Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

The Pennine Way first couple of days

Made it to Malham and many thanks to Simon the owner of Beck Hall B&B who has loaned me this laptop so I can do an entry.

Wed 26 April 2006
Caught train from Cambridge to Edale a pretty good service leaving at 15.10 and arriving at 19.47. Stayed at The Rambler Country House Hotel not very impressive but OKish (but do avoid in the summer seeing the vast armada of tables in the garden). However their inepitude at breakfast worked to my advantage, see below.

Thurs 27th April
Went down to breakfast for 8am to find a fellow walker bemoaning the fact that the staff were still asleep and that someone was trying to rowse them. Turned out that he was a fellow Pennine Way traveller called Chris Lloyd. We got chatting and decided to set of together once the staff had sorted out breakfast (mainly as Chris wanted his picture taken at the start). We got under way at 9.30. We both seemed to go at a similar pace and discovered we had both booked into the same b&b the next night too, so we stayed together crossing Kinder and Bleaklow. At Bleaklow Head I did my usual trick of taking a wrong path 🙁 However, Chris’s old GPS quickly sorted us out!)
We arrived at The Old House, Torside at 5pm having walked 13.5 miles of the PW plus a mile or so extra. The weather was good with the going mainly dry the paved sections really helping compared to the bogs 41 years ago. Having washed and changed, Joanna drove us to The Peel Arms in Padfield for an excellent dinner and beer with gorgeous sticky toffee pudding. Padtax (01457862321) took as back for a fiver. The Old House was good and Joanne is a very friendly hostess.

Friday 28th April

Blogs or bogs


I’ve decided to venture up to the land of peat and bogs to make a second attempt at The Pennine Way. George, Steve and I made a start 41 years ago in 1965. We packed up at Malham having completed 66miles, Steve decided he had enough . (Following week I cycled from Blackpool to Edinburgh in the day!).

Will be interesting to see how far I get this time. Suzie in Hebden Bridge (41miles) and George in Kendal (101miles) have been put on red alert in case of back up.

After reading the experiences of David Gibbins and Justin Turner I go to bed a slightly worried man 🙁

Apparently a high pressure is building up forecasting good weather for the first few days. Although I’m sure the bogs will be very deep.

Microsoft’s blunder and IE7

Excellent article from John Dvorak clearly stating why Microsoft blundered when they suddenly went into the browser business.

Afraid I have uninstalled my IE7 as it caused Firefox to seize up and anyway it didnt seem to offer any advantages over Firefox.