Over the mountains.

Gramaisc

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Today's Sunday expedition was to a new hill (for me).

It turned into a very nice day, after a hazy start.

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We met some dogs, twice, and an interrogation of their companion revealed that, although they were from many miles away, and not in our direction, we actually knew the dogs' mother.

The dogs seemed less impressed by this fact than I was.

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Gramaisc

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The tower in the last picture above is a folly and, unusually for the locality, it is fenced off for safety reasons. Some bits of it are rather precarious.

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About two thirds of the way up, there is a shrine at a holy well. My companion confessed that he once hid a bottle of Lucozade behind the statue, to avoid carrying it up and back down, intending to retrieve it as he passed back. As he approached, he saw a family sitting at the table where this picture was taken from. He feigned exhaustion and staggered to the statue, pleaded for help from her, retrieving the bottle from its hiding place and proclaiming "She never lets me down!"

Glancing back, saw the whole family searching the shrine for any more 'manna'.

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Gramaisc

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Only recently, I became aware of another 'secret lake' in the hills. I only know of its existence as a local walking group gave notice of it as their destination for a walk a few weeks back and, based on their announced meeting point, I scoured Google Maps and found it.

We set off to find it but failed, although the expedition was enjoyable enough in itself, but the woodland was impenetrable. We can't have been far away, however, it seemed unlikely that we would succeed, if we maintained that strategy.

I resolved to go up in the week, approaching from the opposite direction, and follow the forest road as far as I could on the bike, then do the last few hundred yards on foot. I was able to get to end of the trail and could be fairly confident that I was in the right place to strike south for the lake. I locked my bike to a bit of fence by a locked access gate and struck out on the obvious path. Unfortunately, this became steadily less obvious and several partial retreats did not leave me finding the way through the primeval forest. Wednesday's apocalyptic weather would have obliterated any trace of the walk on the Sunday before, so I had no confirmation that this was 'the way'.

The paths deteriorated to 'deer-sized', then 'rabbit sized', so I had to retreat and try again.

It seemed unlikely that this sort of terrain was the way there...

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Eventually, it became clear that I was in failure mode again and I went back to the bike to either 'think again' or just give up. At that point, I saw that there was a small piece of trodden ground behind my bike, and investigating that led me, after about ten metres, to find what did look like 'the path'.

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A road big enough for a small tractor, that might have been in use when the derelict house by the lake had still been occupied - clearly little travelled by humans now, and maintained by the deer and rabbits.

I was confident now that the road was the right one and, after a few hundred yards, the house appeared.

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Now that I do know where it is, it would even be possible to find it in the dark!

Google finds nothing about it, using the name the walking group use, and none on the locals here that I have asked about it are aware there is such a thing.
 

Gramaisc

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The lake in front of the house is as though it is set in parkland, although it is just the local animals that maintain the facilities.

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The lake is fed from a river that runs round the back of the house, in a most picturesque manner.

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It is an idyllic spot and I will return in a few weeks, when this year's new growth has got going.

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Gramaisc

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My co-walker is a bit under-the-weather, so Sunday's walk is in jeopardy. I took the option to attempt another cycle reconnaissance ride today, anyway.

The potential full route would be about twelve miles of forest roads, but I had a couple of diversionary routes, if conditions or time became an issue.

This turned out to be a good idea for a lot of reasons.

It was a lot hotter up there at 500 metres than I expected. Having walked the initial part of the route two years ago, I found that it was a lot steeper on two wheels than on two feet. No rain for two weeks had made the previously good 'macadam' surface very dusty and taking a slide was an ever-present risk. Quite a bit of the roadway had been infilled with rather large 'gravel', adequate for the forestry traffic, but awkward on a bike. These sections were like riding along the site of a row of terraced houses that had been bombed. I felt it wise to walk a few of them. It was also clear that the area the 'full route' passed through was undergoing a lot of timber felling and that was also the reason for the infilling of sections of the road. When I got to my first 'decision point' I met signage alerting users to the dangers ahead - as I had gone up on a Friday, to pre-empt the bank holiday weekend here, I elected to take the short diversion route back - on a Saturday or Sunday I would feel happier about ignoring the signs, but there's no point in getting in people's way. There had been a lot of timber wagons evident on the tarmac road on the way up.

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On the diversion route, there was potential for some exciting falls. Even on the uphill side of the road, six and eight-foot falls into drainage facilities were available.

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I had my lunch by a pleasant little waterfall.

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This also provided another good reason for taking the shorter four-mile route. I had taken the trouble to chill my lunch in the fridge, before leaving, but not taken the trouble to actually bring it with me, so I had to make do with the emergency rations...
 

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My Sherpa announced that he is back in action, after a fortnight of infirmity, so we resumed our campaign of steady escalation.

Today was an attempt to surmount a mountain of women.

This peak is fairly isolated and, at 2,350 feet high, you will find yourself starting the ascent from about 500 feet and doing the climb in about a mile and a half.

It starts nicely enough.

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Then escalates on the open hillside of the south face, with some quite steep bits that were difficult in the bone dry conditions.

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On the summit is a very large 'cairn', which is actually a passage grave from some time back.

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Despite the height and the fact that we gained the summit just past 9am, it was still hot up there, and leaving the jacket in the car was confirmed as a 'good idea'.

Weirdly, though, ascending to the top of the cairn dropped the apparent temperature dramatically, to the very bottom of the 'cool' range, with 'cold' seeming possible, if you hung about long enough.

Being a 'mountain of women', it was fitting that three quarters of the people we met were from that side, including a couple* who, annoyingly, ran up and down past us...


* One of them did it twice in the time we spent there...


After three 'heavy' days, I may take advantage of tomorrow being a holiday here.
 

Gramaisc

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Mmm, I may not survive the night.

Today, we decided to escalate matters, as the weather looked OK, thin overcast and little wind. So we set out to do a 14km loop which takes in four peaks in a horseshoe, ending up at a touch over 3,000 feet.

This seemed a plausible move, but it involved a lot of up and down, the total climb must be at least double. That was a struggle, but it was made much worse by the weather above 2,000 feet being very different - a strong gale blowing the suspended cloud droplets horizontally, if not upwards. We slogged our way to the top, with only intermittent snatches of clear visibility. We had to stop regularly to discuss where we thought we were, as the landmarks that would normally be used were invisible. In the end we did get to the top without mishap, but the wind did require extra care when traversing some narrow bits with big drops available.

3,011 feet above the sea. the highest I've been this century, having surpassed last week's record.

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On the descent, we got some very nice clear periods. This shows the first part, from the car park on the far left, going to the right along the ridge.

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Then further round, left to right, to the main peak.

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It's hard to get the whole thing in view, but it is a very 'big' place. It took us six and a half hours to get back to the car, The descent being particularly arduous, I felt, although the effects of the preceding climbs added to that, of course.
 

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In the early stages, soon after the visibility closed in, we reached a summit, but weren't 100% sure which one it was. By this stage, his phone had a signal again and I suggested seeing if we could access pictures of the summits, so we could identify this one. The most likely suspect was a lesser-known hill and Siri, or whoever she was, read out a list of what she thought we were looking for. Her first suggestion was 'Everest'. I suggested that we gave up and trusted ourselves at that point.

Fairly convinced of where we were, I suggested that we headed off to where the next summit should be, where we might encounter people who could confirm our suspicions.

This was the first person we 'met', a few hundred yards later.

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At this point, I remembered that these hills were frequented by Bob Clay and I was glad that I had remembered to bring a small bar of Lidl emergency chocolate - not so much for the food value as the fact that it has a tinfoil wrapper,

I did notice that they seem to have taken down the signs warning of his potential presence.

A bit further on we met a chap who seemed likely to be a racing pigeon, also having weather/visibility issues and waiting for things to clear up a bit.

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He may have been stacking, having been diverted from Birmingham?
 

Gramaisc

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Another untrustworthy Sunday morning led us to stick to local stuff and, having seen this video of the falls last weekend, we decided to see if today would be on that scale, as wetness has been fairly regular since then.


This side of the fence is 'officially the path'.

This is what we found.

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Not surging onto the path much, but very near to doing so.

On the way there, we called at a public swimming pool, to find it unoccupied, despite the jacuzzi feature being fully active.

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Just upstream from there is a water abstraction facility, access to the 'conning tower' was difficult, as the water was flowing over the secondary dam that functions as the access path, by about three or four inches, and with some force, plus the odd significant lump of wood* passing through. I suggested that we could still get there by using the handrails in the manner of (rather arthritic) gymnasts, and this did prove to be achievable.

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*If you inspect the picture above, you can see that the wood includes the remains of a step ladder.

We met few people on the route, but a notable one was a lone fairly elderly chap, who we encountered as we had just accepted that the drizzle was a bit much and put our jackets on. He was jacketless. Indeed, he was shirtless, having elected to roll it up and keep it dry in his pocket, until the drizzle passed, whilst relying on his waterproof skin.
 

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After the deluge of last Sunday morning, today promised a lot better, and, after a foggy start, it was.

I suggested we attempt Keeper Hill, as it is the highest for a fair way around itself.

It has been mentioned a few times here before, but I've never been near it.

Wow, Keeper Hill. You could see that from the farm kept by my grandparents back in the day. :)

Despite the very thick fog, I suggested that we should reach the summit around 11am and that should also be the time that the fog would be gone from that height (2,300ft). This was met with some scepticism but did prove to be a correct prediction, as we finally struggled to the summit, to find another of Bob Clay's holiday homes.

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The trig point is surrounded by a 'circular cairn', which I initially thought was intended as a wind shelter, but it contains around a dozen memorial stones, which, considering that the ascent had proved to be much harder than I expected, I found a little threatening.

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In the forest on the way up, a little off the track, we found a 'sweat house'. It is believed that these things are a sort of sauna. A fire would be lit inside, heating up the stone structure, then a feverish person would be placed inside, to have the illness sweated out of him.

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On the way up, I proposed that ascending this gully would constitute a viable short-cut - and we could inspect the little waterfall.

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Some small recent issues with a couple of short-cuts have resulted in a heightened scepticism of these proposals, and the attempt was left for a future occasion.

We met a nice dog who knew his way about.

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Half-way down, it became easier to see off into the far distance.

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My target was a small waterfall, but the lack of human activity in the area for the last eighteen months made finding it a difficult task.

The 'path' to it was not visible at all. On the basis that the stream was likely to be in the base of the valley, I did eventually reach it and it was nice enough.

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Whether I was above or below the target point there, I couldn't be sure, but the water levels after the driest April on record may have made it less spectacular than usual, if I had found it.

I managed to climb up a little from that confluence and record it from above.

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The terrain that I had to contend with was very difficult. This was the best 'path' that I could discern.

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It took about an hour and a half to go about a third of a mile - it was necessary to be very careful - to avoid falls, breakages and the risk of being impaled.
So, with today's dismal weather, we took a chance on rising above it and made a further attempt to find this elusive waterfall.

It was, indeed, raining considerably less at height and we set out to follow the stream downhill from to top of the ridge, and on the other side from my previous abortive attempt. Even this method proved to be extremely arduous and with some potential for an accident event.

At one point we did find a minor waterfall feature...

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... but it doesn't look like the pictures from the past.

I suspect the real thing is downstream from there, but the terrain there and the forest, with many fallen trees, made for a rather high potential for injury. After a few minor falls and, standing on the edge of a fifty-foot drop, trying to see through the mass of fallen trees down to the stream below, we decided that a major fall was becoming more likely, especially as we were getting very tired by that stage, so a retreat was agreed.

We only traversed a total of about 4km, but it was very hard going and I was 'empty' by the time we regained the forest road back to the car.

Having failed twice* now, I'm wondering about trying to follow the stream bed uphill in the summer, wearing wellingtons - or just giving up...

*One of the "secret lakes" took three attempts.
 
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