Saturday 27 November 2010

Lake View Park

Snow! Where did that come from?  Not the weather for driving down country lanes so I headed to the local park.  Who else should be sheltering there but a heron.  It won't catch many fish in the streams that flow through this park. An apple or dog's dropped ball may be but not many fish. 

Spot the heron!
Where did that big bird go?

Wednesday 24 November 2010

Coventry Canal Basin

A bright and sunny November day and time for a walk down to the Coventry canal basin to grab the new geocache that has been placed there.  The basin looked good in the sunshine.  Found the cache without too much of a problem, signed the log book and replaced it for the next visitor. At the head of the basin is a statue of canal engineer James Brindley leaning over his desk.  I made a Waymark of this statue a few years ago and listed a bit of the history behind Brindley and the statue itself.


I then had a pot of tea and teacake at Country Crust Tea Rooms for a bargain £1.50 and good service.  Well worth a visit.

Monday 22 November 2010

Coombe Abbey

With legs still sore from yesterday's trip to North Wales I looked for something gentle to do close to home.  Time for a bit of geocaching.  Dave fancied doing a cache or two as well so we headed to north east Coventry.  After collecting a couple of urban caches in Wyken we headed out to Coombe Abbey.  It's a better place when there is more of one of you as you can share the exorbitant £3.30 parking fee.

The first cache 'Coombe and Feed the Ducks' took us an age.  The clue was 'under a tree. but no matter how hard we hunted we couldn't find it.  Then Dave came up trumps as you can tell by his smile.  I'm sure I looked there before. 

About time I let him find one

Sunday 21 November 2010

Moel Hebog, Moel y Ogof & Moel Lefn

A grey November overcast day was forecast for most of the country but in Snowdonia there was an indication that the cloud would lift. I made an early start and headed for North Wales.  As I drove south from Capel Curig some patches of blue sky did indeed appear.  I parked outside the forestry campsite in Beddgelert. Looking up I could see the Nantlle Ridge was bathed in sunshine whereas the mountains I was heading up were still in cloud. 

Moel Hebog and ridge cleared after I came down - typical!

I climbed for an hour over grassland before hitting the cloud base but was then very pleased that I had downloaded a GPS file of the route I was following form GPS Walking Routes site.  This meant I could follow in the footsteps of someone who had walked the exact same route as before without having to refer to my map, compass or taking GPS readings all day.  This was ever so handy as the route would have been difficult to follow without this.

Moel Hebog summit and trig point in the cloud

A full collection of my photos of England and Wales mountains can be found in my Flickr photo album

Friday 19 November 2010

Longford Community Nature Area

I found myself at Tescos looking for an urban geocache and wanted to make it into a short walk so looked at the Coventry Walks website and found an area I've never been before - the Longford Community Nature Area. 

An example of the great maps on the Coventry Walks website

It's a pleasant area with some reasonable paths and slopes. I didn't explore it fully as I spotted what looked to be a pretty aggressive looking dog running free and didn't want my Shadow to get into a fight.
Some late daisies near the Ricoh
Longford Nature Area in November sunshine

Thursday 18 November 2010

Black Head and Black Chew Head

The weather didn't look too good for North Wales or the Lake District so instead I decided to go to the Peak District and climb the county tops called Black Head and Black Chew Head.

Shadow next to the trig point on Black Hill

I parked at Crowden and was pleasantly surprised to find that the car park was free of charge. I headed off north east towards Westend Moss rather than just going up and down the Pennine Way.  I kicked myself afterwards for missing the trig point on Hey Moss that is not marked on the map but is on the Trigpointing website. 

Some of the paths were easy whilst at other times it was hard work dodging all the boggy bits.  I worked on the principle that if I saw Shadow disappear  in the bog ahead of me then it was time to find a different route.

On top of Black Hill I met up with another hill bagger Matt who had come up from Leicester.  The mist came down and I headed south down the Pennine Way.  This section was easier as it is flagged for part of the way.  there are quite a few rivers to cross but plenty of stepping stones to make it not too difficult.

To visit Black Chew Head I detoured off the Pennine Way and up the heather bank, across a boggy area and over a fence to the small cairn on Black Chew Head.
Black Chew Head

A full collection of my photos of County Tops can be found in the following: Flickr Photo Album