterly paranoid about anyone drinking wine.
Turn the BBC into a co-op - Progress Online

"Under a mutual model, membership of the BBC could be open to everyone who pays the licence fee. Members could have the right to elect representatives to a members' council that would elect a majority of members of the BBC Trust. This would give licence fee payers a way to democratic voice in the priorities of the BBC." David Milliband and Tessa Jowel discuss turning the BBC into a co-op.
David Ottewell's Politics: Sian Williams on the BBC move north - Manchester Evening News

A rather good piece from the Manchester Evening News fighting back at some rather bitter pieces about the presenters of BBC's Breakfast being reluctant to move to Salford. It's a great, level headed piece that accurately portrays the dilemmas affected staff have - that there are reasons that people DON'T want to move and people have valid reasons for not moving. Manchester may be great, but even those of us who know how great it is (and that includes some presenters of Breakfast and myself) may not want to move.
How To Use CSS3 Media Queries To Create a Mobile Version of Your Website - Smashing Magazine

Some months ago I tried to find a nice easy to understand article about creating mobile versions of a website as I wanted to experiment with doing one for Planet Bods. If only this piece had been around then - I would have saved a lot of hassle, tears and gnashing of teeth!

More blog posts about: BBC, BBC Breakfast, BBC Out of London, buses, London, Manchester, Merton, money, online banking, Salford, vending machine, web development | Comment on this post, and read other comments

Say hello to The Good Columbo Guide

2010-08-09T09:29:18Z

In amongst all the talk of me archiving bits of Planet Bods, I completely forgot to mention the latest addition to my website family - The Good Columbo Guide - an episode guide for the mighty TV show Columbo.

If you've never watched Columbo, you frankly don't know what you're missing. But lets start from the beginning and explain.

Columbo is an American detective drama that started in 1968 and ran until the 2003.

Now that frankly doesn't sound very interesting and original - after all there have been lots of American detective dramas over the last few decades. So what makes Columbo so noteworthy? What makes it have the honour of a whole episode guide? I mean, it's hardly The Wire is it?

Ah, but Columbo is different. Columbo is a drama that takes a look at the cop show convention and just throws them away.

For example, every episode starts with the viewer seeing the murder, and who did it so the joy is all about how Columbo, gloriously played by Peter Falk, is going to catch them out. And it's never straight forward.

Then there's the regular themes that run through the show. There's the lead detective who could best be described (and usually is) as dishevelled. He bumbles along with his clapped out car and raincoat that looks like its been eaten and expelled by a lama, and everyone thinks he's incompetant and disorganised just because of it. But the reality is that they're up against the mind of one of the finest detectives in LA.

And he's such a lovely bloke. He loves his wife, and seems to take every opportunity he can to mention her. There's the fact he finishes questioning the murderer in their home or office, then is half way out the door before just saying "Oh, just one more thing…" as if he'd forgotten something, before asking a question that stands an excellent chance of tripping the murderer up. He always eats chilli, has a dog that barely moves and whistles "This old man came rolling home".

Oh and it's an American cop show where the main detective seems to abhor violence and certainly hates handling guns - he goes out of his way to avoid the old shooter. In many ways it feels very British.

Everything about Columbo just seemed to work - there are a frankly high number of excellent storylines in there, helped by the fact that the show was never milked to death. In its initial seven year run there were just 43 episodes, with the show initially appearing once a month. When it returned in the 1980s (having been dropped by NBC and picked up by ABC), a mere 26 episodes were made between 1989 and 2003.

It's a rare thing from a US - after all, just look at Murder She Wrote (which happened to be created by the people behind Columbo) which over 12 years totalled 264 episodes and 4 TV movies. Over eight series Diagnosis Murder totalled 178. Columbo - with it's notional 11 series and pilots totalled just 69.

Each episode is 90-120 minutes long, and the small number of them spread over many years means that each storyline is generally very well thought through. Without the necessity to crank out one episode a week, the emphasis could be on quality.

It retains a loyal and large fanbase to this day and regularly appears in the UK's TV schedules. There's also a large, extensive Columbo fan site already, but no episode guide - no one to review the episodes, tell you which are the good, which are the bad (well okay, the "quite not up to the best standard of Columbo if you ask me"). And that's where The Good Columbo Guide comes in.

The plan is to review all 69 episodes. There's nine up there at the moment, another 3 to publish soon and my PVR currently has about 16 episodes lined up ready to watch and review.

So if you're into Columbo, or have just never watched it and want to find out more, well I know a place to go. See you there then...

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Random things found in my work email client's note section #449821a...

2010-08-04T14:23:49Z

Sorting out some work emails, I randomly hit Outlook's "notes" section. I don't really use the "Notes" section bar for keeping a few bits of regularly used information that... err... I usually don't use. Things like links to Telewest's cable monitoring services which probably stopped working in about 2007, an old defunct FTP password for the BBC's website and details of how to get the secret, not very well hidden testcard on the BBC Red Button.

Photo by myrrh.ahn. Creative Commons licensed.

The last note was added in 2008. The first in July 2003.

There were two from 2003, and they went like this:

The Original Series

Baddies

strange green humanoid aliens
strange blue humanoid aliens
strange black and white humanoid aliens
klingons
big reddish thing, created using a big red light bulb

Episode hero

Captain Kirk
Spock
Sulu
Doctor McCoy
Uhura
Chekov
Scotty
Nurse Chappell

Problem

Love with aliens

Next Generation

Aliens

Ferengi
Romulans
Borg
Q
Lore
Doctor Bashir
big blue gaseous cloud

Episode Hero

Captain Picard
Commander Riker
Lt.Commander LeForge
Lt.Commander Data
Lt.Commander Worf
Counsellor Troi
Dr.Crusher
Wesley Crusher

Problem

Transporter problem
Holodeck problem
Mysterious alien virus
Alien takes over control of the Captain
Alien takes over the ship
There is a problem with the warp drive engine

Consequences

Data learns a new emotion
The crew make friends with the alien and go on their way
Data acts strangely
Wesley Crusher gets to look smug
Data goes 'hmm'
Everyone plays poker
Guyanan says something profound

I think it was some sort of "Make your own Star Trek Adventure" idea, although why Doctor Bashir is an alien, well frankly, that is anyone's guess...

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Archiving web sites the Planet Bods way

2010-08-04T14:33:55Z

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been having a bit of a spring clean of my website and archiving several areas of content. It took me quite a while to come up with my arching strategy so I thought I'd share what I decided to do.

Photography by Dolescum. Creative Commons licensed.

When coming up with my archiving plan I eventually decided on a number of steps I'd go through.

1. All the files would be moved into a subdirectory called /archived

Over the years pages on this site have come and gone and moved around. I keep finding directories with long abandoned content, intermingled with stuff that's regularly updated.

I decided I wanted a major tidy up and decided that all archived content would be moved to a sub-directory of www.planetbods.org/archived. So The Wise and Sage Words of Tim Westwood would move from www.planetbods.org/theshed/westwood to www.planetbods.org/archived/westwood. All the file names would remain the same and a simple redirect would be put in place to transfer people seemlessly from one place to another. File extensions - where they exist - would be kept the same.

Now I know there will be one person hear sucking through their teeth shrieking "That's bad SEO!!!!!" but frankly I don't care. This is content I'm essentially abandoning. Some of it is so little read that it really doesn't matter either way. I'm not fussed about pagerank or whatever. And it means everything is stashed away and I know exactly where it is.

It also meant one other thing and that was that I would need to change all the links in the site to point to the new URL. Not a major disaster - I tended to use local links in hand built pages.

2. All sites would be saved as simple, straight HTML - all PHP or other dynamic code would be removed

Right now there are three different ways I use to build this site. Most of it is published within Movanle Type, with shared template modules to control a standard design.

Several older sections are built in PHP files with global elements pulled in and coupled with lots of messy file manipulation. Originally each section had its own PHP file because I always liked the idea of different sections having different designs, however over the years I finally managed to standardise on one PHP file which controls all the PHP pages. Well all the ones expect any pages I managed to forget to convert!

Then there's tech 3 - Hitop. This is a HTML pre-processor called HitopLive that in some respects is a bit like PHP.

Hitop was around before PHP started to hit mass adoption, and it had some funky features that takes me about 200 lines of code to do now in PHP. Plus I knew the people who wrote it, and my website used to be hosted on their server. At one time my entire site was built in it, however PHP began to dominate and Hitop development ended.

Over the years I've slowly but surely tried to convert my content, but there's still about 100 pages of this site built in Hitop format. And it causes problems.

Last year I decided to move my site off my friends server as it was causing a few performance issues and Movable Type was having to run off SQLite and was getting very slow. However Hitop isn't found on any hosting package and I didn't have time to migrate all the remaining Hitop pages to PHP. In the end I bought a virtual server from Bytemark and managed to install Hitop on it - it was a nightmare as Hitop hasn't been updated since 2002 and I always struggle to get it compile these days.

Eventually I managed to find an old Debian installation file (Hitop was briefly packaged for Debian systems) and coaxed it to install. My content was safe, but I knew it was just a temporary solution. The Hitop code had to go.

For content I was going to keep, I'd port it into Movable Type. However for stuff I was going to archive, that would be pointless effort. I decided to save the files as flat HTML instead - I just saved them using wget.

After much deliberation, I decided to do that with the PHP files too - whilst I doubt PHP is going anywhere for some time, saving them entirely as flat HTML files would mean I could run them from anywhere in the future without problem. If I wanted to quickly run them off a flash drive, I could.

This decision caused just one problem - I had a set of three quizzes which the user hit radio buttons and got their score based on their answers. In the end I converted them to pure text and had a magazine style "Mostly A's" type section for working out the answer. Not ideal but frankly only about 2 people a month ever used them, so so what?

3. All archived sites would be entirely self contained

This was the decision that creates the most work. I didn't want any changes I make elsewhere on the site to potentially break the archived pages, so I decided they would be entirely standalone. All necessary images and CSS files that were previously shared would be copied, and links updated. I could move everything to an entirely different server on a completely different domain, and the archived content would just work.

JavaScript I stripped out - I have a standard set of files loaded on all pages. They all do relatively minor things and none of the pages I have so far archived actually used them, so I decided to strip it out. I also stripped out a bit of navigation on some pages if it pointed to non-archived content.

One bit of JavaScript remained - Google Analytics code so I could continue to check user stats. This was put into the code that generated the "This page is no longer updated" banner below...

4. A "this page is no longer updated" banner would be added

Taking best practice from the BBC here - a lot of websites just let old webpages rot and rot and rot. They may have been killed off for years but you'd never know. Some years ago the BBC started doing something to point out such pages on its website - a "mothballed" banner proclaimed very boldly and very dominantly, that the page was archived.

It makes sense and I'm surprised more people don't do it. I decided I would.

I decided to make it a shared include, just in case I ever wanted to update the banner for any reason - the original reason I decided to do it was in case Google Analytics changed their JavaScript.

The banner is pulled in as two simple includes by PHP. One contains the CSS and Google Analytics JavaScript; the second contains the actual banner itself. All the flattened pages would be served as PHP (regardless of their original file type) but because it was very simple PHP, I would be able to change it very easily in the future if I had to.

5. And finally, leave it as it is...

For me one of the things I felt I really needed to do was one that took next to no effort. I wanted to leave it online looking just as it does now. That the design shown to the user should reflect the way the webpage was when I archived it.

I wanted to do this because every now and then I come across a webpage that looks rather structured but consists of Times New Roman text on a white background - the stylesheets have gone; the images lost.

That was what I wanted to avoid in this process. Yes URLs may change and there may be a whacking banner at the top, but it was still roughly the same.

Maybe in ten years time it will all be moot and the web browsers of the future won't be able to display the pages I've archived now. I bloomin' well hope that it won't be the case! But maybe by then only about one person a year will actually view the pages anyway…

And perhaps that's the question - how long do you leave stuff online? Does there reach a point when it all becomes a trifle irrelevant?

Probably… but hey, server space is cheap. Right?

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Archiving parts of Planet Bods

2010-08-04T14:22:34Z

For the last few months we've been evaluating Planet Bods and how we look to work for the future. As such, we're here today to announce the results of the Planet Bods Strategy Review.

I won't lie to you - these are difficult times. Some people will inevitably lose their jobs. Other roles will be moved to Salford. We've had to make some difficult decisions, however we firmly believe that the savings we make can be re-invested back into Planet Bods and make it a leaner, more efficient operation.

The headlines are as follows.

We will close 25% of top level directories on Planet Bods, and close down Planet Bods 6Radio and the Planet Bods Asian Station…

And that's how I would be starting this post if this website was a huge media enterprise and I was addressing several thousand staff. But as it happens this website is just me, there is no Planet Bods 6Radio or Asian Station, and I can't be bothered with arbitrary figures like 25% when there's less then ten top level directories on this website as it is.

However I have been doing a process that's kind of similar, but far smaller, than what the BBC's going through with it's web presence.

It's now been thirteen and a half years since I launched my website. It was a different world back then. Commercial sites were often lacklustre. There were no blogs. The personal home page was king.

Ah, the personal homepage. You don't get many of them any more. Indeed I saw one recently and was just amazed. Over the last few years, the websites of individuals have tended to consist almost entirely of blogs, whilst someone looking for information a person or topic is more likely just to go to Wikipedia than search the net.

Sites you make yourself about your interests and hobbies - a motley collection of your own Star Trek site, fan page for Britney Spears, or whatever - have in some ways disappeared.

The change coincided with the some of the early web pioneers getting bored, or having a family and being too busy. I started a website when I was a student and as such, had loads of time. Time I should have been doing my coursework usually, but time none the less. Now I work a 35 hour week, spend 10 hours of my week commuting and often just get home and want to slump in front of the TV and not think.

Trouble is, this website hasn't really changed hugely to take into account all that. There's all manner of content I put up ago that's diligently sat there for years. And years. And years. A lot of it is older than my blog - and that started in 2002. Now some content is fine like that. But other stuff hasn't had the attention nor love it deserves and needs.

Working out what to do with it all has been a question I've been wondering for about two years. I even toyed with back porting it into my blog at one point and leaving it at that!

Eventually I decided on taking a good, cold hard look at the site and come up with a new policy.

As such over the last few months I've been going through a plethora of pages on the site and archiving several areas. The kind of stuff that has become rather irrelevant, that I just can’t do justice too, or where the web has just changed.

So I've taken the decision to start officially archiving some sections of this site, removing them from the homepage and putting on a banner explaining the page is no longer updated, complete with a nice help page.

If you want to know a good reason why sometimes you have to close things down, well one such archived page is The Wise and Sage Words of Tim Westwood for example. Radio 1 DJ Westwood doesn't half come out with some mad stuff, so I started a site to quote some of it.

Trouble is, to do a site like that you need good, hard exposure to Tim Westwood and I didn't have that. And then Twitter turned up, and to be honest, Westwood does frankly a far better job of satirising himself there than I ever could here! I mean, how can I compete with such gems as...

Its 5am can't sleep - keep dreaming of serato crates. Worrying about them crates. Gotta open the laptop.

http://twitter.com/TimWestwood/status/16668196721

Some things are frankly impossible to beat...

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If you're going to cover stories about London on TV and radio, you need to justify properly why you're covering it

2010-08-03T09:44:12Z

If there's one thing that seems to provoke irie from the BBC's viewers and listeners, it's doing anything about London on air. Well unless said viewer and listener is in London. Probably.

Photo by Diamond Geezer. Creative Commons licensed.

When I heard about BBC Radio 4's London season, I naturally raised my eyebrows and thought, "Hmm, they're asking for trouble there." Whilst I've been on holiday, the topic was tackled on Feedback.

The trouble is, if you listen to the complaints you'd never do anything about London on air, ever. Yet it is the capital city of these isles and it is an interesting and diverse place. About 20% of the population live here. It deserves some recognition on our airwaves. And there are stories that should be interesting to people outside the capital, because frankly whilst people think London is covered a huge amount by the media, most of the coverage consists of stabbings, film premières and politics. And frankly London is just a bit more than that.

When BBC Four did its London Bus night to celebrate the demise of the Routemaster bus in the capital, I would have watched whether I was in Wimbledon or Westmoorland. It was, after all, the only place in the UK where fifty-odd year old open doored buses regularly plied for trade. That's something special and I don't care who disagrees with me.

Similarly when they did a London Underground night, I thought "Brilliant!" and watched every bit. After all, here's a railway system that runs just in one small part of the country, and yet carries almost as many people every year as use the National Rail network. There's some stories to be told there, I thought, and there were. If we can have Michael Portillo travelling around the north of England and Cornwall on diesel trains, we can have programmes about the tube.

And whilst some may moan about "every time there's a tube strike, it's always on the national news", when there's an all out strike that brings the capital to its knees and prevents about 3m people from travelling, hey isn't that a story? Why yes, it is my friend, it is. (Anyone outside London may be interested to know that most tube strikes aren't covered by the national news - only the all out ones which shut almost every line.)

Of course what broadcasters need to do is ensure they validate to the listener or viewer why they have focused a story or programme on London - and (I'm afraid) they almost have to validate it doubly more than any other story.

This was firmly in my mind this morning when Radio 4's Today programme did a piece about the porters at Billingsgate market facing terms and conditions changes.

Even as a person who has lived in London for nearly 11 years, I couldn't quite tell why someone had thought this was newsworthy for a national audience. I mean, I know it's the largest inland fish market in the UK, and I know it's been around in one form or other for centuries. But I didn't have a clue what made the porters special and why I should care about what they compared to say any other porter in a market in the UK. Or indeed any other job. Maybe there's some fascinating reason why it should have been covered, but it didn't come across and I just ended up feeling that if it was going to be covered, it should have been on BBC London instead.

I do think it's sad that some people (not everyone, but some) want to shut out as irrelevant anything that happens in our capital because they perceive of a London-bias in the media. However sometimes those compiling programmes really don't help the cause, and they really do need to make sure they justify some decisions even more so to themselves and the audience if we're ever to attack the belief that the media is overly obsessed with our capital.

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Links for 14 July 2010

2010-07-14T15:51:22Z

8-Bit Cities

Ever wondered what Google Maps would look like on a ZX Spectrum? What? You haven't? What planet are you on? You're a disgrace to the species dude, a disgrace to the species.
London Reconnections: West Ashfield (Part 1): Models Great and Small

Part one of a fascinating insight into one of the tube's hidden tube stations - the one that sits in an office block somewhere near West Kensington. A must read for any Londonder!
Absolute Radio to launch fifth digital service - guardian.co.uk

Will Absolute Radio Extra work? Is DAB ready for a "red button" style service? Will radio manufacturers be rushing out to add red buttons to their set? Time will tell.
London Underground cooling budget cut by £10m - BBC News

The video report here is especially interesting as it mentions that the Central, Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines are the worst for heat, but that most of the money spent on cooling projects this year will go on the Victoria Line. Well I'm sure it makes sense for someone. Also included is a PDF of the tube "heat map" showing the places that you really don't want trains stuck in a tunnel - pretty much being the entire underground section of the Central...

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Links for 8 July 2010

2010-07-08T13:16:08Z

Haven't done this for a while for various reasons. Most of which revolve on me not seeing any links I like. And then what happens? Four come along at once!

BBC Mind The Gap: Bike hire etiquette: No animals allowed

I'm not a cyclist myself, but I'd like to be (especially if I had a slightly shorter commute) but I can't help but notice that huge swathes of road near where I live have been painted blue. It's Boris's Cycle Superhighway, and it all looks rather pointless - a cycle lane merely painted blue. As can be seen in the report on the BBC London Mind the Gap Blog, there's certainly been a few problems. Still praise where praise is due - mirrors at traffic lights to help with HGVs blind spots are a very simple and a very good idea.
Bashing the BBC: The peculiar rage inspired by the BBC - The Economist

"Here is a curious paradox about British conservatives. Challenge them to defend grand British institutions, from the Royal Family to the House of Lords or the lack of a written constitution, and they argue passionately about the dangers of tampering and meddling with things that evolved organically over time. They will talk about the British genius of leaving well alone. Perhaps you would not start from here, they may concede, and parts of our system may look a bit odd to outsiders, even extravagantly so. But these fragile accretions work rather well, they say, and would not survive piecemeal attempts to reform and tweak them. If it ain't broke, in other words, don't fix it. And yet, get the same British conservatives onto the subject of the BBC, and they turn into wild-eyed Jacobins, yearning to punish and slash and burn and stick the heads of senior BBC staff on spikes."
Swelegant Style Shopping: The Importance of Shirt Buttons

How many buttons to undo on your shirt. I say two. I am not alone.
Removing target dates for digital radio switchover can only be a sensible move - Transdiffusion Broadcasting System

My latest piece for the Transdiffusion Blog looks at how the end of the 2015 switchover date for digital radio, can only be a sensible thing.

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6music saved

2010-07-05T13:15:52Z

Sssh! Don't tell anyone but I've always had this secret fantasy life. It was that one day I'd end up working behind the scenes at BBC Radio 6 music.

Photo by Geordiekid. Creative Commons licensed.

Whilst working there, I'd somehow manage to get to present a show - probably because the weekend breakfast presenter fell drastically ill at the last minute or something. From there I'd end up regularly presenting late night slots, before being plucked from obscurity to co-host the breakfast show…

There's more to it than that, but it all gets a little odd really and perhaps I shouldn't share.

The suggestion that 6music would be closed down was a heart breaking moment for me. My secret fantasty would never come true. It was like being stabbed twice - once as my favourite station would go whilst the second life killed off my dreams. Dreams that stand about a 0.001% chance of becoming true, but hey, you've got to have your dreams, don't you?

Today the dream is back on! The fantasty is once more alive! 6music is saved! Woo!

Although those who had fantasies about somehow ending up on the Asian Network probably won't be celebrating...

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Wimbledon tennis, buses and the elusive open topped bus

2010-07-01T13:27:25Z

Every summer - World Cup or not - crowds and crowds of people descend upon a corner of South West London to go and eat strawberries and cream whilst watching some people hit a ball over a net.

Photo by Steve9091. Creative Commons licensed.

Not being a tennis fan I've never bothered to go and watch it all happen, especially as there's a far more interesting operation going on a bit closer to my home.

Dealing with thousands of visitors are fleets of buses which descend on the area to provide a myriad of services including shuttle buses and park and ride schemes. Arriving by train into Wimbledon train station, anyone off to visit the tennis is quickly syphoned off into a tennis bus queue faster than you can ask "Can I use my Travelcard card on this?" Before the punter knows it, they're purchasing their £4.50 return ticket and are on their way. Wimbledon Town Centre is gone in but a blink of an eye. At least it is when the bus has traversed the one way system.

The whole thing is like a tightly controlled military operation designed to keep the tennis tourists both out of the already congested town centre, and as far away from the busy locals buses as possible.

Every single spare bus owned by London General buses seems to be pressed into service and the town centre becomes filled with a motley collection of middle aged double deckers. However the Wimbledon shuttle and park and ride is only part of the picture as the company also operates services from nearby Southfields tube and even from Marble Arch.

The company presses in buses from across the South East, from sister companies to independents, leading to the sight of yellow or cream buses plying their trade.

And then it raids its "special" fleet, resulting in Routemasters parking upside ready to go - two weeks a year, the iconic open backed buses ply their trade around Wimbledon, making it very tempting to hop on and ride and admire Wimbledon Common from the top deck.

And on a nice day, when the sun is really shinning, something truly wonderful can be seen on the streets. As the locals board their glass lined sweat box double deckers, they can only look on in envy as happy spectators sit with the wind going through their hair on the open topped buses normally reserved for the London By Night tour service.

I've always had a thing for open topped buses - a belief that there's no finer way to travel on a hot summers day. They always remind me of those days leaving West Hill school in the afternoon and running for the bus to Ashton.

Photograph by Gene Hunt. Creative Commons licensed.

Local company GM Buses had three open topped buses in its fleet. Normally they'd sit in the depots unless called upon to ferry a football team around on a celebratory tour. However if the weather was right and the buses were idle, some bright spark would send them out to ply their trade on normal bus routes. The 219 going past my school seemed to be a regular haunt of the mighty sans-roof bus.

However what the bus man giveth, the bus man taketh away. Someone was clearly a very cruel and evil man. For without fail the 219 would be scheduled to drive past the gates of West Hill School barely 1 minute too early to miss the post-school rush. Only those whose teachers had been extremely generous and who had allowed the class to leave a few minutes early ever caught that bus. The rest of us could only watch in torment as it sailed away from the bus stop whilst we were trying to get aboard.

Not once did I ever manage to get on board an open top bus as a school kid... Not once. And I'm still bitter about it to this day.

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Pension Pondering

2010-06-30T10:15:21Z

The story that the BBC is consulting its staff on what basically amounts to the end of its final salary pension scheme has naturally been whirling around my mind recently.

Photograph by zappowbang. Creative Commons licensed

It's the latest in a long line of final salary scheme closures, mostly in the commercial sector. The BBC's move is seen by some as a blueprint for what the Coalition Government might do to other public sector pension schemes.

The reason why it's been whirling round my mind is because it's the first time I've really thought about the money I'll need to live when I retire.

I am, it has to be said, further ahead of the game than some on this one. As soon as I could start paying into a work pension, I did, joining aged 22 just over 10 years ago. I started early partly due to my mum's constant mentioning of it at the time, and because I would occasionally watch programmes like Working Lunch and almost everytime they mentioned pensions, they would say the earlier you could start, the better and the more you'd have at retirement.

At the age of 22 it all seemed a lifetime away, but I've always been practical and - shall we say - cautious about money (I'm no miser counting my pennies, but I don't throw money away unnecessarily) so it seemed to make sense. So by the time I retire, my thought was that I'd be all right financially.

Maybe.

Suddenly I found my mind swirling round with such thoughts as "How much does it actually cost to live?" combined with "How much WILL it actually cost to live?", "What savings will I have?", "Will there even be a state pension by then?" and the biggie… "When on earth will I even get to retire?"

And that last one's a moot point. Retirement ages keep increasing. We're told populations are getting older; the country can't afford too many retired people.

Up until relatively recently in history, people pretty much worked til they dropped - is the same going to happen to us 30 somethings?

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Planning a trip walking on the South Downs Way

2010-08-05T15:15:24Z

What with all the excitement of actually finishing the South Downs Way, I never got round to pulling together a post about organising a trip walking on it.

I say walking on it - actually the South Downs Way was the first National Bridleway and as such is perfectly suited for cyclists and horse riders as well.

The fact it's a bridleway has certain benefits too in that the paths are generally wide and there's no styles, just gates. It's also doesn't feature much mud which is wonderful in itself.

The South Downs Way is also not particularly hard going - there's not huge amounts of ups and downs to contend with. Most days include walking up to a ridge and then enjoying the relatively flat walk for a few hours whilst you enjoy the view. That's not to say there's not some challenges - the final stretch along the Seven Sisters is pretty hard work because it breaks that rule. However in the main, it's pretty simple walking.

Breaking up the South Downs Way

The first thing when planning the walk is to work out how much you're going to do every day, and whether you're going to do it in stages or all in one. As it never gets particularly rural, there's lots of villages to stay in and there are many ways of splitting up.

The Way also has good transport links with lots of railway stations with direct services to London. As well as stations at either end at Winchester and Eastbourne, there's stations at Petersfield, Amberley, Lewes and Southease, so it's easy to split into sections. I opted for four two day segments.

Given the South Downs Way is about 100 miles long, chunking it up into eight days means an average of 13 mile days. This is normally around the limit of what I prefer to do on a day, however I personally found the walking easy going and I did several days in about six hours. Knowing that, if I was doing it all in one go, I'd probably try to do it in six or seven days instead.

Finding Places To Stay

There's a reasonable amount of accommodation in the South Downs area, although mostly small B&Bs. As it's also a popular destination to visit and for weddings at weekends, booking really is advised. Even walking in the early part of Spring I found a few places were booked up. Don’t be too worried about staying a few miles off trail if you have to as many B&Bs which are a bit further away offer free pickup and drop off from the trail.

Finding out where the B&Bs are is often a nightmare - just typing in a search term in Google does sometimes give you results, however an excellent place to check out is the National Trail website's South Downs Way Accommodation Guide.

This is an excellent resource which includes a map so you can see roughly how far places are from the Way. It also gives you some results you just won't get in Google like The Copper Room in Corhampton where I stayed and is one of a number of B&Bs which only accept walkers as customers.

It's fair to say that accommodation in the South Downs can be pricey - one B&B cost me £55 for a night based on single occupancy - although it was a lovely room and the best breakfast I had - but if you're after something a bit cheaper, you may want to check out the youth hostels.

The YHA has locations at Truleigh Hill, Alfriston and Telscombe which are not far from the Way, and a new hostel is planned at Southease, hopefully opening Summer 2010.

Personally I found their locations didn't really match up with the way I'd broken up my walking and only stayed in Alfriston, although I could have (and probably should have!) stayed at Truleigh Hill.

Guide Books and Maps

The South Downs Way is extremely well way marked and amazingly easy to follow. Bar Winchester where the way marking is terrible, you could almost do the whole thing without looking at a map. However I'd advise taking something with you, just in case! There were occassional points where I thought I'd got lost (although hadn't) so having something to refer to is useful.

For the most part I relied my guide book - the South Downs Way National Trails Guide by Paul Millmore. This official guide to the trail is published, along with guides for all the other National Trails and some other long distance walks, by Aurum Press.

I'm a big fan of the Aurum books because they include OS Maps for the whole trail. Some other guide books only show a very limited area around the path they're showing, but the Aurum ones give a good area around the trail.

The layout is clean and clear, and the books are sized so that when opened out, both pages are the same size as a folded OS map. This means they fit neatly into a map case. Shut, they'll fit into a map pocket in your trousers too! I have a pair of walking trousers that has a pocket ideal for such purposes! They're also usually well written and include lots of historical and landmark information.

The quality of the Aurum books is such that we have a substantial number in our house and (depending on the complexity of the path), I've happily used them on several occasions without carrying an accompanying map - indeed I didn't carry one at all on the South Downs Way.

There is one annoyance with the South Downs Way book in that it goes East to West, starting at Eastbourne. If you're cycling, this is the best way to do it as you'll be going along with the wind rather than riding into it. However for walking I personally feel that ending in Eastbourne is a far more rewarding experience than ending in Winchester - you just can't beat the drama of walking on the white cliffs. As I was walking in the opposite direction to the book, it did require me to spend more time finding the right section - ultimately that's one reason why I always prefer to walk in the same direction as the book I'm using.

Refreshments

One of the lovely things about walking in Britain is that you can usually find a pub in the evening to eat and refresh yourself. The South Downs Way goes one step further and on many days you could pop to a pub or café for lunch too! There's almost always somewhere to buy sandwiches too.

I was also very well treated in the evenings - the four pubs I dinned in on my trip were all excellent - The Shoe at Exton, in particular, was amazing.

Not knowing what to expect when he joined me on the final two days, Jacko had brought some water purification tablets to allow him to take water from streams and ponds. However most of the route is also well catered for with water taps as well. The guide book marks these out with a handy red tap icon, and the taps can be enormously helpful on warm days. Needless to say the water purification tablets remained unused.

And finally…

Because you have to end a post somewhere and somehow, here's the and finally… To be honest I couldn't think of much else to say other than to say the South Downs Way is a lovely walk with lovely scenery and views. It can be a bit windy, but it's a lovely walk - not hugely taxing but very very rewarding.

If you live in the South East of England and haven't been to the South Downs, you don't know what you're missing. And if you don't live in the South East and haven't heard of the South Downs, well you don't know what you're missing.

It may not have the mythology of the Pennine Way; it may not have the fame of the Coast to Coast. In fact it's all a bit of a hidden gem. The fact is that the South Downs is a wonderful part of the country. Standing on that ridge looking out at the Isle of Man and the Channel, well it made me feel good to be alive. So go on, get out there. Put your hiking boots on, book your accommodation and get walking!

Oh and don't forget your free certificate when you complete it!

Splitting your train tickets - more train fare madness

2010-06-11T16:14:56Z

Trying to fit the Dales Way, Coast to Coast and finishing off the Pennine Way this summer has meant a plethora of train ticket booking, and through it I've managed to find a number of bonkers train fare situations - one where the advance ticket costs more than the on the day ticket, and another where arriving two minutes later saved me £70.

Both those two involved advance train tickets and obscure routes.

Today I found an insane situation involving on the day tickets.

To provide some context, I'm going to walk the Dales Way in August. I'll arrive in Windermere on a Friday, stay the night then get the train to Newcastle where I'll meet Catherine and we'll head off to finish the Pennine Way.

The journey from Windermere is a three hour journey involving three trains and goes like this:

Windermere to Oxenholme by Transpennine Express
Oxenholme to Carlisle by Virgin Trains
Carlisle to Newcastle by Northern Rail or Scotrail, depending on the train

Through ticket price for the whole journey £35.90 - an anytime single.

Now I might be able to buy an advance ticket for the Oxenholme to Carlisle section but they're not yet available (there's no advance tickets available on the other two sections) so I idly pondered what the individual costs of stages 1 and 3 were. So I looked it up.

Windermere to Oxenholme is £4.30 for an Anytime single.

Carlisle to Newcastle is £12.90 for an Anytime Single.

Hmm, I thought. That must mean that the Oxenholme to Carlisle section is really expensive!

I tapped in the details to check it out.

Computer said £10.80

Now whilst I did a Maths degree but my mental arithemtic is a bit dodgy. But even so that didn't look right. I fired up the computer calculator and double checked.

And triple checked.

No matter what way I typed it - whether I put in the cheapest price first or last; whether I typed it with left hand or my right; the result still came out the same. £28.

Yep, I could buy three tickets to cover the exact same trains and it would cost me £7.90 less.

I decided to work out where the madness lies. So I checked out the fare foe Windermere to Carlisle. If I was to buy a through ticket it would cost me £18.50, 70p more than splitting it. But Oxenholme to Newcastle would cost me £31.60 - again £7.90 more than the two tickets.

I'm sure this absurd situation makes sense to someone, but not to me. I've heard of savings involving splitting tickets and staying on the same train before, or of getting advance tickets for part of the journey. But never have I come across a situation where where breaking down a train journey involving several trains and with normal walk on fares costs can save me about 20% of the price.

I'm sure it makes sense to someone - certainly makes sense to the railway companies who would be lining their pockets with a whopping extra £7.90 from me otherwise… But it makes no sense at all to me...

More blog posts about: railways, train tickets, trains | Comment on this post, and read other comments

Daily Links for 10 June 2010

2010-06-10T13:42:56Z

For some reason I haven't got round to posting links recently so they've been sitting around in Delicious just waiting for me to get my backside in gear. So here goes...

Why don’t more restaurants do this?- 90 Percent of Everything

What? Put on the bill the cost per person? Bonkers. It'll never take off...
Old and resistant to change? Why embeddable fonts make me nervous... - Martin Belam's currybetdotnet blog

"I'm sure there were people complaining that the introduction of <font color="blue"> in HTML 3.2 would unleash anarchy..." Well it did. For a bit anyway.
That crass and overly commercial cycle hire logo - MayorWatch

"I’m sure we’re all very grateful to the shareholders of Barclays for spending some of their marketing budget on slapping their logo all over the bikes and uniforms of staff but frankly this new roundel (pictured) brings crass commercialism crashing down to whole new levels of bad. [...] Allowing the roundel - a true icon of London - to be absorbed into a glorified advert like this is pretty crass. Sadly, in order to show you how bad it is I need to display it on the site otherwise it wouldn’t get screen space." Can't deny it. It's awful and sets a dangerous precedent. TESCO London Underground no doubt coming soon.
Come ride with me - Christian Wolmar

Before the election I proclaimed one of the great losses would be the demise of Lord Adonis as transport secretary who has, for my money, been one of the best we've had in decades. Well, transport writer and journalist Christian Wolmar doesn't seem particularly impressed with Lord Adonis's replacement who apparently believes cycling in London is extremely dangerous, and who can't even cope with a ten minute walk between his office and Parliament. Looks promising as Transport Secretary, I'm sure you'll agree.
Price comparison « No Tesco in Stokes Croft

From a campaign to stop a branch of Tesco opening in Stokes Croft in Bristol, comes a small survey on prices. People think the supermarkets offer the cheapest food, but as the survey found, that's not always the case - especially with smaller Tesco Express stores.
Press Red Blog: All Good Things...

Difficult blog post to write, but then writing that something is closing should never be easy.
BBC Television Centre to be redeveloped as 'cultural quarter' - The Guardian

Vaguely better than the original plans of just flogging off the place I suppose...

More blog posts about: BBC, BBC red button, cycling, London, politics, shopping, supermarkets, Television Centre, Tesco, web development, White City | Comment on this post, and read other comments

More train fare madness

2010-06-01T11:48:21Z

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the absurd situation where the cheapest advance train ticket for a journey I wanted to make cost more than the less restrictive, buy-on-the-day ticket for the same journey.

This seemed bonkers to me, because it is bonkers.

Photograph by VerseVend. Creative Commons licensed.

The price quoted for two people on this journey was rather ridiculous - £195 advance ticket and £188 for the Off Peak Single. So I ummed and ahhed and found a cheaper way of doing it which involved going an hour earlier.

However this in itself lead to more insane ticket price madness.

The journey we're going to make is from London to St Bees. St Bees is on the line that runs around the coast of Cumbria between Carlisle and Lancaster, so you can get to St Bees by changing at Lancaster or changing at Carlisle. The main choice is whether you want a slightly faster route where you have to change twice, or the slightly slower route where you have to change once. But the time difference is literally in minutes - for the journey I looked at it came in at a 2 minute difference - that's how insignificant it is.

Both journeys would involve the same two train companies - Virgin Trains and Transpennine Express - and would involve roughly the same time being spent on each company's trains.

The ticket prices I saw were identical either way. Well mostly.

Turned out that for the journey we wanted to make the fastest journey was to change at Preston then at Carlisle and go along the coastal line from the north. The price for two remained at £188 (off peak single).

Yet all I had to do was change once at Lancaster, go along the southern section of the coastal line and arrive a whole 2 minutes later. The price for two? An Advance ticket price of £118…

Yep, seventy quid less for arriving two minutes later…

More blog posts about: First Transpennine Express, railways, train tickets, trains, Virgin Trains | Comment on this post, and read other comments

Links for 25 May 2010

2010-06-01T12:25:47Z

GTmetrix - Website Speed and Performance Optimization

For all the web developers out there in the hood, this is quite a nice tool that helps you optimise your website for faster loading. Judged on the results, this site isn't too bad already although it's given me some ideas to help just shave away a little at the speed, and you'll start seeing the results as I slowly replace some of the almost unmaintainable code that's running this site at the minute. Don't expect it to make a drastic change to the way you view Planet Bods, but overall it will make some small differences.
6 Music closure 'defies belief', says music industry | Media | guardian.co.uk

"The BBC's own charter makes crystal clear that the corporation is specifically tasked with stimulating creativity and cultural excellence. It defies belief, therefore, that the BBC is proposing to close a radio station that excels at doing exactly this, particularly when 6 Music's audience is growing in leaps and bounds and virtually the entire UK music community is united in support of it."
Boris Johnson urges Londoners to grow food in coffee cups - Wimbledon Guardian

Pah. Rubbish. An old hiking boot is much better! I have two on our balcony with dwarf beans growing in them!
Government wants 'value for money' from £16bn Crossrail - BBC News

Be afraid...
George Lamb to leave 6 Music - Radio Today

I'm gutted I tell ya. This is going to completely screw up my weekend radio regime. I mean, I might have to actually retune my radio to 6music on a Saturday morning. Terrible...
Sky News ditches weather presenters - guardian.co.uk

Cost cutting hidden under the banner of "exploring new ways of delivering content". Expect Francis Wilson to appear somewhere on regional TV weather soon.

More blog posts about: BBC, BBC Radio, BBC Radio 6music, Boris Johnson, gardening, radio, Sky News, television, weather, web development | Comment on this post, and read other comments

New World, New Kitchen

2010-05-23T11:24:42Z

Last year we redid the bathroom. And throughout the process of doing it, I kept saying "kitchen" instead of "bathroom" in conversations.

Maybe it was some subconscious desire to redo the kitchen, I thought at the time.

Before - awful isn't it?

The kitchen did need doing though. It was clearly rather cheap crap when it was installed in the 1980s, and now it was really falling apart.

Worse still, the whole design was just poor. The cupboards were just plonked in without rhyme or reason, and there weren't enough of them meaning that some items (like the food processor) had to live perpetually on the worktops. The cooker was a standalone model with huge gaps on either side which meant food could fall on the floor. The space wasn't utilised at all well. It wasn't clean - indeed it seemed to attract dirt and muck like you wouldn't believe. I'd never managed to actually get the cooker free of grime.

It wasn't always this cluttered - this was taken whilst I was trying to unpack it all.

Things were falling apart. The lights were half broken, and I was convinced the cooker would break at any time. Then at Christmas the taps stopped working properly. I attempted to replace the tap heads but the confounded things had rusted and it was near impossible. We ended up having to use pliers in order to actually get any water.

In short, it was time for a new kitchen. And hopefully you'll agree it's a huge improvement!

With a small kitchen like ours, the design is everything. One of our requests was to increase storage space as much as possible, so the new layout saw the sink move under the window.

New! Shiny!

Additional cupboards were mounted on the wall either side of the cooker - including a corner cupboard which is, alas, slightly tight to get into thanks to the new extractor fan, but do-able. There's also now a cupboard above the freezer. Moving the sink also meant we now have a nice long worktop right next to the cooker rather than having to chop under the window then carry it to the other side of the kitchen.

Catherine and myself really liked the glossy white effect for the cupboards, so we mixed that with a wood effect worktop. The glossy white reflects light well in the small space.

The design is quite tight in some respect and our new broom cupboard is narrower than the old one - a bit too narrow as I now have to disassemble our Dyson slightly in order to store it away. However the flip side is I've got a full set of proper drawers for the first time.

Which all the white, I was keen on a bold colour for the tiles. Originally I suggested having three different tile colours all mixed up which I've seen elsewhere and works really well. However we just couldn't find any tiles that we liked. However we then found some nice "Metro" tiles - they're the rectangular ones that you put together in a kind of brick effect. They were available in about a hundred different colours so we found a nice green and went with it.

Half way through the building work, we found out the style had been discontinued. This was annoying, but we went for a 10x10cm square in the same colour and it works really well. Our builder offered us the choice of normal grout or one with a tint of green.

Having to make a snap decision, I picked the green. I thought it would be more of a grassy green but it turned out to be a bluey-green. Looking at it for the first time, I have to say I thought we might end up having to get it all regrouted, but it's really grown on me and the hint of blue complements the soft green quite nicely, and means the grout doesn't stand out hugely.

One of the biggest challenges was appliances - mainly because there's just so much choice. I'd had a few suggestions from people that black hobs would show up the muck less and be easier to keep clean. That left me scouring websites wondering what the difference was between the 60 odd black gas hobs was. In the end I went for a Hotpoint.

I wanted a good double oven, and scouring Which?'s online reviews, Bosch seemed to come out very well so I opted for one of theirs. It's an electric fan oven and does seem slightly slower to cook things than my old gas oven however the dial on the old oven had worn off years before and I was never quite sure what temperature I was cooking at! I'd probably been overdoing food for years!

The extractor fan is a Baumatic - no, I've never heard of them either - but it has nice and curvy glass. Which will probably get really mucky. Ho hum. The fridge freezer and washing machine were our old models.

Getting it all sorted was a pain in the neck, however it looks lovely now, despite there being more cupboards, seems to feel bigger too.

Alas there was one unintended consequence. It's became clear that we had a small colony of mice living in our house who had no doubt been feasting off crumbs and stuff from behind the old cooker, and from the bag of birdseed which I'd had on a shelf in the hall. I'd once seen one climb the outside wall and enter the loft area, but never seen any evidence of them in the house, but clearly they must have been visiting.

The new kitchen meant everything could be stashed away and can be kept substantially cleaner, which has clearly disrupted their previous feeding patterns. So much was this apparent that one morning I'd found that they'd resorted to munching on my cork heat-proof mats, whilst a few nights later we found one in the bedroom.

Whilst I'd like to hope they'll eventually get the "lack of food" message and just leave, I'm not that niave, so we've a trap waiting for them loaded with peanut butter (which they apparently like) with the hope that we can catch them and release them somewhere else. They may find a new home in the park down the road...

More blog posts about: house, kitchen | Comment on this post, and read other comments

Walking the South Downs Way: Day 8 - Alfriston to Eastbourne

2010-06-10T10:56:22Z

Bunk beds. They're dead exciting when you're a kid. When you're an adult, they're not quite the same. You realise how much they creak every time you move. And when you're on the bottom bunk, you feel the whole thing shudder when the person on top moves.

Needless to say, I didn't have the best of nights in the bottom bunk at YHA Alfriston. Still I had no problem complying with the warden's advice to get an "early breakfast as we've got a big group in." Mind you given how many teenage rugby players filled the dining room not long after I sat down, she'd clearly given the same advice to them. Still, they had black pudding on so it wasn't all bad, although the sausage wasn't up to my exacting standards and the baked beans looked rather over done.

Enough! Enough of this triviality! For it's a big day! It's the day I would finish the South Downs Way, and, funnily enough, complete my first National Trail ever!

I was going to finish in real style. My one remaining segment of the South Downs Way would see me head to Eastbourne, walking along the glorious chalk coastline and over the mighty Seven Sisters. For my money it's the most beautiful place in the South East of England. And even better, I had four friends to share it with and the weather looked absolutely glorious.

But first there was something else to see…

Alfriston is where the South Downs Way divides. As a National Bridleway, the SDW is accessible throughout for cyclists and horse riders as well as walkers. There's a few sections where the footpath diverges slightly, however it's not generally significant - except for the Eastbourne to Alfriston segment which is completely different for each mode of transport.

Whilst riders and cyclists don't get to enjoy the Seven Sisters, they do get to see the Long Man of Wilmington. And I wanted to see it too.

Looking on the map in the hostel entrance way, we formulated a plan that would see us initially take the bridleway, see the Long Man and then loop back to join the footpath section at Littlington - about half a mile away from Alfriston - to take us off to Eastbourne.

So after posing briefly for the inevitable group shot, we were off back up the road to Alfriston to pick up the bridleway and a rather steep climb to get up to the top of ridgeway. It didn't take us long, and after briefly getting lost, we were soon towering over the Long Man.

Quite why the Long Man was drawn on the side of a hill is an interesting question and one of many debates. Indeed there are debates as to whether it's even a man. Until 1874 it was only visible after a light dusting of snow and even then, only in certain lighting conditions. It was then marked out with bricks, and has been visible ever since.

Some speculate it's actually a woman, and then there's claims that its male genitalia were removed by the Victorians. Whether it's some giant fertility symbol, or a representation of an Anglo Saxon god, we'll never know. What I can tell you is that looking down on it from above is probably not the best view of it you'll get.

Better visible was the White Horse of Littlington over on the other side of the valley. Not quite as historic, it was cut in the chalk in 1924, it was made during a full moon so that its sudden appearance would startle locals and make the people who cut it, famous. It was originally a standing horse, but is now a prancing one in order to help prevent the chalk rubble slipping. For the South Downs Way walker, it's a much more dominating landmark and was ever present as we completed our near-circuit.

As well as admiring local landmarks, we were also treated to some great views of Alfriston and some interesting conversation from Simon who proclaimed he'd heard on Radio 4 that you can eat gorse flowers. But that when they'd tried them on air, they hadn't mentioned what the said flowers tasted like.

Well dear readers, I can exclusively reveal that gorse flowers taste litterally of… not very much. And I can bring you this exclusive news having tried some from the ample gorse buses of Windover Hill. They do have a sort of chive-esque consistency and maybe, just maybe you'll get a tiny hint of citrus when you eat one however that'll be about it. Believe me, it's worth a try if only to see how like eating nothing eating a gorse flower is.

After the earlier very steep climb up, our chosen path sloped so gradually down to Litlington that when we finally got there there was much confusion in the ranks about how we'd even managed it as wee rejoined the South Downs Way footpath section towards Exceat. Leaving the village, and pausing for biscuits in the late morning sun, we also got to enjoy the sight of watching a large group of Scouts with very full rucksacks, struggling through a narrow kissing gate.

Casually watching them try and climb up the railings to stop the packs getting stuck in the gate, I rather unfairly I elected not to suggest to them that they might be better off just taking the rucksack off. Mean I know, but it didn't actually occur to me until most of them had got through, and I didn't want to make them all feel stupid. See - I'm all heart really.

After a little more downhill along a field, the Way took us through a wide forest path and then through the hidden village of Westdean, before depositing us with a fantastic view of Cuckmere Haven.

Our original lunch plan had been to visit the pub at Exceat, however it being warm we opted for a lighter lunch at the Exceat Farmhouse tearooms. At least that was the plan.

Simon ordered the Brie baguette only to find a monster of a sandwich, whilst the ploughmans that Jacko, Catherine and myself ordered were some of the largest I've ever seen. Only the hungry Tal seemed let down. After ordering a full main meal to stave his hunger, his meal seemed the smallest of all!

Another lesson of the day was that when all you want to fill up a water bottle from Exceat Farmhouse, don't try and use the small water fountain - it's so small that I ended up having to fill my large Sigg bottle using a smaller plastic bottle. Instead look for the cunningly camouflaged tap right next to it!

Water bottles filled, sun tan lotion re-applied, it was time for what was for me, the highlight of the whole thing. Our afternoon walking would take us along the top of the chalky white cliffs of the Seven Sisters and beyond, all the way to Eastbourne. For my money it's the most beautiful part of the South East of England. I'd fallen in love with it when I'd visited it a few years before and that was a cloudy and miserable weekday.

Whilst you could walk along the flat path of Cuckmere Haven to close to the sea, the South Downs Way actually diverts slightly to go up a small hill which gives you a good view of the meandering river and the Haven, before sloping back down to the main path. However the flat walking is over all too soon as whilst most of the visitors head off to the beach, as an SDW walker, you've got hills to climb!

We were now on the Seven Sisters - a series of chalk cliffs and eight (yes, eight) undulating hills which follow on from each other. Each has a slightly different style - some are steep and high, some are gentle and low.

The first two - Haven Brow and Short Brow - were also filled with chalk written messages from visitors. Chunks of chalk had been used to spell out a number of messages ranging from declarations of loyalty to their home nation, through to messages of love. Or merely that Kilroy woz 'ere.

Whilst such wanton vandalism carried on, others were making use of the short green grass to sunbathe - curiously the preferred place for many seemed to be as close to the cliff edge as possible - or just to admire the fantastic views of the Haven. There seemed little let up in the numbers of people joining us on our stroll as we meandered along.

One of the sources of the people proved to be Birling Gap - originally a hotel complex, it boasts a large car park and access to the beach. The car park was rammed. The hotel itself was not doing a roaring trade, due to it having recently being taken over by the National Trust when the previous owner retired.

The National Trust owns a significant amount of the local coastline and had promptly started a project to refurbish the building. During the works, a catering van had been parked up next to the building, and despite the hot weather, seemed to be doing a roaring trade in sausages and burgers, whilst we opted for the more obvious ice cream.

The sheer number of people there meant it wasn't somewhere to linger in, and we quickly headed up towards Belle Tout lighthouse.

Now replaced, Belle Tout started shining its beacon in 1834 and carried on until 1901 before eventually becoming a private residence. Perched near the cliff edge, it was under threat due to erosion for some time before being moved back 17m in 1999.

It's not safe for ever though and will probably need to be moved again in about 25 years time. In the meantime, it's just re-opened as a B&B and you can stay there, whilst the South Downs Way runs through its grounds and past a conveniently sited ice cream stand.

Belle Tout's replacement was Beachy Head lighthouse which was built down at sea level. With no nearby beach access, it was a location that must have been incredibly difficult to build on, and apparently required stone to be winched down from the cliff face.

We were now on the home stretch and just a few miles to go. Passing by the Beachy Head visitor centre (and another ice cream van which made Mr Jackson very happy), we got a glimpse of our destination - the end of the South Downs and the large seaside resort of Eastbourne.

It was all nearly at an end, but in some ways couldn't come soon enough. Whilst it is a beautiful looking area, the constant ups and downs of walking along the cliffs had taken its toll and left everyone rather weary as we finally descended to the end of the South Downs Way.

For me, it was a real end. Over a hundred miles of walking were now complete. In celebration, we headed to the promenade and walked along the top of the beach.

In my mind I'd originally had a few visions of celebratory pints, however as we sat and listened to the sea, the long journey home sank in and we stumbled towards the railway station to board a busy train back to London.

As the train hurtled through the landscape, I pondered the achievement. I'd successfully completed my first ever National Trail, and the first of four long distance paths I intended to complete in 2010.

It had been a good walk through some lovely scenery and countryside, through some of the finest parts of the South East of England. I'd been lucky and had had some pretty good weather and bar a rather long walk to Lewes, it had been a nice walk. There'd been lovely villages, top pubs and lots of nice scenery. What more could anyone want?

Well a bit less mud perhaps...

You can view all the photos from day 8 on flickr, or see the full lot.

More blog posts about: South Downs Way, walking | Comment on this post, and read other comments

Planet Bods Blog

A Coast to Coast Walk Day 5 - Bampton to Orton

One Coast To Another e-book

A Coast to Coast Walk Day 4 - Patterdale to Bampton

Patterdale Mountain Rescue

One Coast To Another e-book

A Coast to Coast Walk Day 3 - Borrowdale to Patterdale

Patterdale Mountain Rescue

One Coast To Another e-book

A Coast to Coast Walk Day 2 - Ennerdale Bridge to Borrowdale

One Coast To Another e-book

A Coast to Coast Walk Day 1 - St Bees to Ennerdale Bridge

One Coast To Another e-book

A Coast to Coast Walk: Walking Wainright's Walk

One Coast To Another e-book

The music of early 6music

Links for 13 August 2010

Say hello to The Good Columbo Guide

Random things found in my work email client's note section #449821a...

The Original Series

Baddies

Episode hero

Problem

Next Generation

Aliens

Episode Hero

Problem

Consequences

Archiving web sites the Planet Bods way

1. All the files would be moved into a subdirectory called /archived

2. All sites would be saved as simple, straight HTML - all PHP or other dynamic code would be removed

3. All archived sites would be entirely self contained

4. A "this page is no longer updated" banner would be added

5. And finally, leave it as it is...

Archiving parts of Planet Bods

If you're going to cover stories about London on TV and radio, you need to justify properly why you're covering it

Links for 14 July 2010

Links for 8 July 2010

6music saved

Wimbledon tennis, buses and the elusive open topped bus

Pension Pondering

Planning a trip walking on the South Downs Way

Breaking up the South Downs Way

Finding Places To Stay

Guide Books and Maps

Refreshments

And finally…

Further Reading

Splitting your train tickets - more train fare madness

Daily Links for 10 June 2010

More train fare madness

Links for 25 May 2010

New World, New Kitchen

Walking the South Downs Way: Day 8 - Alfriston to Eastbourne