Or, in fact, forgetting to put them on.
Something I used to do on a semi-regular basis was to wander off for a short hike – usually somewhere within a reasonably easy drive of home, such as the Brecon Beacons or down towards Wiltshire. If I was heading off for the weekend, I’d go somewhere further such as Dartmoor, and if I was off for a little longer I’d likely head towards the Cornish coast or to the Lake District.
That all stopped in 2020 when the pandemic hit the UK. The restrictions that were put in place at one point limited any such activities to places local to home – though where I live features some great places reasonably close. For example, this is on my ‘doorstep’ so to speak:
You should envy me – you really should. I would, if I were you.
Well, perhaps unless you live in the same vicinity, or somewhere equally nice, or even nicer! 😉
As I said, when the pandemic hit in 2020, the restrictions at one point meant I couldn’t go off on any walks much further afield than the local woods shown above, and other places reasonably close – but eventually those restrictions were lifted, so I was able to start taking off again, right?
Well, yes, I was able to – but didn’t. With a few exceptions, I haven’t driven off anywhere for a hike since. In part, the loss of my main source of income a few years back was a factor (heading off for a hike would have felt wrong when I needed to find more work, and of course I had much less money coming in and the cost of fuel was rising), but even with that problem behind me the best I’ve done is consider places to go, but not actually go there.
The exceptions?
Well, one morning a few weeks back I had reason to head up to Pontypool, so while there I nipped over to Blorenge – though that was only a short walk because I was conscious of the time and the need to be back in Bristol for a meeting later that day.
Another, slightly older example is that sometime last year, around September if memory serves, I was given a BBC Master computer (thanks, Steve!) and decided to combine the trip to collect it with a day out in the Cotswolds, to visit a couple of places and get in a bit of walking.
And prior to those two, when my car’s MOT test was due, the garage I used to take it to was convenient for a bit of walking. I’d leave the car with them and go for a wander towards the Severn bridge or, if I had to leave it with them longer, there’s a quite pleasant route to walk home. Those walks don’t happen any more because one of the places I now work is a garage, so for convenience, my car goes there while I’m working, but prior to that and since 2020, there would have been two or three such walks.
In another recent post I mentioned that my old Network Attached Storage (NAS) had failed, that the device was the home of my photo collection, and that I had stupidly overlooked those photos when it came to backups. And that I had therefore lost them – or at least, lost them up to the point that I had decided to put them on the NAS in the first place. I was confident I’d still have them somewhere up until that point.
That point, it turns out, was very early 2014. It appears that I must have made the transfer from another location to the NAS some time after I went to Dartmoor for the weekend in February of that year, but before I took any further photos (or perhaps before I added newer photos to the collection).
Beyond that, I’ve also found some sets here and there, for example where I hadn’t re-used an SD card, or had also copied the photos somewhere more convenient for a temporary/specific purpose but hadn’t subsequently removed them, and in some cases the odd photo rather than the complete set.
For all intents and purposes, though, the vast majority of the photos I’ve taken since February 2014 are gone. For now, anyway, because I may yet attempt to recover the drive itself.
I don’t know just how many sets of photos I’ve lost, but some specific ones do spring to mind. As well as the two or three ‘MOT test’ walks mentioned above, for example, there would have been quite a few (along with other garage visits) between 2014 and 2020. I can also think of at least one trip to the Lake District where I no longer have the many photos I took – it gets a mention on this blog. The last time I walked to the Chartist’s Cave in the Brecon Beacons? Gone. Walks around Pewsey Downs (Adam’s Grave long barrow one side, Knap Hill the other side), along with a few others in that area? Gone.
Photos I’ve taken at various RISC OS computer shows since 2014 are also mostly gone (‘mostly’ because a few of those are among the sets found elsewhere; copied somewhere convenient while I wrote up show reports for RISCOSitory).
And so a few weeks ago I finally decided to put on the old walking boots again, grab my walking poles, along with my wide brimmed hat to protect me from the sun (and the rain), and to head off for a walk. My walking boots and poles are kept in the car – but the hat usually isn’t. This is because I sometimes load up quite a bit in the car – the poles and boots will cope, but the hat would be at risk of being crushed.
I couldn’t find my hat! It was an Australian Outback hat, and has served me well for many years. I actually have two, but one is too big for me, even with a band inside to reduce its size. That one I can find, but I’m completely flummoxed about the location of the one that fits. Solution? I decided to buy another – simple! Problem: I Can’t remember where I bought it (them) originally.
In the end I bought something that is broadly similar, but not as good. It’ll do for now, though. I expect I’ll eventually remember where I bought the original, order another, and then the missing one will randomly turn up.
That said, it was starting to get a bit battered and probably due to be replaced anyway. *shrug*
And so, complete with new hat (which I didn’t wear), earlier this month I headed off for a walk. I decided to go to the same places (ish) that I went when I picked up the BBC Master – it seemed a good starting point to replace the lost photo sets with new ones. The specific places I hit last year were:
- Rodborough Common(s). This was by accident; I’d missed my first target, but as I was driving broadly in the direction I wanted to go for the second, I drove up over the hill, and spotted a small car park. The place looked ‘interesting’ so I pulled in and had a wander.
- Nympsfield Long Barrow. This was one of the sites I intended to visit.
- Uley Long Barrow (aka Hetty Pegler’s Tump). Another site I intended to visit.
As I hadn’t been out for a ‘proper’ walk for a few years, I didn’t intend to go for a long (or difficult) walk last year. My plan was to head for Oakley Wood (near Cirencester), but I completely bypassed that. In the end, the walk I did undertake (wandering around Rodborough common aside) was from the car park for Nympsfield long barrow, heading towards Uley long barrow. I pretty much walked from one to the other (and back) but that walk saw me a long way down a steep hill from the latter barrow, which I opted not to climb! I remember being completely worn out and couldn’t face it, particularly given that I’d have to face other hills to walk back, and that return walk without climbing the hill to Uley long barrow was daunting enough. So instead, I followed the same route back to Nympsfield barrow, and drove from there to the Uley barrow.
My plan last week was to skip Rodborough common, saving that for another time, and to instead just head to the two barrows and walk the same route as before.
I headed for Uley long barrow first (where I ended up taking 121 photos). I then set off by car up to Nympsfield long barrow, but I drove straight past the car park. I pulled in to a small lay-by a little further up the road, intending to turn around, but spotted footpaths heading off into Stanley Wood – so thought, yeah, why not, and went for a wander there (another 309 photos taken).
This, then, became my small walk, covering I think around two and a third miles. There was a very steep climb at the end, though, and with that lack of any real walking in recent years, yes, I was very tired by the end of it. (It didn’t help that because I was only going to go for a very short wander into these woods – and definitely not do a walk of that length – I didn’t take anything with me, least of all any water.)
I then did drive to the car park for Nympsfield long barrow, where I took another 103 photos. In all, that’s 533 photos!
And – referencing the title of this post – at no point did I put on the old walking boots (of which I have two pairs, for different conditions, and which I keep in the car). I kept on my normal, day to day boots, and as these are only cheap, they haven’t survived the walk unscathed – I’ve had to buy another pair. Oops!
When I used to walk more regularly, I tended to plan walks of around six to eight kilometres. That’s a reasonable distance, but not as long as it could be for a day’s hike – but there are reasons!
The average person’s walking speed is around three miles per hour, which just under five kilometres per hour – so a walk of six to eight kilometres is a less than two hour walk (if it’s an easy one – it’ll be longer for tougher walks, with steep inclines or rugged ground, etc). However, although I usually plan that length walk, in practice I tend to walk a greater distance. Not because I reach the furthest point on the planned route and then go on (though that has been known), but usually because I wander around in different directions off of the planned route – I might spot an ‘interesting’ looking path, for example, or a feature in the landscape and want to get a closer look (and take a few pictures). Such things add to the overall distance. Obviously the more I do it, the more it adds.
Then there’s the silly number of photographs I take. Every time I stop to take a picture, I’m adding a little time to how long the walk is going to take overall. (And this is also why I prefer to walk alone. I have walked with others in the past, and been moaned at for slowing down those with me!)
And the other thing is the time I leave home. I tend not to do early. (And the time to get to my destination needs to be factored in as well).
At one stage, I had a database going to record some key details of my walks – the start time, the end time, the true overall distance, and the number of photos I took. The times and distances were recorded via a GPS/mapping app on my phone (with a pause function for when I stopped to eat). The database factored in a few seconds for each photo, deducting it from the overall time to work out an adjusted one, and from that worked out what my likely average speed was. It might be a good idea to either find that database at some point, or start a new one.
But bearing all of that in mind, and looking back at last week’s walk; two and a third miles (approximately) in Stanley Wood. Add in the walking from the car to/around/from Uley long barrow, and the wandering around the area by Nympsfield long barrow, I’d guess my overall total was more than two and a half miles (four kilometres), but probably a little less than two and three quarters of a mile (four and a half kilometres). When allowing for the fact that I haven’t done any serious walking since before 2020, I’d say that compares well with the planned minimum distance of those old walks. That’s probably not bad after a four year hiatus.
That said, I’m going to try to keep them short and easy for some time yet!
As I’ve decided to write a little about the decision to start walking again, and to comment on that first walk, I may as well throw up a few example photos and comments!
A large number of my pictures – particularly those from Stanley Wood – are nothing more than shots of the path ahead of and behind me. Bland pictures like this:
As the caption says, the photo is fairly ‘meh’ – it’s nothing special, and there isn’t any particular subject other than the path leading off. I take a lot of pictures like that, whether on a woodland path, one running alongside (or over) a hill, near the coast, whatever. I do this in case I ever want to use them as support photos for a computer game. Specifically, adventure games (aka interactive fiction), where the image is shown alongside the description of a location. I’ve done this ever since I had my first camera back in the late 1980s, even though at that point I didn’t have a means to get them into the computer (and obviously back then I was using film, so there were far fewer of them because of the cost of the film and getting it developed).
And to date, despite having countless photos taken with that purpose in mind (even after the loss of the NAS), I’ve only ever written one game that uses any of the photos that way – Quicksand.
Sometimes, I’ll take photos of things I spot along the way – which might be an odd (or interesting) rock formation I pass, an interesting feature on a tree, or whatever. Again, I tend to do this with the possibility of game use in mind, though sometimes for other reasons as well. For example, I spotted this on that walk in Stanley Wood and thought it looked like a character from a science fiction TV show from some years ago:
The show I was thinking of is Space Precinct (which I never really watched – a rare case of me giving up after a couple of episodes), and the character was Captain Rexton Podly (or one or two others of the same species).
Something else I spotted along the way was a tree with interesting patterns in its bark – clearly where at some point a branch had been removed (I guess to prevent people climbing?). This has never occurred to me before, but the moment I saw an example on this particular walk, I realised: I imagine those rings/patterns must work in a similar way to the tree rings that would be visible if the tree was cut down which indicates the age of the tree (dendrochronology). i.e. that they probably form over the course of time, with each ‘ring’ indicating a period of growth as the bark forms to cover where the branch was cut.
If that guess is correct, I shouldn’t think the number indicates how long it was since the branch was cut, but rather how long it took for the ‘wound’ to heal over, with smaller branches healing over quicker. You can sort of see how that might work in the picture above – front and centre there’s a pattern with a lot of rings/lines with what looks like the cross section of a branch that has been cut at the top of it, but a little way above, as well as further down and to the left, there are much smaller examples with correspondingly fewer rings/lines.
Here’s a close up of one, just ‘because’:
Going back to before the unplanned walk in Stanley Wood, there was the visit to Uley Long Barrow. Like the walk in the woods, plenty of the photographs I took here are a bit ‘meh’, such as when I walked from the car park across the side of the field to the barrow itself. Even on the final approach to the barrow, the photo is a bit bland – when still far enough off to take in the whole front of the barrow, the entrance is largely obscured:
I think to get a decent shot from there requires a little more height – not just a few inches more on my legs(!) but perhaps at minimum the camera needs to be a few foot higher, such as taken using a mobile phone on a selfie stick, perhaps, or even higher still via a drone. (Hmm. Possible wish-list item, there?)
Up close, though, the entrance is more visible:
Unlike, say, West Kennet Long Barrow (been there, still have the photos!) it’s a bit of a crawl to get inside (but once in, merely stooping becomes an option), and then it’s lovely and dark so the flash is needed. Here’s an example:
I wasn’t alone in there. After taking a number of photos, I spotted this beauty:
That cave spider isn’t quite in focus because I was trying to use the macro facility on my camera (which I consider a user interface fail on the current one) and trying to focus up close and in the dark.
The problem with the macro facility on my camera is that it can’t be manually set. It attempts to detect that you’re trying to focus on something close to the lens, and to switch automatically if so. Just give me a manual option, damn it, like on my previous camera(s).
Anyway, I’m sure professionals can do a much better job. I’m anything but.
I only noticed that one spider at the time, but glancing at the photos after, I realised there were a few in there. For example, there are three in this photo:
Back outside – in the light – and the macro facility is much more practical to use, as seen here:
When I was in this area last year, one of the photos I took – and was very pleased with – was a large spider that had a moth or a butterfly that I couldn’t identify wrapped up and ready for dinner. Now that I have a clear photo of the six-spot burnet, I want to say that was the type of moth in question, but as I no longer have that photo I can’t refer back to it to check.
Revisiting the way the macro facility on my camera is used, even in the light it can get it wrong. It took a few attempts before I could get any passable photographs of these two bugs on a wild flower:
I guess the problem may have been that the broad overall shape of the flower was vaguely similar to a face (round-ish), and the two bugs were more or less positioned such that the camera interpreted them as eyes? I don’t know – but it was very annoying.
Anyway, the last stop of the day was Nympsfield Long Barrow. This site has less of a darkness problem, as its roof has long since gone. Standing just in front of it, facing the entrance, it looks a bit like this:
And standing ‘in’ it at the back, it looks like this:
I tried to take a shot encompassing the entire (open part) of the barrow from one side, but when far enough back to take in the whole thing, the lack of height meant there wasn’t much to see. Getting much closer it’s possible to get most of it in – as per this example:
I was able to get a better perspective from the other side, though:
Again, a little extra height – or a drone – would be handy here. Does it sound like I might be trying to convince myself to look into them? 😉
The barrow is off to one side of a picnic area, sitting atop a hill with a nice view out towards the River Severn and Wales:
Things that should be visible in that photo on the other side of the river (but I’m not sure if I can identify them specifically) include places I’ve been, such as Pontypool and The Blorenge (i.e. where I was a few weeks ago), as well as Sugar Loaf (where I’ve been a few times, but not sure when the last time was – probably after February 2014!) as well as places I haven’t, such as The Skirrid and Hay Bluff.
If you’re looking at the cloud in the top left, I thought it looked a little darker than that on the day, and I did at one point think rain may have been on its way – but I wasn’t far from the car here, and in the end there was nothing to worry about anyway!
As well as the clouds, there was a glider being pulled into the air:
I saw (and took photos of) quite a few when here last year – there’s a gliding club based just over the road, and the (grass) airstrip itself is lined up perfectly with the barrow, so it can be a good spot for seeing them overhead. (Which in hindsight means a drone to use at this particular spot wouldn’t be an option – I’m pretty sure there’s a rule that says they can’t be used within a kilometre (or mile?) of any kind of airfield).
If you happen to be here at the right time, it can also be a good place to watch (and potentially photograph) people paragliding and hang gliding:
I didn’t see any this time, and (other than spotting someone hang gliding elsewhere in the area while I was driving) none last year. I do intend another visit, though – I still want to walk the same route as last time – so maybe I’ll get lucky on that trip?