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ENGLAND Cotswold Way 2011-2

Cotswold Way (+Heart of England, Monarch’s, Diamond, Gloucestershire, Macmillan, Windrush, and Wardens’ Ways).

 

The first time my husband got me onto British soil, he was virtually dragging me, kicking and struggling (well, a bit of hyperbole there). My image of this island was that it had wall-to-wall buildings, that you would never get away from the madding crowds and that the food would be egregious. And, to add insult to injury, the denizens spoke English. How boring is that!

I changed my mind very quickly, about nearly everything. England has never ceased to amaze me in that it can have the population that it does, yet still retain endless tracts of houseless land. Not only that, but the system of ancient rights of way means that you can walk on far more of that land than often seems the case here in Australia, where “Thou shalt not” seems written on every door and fence. Following these dotted lines on the map, you can spend whole days without encountering a single other soul if that’s what you choose.
Tonight I have gone through my Cotswold Way photos with a view to writing this article, and feel the most astonishing homesickness for that path that we enjoyed so much. It is not wilderness like our national parks might aspire to, but it is certainly not urbanised, and almost all of every day we wandered at our leisure through woods and fields, past domesticated and wild animals and magnificent gardens, monstrous trees that reeked of history, their beer-bellied girths and gigantically spreading canopies telling their own tale of longevity. Meanwhile, when we chose to, we could interact with friendly country people who seemed to share none of the rapacious ways of the twenty first century. We loved them.

Our route was utterly unorthodox, and designed by me to fit our needs. The first part was done in 2011, and followed the traditional Bath to Winchcombe part of the route as per the map. At this beautiful village (town?) we unfortunately had to stop as our time was finished and we had to fly home. But we were in love, and couldn’t wait to be back (2012) to complete what we had begun – except, because we love it so much, we didn’t want to finish it as soon as the map said we should (we had a mere two days left). In addition, we would leave a bag of weighty stuff at our second starting point (Winchcombe), so needed to finish where we started in order to pick it back up. I thus designed a big circle that continued on past the end of that route, and went clockwise in a huge loop that returned us eventually to Winchcombe. This joined up sections of all the Ways mentioned in the title, in the order in which they occur.

There is something pretty amazing about wandering along, and happening on an ancient fort 5500 years old (Crickley Hill); reading a sign that says the beech trees you’re passing through are some of the oldest in the UK. Meanwhile, Painswick’s churchyard dated to 1377, and the post office there was the oldest in the UK (1428). Belas Knap had a burial ground dated 2500BC. All this history thrilled us.

And then we come to the wonderful Sudeley Castle, which originally dates back to Ethelred, in the tenth Century. The present structure, however, is much newer – built in 1442. In 1535, Henry VIII visited the castle with Anne Boleyn. Of lesser interest to me was the fact that Katherine Parr (another of Henry’s wives) is buried there; at Sudeley Queen Elizabeth I was entertained 3 times, and in 1592 was given a spectacular three-day feast to celebrate the anniversary of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. You just roam around, absorbing all this history along with the heavenly smells and sights being emitted by the old world roses – Albas, Gallicas, Portlands and more – thinking yourself back to those ancient times and somehow becoming part of them while you are there.

Tiny villages with caramel-coloured dolls’ houses and roses growing up the walls, spilling over the gates, sneaking through gaps in the walls; clear streams with ducks that quack hello as you pass; lush pastures with inquisitive bovines that chew and moo to pass the time of day; little V, a lamb I took a particular fancy to – all these and more are the delights of the Cotswold Way.

And as for the food! Wow. We were fed like kings. Breakfasts where bowls of fresh berries and homemade yoghurt accompanied the cereal were perhaps my favourites. At lunch we usually just had some soup, as we’d eaten so well at the start of the day. Dinner we had fun trying out various pubs.
Unfortunately something that can’t be repeated is the fact that – totally by fluke – we were there for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. We didn’t even know it was on until all of a sudden we couldn’t get in anywhere. We never make bookings. For me walking and holidays mean you are FREE, and freedom means no arrangements, no deadlines, no script, no constraints. I’d prefer to sleep under a tree in the drizzle than be a puppet, dictated to by a rigid plan. This is all very nice, except that when the people who actually rule England decide that since the queen has been on the throne for sixty years the people should rejoice. That means the Brits are going to party big time, and there is NO room at the inn – or anywhere else. We walked from village to village trying to find a free place to sleep. It was really tricky, but we always turned up lucky in the end, and had some absolutely fabulous experiences along the way, but I don’t want to turn this blog into a thesis, so I’m going to tantalise you and leave it right here. I will only say that if they declare another party for her 65th, we’ll be there!!!!
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SWITZERLAND 2012 haute route July

SWITZERLAND haute route 2012
This route has been filed under the FRANCE section of the BLOG, as it began there, but as almost all of it took place in Switzerland, I am also just putting in a brief note here alerting you to where the proper blog is. Here are just a few photos to whet your appetite for the real thing.
http://www.natureloverswalks.com/haute-route-chamonix-zermatt/


Sunsets like this in the mountains are always a treat.


He is my husband, the closest person to me on earth – my soulmate and, of course, best friend – and yet I cannot for a single second imagine what it must be like to have a sentence like Parkinson’s Disease hanging over your every move, or to try to courageously do a route like this, negotiating terrain like this with all the fears and frailties that come with his disease. He fought his destination and his biology so valiantly. He never wanted to introspect about what was going on; he preferred to just get out and live as best he could for as long as he could, and I had to honour that.


He looks like an excited schoolboy, but he is being roped up to do a death-defying climb up a ladder that climbs to eternity. If he let go (and hence the ropes) instantaneous death would be a certainty. The guy helping him is a random British climber met in the hut. Such was the generosity of other climbers and walkers we encountered.

 Talk about a room with a view, eh? You should have tried the cakes: nearly as good as the view, and every bit as welcome. I had found it rather scary getting us both to this place, and was even more terrified of getting us out of it on the morrow. I nearly killed myself making sure that Bruce stayed alive.


Another moody sunset to close off the day.

Track life: a narrow path, mountains and eternity. Just how we’ve always liked it.

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Tyndall 2012 Apr

Tyndall Range   28 Apr 2012
(All photos are taken at the end.  It was impossible to photograph up the top)

The day had begun well enough, although mist and light rain attended us, even as we donned our boots, coats and packs. We all set out in good spirits up the mountain shrouded in mist, its soft-grey rocks melding with the moss colour of its greenery. The rain wasn’t too bad, and the wind was a lot less strong than we’d been promised. Down there. Up we climbed. Even by half way up, people’s wraps for morning tea had become sodden balls of pudding that disintegrated in the hand. I was too cold and wet from long periods of waiting to be interested in eating, or in taking off my pack to find my food, even though it was in the outside pocket. Pack on was warmth on.
At the very top, the force of both was something we’d never experienced before. This was WILD, WILD nature, and it was awesome, a privilege to be part of. Water was blowing UP the waterfalls. Rain was horizontal, of course. The whole mountainside had turned into an almighty waterfall, as the mountain spewed its excess water. The track was a flowing river, sometimes over knee height in depth. We sloshed up the waterfalls and newly-made creeks.
 
 As we walked along, slopping through the “track” that was 15-20 cms underwater – as was the surrounding vegetation – I began to wonder where on earth we could pitch our tent. What tent, however brilliant, could stand up to being pitched in the middle of a wading pool? And then, there was the wind factor. Each gust sent me “dashing” several metres sideways as I lost control of my footing in the gale force.
I pictured the pitching process. We would stop and try to undo our packs. This would be a challenge, as not one member of the party had any feeling left in his or her fingers. We would struggle with the clips and presumably eventually undo them, putting our packs down in the pool. Opening them would be the next almost insurmountable challenge, but hopefully with perseverance, we’d accomplish that if given enough time. Our unfeeling fingers and weakened arms would grope ineffectively whilst attempting the Herculean task of pulling the tent and poles away from their wedged-in niche. This achieved, we would then spread them on the ground below the water, saturating them, of course – and meanwhile, the driving rain and gale-force wind would be working at lowering our core temperature whilst we, stationary, tried to do what senseless hands and limbs were ill-equipped to accomplish. The wind would quite possibly lift the tent and blow it off into the distance while we tried to get the poles ready for insertion into the tiny holes allotted them (if we could catch the run-away tent). I then pictured us struggling as we tried to put the poles in, a job that can be challenging even in clement conditions, the wind buffeting both us and the tent as we did what you needed strength to do.
 
 The next interesting job would be taking off the wet gear and putting on a new set of clothes, hopefully dry. We would sit in water that came up to near our hipbones, wrestling with boots and laces and sticky, sodden clothes, pulling, grunting, tugging but achieving little. We would by this time be shaking, if still conscious. And if we did get the waterlogged gear off, and withstood the gelid temperatures long enough to put on something dry, our saturated skin would soon ensure that the once dry clothes were dry no longer (all of which was assuming that the dry clothes in the pack had managed to remain dry). Apparently my husband was also running the same mental video as he walked along, although he had added the detail that the position of the tent in his pack was below his dry clothes, so he pictured himself removing the dry clothes to free the tent, and standing there stranded with them as they became drenched with rain. My reverie had just had us kind of pushing the clothes to the side while we struggled to release the tent. The reality was that any opening of our bags welcomed a mini-flood to the gap created. The top pocket of my pack was already sodden because someone had kindly pulled out my gloves for me, allowing water to enter while the gloves exited. (Pity that’s where my camera was). We all had to get gloves and beanies for each other, as none of us could take off our own packs.
Our leader for the day called us all in to make an announcement. She had decided that we should head back down the mountain. Her decision was met with hearty approval by all. She said we should have lunch before descending. However, the skinnies amongst us were too cold to eat, and had no feeling in our hands to begin to attempt to retrieve food from our packs. We had also lost all appetite. I couldn’t release my main clasp, and I realised that if I did take my pack off and lost the protection it was lending my back, that could be a fatal mistake. Luckily I had muesli bars that could be reached by someone else in a side pocket. The skinnies huddled together while the not-so’s went off and ate elsewhere. G stood there shivering. I got him to get a bar from my side pocket and then told him to eat it. He was grateful. I got him to get B one, too, of course. To S, I gave lollies, as I noticed she wasn’t eating either. L tried to eat, but she said her lunch just mashed in her hands, so she gave up. K said she’d lost all interest in food, but needed the toilet, so disappeared, before she left, instructing me to eat her banana that she’d managed to get out. I had two bites – magic!!!! Just what I needed to keep me going. We waited some more.
K came back from the toilet shaking furiously. She’d been going really well, but pulling her pants down had undone her. She was now possibly the coldest, though the other skinnies were now getting worried about B, whose shakes were quite grand mal. He was too cold to get gloves or a beanie on, but the skinnies combined forces to shove them on him. Meanwhile, G was also finding the task impossible, and, sweetly, B, who couldn’t do his own, joined with another to push and pull G’s hands and gloves to get them back on for him.
Down we went, but the first time I looked back, I could see B was struggling. The wind ripped his coat away from him as he hadn’t done it up properly, and I had no feeling to improve on what he’d done. A few of us stopped to try to help him, but we failed. He just had to put up with it. K’s pack cover blew off and danced back up the mountainside. She gave chase. B’s cover then blew off, but it was clipped to the pack, so made a brilliant spinnaker. My coat was trying to blow open too, so I clutched it with one hand while I walked. B looked so cold I started to really worry about him. I went right to the back to make sure I had him covered. A-M and L were also there. The others went on ahead, all of a sudden the insistence that we all stay together and travel at the same pace no longer being in force.
Now B encountered a new problem – his trousers were so wet that they started falling off. The two with me suggested that we stop and help him change them, but I pictured the impossibility of getting his pack off, of getting his shoes and gaiters off, and a new lot of clothing on, and said it just wouldn’t work. Our best bet was to get him off the mountain as quickly as possible. I thought he should just take the pants off. “No, no”, they cried. He’d freeze. They helped me try to get them back up to around his waist, joking that he was just doing this to have three women playing with his trousers. We were all – then and throughout – very jolly despite the conditions. B and I would at times burst into song and dance (to keep warm, but also to try to help keep everyone happy).
Getting us off the mountain and keeping everyone safe was a real group effort. We all needed each other to survive this one. Anyway, soon enough the trousers just dropped off into the mud; B walked out of them and kept going. I picked them up and popped them into a sort of pouch made by my pack cover, heavy as they now were, so as not to litter the wilderness with rubbish. Once he’d got rid of their impedance, his pace picked up nicely. We’d now dropped low enough for the worst dangers to be over, and I grew in confidence that this adventure would have a good outcome. As it all drew to a close, and we waded through knee-deep slopping mud before joining the road that led back to the car, we could reflect on the mighty power of nature, and the fun of the adventure we’d had.
The road was a mighty flowing river, sometimes so deep and strong that we had to link arms for safety – a symbolic ending to our reliance on each other to complete our epic. It was a very happy group that dived into the Tullah pub, ordered hot drinks and warmed up by the welcome fire. I wasn’t to know then, but the next time we tried to summit Mt Tyndall, we would encounter a blizzard, with snow and ice replacing rain; the wind was similar.
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Watcher Mt Field 2012 Apr

The Watcher, Mt Field National Park   21 Apr 2012. A photo story. 

This was, as the photos indicate, a beautiful misty, moisty autumn day. Perfect.
Right at the start
 Fagus on Tarn Shelf
On the way to Newdigate Hut
Approaching the Watcher
The Watcher, summit 
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King William II, Slatters Peak 2012 Mar

Mt King William II and Slatters Peak: my first extended bushwalk without my husband to share the load.


View from Slatters Peak on the first evening
All week I feared this walk, mostly because I was going to carry the heaviest pack I have ever carried, and I was unsure whether I was up to the task (normally my husband and I share the load of tent, food, etc). I was also anxious, as gastro had been going around Tasmania, and I had been in bed vomiting on the Monday and Tuesday, and was still feeling frail as the weekend approached. Was I going to cope? Well, I’d have to grin and bear it. I was determined to see these mountains, and determined not to fail. Nonetheless, just in case, and in anticipation of the worst, I signed my will the day before I left!
same
Day 1. Slatters Peak. The start was not auspicious. I was quite clearly not welcome amongst the male coterie gathered at the bus stop, and I felt uncomfortable. Oh well. Here I was …
and again

We set out. There would be no track to follow them on should I be too slow – we were heading straight into the bush – so it was keep up or die. I kept up, so busy concentrating on that very task that I didn’t even have time to wonder if my pack was too heavy. I was relieved that my friend S and a new girl, M, were both a bit slower than I was. If I got dropped, they would too, so at least I’d have company. I’d heard our coordinator talking about M on the way: “If she can’t keep up, we’ll just dump her at Fisherman’s Camp and pick her up in three days.” That put great fear into me. My shoelace came undone, but I didn’t dare stop to do it up. To stop was to be left in the middle of nowhere and perish.

At Fisherman’s Camp I relaxed a tiny bit. I made sure I was always in the first three (of nine) and, concentrating on that job kept all other pack pains and fears away. I raced through the thick button grass, righting myself with celerity if I fell in a mud hole, fearful of failure.


Soon enough it was time to attack the real ascent. Up and up we climbed. The bush was super thick. You couldn’t see the person three metres in front. I clung desperately to the rear end of the man ahead of me. The trouble was, these were guys with huge, strong legs, and I was trying to keep pace with them as we hauled ourselves up a near vertical rise, using saplings and shrubs to pull ourselves upwards on the mighty slope. My real problems were the fallen trunks and horizontal scrub or piles of debris with branches jutting out to catch you that they could breeze over but that I had to climb with some effort. I could hear myself grunting like Victoria Azarenka with every single haul. The others said M was grunting too. S’s face was twisted with effort. The guys seemed relaxed.
This kept up for two more hours (six in all so far), at the end of which we reached a kind of waterfall-cum-chimney that we needed to ascend. The first bit was even steeper than what we’d done (as near to vertical as you can get in the terrain), and there was one very tricky bit in the middle with few foot (or finger) holds, and with water coming down the rock we were to climb. I grabbed a tiny shrub with the left hand, a patch of grassy stuff with the right. My feet, however, slipped out from under me so I was hanging from the cliff by shrubbery, water rushing past my chest, and a drop below that was considerable. I looked down at one stage and could see M and S’s faces staring up at me – their features were strained with fear, their eyes large. Rod, a nice guy, not from our club, grabbed my wrist and yelled for help, as he couldn’t hold me and he was terrified I’d loosen my grip with fatigue and fall. W (from the club) came back and helped him get my pack off (VERY tricky). Once that weight was gone, I could complete the climb. G got out a rope and did a pack haul for my pack, plus those of S and M. Like me, once they’d lost the weighty packs they were able to complete the climb. We’d just been going for so long and it was all so steep and strenuous that the three of us had lost strength by that stage.
Once we were up, the rest was easy. We danced along to our selected campsite in a wonderful tarn-filled valley at the foot of Slatters Peak. I chose a spot that had the mountain reflected in water visible from my tent ‘window’. Before it got dark, we spent another hour and a half climbing and descending Slatters. The views were stupendous.


Back at the campsite, we cooked dinner in the fading light. I made a tactical error, as I chatted for too long with the wind ripping through from behind (my feet were still sodden from the day’s activities) and all of a sudden I realised that my core temperature had plummeted right under. My feet never warmed up during the night. I shivered the whole time, despite sleeping in icebreaker, Helly Hanson, fiibrepile, beanie, possum gloves, wollen socks, and Helly longs, with my down jacket over my sleeping bag to add an extra layer, and my overpants over my feet. M and S reported that they, too, shivered all night.
Day Two: King William II and IIb. On day 2, marching orders were for 7.30 sharp, so of course we were all in line at the appointed time. Putting on my wet socks and shoes was one of the most unpleasant jobs I have ever done, especially as I was already freezing. M and I walked together. She resented the fact that going to the toilet incurred the risk of being abandoned in the mist. If you wanted a drink, or to go to the toilet, you had to run afterwards to catch up. This day, dropping behind was particularly perilous, as we had about 50 metres visibility due to the thickness of the mist that quickly turned to rain. Re-finding the campsite would have been utterly impossible unaided. M and I stuck together to protect each other. I took photos for her, as my camera was faster, and then we would sprint to catch up afterwards.

There was a certain degree of inconsistency, as sometimes we would have random stops when the leader felt like it, and he would chat in the middle of nowhere, and M and I would freeze while he talked. We both started to get hypothermic. She – and the others, too – decided I was really going under. (They were right). So, who helped me? The experienced people? No. M. She gave me her padded synthetic coat, which was warm when wet, and it made the world of difference, but I was being saved at the expense of the one person in the expedition who could least afford to give me something. With her coat I could keep up and keep the top half of my body warm, even though the bottom half was still frozen solid. My feet were quite numb, which made falling a distinct possibility.


Anyway, thus clad we reached the next mountain safely (we had now climbed Mt King William II and a point that is apparently higher, namely, IIb, which has become the true Abel, as it is the highest point on the range, and not the black dot representing King William II). That afternoon it was still raining, and I did not dare to use my trangia inside the tent, so said ‘goodbye’ at 3 p.m, knowing I would get no dinner. I sat in my tent for the rest of the day wearing my lovely dry down jacket, possum gloves and wollen socks that had been saved for nights. Every now and then the rain eased and I poked my head out the tent. The view remained wonderful!

Day Three: Next day, we got to slide down the mountain. I had an absolute blast. Everyone agreed not to use that dangerous route of the first day, and so what we did was controlled sliding down 800 ms of mountain using gullies filled with large pineapple grass plants – wonderfully slippery when wet. Such fun. The rain stopped and the sun came out. I loved it. Eventually we made it to the car. I could barely believe I was still alive and had finished.
Despite some less than pleasant moments, I am thrilled I did the walk. It was a challenge that I kind of met. I’m delighted to have seen those views, summitted those peaks (all three), made the acquaintance of some new, wonderful people, and survived my first ever walk where I had to carry absolutely everything myself.