From Slip & Slide to Crisp & Crunch

The latest walk in my irregular training regime was the circular route from Steeton to Silsden, along the valley floor to Kildwick and back. The snow was particularly deep in places making it heavy going but not as bad as the mud bath of the previous week.

With ice apparent on the trees and river it was what is politely called 'bracing' and I tried to keep up a reasonable pace to compensate.

My mate Max, or the neighbourhood squirrel as I've taken to calling him after finding the joys of Fred on youtube, enjoyed the walk too.

Here We Go Again

As if I hadn't learned my lesson last time, here we go again. Probably more unfit this time I've agreed to take part in TT11!

I've started with some gentle walks and extended them to Skipton and back getting as far as Cononley twice and stopping due to a limping dog, Max that is but more on him later.

First walk peeked the interest of the cows who were doing an impression of Hitchcock's Birds...

Second time around the valley floor was flooded which made the ground very soft but looked quite nice in the lowering afternoon sun.

Next task is to make it all the way home... role on Sunday ;-)

Sgorr Dhonuill

On the last day of a family trip to Scotland I decided to head out and do a bit of walking. I'd planned to do two peaks - Sgorr Dhearg and Sgorr Dhonuill. As it happened a combination of last minute planning, tight timescales and some dodgy map reading meant I only managed to do Sgorr Dhonuill. The rain was pretty persistent and above about 700m the visibility was very poor.

This was more than the 'gentle' walk my body needed but was good fun all the same.



View back from the forest track across Loch Leven.


Low clouds obscuring mountains.


View from above forest looking back to Ballachulish Bridge.

Training begins....and the event isn't confirmed yet!

Despite Trailtrekker 2011 not even been confirmed (that I know of) James and I have decided to start our preparations early. At the moment I'm messing around with blog design and having gone through a few iterations I've decided the previous 2 years' blogs are pretty good so will stick with them for now.

As with 2009 one of the first walks to make it onto the blog is the Embsay Crag circular. I set of at 5.30am from Skipton and got up to the reservoir just in time for the rising sun.



I'd hoped to take an exploratory route over the moor but with it being grouse shooting season I was restricted to the public footpath. In the end I took the familar path up to the crag and then dropped down into Embsay over the other side. As you can see the heather was on good form and I can report there were a good number of grouse.



I was on something of a (self-imposed) time limit to get back home but still having a bit of time I took another footpath onto the moor from Eastby. I didn't have time to venture on this footpath over towards the Barden reservoirs and soon had to retrace my steps back to Eastby and from there back home.

I did manage 10 miles though and added to this later in the day by trying to track down some of the 25 sheep which currently litter Skipton's urban landscape as part of the Flock to Skipton exhibition.

And so it begins :-)

After two or three months of recovery from the 2010 event, thoughts are turning towards Trailtrekker 2011.

Watch this space for fundraising updates, training updates, and team updates :o)

In the meantime, feel free to view our team's blog from last year (2010), or our blog from Trailtrekker 2009

Thanks to all who supported our efforts, whether it be through fundraising or support crew and logistics.