( Mileage details behind here... )

Percentage complete: 0.5%

Point reached on journey: Frodo, followed by Sam, has sneaked off with the ring and we have run from Parth Galen searching for him. Attacked by orcs! Boromir mortally wounded and Merry and Pippin captured.

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Where I really went...

I reached Rauros Falls a couple of days ago, so as I was about to embark on the next leg of the journey, I looked for the nearest equivalent I could find locally.



Not quite the Rauros Falls, but it will have to do. :)

I've photographed these falls a few times before, but I think this is the best effort so far. I wasn't hopeful because it was late afternoon and the light was already fading, but a tripod makes all the difference. Actually, I think the absence of strong sunlight helped because usually there's too much contrast between the sunlit trees above and the rocks below that are always in the shadows.

Tags: eowyn challenge, exercise, walking, walking to mordor
Current Mood: accomplished

Next destination: Isengard

Miles travelled today: 10
Miles travelled so far: 389 (1309 from Bag End)
Percentage complete: 100%


Point reached on journey: We have reached the lawn of Parth Galen below Amon Hen. “Rauros was calling with a great voice.” We have made camp...

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Where I really went...

I hadn't planned to reach Rauros Falls today. The weather forecast was not good, but I wanted to reach my destination before the end of 2009. Realising around 11 am that it wasn't actually raining, I ventured out. My plan was to do a quick cycle ride to add enough miles to put me in easy reach of the finish of this leg, which could be accomplished tomorrow.

Except when I reached the point where I intended to turn round and cycle back, the weather wasn't all that bad (still no rain!) and instead I headed up the Gwynant valley, past Kings Youth Hostel and came back via Cader Road. No photos, I'm afraid, but everywhere was grey and drear.

I did think a couple of times that the idea of doing the circular trip wasn't terribly bright. I had forgotten that though it wasn't all that cold down by the estuary, a few hundred feet higher, it was trying to snow, but it wasn't cold enough to freeze and the roads were clear of ice, so I persevered and eventually was rewarded with the long swoop down the hill into town. I did push the bike up most of the hills, but the extra couple of miles meant that the effort was worth it and a total of 10 miles for the day put me at Rauros Falls. :)

I think I'll have a rest day tomorrow, then it's onwards to Isengard with Merry and Pippin.

Tags: eowyn challenge, exercise, walking, walking to mordor
Current Mood: accomplished

Next destination: Rauros Falls

Miles travelled around London: 24
Miles travelled Christmas Day: 3
Miles travelled today: 3½
Miles travelled so far: 372 (1292 from Bag End)
Miles still to go: 17
Percentage complete: 96%


Point reached on journey: Just passed through the narrow chasm of the Argonath and emerged into the lake.

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Where I really went...

There was a brief spell of dry weather around midday and the rain/hail held off long enough for a walk down the old railway trail. As I was a bit fed up of walking the first few miles of the track, I drove to Penmaenpool and walked from there to Abergwynant and back.



( More pictures here... )

Almost back at the car, the sky turned ominously grey! I just made it to the car before the heavens opened and the hail came down!

Tags: eowyn challenge, exercise, walking, walking to mordor
Current Mood: cheerful

Next destination: Rauros Falls

Miles travelled on Sunday: 10
Miles travelled on Monday: 1
Miles travelled today: 0
Miles travelled so far: 287½ (1207½ from Bag End)
Miles still to go: 101½
Percentage complete: 74%


Point reached on journey: We left the last camp site at dusk and are paddling cautiously down the river.

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Where I really went...

Time of day is correct as per photo, but this river is not navigable! :)



Note to self: It's no good walking 10 miles in a day if you are then lame for 2 days due to a blister and a slightly strained muscle at the back of the knee!

I hadn't been out for a walk for a couple of days due to dismal weather etc, and for some reason I got the urge to do a really long walk. Probably, with hindsight, about 3 miles too long, especially as I had to keep up a fast pace because it was going dark. Anyway, the leg is more or less better today. Perhaps a short cycle ride tomorrow?

In other news, I have a new walking icon, courtesy of my friend N, owner of the two collies. She sent me a couple of the photos that she'd taken on the walk up to the peat bog.

Tags: eowyn challenge, exercise, walking to mordor
Current Mood: too much to do!

Next destination: Rauros Falls

Miles travelled today: 4½
Miles travelled so far: 195½ (1115½ from Bag End)
Miles still to go: 195½
Percentage complete: 50%

Yes, I'm exactly half way between Lothlorien and Rauros Falls!

Point reached on journey: We're still paddling along the river, which at this point swings south amid high hills.

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Where I really went...

Rather than paddling a boat along the foot of the hills, we climbed and climbed and climbed. Though the walk (when measured on the map) was only 4½ miles, that was two and a quarter miles of steady ascent, followed of course by two and a quarter miles of descent. :)

I had actually settled in for a day attacking the in-tray, but after making some good progress in the morning, G tempted me out for a walk in the afternoon.

Today we went somewhere entirely new. Rather than walking near home, we drove to an area of forest that lies beyond Corris. We've passed the sign to the car park a thousand times on the way to and from Aberystywth, but we've never turned off to explore. Well, we discovered a huge forest and lots of trails. It's not exactly exciting. One forest starts to look very much like another after a while, but there was a good view from higher up and, looking at the map, it would be possible to walk right over the top from Corris to Abergynolwyn. With a bit of pre-planning, this should be doable, so perhaps an expedition for the future?

Anyway, here are a few photos...



After plodding up the forest track, the trees finally came to an end, giving a fine view of the mountains.

( ...and a few more behind here... )

Tags: eowyn challenge, exercise, walking, walking to mordor
Current Mood: tired

The weather is so changeable at the moment, that you just have to grab any decent days as they speed past.

We initially had no plans for a walk. G was busy working on some stuff for college when his new Linux computer arrived. I got roped in to help him assemble it and try it out. Now we've both been using computers for over 25 years, but we have had little experience with Linux, so we weren't totally sure that everything would work. What we didn't expect was that it would be the monitor that caused us all the trouble.

We put everything together and plugged it in and the computer whirred into life, but the monitor was as dead as the proverbial dodo.

"Have you switched it on?" I asked.

There was a light to indicate whether the power was on, but however carefully we examined the monitor, we could find no switch.

Presumably it didn't have one.

I checked the instruction book, which said that if the monitor failed to come on, to try a different power lead that was known to work. We did this. Monitor was still dead. At this point I felt gloom descend. I was going to have to take it back, G would be in a bad mood, I'd waste the afternoon driving to PC World in Bangor and, even worse, we had muddled all the packaging up! It was going to be a nightmare sorting out which bits of plastic packing belonged to the monitor and which belonged to the computer.

And then G managed to press the power light in a slightly different way and -- bingo! -- the monitor came on!

All was well and I narrowly missed a most embarrassing conversation with a shop assistant. It would have gone something like this.

Me: "This monitor doesn't work!"

Shop assistant: "Have you tried switching it on, madam?"

Me: "Of course we have. Do you think we're idiots?"

*Shop assistant presses on button*

*I try to sink into the floor with embarrassment*

But I do think that Acer monitor has to take the prize for Most Well Concealed On Switch Evah.

Anyway, after all that palaver, G decided that as the weather was lovely, a long walk would be good to calm us down and this is where we went... ( More pictures here... )



I love the distant forest in this shot. The dark trees look like green fur.



And just to round off the day, it's now tipping it down with rain! But I don't care, I'm snug and warm and well-exercised. :)

Tags: exercise, walking
Current Mood: well exercised

G fancied going to the cinema this afternoon, but there was nothing on that we wanted to watch -- or at least nothing that both of us wanted to watch. He seemed a little sad because this was really the last day of his holiday; tomorrow he'll have to start seriously applying himself to college work for the new academic year. So I suggested that we could just go somewhere different, for example Aberystwyth. Yes, he said, we can have a look round the shops.

So we drove to Aber and we parked in the car park.

And then he said, "Why don't we just have a look at the start of the Ystwyth Trail?"

Thus I found myself walking towards the hill where I took George a few weeks ago. We didn't really find the start of the trail, but having seen the lie of the land the map now makes more sense.

Then we walked from the harbour all the way along the sea front and finally plodded up Constitution Hill. I haven't been up there since I was a student which was, ooooh, a long long time ago. The weather wasn't brilliant, but it stayed dry and I managed a couple of photos.



( Another picture here... )

We did actually peep into a few shops on the way back to the car, but didn't end up buying anything. And then we drove home.

By the time we'd had dinner, it was too late to process the next batch of London photos, so that's a job for tomorrow.

Tags: exercise, walking
Current Mood: well exercised

Everything changes, everything is not the same.

My brother emailed to say that he had been back to visit the area of Manchester where we grew up. The two houses we lived in are still there, but not much else is. Our maternal grandparent's house is a patch of rubble and grass, the cinema we used to go to as kids is now a traffic roundabout. A few familiar things remain, apparently, but not much.

Even when we still lived in Manchester, they were pulling whole areas down. The city centre was redeveloped, destroyed by an IRA bomb and redeveloped again. Whenever I went back, I had to cope with change. So much so that I find it slightly strange to live in a place where nothing changes and it's much the same as it has been for hundreds of years.

Except...

Yesterday my husband decided to take me on a walk up to a lake that we haven't visited for many years. I found it rather exhausting and it pushed me to my limit. OK, I'm not as fit as I should be, but it was hard going because we had to fight our way through breast high ferns! For about a mile!

Then, having squelched around the edge of the lake (which is rapidly filling up with vegetation), G decided that it would be easier to climb up out of the valley and drop down towards the estuary. So we climbed up the ridge, but when we got to the top, the ground on the other side of the mountain wall fell away in a really steep drop, so we had to climb down again and go back the way we had come after all.

Going back was a little easier, however, because I managed to lead us along some sheep tracks that went more or less in the right direction.

The thing is, this used to be an easy stroll over open sheep pasture. In the intervening years, the farmer must have stopped clearing the bracken. It really shows how the British landscape it totally shaped by the farming practices. There are hardly any sheep on the farm now, just a couple of dozen down near the farm house (that we had to tiptoe past because there are no public footpaths to the lake). I don't know who owns the farm now, but when we lived nearby it was a thriving hill farm. But that was 20 years or more ago.

Anyway, here is my first attempt at a stitched together panorama of the lake. I've posted it small so it doesn't mess up your reading page, but please click through to view it large.

Tags: exercise, photography, walking
Current Mood: accomplished

Next destination: Rauros Falls

Miles travelled today: 8
Miles travelled so far: 79½ (999½ from Bag End)
Miles still to go: 309½
Percentage complete: 20%


Point reached on journey: We're still drifting down the river. The trees are thin and the sky is grey and overcast. (So at least the weather was authentic!)

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Where I really went...

I went on the kickbike down the old railway track to Aberwynant I haven't ridden the kickbike for about 2 weeks, what with going away for the weekend and just getting distracted by other things, but I now seem to have found a nice steady pace, 4 kicks to each side, that I can maintain for quite a while, even going up a slight gradient into a head wind.

This makes the third day in a row that I've done an exercise session and I've started to cut down on carbohydrates again. With luck I might start to lose a few pounds, which in turn should help the blood pressure.

As today and yesterday were just routine local walks, I'm going to post pictures of Thursday's walk in Aberystwyth. G had to go there to receive his certificate for successfully completing the course on teaching bilingually, so after dropping him off at the posh hotel, I went back into Aber and parked in the main car park. I did a quick walk round the shops in the rain -- there is a new Pets At Home and what used to be a supermarket is now a Matalan -- then down the high street and back to the car to eat my picnic. At that point, the rain eased, so I decided to cross the river by the new pedestrian bridge and see if I could find the way up Pen Dinas. I did this walk many time when I was a student in Aber, but that was getting on for 40 years ago and my sense of direction isn't all that reliable, however, for once it did not fail me and though there were now big new houses where there used to be fields, I did find the start of the footpath up to the top.

I had George the monkey with me, so I took several photos of him too. I really want to take him for a day at the seaside. I have some ideas for cute photos, but I need better weather than we're currently having. The rain just about held off for my walk, but it was spitting throughout and as you can see from the skies, more rain was on its way.



( More photos behind here... )



Almost there! The monument at the top was to commemorate the battle of Waterloo. The site is actually an good example of a hill fort, but there really isn't anything much to see on the ground.

( Read more... )

Tags: eowyn challenge, exercise, kickbike
Current Mood: Tired but refreshed

Next destination: Rauros Falls

Miles travelled today: 4½
Miles travelled so far: 31½ (951½ from Bag End)
Miles still to go: 357½
Percentage complete: 8%


Point reached on journey: End of day one for the Hobbits. (My progress is really feeble compared to a real Hobbit! It's taken me 2 weeks to get to this point.) There are bare woods on both banks. The land is silent. It is misty and dusk comes early. We are about to camp in the woods on the west bank of the Silverlode. The weather is dreary and cold.

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Where I really went...

This was the longest expotition on the kickbike so far. It wasn't anywhere exciting though, I just went down the old railway trail to Penmaenpool and back. Thankfully I had nice weather than the Hobbits, but only just. It's been grey and overcast all day and I had to put on a sweater this morning as the thin cardigan wasn't warm enough.

Anyway, I must be getting fitter because it's starting to seem easier to kick along. I seem to have developed a steady pace that I can sustain for some time and I don't swerve around as much when changing legs as I did at the start. It's still fun and as I arrived back out of breath and sweaty, it's making me work harder than the bike.

The next step is to experiment with getting it into the car boot. As it has quick release wheels, it's supposed to fit. That would mean I could explore the forest and other trails that are further from home. Oooh! More variety.

Tags: eowyn challenge, exercise, kickbike