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A walk to Grand View Point Overlook, Canyonlands National Park

Our campsite, just outside Moab, Utah is in the middle of the Colorado Plateau. The plateau varies between three to twelve thousand feet above sea level and stretches over four states. Consisting of high, sparsely populated and arid desert land it’s home to no less than nine National Parks, including the Grand Canyon. Even if you’ve never visited you will have seen the plains, canyons, red rock towers and buttes of the Colorado Plateau in countless movies about the ‘Wild West’ from The Searchers to Forrest Gump. In fact, the opening scene from Mission Impossible II was filmed on the trail we will be walking today.

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A walk along the Grand Balcon Sud, Chamonix-Mont-Blanc

My first visit to Chamonix was in 1993 when I walked there from the shores of Lake Geneva doing a section of the GR5. Thirty years later I walked there again taking the long way round from Les Houches when hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc. Last summer I actually got to drive into town when Mish and I headed off on our summer road trip to the French Alps.

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Lens Artists Challenge – Last Chance

Having only joined the lens artist challenge last week I’m fortunate to have a years worth of pictures to choose from for this weeks challenge which is hosted by all so I’ll link it to Sofia’s Post.

The theme provides an opportunity to post pictures that were taken in 2024 but have not previously been posted. It’s also an opportunity for me to post some of the non walking related pictures that I take on my travels.

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Lens Artists Challenge – Winter

Over the last few months I’ve been looking at the various challenges that appear on WordPress, watching from afar and wondering if I should dip my toe into one of them.

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A walk to The Falls of Kirkaig

The car park for the Falls of Kirkaig is empty when we arrive with two steak pie and mashed potato dinners purchased twenty minutes earlier from Lochinver Larder but still hot. “How many other vans do you think will turn up, three, four?” I muse over our meal. Mish looks out of the window at the April showers and lowering temperature and confidently predicts “none”. Surely not, we’re in beautiful Assynt, surrounded by ancient woodland with the Kirkaig river not twenty feet from us. When I look out the window in the early hours the rain has stopped and we are alone, with just the owls, the roaring river and a billion stars twinkling in the ink black night sky to keep us company. Wives, why are they always right.

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Lingmoor Fell from Great Langdale

My walk up Lingmoor Fell starts conveniently at the National Trust campsite at the head of Great Langdale. I don’t even have to move the van and take full advantage by having a lazy breakfast. This may be my first walk of book four but it certainly won’t be my last from this location as Great Langdale is the launch pad for some of the big ones and a place I will get to know well over the coming months.

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A Walk Up Slieve Donard

What they undertook to do they brought to pass;
All things hang like a drop of dew Upon a blade of grass
William Butler Yeats

Ambitions and goals are important things in life. They give you purpose and hope. They keep you focused, moving forward and concentrating on the future instead of dwelling on the past or being indolent in the present. I have a fair number of goals, targets and projects or more poetically, dreams, hopes and aspirations. There are things I want to see and experience, walks I want to complete and places I want to visit before I go off to rest with my ancestors. And one long standing project is to stand on top of the highest points in the five nations that make up the British Isles, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Northern Ireland.

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An Outer Langdale Round

‘If I should bow my head let it be to a high mountain’ Maori Proverb

I’m back in Great Langdale just a couple of weeks after my previous visit when I was fortunate to walk the Langdale Pikes in glorious weather. The weather isn’t so good today but it’s dry and the tops are clear which is what matters. I’m heading for a group of hills that form an outer circle around the rather compact Pikes, Blea Rigg, Sergeant Man, High Raise and Thunacar Knott. And in visiting these, I’ll also bring to a conclusion my journey through Wainwright’s Book Three, The Central Fells.

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The Langdale Pikes

Just as autumn seemed to have arrived, summer sunshine and warmth has returned for one last hurrah and I’m fortunate to be in Great Langdale to enjoy it. The Langdale Pikes are an iconic group of hills whose relative accessibility, moderate height and interesting routes have made them emblematic of all that is attractive about the English Lake District. From the moment their shapely and unique outline is glimpsed across Windermere on the road to Ambleside you know you have entered into the heart of Lakeland with its mountains, lakes and rivers. It’s time to relax, breathe out, and for a while leave your workaday stresses behind and allow your heart to be stirred in anticipation of adventures that lie ahead. And today, in the sunshine, I’m walking the Langdale Pikes.

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A walk up Ullscarf from Thirlmere

My last visit to Ullscarf was thwarted when the clouds which had been hovering above it all day decided to lower onto the summit plateau just as I reached it. As I have a rule that I will be able to see the view from each top on my journey through the Wainwright’s this unfortunately meant a return visit. At least going up again gives me a chance to try a different route and today I’ll be ascending via Harrop Tarn and returning down the Wythburn valley which means I don’t have to walk back on myself.

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