Always take a compass

Looking back to the "Old Man of Storr" After an amazing week on Skye we decided to visit one of the more iconic parts of the island before heading across to the Cairngorms for another week of walking and climbing. Most people will have heard about, or seen pictures of, the Old Man of Storr and most people will, at a guess, walk from the car park on the side of the A855 up to the strange rock formations that have calved away from the main face of Storr, take some pictures and return to the car.   In itself this is a nice walk and the views looking back across The Old Man of Storr, Needle rock and on out to sea are amazing but we decided that it would be good to include a bit of scrambling and planned a circular route taking us past the rock formations (an area called the Sanctuary), up to the summit of The Storr (719m) and then down the route of the stream near to Bealach Beag and back to the car - all in all a fairly short walk of just over 7km. Looking up to t

Chilling out on the SUP with Hayling beach in the background After last weekend's SUP lesson, subsequent board purchase and paddle on the Hampshire Hamble river we were itching to get back out on the water and on the boards and we'd been watching the wind and tide reports on WindGuru and XC Weather with eagle eyes all week looking for the ideal spot to paddle on. Following our lesson we'd been added to an email list of SUP trips organised by a local boarder and there was talk of a trip from Lepe beach on the Sunday (28th April) morning but after exchanging a few emails we decided that it would be better for us to find a spot that we could get out on the boards on our own to practice and build confidence on the boards. It was during another trip to AB Watersports in Gosport that we spoke to Andy about possible spots and decided to go and check out a few spots on Hayling Island - a place that, despite spending 30 odd years living in the south of England, I've nev

Thursday 11th April, 2013 - Elgol, Skye As part of our week long stay on Skye we'd arranged to do some scrambling on Clach Glas & Bla Bhienn with Mike from Skye Guides - something that we were both equally as excited and apprehensive about as the mountains of Skye are renowned for being a harsh and inhospitable place at the best of times and the recent news of a walker going missing 4 days prior to our trip (the search was unfortunately scaled down and stopped without finding him) had really driven this fact home. Looking up to Clach Glas from the car park We met Mike at the foot of Bla Bheinn, in the car park just off the Elgol to Broadford road, at 8:30am with the weather "ok" and not raining but that was about as good as I can say - the forecast was for rain (or snow higher up) later on in the day and there was still a good covering of snow visible on the tops. Looking up to the "putting green" After a quick hello we had a check

How do you get from 2 weeks walking, scrambling and climbing in the snow in Scotland to paddling along the River Hamble in Hampshire and what is SUP anyway? Well the answer is fairly simple!  On the long drive back from Scotland we were discussing hobbies (other than cycling) that we could both do that wouldn't entail the huge drives that have become a necessary part of our walking and mountaineering trips and Donna decided that she'd like to have a go at Stand Up Paddle-boarding (or SUP for short); so after a bit of googling we booked a lesson for Saturday morning (20th April '13) at Calshot with Paul from Nomadic Kitesurf (more info on their website here ). The lesson was great, Paul was really helpful and after a rather unsteady (and wet!) start we were both paddling along the Calshot spit and round into the sheltered harbour, tackling smaller waves, before heading back along the beach to the 24-7 shop.  We both enjoyed the 2-3 hours and were itching to have ano