Lonewalker's Walking Diary

Key to symbols:
= Trig Point     = Yorkshire Top

Yes, I know, another bloody Yorkshire Top. Well that’s my burden for this year and for the next few months yet. I say burden, but it’s been a great bagging list this. I’ve completed the original Top 30 list, but felt I needed to be a bit more scientific about the list, so I expanded it to include all the Nuttalls, Deweys and HuMPs inside the Dales National Park boundary. That was great – it gave me another 35 hills to visit! So now I have a bagging list with 66 names on it and I’ve now done 48 of them.

Today I decided to make use of the Settle-Carlisle line to create a linear walk. I arrived earlier than expected so I parked about a mile from Ribblehead station (thereby reducing the amount of walk at the end) and used the train to deliver me to Garsdale – not one of the great train journeys of our time, but at £4.50 for a 13 minute journey it was bloody expensive!

It was cold today as well, and it rained. I think the summer has well and truly departed and we’re already getting that blustery, rainy awful autumn weather. Ah well, it was nice in May.

The full size photos can be found here: Wold Fell Photos

You can follow the route in Google Earth by downloading this file…. Wold Fell in GE

PS. The sharp eyed amongst you may notice that the map at the top of the page doesn’t really match the route I took. Well spotted. My GPS packed up just after Wold Fell, so I decided not to visit Blea Fell in the pea-souper I could see it was sporting and besides it was raining, so I used the Dales Way to cut back to the car.

These are another pair of shoes/boots sent to me for review as part of the “Reviews for Shoes” program at Fitness Footwear. I thought it worth mentioning that up front as it were. I did tell the guys looking after the process that I wouldn’t give a good review just because I got the shoes for free – if they’re rubbish I’m going to say just that. Unfortunately – just like the last pair of boots I was sent – I really like them, so like I said – it’s worth being up front about these things.

These are the Salomon Exit Aero shoes – I’ve got the remarkably appealing colour combination of “Swamp, Dark Clay, Moss”, but they also come in “Autobahn, Detroit and Bleu Gris” and “Autobahn, Detroit and Ciment Blue” – see all the combinations here: Salomon Trainers.

These aren’t lightweight fell running shoes (my size 11 weighed an average of 456g each) and they’re not really trainers either. They are sort of an off-road trainer. A bit like a Range Rover Vogue – perfect for posing down the high street, but also able to cut the mustard on the hills. They have a very technical sole, which provides plenty of grip on wet grass and loose stony surfaces, so I’d be more than happy to go fell walking in these (and I have done). They are probably better suited to lower level walks on good path though, because they’re not waterproof.

They have a great sole and look the business too.

Having said that, I’ve never seen the point in waterproof shoes – especially not those that are designed for the hills. If you walk in any low cut footwear on the hills, the quickest way you’re going to get wet feet is ingress over the top, not through some very expensive and sweat-inducing membrane. So these are no worse for being non-waterproof.

The fit, like all Salomon footwear I’ve had so far is a 1/2 size smaller than normal. So if you’re usually a 10.5 in a shoe or boot like I am, then you’ll probably need a size 11. They have a great feel to them, they’re solid and comfortable. They feel like they’ll last a good long time and they also feel like they’d offer some protection to toes in the event of kicking something solid – like a rock – so nothing at all like a pair of Inov-8 shoes then. The technical sole is also very protective, it buffers you from the worst of a stony track, so you don’t feel quite as punished at the end of a walk as you would in lightweight fell runners.

At first I was very aware of the arch support in these shoes – much more pronounced than my usual “about town” trainers and I’ve never had the same sensation in fell runners or boots before. However, after a few minutes the feeling goes away and it hasn’t bothered me since.

Overall, these are a comfortable pair of dual-purpose trainers/approach shoes, they are very well built, sturdy and functional and I’d be happy to recommend them to anyone. I’ll be using them on and off for the rest of the summer and they will probably get used at lot at home during the winter, so I’ll continue to post reviews as I get more use out of them.

Key to symbols:
= Trig Point     = Yorkshire Top

After all the recent rain, I needed a walk on reasonably good paths today and I’ve been meaning to tick off Great Pinseat for a while, but the problem is its one of those awkward hills that doesn’t lend itself easily to a 12-ish mile walk. So I needed to extend it a little bit. I chose to visit the Old Gang Smelt Mill, not the bit on the C2C path, down on the road, but the flue that runs up the side of Reeth High Moor, the chimney on the top and then drop down to see the monstrous peat store that supplied Old Gang Mill with its peat.

So a rather wavy track was trod today – wherever possible using paths I’d not used before – and paths most people don’t use, so it was very quiet, in fact I only saw 4 people all day and they were on the 400 yards or so of C2C path I had to use. The full slideshow is available below.

The full size photos can be found here: Great Pinseat Photos

The Google Earth track can be followed by downloading this file: Great Pinseat in GE

Not really a trip report, merely some photos taken on our recent walk around the reservoir.

That was the question posed by Nick Newcomen after he finished his 30 day trek across the USA – he used a GPS and a car and drove across 30 states in order to expound his view that more people in the world should read Ayn Rand. He selected a route, switched on his GPS and set off. At various points he switched off the GPS, drove to a new location and then switched it back on again. The resulting GPS tracklog, once uploaded to Google Earth, looked like this!

You can read more about it – but there’s not much more to it than that – here

I wasn’t inspired to read Ayn Rand, whoever he/she may be, but I was inspired to see what I could write with the GPS tracklogs I’ve collected to date. After the initial euphoria I quickly realised that although I had an awful lot of walks to choose from over the past few years, they would typically only help me create a word with lots of “o”’s in it – as most of my walks are circular!

In the end I used my Pennine Way walk of this year and the Coast to Coast walk from last year to create this – seems sort of appropriate really!

Obviously it would have been better if I’d had a picture of England covered in snow – but you can’t have everything.

This tracklog took me 29 days to create – just one day short of Nick’s journey.

So, I ask you, what would you write?

This is a follow-up report of the Inov-8 boots I’ve been testing for Fitness Footwear. The Roclite 390GTX is a waterproof mid cut boot from the people who brought us the ultimate in lightweight footwear, Inov-8.

If last weeks walk over the gritstone of Kinder was no test at all of the grippiness of the Roclite boot, then this weekends walk over the limestone above Malham was surely the ultimate test – not having any ice available yet of course. If there’s anything more slippery than limestone mud then I haven’t found it and wet limestone pavement has to be one of worst stone surfaces to walk on in the UK.

On the whole I wasn’t impressed with the way the boot coped with the surfaces. I used to suffer from a lack of grip when I used the Roclite 315 shoes and the sole on the 390GTX seems to be almost identical.

The layout of the tread seems to be identical (315 on the left, 390 on the right) and the 390 still has its tiny little dimples on each lug – it still didn’t help traction on the limestone. I walked down a long track, a fairly shallow descent, but very rocky and my feet were constantly sliding off rocks I would have happily been firm on with my Salomon Mission boots. The lack of traction was noticeable.

However, having said that, once I got used to knowing the amount of traction I had, I adjusted to it – as you do – you just take more care in foot placement and don’t rely as much on the sole of the boot.

The first three or four miles of the walk was through fields and then pathless fellside. All through long wet grass. Within an hour my trousers were soaked almost to the knee and I could feel my socks slowly drawing the water into the boots. By the end of the walk my feet were sodden, but it’s impossible to tell how much water ingressed through the actual surface of the boot and how much was via the socks. In my experience no boots are waterproof – these proved to be more resilient to water than my recent Salomon Fastpackers (which I had to return) and my Salomon Missions (which I still use).

The laces in the 390GTX are the thinnest laces I’ve ever seen. Even the Roclite shoes have thicker laces. I’m sure it’s a weight saving measure, but this could be a step too far. Not only do they not stay laced tight they cut your hands when you have to keep re-tying them. I have to re-lace most boots once on a walk – I had to re-lace these three times in 12 miles. I will be replacing the laces with something more usable.

So it sounds like I don’t like these boots – but that’s not the case – I really have grown attached to them. I love their weight, their flexibility, the close proximity of shoe to earth, their comfort and the fact that they are cut high enough to avoid the worst of the grit and debris associated with fell running shoes.

Despite their poor grip I will continue to use them this summer. I have a weekend backpacking trip coming up this weekend (fingers crossed) and I’ll be using them for that – a proper test with a full pack, over the top of High Street.

I was back to the Dales today and the Yorkshire Tops tick list, after a couple of weeks walking with friends elsewhere. I was expecting a wet day and wasn’t surprised by the weather, but it was warm and muggy so I sweat bullets in my waterproof jacket.

My goal was a little known Dewey (and HuMP) called Grizedales – more the excuse for a good walk than the goal, but then that’s peak bagging in a nutshell. I was testing a couple of pieces of kit today. The Inov-8 Roclite 390GTX boots were getting another day out after last weekend and I was also using Route Buddy Atlas for the iPhone – a mapping app that uses the GPS and compass in the iPhone.

You can follow the walk in Google Earth using this file: grizedales.kmz

Key to symbols: 
= Yorkshire Top

I’ve been dying to try a pair of these, ever since they were released a year or two ago, but until the kind folk at FitnessFootwear offered to let me have a pair to test I’d not really had the opportunity. Boots aren’t normally something you can try on whim – they’re something you have to live with – something that can make the difference between a joyous walk and a nightmare of discomfort and pain. So when I got an email offering to swap a pair of the boots for a review of them on the blog – I jumped at the chance.

When you get them out of the box they look a bit space-age – something Jane Fonda may have worn in Barbarella, or James Caan in Rollerball (without the wheels obviously) – they have a shiny mesh coating over most of the upper and white flecks in the rubber sole bed. Very striking. They are shockingly light too. I’d requested a size 11 (UK) and these weighed in at an average of 448g each (15.8oz) – the lid of the box was all that was keeping them from floating away.

The only problem with ordering boots over the Internet is that you don’t get a chance to try them on. My Roclite 315 slippers are a size 11 and they fit fine – the boots are a half size (maybe even 3/4 of a size) bigger fit, so they are a bit loose for my liking. The ridiculous lacing system they use also doesn’t help in trying to get the boot snug on your foot – it’s incredibly difficult to draw in the slack – so I ditched that almost straight away and replaced it with the traditional cross-over method.

On the left the bizarre lacing system from Inov-8 – on the right the traditional cross-over method

Using a thin liner sock and thick soled training shoe sock I managed to lace them to the point I was reasonably happy and then set out on a fourteen mile walk across Kinder with them. Bold or what?! But I thought if I’m going to test them, I’m going to do it properly

It’s difficult to test the grippiness of the boot when you’re walking on the gritstone of Kinder – my Roclite 315 shoes had always felt a bit lacking in the grip department, but the boots seemed fine, even on the grassy sections we encountered, I didn’t have any loss of traction. I did experience a rather annoying sound from them though. The mesh cover (and possibly the layer beneath it) on the front of the boot makes a soft popping sound each time you take step. When the shoe goes from bent to straight it seems to pop. Not a problem, just a bit odd – and possibly down to the shoes being a tad too large for me – I don’t know.

Anyway – that’s just about the only negative I have to report on the boot. Over the 14 miles of Kinder walking I hardly knew they were there – they were instantly comfortable, gloriously light and of course waterproof too. Many people, myself included, have tried Inov-8 shoes and lived with the lack of waterproofing as a way of reducing weight and relishing the responsiveness of the Inov-8 technology. We’ve lived with the gravel in the shoes and wet feet. But we don’t need to anymore. The Roclite 390GTX saves me over a kilogram of weight on my feet compared to my winter Scarpa boots. They keep the water out and they are cut high enough to discourage most of the debris you would normally accumulate with a shoe.

As an initial review summary I’m impressed. These will stay on my feet for the remainder of my summer walking and I’ll post another couple of updates to this over the coming weeks. The real problem with Inov-8, in my experience at least, is longevity. A single review, a single walk is not conclusive. My Roclite shoes and my Terrocs before that have died too quickly – lets just hope the Roclite boots will last a bit longer.

I’ll leave you with a dirty picture to round off this initial report……

Pricing and availability – see here: Fitness Footwear

Today I was walking with a friend I’d not seen for the best part of 15 years – so today had the potential to be an awkward, stuttering sort of day, but it actually felt like we’d never fallen out of touch at all. Mark and I both discovered the joys if walking since we’d last met – so a walk was the perfect way to meet up and chat about old times and what had changed, other than the state of our waistlines.

Mark is also in training for the Inca Trail – jammy sod – so a good walk was required to keep the fitness levels up. He chose this one – a long linear using two cars – from Ladybower along the quieter of the two edges of the Kinder plateau and over Mill Hill to the Grouse Inn at the other end. The map isn’t very clear – the zoom level required to get it to fit into the space below is too high

You can follow the walk on Google Earth by downloading this file.

Key to symbols:
= Trig Point     = Yorkshire Top

Today, for the first time, I was walking with Alex, a friend from work – he’s in training for Kilimanjaro in January and he lives in the flat and boring southlands, so we met somewhere central for some hills. Finding 10-12 miles of strenuous hill walking in the Midlands is difficult. One of the very few options is the Malvern Hills. Fortunately with two cars it’s possible to do the full length in about 4-5 hours; depending on how long you stop at the ice cream cabin on the A449.

The Malvern Hills are a series of ups and downs – there is no ridgeline as such, but it was a reasonable workout for Alex and it was a good test for my knees, which have been troublesome of late. As it was we both coped admirably and had a great time. We had almost perfect summer walking weather too – no direct sunshine, but warm and a slight breeze to keep us cool.

You can follow the route, using Google Earth, by downloading this file.

Key to symbols:
= Trig Point     = County Top / Recordable Hill