Day Return to Bloworth Crossing . . . and Beyond
A walk along the mineral railways of the North York Moors . . . Continue reading →
View ArticleA Blackpowder Blast From the Past
IUSED to blow up huge chunks of Cumbrian hillside for a living. I stopped doing it not through any regard for conservation or the environment, but because I’d noticed that none of my more senior...
View ArticleMud: It’s Alive and Sticking
MUD. Don’t go there except with your feet. Let it fill your boots and stick like it’s supposed to. But don’t delve any deeper unless you want a shovelful of acronyms . . . Back in November I set out …...
View ArticleOnly a Rosedale, I give you . . .
THIS set out to be a hike to the Rosedale iron mines – but I got tangled in a fox hunt and that’s far more entertaining. It was also a day of bewildering signposts, dazzling sunlight, heather fire haze...
View ArticleI Must Go Down to South Gare Again . . .
Searching for the meaning of life on the beach at Teesside . . . Continue reading →
View ArticleForever Changing – Broad Majestic Duddon
A walk along the shifting sands of the Duddon estuary . . . Continue reading →
View ArticleSutton Bank, Witches and Featherless Geese
A walk along the Cleveland Way from Sutton Bank . . . Continue reading →
View ArticleThirty Years On – Cwmorthin Revisited
From one side of a Welsh mountain to another – underground and overground . . . Continue reading →
View ArticleManod and Mysteries, Earth and Environment
Underground bunkers in the Welsh mountains . . . Continue reading →
View ArticleThe High and the Mighty – Carneddau
SOMETIMES it’s enough just to climb a mountain and allow your thoughts to sail on the wind. No worries, no anchors. This is one of those days . . . I’m not too familiar with the mountains of Wales, and...
View ArticleAbove Bethesda – Ancient and Modern
TO the south-west of Bethesda an open moor rises towards the clouded heights of Elider Fawr and Mynedd Perfedd. It’s a wild place dotted with occasional ruins and sheepfolds and crossed by indistinct...
View ArticleMourne Mountains: Slieve Binnian and Second Impressions
Northern Ireland's best-kept secret – the mountains of Mourne . . . Continue reading →
View ArticleSlieve Muck, Moal Chobha’s Fort, Veering, Visibility Good
McEff is again let loose in the Mourne mountains . . . Continue reading →
View ArticleBlencathra by the Back Door . . . Grudgingly
MUNGRISEDALE is a village where curtains twitch. Eyes watch your every movement from behind rhododendrons and clipped hedges. Security cameras are positioned above cottage doorways. And the parish...
View ArticleEast of Ullswater – An Inland Voyage
THE steamer Lady Wakefield chugs down the lake with its cargo of day-trippers. This is the way to embark on a walk. Throb-throb of engines; white light shimmering on water; the scent of fresh-cut hay...
View ArticleGreen Remembered Woods
WANDERING through hay meadows. See twisted hawthorn trunks and rusted metal gates hanging from stone stoops; fields swooping down towards an estuary and distant Lakeland fells. Smell hay and damp...
View ArticleConiston Fells: Highways, Byways, Narrow Ways
A day tramping over the Coniston fells . . . Continue reading →
View ArticleStarry, Starry Night
IT’S turned midnight and stars are burning. There’s a smell of autumn in the grass and draughts stir the flysheet. The summer isn’t quite dead but it’s fading. In the deep shades of night, lying still...
View ArticleA Pennine Trek, Part 1 – Moorland and Mustard Gas
The first stage of a three-day walk from Bowes to Hexham . . . Continue reading →
View ArticleA Pennine Trek, Part 2 – A Night Beneath Hangman Hill
McEff continues his backpacking trip to Hexham . . . Continue reading →
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More Pages to Explore .....