A walk around the transport links of Whitchurch

Distance: 3.5 miles
Start & Finish: Either Bell St car park or Whitchurch Silk Mill.  Whitchurch station a possible option.
Conditions: no steep gradients, surface mud underfoot.
Refreshments: (all in Whitchurch town) H's Coffee Shop, The Bell Inn, The Red House, The White Hart, The Kings Arms
Parking: Bell St Car park or the Silk Mill
Links:
Whitchurch web walk number 2.
Runkeeper Route:  Runkeeper


As it was warm outside we decided to go for a short walk.  We have a loop around the town that we do regularly but decided to try something different today.

We decided to choose the walk 2 from the Whitchurchweb website.

We started the walk from the Silk Mill and joined the route at the top of Fairclose as it heads up the path.

The directions have changed at the top of the cemetery due to a recent housing development.

After passing the cemetery enter the housing development and follow the footpath sign between two houses, continue following the path as it parallels the disused railway line and past the old railway station and underpass, continue straight until you come to an open field, cross diagonally across the field and rejoin the route as you arrive at Bloswood Ln.

The rest of the route is as described on the website.

Whitchurch from the Northwest.

This walk has a good view of Whitchurch from the north, but suffers in its adjacency from the A34 and the subsequent road noise is present throughout reducing only within the town itself.

Disused Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway.

In places the route is along the disused Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway (DN&SR) which ran from 1882 until its closure in 1964.  The old railway station can be seen early on, although this is now a private dwelling.

West of England Main Line looking East towards Whitchurch Station. 

Also the route passes over and under the West of England mainline and is fairly close the the station.

DNS&R railway tunnel under the West of England Main Line

As an alternative the route could be started from Whitchurch Railway station by exiting the station and heading straight ahead until you meet Evingar Rd, turn right and follow the road downhill, the trail comes up and joins from 'Pesthouse Ln' on the right just before Ardglen Road.  To return to the station, follow the route coming out of the tunnel under the rail line and turn left as it meets Evingar Ln.

We had an enjoyable short walk and will look to do some more in the near future.

Walk from Horsley, Northumberland.

To get ready for the Christmas Dinner, this is the walk we did from Horsley in Northumberland.

Distance: 4 miles
Start & Finish: Horsley Village, Northumberland.
Finishes with a steep slope uphill.
Soggy ground heading up the hill towards the end.

Runkeeper Route: Map

Pub stops available in Wylam, and two pubs and a cafe in Horsley itself.

Setting off from the village, head East along the main road, just before you exit the village, turn right up a farm track with a foot path sign to Wylam 1 1/2.
Turn left at the end and head straight on to the left of a field, with a waymarker.
Continue straight on past the first wall and across the field passing through a disused gate in the second wall and then turn to cross the next field diagonally, looking for a style on the southern side of the field that will appear shortly.
Once across follow the path to a footbridge across the river and up a short slope.  Head diagonally across the next field towards a style and then head for another style before the road.

Follow the road downhill into Wylam and at the junction turn left to pass by The Ship Inn, and just after The Ship turn right up Chapel Lane and continue until just after you pass over a railway bridge.  Turn right and head down the slope to the disused railway and head west towards Wylam Bridge over the Tyne.  Don't cross over the bridge, instead take the path to the right off the railway and stay on the northern bank still heading west along the path before arriving at the road and continuing along a thin foot path.

When the roadside footpath disappears head off the road down to a footpath at the river side,  pass a house to your right.  Immediately after the house turn right and follow the drive between the house and the pumping station re-emerging onto the road and turn left onto the footpath.

Just before the cottage on the right look for a path signposted Horsley Wood, take this uphill and take the first left and at a warning sign for low power lines take the right fork.

Follow this somewhat squishy (when wet) path up the hill until you reach a junction of trails, take the trail that leads up hill towards and passes to the left of Horsley Wood Cottages, continue up the trail past the twists outside the water treatment works and return to the village.

New laptop or upgrade?

For a number of years I have had a core i3 laptop, that I bought refurbished on the cheap.

At the start of this year I felt that it was starting to get a bit old, slow and a random overheating problem kept occurring.  I could do with something a bit more beef, especially since I was having issues running some Linux distros in Virtualbox.

Having spent a while looking for options and working out which spec would be ideal for me, I had drawn up a list of things that I would like to have.

1.  Preferably 17", minimum 15.6" (the current is 17").

2.  Minimum 8GB ram.

3.  At least one, preferably 2 USB 3 ports.

4.  SSD or at least a hybrid drive.

Having looked around for a while and pricing up a number of possibilities I could never find the right one for me, definitely not in the price range that I was expecting to pay.

I had also always toyed with picking up a Chromebook for the road, but that would not be on the cards if I purchased a new laptop that would be unjustifiable for a while.

One night I looked at the possibility of what I could do with my current laptop, by upgrading the memory and changing the HDD to an SSD.  Whilst thinking about this, remembering that it was a 17" laptop I decided to check the specs on the manufacturers website to check what upgrades were supported.  The real watershed moment was when I noticed that there were not one, but two slots for hard drives, a quick shut-down and opening up the panels on the underside revealed the truth that staring me in the face was an empty hard drive slot.  A quick search on SSD reviews and the timely appearance of PCPRO's feature how fast a PC do you really need spurred me into action and off I roared to the websites to purchase the two things I felt I wanted.

1.  A Samsung 840 Pro SSD (80GB).

2.  8GB of RAM.

Whilst I was out set a backup of the 500GB HDD that was in the laptop and then headed out to purchase the goods.  On my return, excitedly, I inserted the RAM and the SSD, and set about installing Windows 7 on the SSD.  Once complete I did a quick reboot and was shocked that one of the main causes of my previous annoyance the boot time had dropped to around 20 seconds - WOW.  Although some of this could be down to the fresh install and the extra RAM, but still - WOW on an over three year old cheapish laptop.

A quick format of my old HDD, pointing the documents links to the old HDD and off the SSD before restoring my files taking the time to put them in better order and after a few more months of use I am still happy.  Additionally an overheating issue that used to exist has yet to rear its ugly head yet.

Overall these updates have been a huge boost to my current laptop and will keep it going till the end of Windows 7, at which point I expect whether to stay with windows or move across to Linux (I do have access to a Window 8 PC that I can make my decision then).

This freed up the cash to purchase a Chromebook which I use on the road (Chrome Remote Desktop is useful to access the grunt of the home PC when I need it).

How I remain connected on the road will come in a later post.

Another way to avoid a media event.

Over the Royal Wedding and Mayday bank holliday weekend I headed, with friends up to Scotland.

Staying in the Arrochar Hotel, just a stones throw from Loch Lomond, Friday was taken up by driving north and packing.

Saturday morning at 9.30 we arrived at the Cruise Loch Lomond ferry at Tarbet, for the 10 O clock ferry across the Loch to the foot of Ben Lomond, one of Scotland's 283 Munros (mountains over 3000ft).

On arrival we had the chance to see some of the runners competing in a 53 mile race up the west Highland Way.

Once everyone was ready we set off up the trial towards Ptarmigan ridge, keeping away from the tourist route and heading for the steeper slightly harder climb. As we were relying on the ferry for the return journey back to Tarbet we had a farily reasonable time limit to get to the summit and back. We eventually climbed out from the lee of the main ridge and the wind, which we would have to put up with started to make its presence.

After a quick stop for lunch near Ptarmigan ridge we set off for the last climb up the steeper side to the summit, this was quite hard going and required some rest stops, but after a short and tiring haul we arrived at the summit.

This is me at the summit of Ben Lomond with the southern end of Loch Lomond in the background. We did not hang around at the top, as the wind was really uncomfortable, so we found some shelter on the descent on the easier, but less spectacular tourist route back down the mountain.












This is the view from the Carpark at the base of Ben Lomond, waiting for the ferry.











The following day we set off around Loch Long to climb up Ben Arthur, which is more commonly called The Cobbler. This mountain is often overlooked by hardy walkers because it is just short of being a Munro, but is probably more interesting to hike up than its neighbor Ben Narnain.

After a steep initial climb of around 1000ft you get to a more gental slop which glides you up to 2000ft before the steep steps up to the summit. There is another route, which is listed as being a bit of a scramble, but most of us chose to take the steps.

Like Ben Lomond, The Cobbler has that last steep and hard climb to get to the top. Unlike Ben Lomond, instead of being a single peak, The Cobbler is a short ridge with a number of peaks.


At the top of the central peak is this rock, if you check the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cobbler) it will inform you of how to get to the true summit.

With my fear of heights and the wind I opted not to go all the way to the summit.













This is the view from the Central peak to the Northerly peak with Ben Narnain in the Background.

The return back down the moutain was by the same route, and then back to Ben Arthur's Bothy for a well earned cider, before an excellent meal at Ballyhenna restaurant.

We had a short walk along the Loch Lomond on Monday morning before setting off on the return journey back to Newcastle.

And here is a cuddly toy from Kentucky that I pulled from a geocache on Ben Athur, with the hope of helping him on his way to the London Olympics.

Main achievement this weekend: my first Munro.