Mr Wood's Bittern and other short stories.

It had been a while since my last jaunt in the hills, November 5th last year to be precise when my mate Mark and I did a lovely round of fells from Mungrisdale including a thrilling ascent of Blencathra via Sharp Edge.
A few things have conspired to get in the way since then and kept me localised until very recently and through the winter months I had increasingly found myself holed up in The Bittern Hide at Old Moor RSPB reserve in the Dearne Valley.  Old Moor link.

Over the last 18 months or so, I had become increasingly frustrated with my pathetic attempts to get a glimpse of the Bittern's that allegedly frequent the reed beds close to the hide.

Bittern Hide, home from home

My optimistic, and subsequent disappointed "Tweets" of each lengthy and fruitless visit to the hide caused much merriment and indeed, hilarity amongst the volunteer staff at Old Moor.
During the week, when I was at work, there would be regular sightings of said birds and on occasions stunning photographs of the Old Moor Bitterns swooping in to roost on the reed beds would be posted on the Old Moor forum, as if to taunt me.
When the weekends came around I would eagerly turn up at Old Moor and scurry around to the Bittern Hide clutching my binoculars firmly in gloved hands, log book and pencil at the ready and wait patiently for hours on end for the Bitterns to appear....Coots, Mallards, Tufted Ducks, Canada Geese and the occasional Mute Swan would sometimes break the monotony of this seemingly senseless pastime.

Mute Swan passes serenely in front of the Bittern Hide 

On each occasion I would trudge back to the visitor centre in the fading light with hands in pockets and shoulders hunched, cursing my bad luck.

But I am a determined, stubborn old bugger if nothing else, every Bitternless visit made me more determined to succeed (excuse the pun) and eventually my patience was rewarded.
On Sunday 5th February at precisely 4:34 pm my big moment came. A brief, but positive sighting of the bird of my dreams! 

BITTERN!

The news of this momentous occasion spread like wildfire, my Twitter time line almost went into meltdown trying to cope with ironic/sarcastic messages of congratulations and I even merited a special mention that evening in Dave Simmonite's daily sightings form Old Moor.(link here) Mr Wood's Bittern All good clean fun, and proof that all things do indeed come to he who waits, if you're daft enough to wait long enough!

You would think that I would have seen enough of the Bittern Hide, the reed beds, and usual paltry gathering of common as muck birds to last me a lifetime, not the case, I will be back doing the rounds on on the reserve and heading off to the bittern Hide as usual in the coming months and hopefully years.
It was never about the Bittern at all really. I love Old Moor and the reed beds in particular. It's a lovely place to spend a few hours to gather my thoughts and I am fortunate to have it so close to my home.
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Anyway, back to the hills...The weekend before last, a favourable weather forecast saw my mate Mark and I speeding westwards to Snowdonia to snatch another memorable hill day in this spectacular corner of Great Britain. The two best day walks I have ever done, The Snowdon Horseshoe and a traverse of Tryfan, Bristly Ridge and the Glyders were both done in superb weather conditions and were were not to be disappointed this time either.
Ogwen Valley was the start point for a smashing circular walk taking in Y-Garn, Elidir Fawr, Carned Y Filiast and back along the minor road to Ogwen.

Lynn Idwal

Ogwen Valley from Y Garn

Mark on the shapely summit of Foel  Goch

Elidir Fawr

Another great day spent in Snowdonia, I am looking forward to spending more days and weekends there in the not too distant future.

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My hill walking exploits tend to run similar the the old Yorkshire Traction buses, I don't get one for ages, then suddenly two come along together.
Hence, when a twitter pal, Carl Mynott, aka "@Locomountaineer" aka "good bloke" (see link to Carl's pages here) Carl's blog , suggested a trip for a bit of a backpack/wild camp outing in rehearsal for his 1st TGO Challenge and my forthcoming Skye trip, I eagerly snatched his hand off and set about planning a route.
Carl is from somewhere "darn sarff" and he drove up the A1 early on Saturday morning to meet me at the services just north of Doncaster. I took up driving duties and 2 hours later we found ourselves tucking into breakfast in" Laura in the Lakes" in  Keswick, before pushing on to park the jalopy in the village of Grange.
It turned out that Carl and I share similar interests other than walking, and the journey passed quickly as I bored him with details of my previous TGO Challenge trips, and stories of elusive Bitterns.
The route from Grange took us up through lovely woodland to the delightful top of Grange Fell and onwards to Great Crag, where a sudden, violent hail shower blew in just as we left the top. Descent was a bit precarious and I almost came a cropper at one point on the wet stony path down to Stonethwaite Beck.

King's How on Grange Fell

Eagle Crag in the sunshine

The route was then along the lovely Langstrath, which has a Scottish glen like feel to it, hemmed in by the high hills on 3 sides.

Carl admires the view back down Langstrath

We took a joint decision to cut short my planned route up to Tongue Head and Allen Crags, and instead headed straight up the hillside to find a suitable camping spot on Glaramara as the weather was closing in a bit.

We found a couple of nice pitches at around the 2000' contour height overlooking Langstrath and the Langdale Pikes.

Camp at 2000' on the flanks of Glaramara

Food and whisky were consumed and I eventually drifted off to sleep to the sound of rain on the tent at about 8.30 ending a good day.

I woke several times during the night, feeling the cold.and listening to the flapping of the tent in the wind. I eventually dropped off into a restful sleep and opened my eyes at around 06.30. 

Unzipped the tent to be greeted by this wintry scene...

View from the tent at dawn

The old Laser not bearing up too well to the conditions

Another joint decision saw us abandon plans of two further Wainwright ticks in the blizzard like conditions and instead head back down to Langstrath.
Just below the level of our camp site we copped a sighting of 4 Snow Buntings taking flight up the hillside, as identified by Carl. A life tick for me and great to see them in their natural environment,

Carl leading the way on the tricky descent

Langstrath

It was a lovely low level mornings walk back to the car. Birdsong and wildlife abounded, we had sightings of Jay, Buzzards, Ravens,  Red Squirrel, Chaffinch, Coal Tits and a Grey Wagtail along the way.

Red Squirrel

We called in at a lovely cafe in the village of Rosthwaite for hot tea and bacon sandwiches before eventually continuing below Castle Crag and beside the river Derwent  back to Grange to pick up the car for the long journey home.
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It had been a great couple of days spent in the company of Carl in a glorious area of Lakeland. 

I have decided that backpacking is probably the best way of mopping up the final 80 odd Wainwright's that I still have to complete and hopefully Carl and I can team up again sometime for another outing.

All in all not a bad start to the year...

2011 A Year of Ups and Downs

As another year comes to an end I suppose I ought to try and put things into prospective and summarise my year both on and off the hill.

Family Life

On a personal note, it's been an awful year for my family. 

My Mum passed away in October following a short illness and it's been a real struggle trying to come to terms with her passing. 

Mum was 82, a good age I suppose, but no matter how much I had tried to prepare myself for the inevitable, I was not ready when the time came. 

I will get stronger with my feelings as time goes by and everyone has to go through the grieving process at some point in their lives, but for now I am finding it very difficult to deal with.

Throughout Mum's illness and during the weeks that followed, my close family were a tower of strength. My "kids" all now grown up, were an absolute rock and without their support I don't know how I would have coped at all. 

The one bright shining light this year has been my beautiful granddaughter. 

Phoebe was 2 in June and is an absolute delight to be around as are all children of that age. I see her almost every day as my wife Steph looks after her while her Mum, Hannah works in the afternoons, I can't wait to get home from work to spend some time with her. She is just adorable. 

Work

I work as a Quality Engineer for an engineering company in Rotherham. I have been with them for just over 8 years, which is not bad going these days. The company is doing as well as can be expected in the current climate and is as secure a job as one could hope for. 

I managed to get my son, Andrew a job working in my department in August and he works on the next desk to his old man...which is nice.

Sport

I no longer participate in sports, other than a frustrating game of golf from time to time and instead get my sporting pleasure from watching Andrew play cricket. He's a talented batsman, far better than I ever was, and represents Wath CC 1st team in the South Yorkshire League. Andrew also represents England Deaf cricket team and played in Australia last year.

For my sins, I also support Sheffield United and the least said about them this year the better.

Walking

An average year on the hills for me this year. Steadily plugging away at the Wainwrights hill list, of which I have now completed 124 including 27 this year. Highlights include Place Fell (100th) in January, Rampsgill Head, (107th) half way point in June, a lovely backpack through the Central Fells with an overnight camp on Greenup Edge in July, and more recently, on 5th November, a sparkling round of fells including Blencathra via Sharp Edge. 

My mate Mark and I will continue to plug away at the Wainwright's over the next few years until we have both completed AW's list.

I completed my 5th TGO Challenge walk in May, which will go down as one of the toughest Challenges ever, weather wise.  I was disappointed with the walk, in that I hardly walked any of the grand, high level route that I had planned, yet still enjoyed the event because of the great camaraderie that exists amongst Challengers. This really is a great event and I hope to be back for my 6th in 2013 as I am taking a voluntary year off next year.

Bird watching

I am very fortunate to have a RSPB reserve on my doorstep, and when I have a bit of spare time I like to nip down to Old Moor in the Dearne Valley to spend a couple of hours watching birds and socialising with like minded folk. I'm not a complete anorak, you understand. and don't keep count of the birds I have seen or anything like that, but I do find that it's a great place to while away the time and gather my thoughts.

Highlights of the birding year include an Osprey which we had in the area throughout September, high tide wader watch at Gibraltar point in September, which I managed to sneak off to during a family holiday in Skegness, and the many hours I have spent at Old Moor throughout this year.

Well that's about it for 2011, it's New Year's Eve already!

Thank's for reading this, and any of my other postings this year, not sure how long I will keep blogging for, but I do enjoy it and for some reason I feel better about things just writing this post, so we'll see.

Here's hoping for a happier 2012.

Happy New Year everyone.

Sanctuary on my Doorstep

All my life, I have lived in South Yorkshire.

I grew up in a town called Wath-Upon-Dearne and attended Wath Victoria Junior and Infants school and then Wath Comprehensive school. I left school in 1977 and started work at one of the local collieries as an apprentice Blacksmith Plater Welder.

During my youth, my enduring memory of Wath was of the thick smog which hung over the town most days as a result of the huge coking plant that was situated on the edge of the town. Back then, there were also two collieries in the town, Wath Main and Manvers Main and a huge marshalling yard (Link) which transported the coal and coke all over the north of England.

The area was booming, families moved into Wath from all corners of Britain, new homes were built and there was money to spend. The local shops and pubs had never had it so good.... ..but the environment was paying the price.

Today all of the industry has long since gone. Where the coking plant and Manvers Main once were, stands Dearne Valley College and numerous Call Centres. A new road starts here and passes directly through the area where the marshalling yard was situated.
The land on which Wath Main proudly stood for over 100 years has been extensively developed and now hosts a golf course and a lake. Thousands of trees have been planted and the area is now quite pretty, totally transformed in the space of 25 years.

The new road continues here to eventually link up with the M1 and passes new housing developments, a rather tacky looking new hotel and the inevitable KFC. About 300 yards further along the road a rather innocuous sign post, just before a mini roundabout exclaims.."RSPB-Old Moor"......This is the sanctuary on my doorstep.

There have always been wetlands in this area adjacent to the River Dearne and when I was growing up in Wath my mates and I used to venture down there occasionally. We called it "Swan Lake" or "Swanny". There was not much there to interest us though and we generally stayed closer to home.

In 1998 Barnsley Council, as part of the regeneration of the area, opened up a visitor centre here in some converted farm buildings. Further development took place in 2002 as a result of a lottery grant , and the following year the RSPB took over the site. They have lovingly developed the site and other wetland areas close by, and what we have today is a first class area of outstanding beauty for all to enjoy.

Entrance to Old Moor

Please take time to have a look on the RSPB-OLD MOOR WEBSITE .
Theres lots of information on the website...and don't miss fat Berts daily updates on the days sightings at Old Moor!
Download the map and go and have a look around.

Old Moor Wetlands

Autumn Colours

Grey Heron in the rain.

Tufted Duck

The onset of winter at Old Moor

Icy view from the Wath Ings hide