Staff Blogs
Tall tales from the outdoors. Outside staff are often to be found running over moors, trekking up mountains and climbing up everything from high mountains to Stanage boulders. Occasionally they'll even be caught squeezing under mountains, and every year at least two of them will find some way to climb a frozen Kinder Downfall.
When we can persuade them to stop moving for long enough, we get them to write it all down and share some of the photos they've taken. Welcome to the Outside staff blogs.
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Tilley Hats Review
A long term investment - or Finders, Keepers! Some products in the outdoor industry are more hi-tech than others. The Tilley T3 hat that I stumbled across back in 2005 is one of the more time-honoured designs. I found said Tilley hat, lost by its previous owner, floating gently on...
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Wainwright’s Coast to Coast to Conclusion
When I previously wrote about our west to east walk following the route invented by the legendary guidebook writer Alfred Wainwright from Coast to Coast, we had reached the lovely market town of Richmond in North Yorkshire on 8th October 2020. Progress was halted shortly afterwards by the current governments’...
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The Dragon’s Back Ultra - Training
5 months to go and Wales is about to open up Splitting logs was not a good idea. A warm house perhaps, but also a muscle spasm protecting a jarred back. This was the first injury since starting my Dragon’s Back training schedule exactly six months ago. Fortunately, it occurred...
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Beating the Lockdown Blues
Shipton, Blank on the Map - a rare 1st edition My strategy for beating the lockdown blues is in two parts. I got the idea for 'bookshelf expeditions' from a book in my bookcase that belonged to my Dad. It is called Blank on the Map and it was written by...
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Lockdown training for the Dragon's Back
It is tempting to grumble about the current situation and how it might be affecting my training for The Dragon’s Back mountain race in September, but of course compared to most I have nothing to complain about. All I have to do is look out the window to realize how lucky...
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Walking Wainwright’s Coast to Coast
The Coast to Coast Walk is an approximately 190-mile, unofficial and mostly unmarked* long-distance footpath in Northern England. It was devised by Alfred Wainwright (AW) and published in 1973. It passes through three delightful and contrasting National Parks: the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales, and the North York Moors. Unlike...
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Running the Dragon's Back - training
I am now approaching completion of 9 weeks of my Dragon's Back training plan devised by Dave Taylor. Initially I wondered how I could possibly fit it into my work and home life, but it proved easy to sort out priorities and ignore less compelling tasks and activities. Also, the...
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Running the Dragon's Back
At the beginning of July I began to entertain the thought of running the infamous Dragon’s Back Race in 2021. This 5-day ultra-marathon journey down the spine of Wales is billed as the ‘world’s toughest mountain race’. As expected, Jane was enthusiastic and supportive, but my twin brother Colin was...
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Day return hiking - completing the Pennine Way
Earlier in 2020 I reported on my attempt to complete the Pennine Way for the second time, how the Covid-19 lockdown had thwarted me and how I had diverted the remaining miles to Sheffield parks. Government rules have morphed somewhat since then and at the time of this adventure, you...
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The new Norman: day walks in the Peak District
Our current tranche of politicians often refer to the time when the worst of the Coronavirus pandemic is over as returning to a “New Normal”. Aside from the fact that you can’t, by definition return to something that is new, I would also make another suggestion, don’t go for Normal...