Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

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A day in The Valley of the Nar

On Sunday I ventured with Caroline into the Nar Valley, we met Ellee at the Ostrich and my new found friends JollyMolly, Sally in Norfolk, Adrian_rtq, The Hound and Millstream from The Ramblers forum for a walk on either side of The Nar from Castle Acre to Narborough.

The profile of the walk from someone whose just finished the Alpine GR5 is interesting. Notice the giddying height reached of over 60metres!

Adrian had his GPS working (OK, I forgot to enable the Track log on mine) and so we have a nice plot of the actual walk.

Actual length walked, including the three little detours 🙂 was 26.4km / 16.5miles in about 7 hours.

We found ourselves walking 90 degrees out twice, which is about par the course for me. Thank goodness for GPS systems.

Thanks to Ellee I even have a decent piccy of me – just look at that sky, a perfect day, temperatures close to 20 I reckon and a decent OPEN pub at the end Oh, and many thanks to The Hound the best behaved dog I’ve met in a long time.

On the way back we called in at Jeff’s Halloween party with loads of scary kids. Kirsten introduced herself to me as she recognised me from one of Caren’s parties. I wish I had that ability 🙂 Told her the story about the previous night where I had forgotten the face of the lady who I had started the practice dance with, much to my embarrassment.

A busy Saturday

First back from Nicks having completed, at last, the installation of his Arke compact staircase and then straight to Cambridge Rugby Union Football Club for the lunch and match against the Bees (Bradford and Bingley) who Cambridge soundly thrashed at 41 -17 an excellent game and also good lunch in the Camstead suite with Philip and his friends from the Judge Institute, especially Maria Fernanda from Argentina.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeffery Archer and Rod Bishop admiring the pitch at the start.

  Jeffery Archer, Rod Bishop

Then in the evening it was A Charity Ceilidh at Michaelhouse organised by Melissa from The Cambridge University Press. Excellent fun and well attended, mainly by CUP people and their friends.Charity Ceilidh Thanks Jason for telling me about it.

The Kentmere Horseshoe

 On Saturday George and I did the Kentmere Horseshoe in The Lake District. The weather was foul with a couple of very heavy showers and low visibility virtually all the day. Still it was very enjoyable.

  The image  is the memory-map route that we fed into the GPS. For those of you who want to see where we actually walked (:-)) a Google earth file is here for you to download. Unfortunately, as off this post the Google images are not of the highest quality, However, it still gives you a feel of the walk. We did about 1000 metres of ascent in 14 miles. Walking time of 4 hours and total time out of 5 hours.   George was struggling a bit onthe  last ascent but I’m sure it won’t take him long before the boot is on the other foot!

 

Here is George towards the end of the day when we suddenly saw some bright light in the sky – Yes it was the sun about 5 hours to late!

A day on the beach..

On Sunday George works on Southport pier so I thought it would be a good excuse to do a bit more of the round Britain barefoot coastal walk. George dropped me off at Crosby so that I could walk the 15miles on the beach back to Southport.  

 I was lucky enough to see some of Antony Gormley’s (Caution: Flash site) “Another Place” sculptures gazing out across the muddy sea. Very eyrie and splendid. The icecream man was raising a petition to prevent their removal in November to the USA. Previously they have been at Cuxhaven in Germany, Stavanger in Norway and De Panne in Belgium. More close up photo’s off the figures on the  Blueshawk website.

The beach became more deserted as you approach Southport and in fact Southport had the muddiest sand complete with embedded  oil on the whole stretch of the walk, coupled with the rain starting up meant the last stretch of the 15mile walk was not the best. Made me realise why  they needed a pier!

 

 

 

However there are great views (weather permitting) across to Wales from the pier.