Tag: Walking
Yorkshire Three Peaks Vlog
My vlog detailing hiking the Yorkshire Three Peaks.
Yorkshire Three Peaks: Conquered!
After thirty years I finally hiked the Yorkshire Three Peaks again. Last time I did it I was twelve years old. I can remember being pretty worn out back then, and this time I am sunburnt and currently on crutches due to me getting absolutely dreadfully painful, unwalkable blisters as a result. That aside, I feel so great. I also recorded a vlog that I intend to edit and upload to YouTube very shortly.
My friend John and I did the classic route, Pen Y Ghent > Whernside > Ingleborough, only this time the regular Ingleborough ascent was closed. We were diverted and had to complete the most horrendous climb and scramble that I have ever done. I will never forget that for as long as I live (see mile 19 in the Strava data below). Quite where we both summoned up the determination, patience and sheer bull-headed stubbornness to not be beaten by it is beyond me, but we did it nonetheless. Despite the extra distance and my hobbling the final five miles on my poor, blistered feet, we beat the twelve hour time target quite comfortably, and fortunately my Garmin Vivoactive HR watch had just enough battery to record the whole thing.
Data from Strava
Map
Summary
Pace, Heart Rate and Cadence
Splits
Mile Times
A Couple of Lovely Photographs
I guess I need a new challenge!
Lockdown Progress is Still Progress
Last week I pushed up to five miles running, did plenty of (slow) cycling with the kids on the tourer and on Saturday I did a red hot, scorching hike over Whernside.
Yesterday I cycled in the evening with my boy and I have been amazed to see how quickly he is becoming powerful, fast and strong. He will be better than me hopefully! Captured the gorgeous sunset too. Check out the glitter path below.
I also fond a lovely outdoor location to explore, Rivington Pike near Bolton.
I remain on a 16/8 fasting diet which is working hard for me right now. I have literally stopped all refined sugar intake and I recently discovered that barley has a glycemic index of 25 – ridiculously low – so I am using that as a base for my cooking. That along with quinoa and a few other whole grains like buckwheat. I am already, in two weeks, 3.5 pounds lighter. The best part of this is that I do not think I have ever felt so stuffed in my life! I have only ever counted calories once and it was a waste of time. This way I am tracking my weight with a weekly weigh in and just eating good food, and boy is it working. Plus, barley is 55p a bag so my bank balance likes it too.
In my 43 years on Earth I think I might have weighed myself four or five times so I am hardly obsessive, but now that the kids are old enough that I do not have to spend every single minute refereeing their skirmishes or just keeping them alive, I have time to focus on my health much more. This is bringing great results. Having spent over a decade doing whatever exercise I could and eating what I can as best as I could I now relish this second innings of living. Any parent knows that the first ten years of child rearing are nonstop sacrifice, impossible to plan or work around and you spend most of your time exhausted. Now I get to take them out with me and they can be exhausted!
I am very much enjoying trail running. I have never been a fast runner really so I have nothing to prove on that front, but I can endure quite a lot so right now I am focused on off road activities and working out the best planning for nutrition. It seems that fasting of some kind works brilliantly – I even climbed Whernside in a fasted state – and thinking more about food is working. I have been a vegan for years and years but to get the best from myself means that my enemy is sugar. I really cannot believe the magnitude of difference that it makes to my physique if I stop eating it completely. All of the reading I am doing says this, and it all advocates fasting regularly and also straining the body, meaning to push hard in terms of endurance.
I guess that this week the results will prove me right or wrong.
Elterwater, Skelwith Force and Colwith Force: Conquered. Bonus: Lambs Oot!
This was a stunningly beautiful hike today. It was surprisingly strenuous exercise at times considering there are no peaks, fells or mountains on the trail. The scenery was breathtaking in parts, particularly the views of the Langdale Pikes and the two waterfalls along the route. For anyone wanting to wear out young children whilst also having plenty of opportunities to paddle, skim stones or indulge themselves in plain water fights then this is what we Lancastrians would refer to as a bobby dazzler. There are two cool stretches of forest, Elterwater itself, the aforementioned waterfalls and a few pretty bridges that all make for picturesque scenery. Of course, the beauty of the landscape makes for plenty of photographs, so they are below, along with the data from Strava. Click here for the GPX file and/or map for WikiLoc.
Photography
Strava Map
Elevation, Cadence, Pace and Heart Rate
Split Times
Whernside: Confessions of a Grumpy Nine Year Old
I love the Yorkshire Three Peaks and I try to climb them individually each year, with the added bonus of one day hoping to do the Three peaks Challenge again, this time as an adult with my own children, when they are old enough. Right now there is one major spanner in the works: my youngest daughter. She is an absolute fireball of a child. She has inherited the redhead temperament from me which means that I love her attitude, sass and drive, but good god she can be a real little shitbag.
This last week I climbed Whernside and it was the toughest hike that I can recall ever having done. Aside from the fact that it is the hardest of the Yorkshire Three Peaks, it was scorching hot and my little girl decided that she was going to strop ALL THE WAY. I would not change her for a nanosecond – that fire in her belly is going to serve her well in life as she kicks ass, but I really would rather have just hiked and not had to drag her every step of the climb. Still, we did it and that was great. Details and photos below.
Strava
Lovely Photos
Lockdown Lifestyle
So, here we are, a family in a semi rural town with time on our hands. Of course I have been hiking and cycling.
Climbing Ingleborough
Map and Splits
Pace, Heart Rate and Cadence
This was a hard slog for whatever reason, but ultimately rewarding. I am definitely not 100% healthy, my immunity is low and I feel a background malaise but still it was great to get out hiking. Isolation from the rest of the world is the thing I love about hiking the most so it is obviously fine in respect to social distancing. I think we saw perhaps three other people, two at the summit and one on his mountain bike ascending after us.
Cycling
As I previously posted, I bought myself a folding bicycle so naturally the thing to do is buy another bike also, which I did – a tourer hybrid. This means that I can now go cycling off road. It’s no good for mountains or whatever but for towpaths and dirt tracks it’s just fine. The Leeds-Liverpool canal is like an artery running through my town, linking it to almost all of the North West of England so it’s useful to be able to access it, not only for my convenience but also because it is much safer for taking the kids cycling. My daughters love it. The oldest is the cautious, cerebral one and we cycle more or less together. All the while her younger sister – the absolute little shitbag – slams the pedals hard and flies off into the distance. I love her bravery and fearlessness as much as I love her sister’s gentle, caring nature. It’s fascinating how different they can be. Anyway, below are data for a couple of rides. I have done more - you can visit my Strava if you really want to see the lot.
May 12th 2020
Bolton Map
This ride was very strange. Firstly I was testing out my tourer over distance. It’s not only a slow ride compared to what I would have done on my racer, but also because the last eight miles were me cycling slowly, hopelessly lost. For some reason, once I arrived near to my destination my Garmin Edge 1000 took me on an eight mile track which was basically an orbit of my actual intended destination. It was the most bizarre navigation error I have ever experienced.
In terms of features the Edge 1000 is streets ahead of the Edge 800 it replaced, but the navigation performance has been very iffy. The 800 was genuinely a fantastic addition to my gear. Every single destination I used to to reach was in there and I arrived literally at the front door every time. The 1000 has taken me on some exceptionally unusual routes. For example, when I was working in Todmorden it took me over an unbelievably difficult and hilly ride because it was around .25 miles shorter than the much flatter, faster alternative. Obviously the hills added a lot of time to the journey, and I can’t believe that the Garmin algorithm did that. Now it has taken me eight miles around my destination for no reason, and when I was plotting the route originally it struggled to find the address. The 800 always accepted the postcode and took me there. For me the jury is out right now on the 1000. I got it because the 800 has no Bluetooth or WiFi and I used to have to boot my computer and plug it in just to upload routes which drove me batty in the wireless era of technology. Right now I would happily go back rather than have the current issues I am facing. I hope that things improve quickly.
Nature and Mental Health
Being outside is great for your mental health. The evidence is growing, despite the fact that, to me at least, it seems intuitively so. Some of the best times of my life came. when I was most at peace were in Sweden, and specifically during the winter in Abisko National Park.
Natural beauty seems to have a profoundly restorative effect on the mental health and wellness of human beings. To commit to spending a good portion of one’s life outdoors is a transformative habit in which to engage oneself.
The whole world has stunning locations that are cheap and easy to reach. Below is Pirin Mountain, Bulgaria, where I hiked up to meet my friend snowboarding from the top. This trip cost me less than £200.
The beauty of the natural world is that it is everywhere, however. There is no need to travel far. One the the great things about living in England is how well preserved our countryside has been down the years.
In Lancashire where I live natural surroundings are a fifteen minute walk in any direction, the Yorkshire Dales a 45 minute drive away, and Cumbria around 90 minutes. It’s everywhere, all you have to do is look for it.
Hiking is free you know! It is also access to priceless sights and experiences.
The most satisfying part of the hiking experience for me is when I arrive home and the kids and the dog fall asleep almost immediately and then do not stir all night! The last hiking season we did we used to take our hound and she would literally not move for two days after expeditions – such a great feeling. Obviously the whole day spent outdoors is fantastic and the feel good factor of having walked miles or climbed a mountain is great, as is the endorphin hit. It also feels like a day well spent and I can tell you now that no workout in the world that you will ever do can compare to the resistance exercise obtained climbing and scrambling over rocky fells and mountains. God that is seriously hard work, and your muscles will thank you for years.
So get outside and see the true beauty of the natural world.
A Dumbass Went Over Ingleborough…
Today’s hike was over Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales and I managed to pause my Apple Watch and forget to restart when we stopped for lunch, so god knows what these figures and the map means. You can safely double the elevation gain, likely the calories too as I missed recording the hardest, most technical part of the mountain to climb, and I think I would probably add around two miles or so.
It was a grand day out nonetheless.
Incidentally, Apple Watch in its current iteration is a quantum leap ahead of the turd I bought in the form of the first generation model. Superb battery life and excellent functionality. I got home after recording this hike and the battery had depleted to 68%. My previous watch used to last three hours recording workouts. This is a huge improvement.
Blog of Ages
Good lord, it has been such a while since last I posted. This post will appear slightly late relative to the activities as I forgot to renew my domain name so I have to do that first, but hey, I am still here and hopefully somebody somewhere is vaguely interested in what I have to say on here.
I have been jolted back into blogging by the weather improving and the nights getting longer. Here in Lancashire we have very dark winters where the day essentially ends around four o’clock. This is particularly annoying for those with a family. The last week has seen sunny days and temperatures around ten degrees celsius which is definitely all the excuse I need to break out the hiking boots.
I ran twice this week. Conveniently my GP is about 0.6 miles away so if I jog there and back it’s a decent fifteen minutes or so of raised heart rate, which is fine just for a daily thing whilst I wait out the winter months. I am currently running using the latest Apple Watch and the auto pause does not always work properly indoors so the figures for mileage times and pace during the first run are wrong, but for what it is worth, here we are.
Wednesday 13th February
This was when I ran down there to get a blood test and the watch kept running whilst I was at the surgery.
Map
Friday 15th February
Slightly shorter run, but again Wednesday’s distance includes spurious data from the watch not pausing properly.
Map
Saturday Afternoon Hike
We hike every year, as often as possible, and we always commence with a hike around Malham Cove in the Yorkshire Dales. It is beautiful up there.
Map
If you are not too experienced a hiker or you need to get fit then this is not too challenging and the location is rewarding in terms of scenery and views looking out over Yorkshire, and the fantastic waterfall, Janet’s Foss.
