Beacon Hill - wet, windy but worth it?

Looking through the rain to Beacon Hill in the distance
Beacon Hill, Near Highclere, Saturday 4th Jan 2014

 "Why?" I asked myself as I pulled off the A34 after a 30 minute drive from Romsey in heavy rain and pulled into the flooded car park at the foot of Beacon Hill.  "Why would anyone choose to walk in this weather?"

 I'm not a fair weather walker really but there has to be a point for wandering up a hill in the wind and rain amidst some of the worse weather we've seen in a while, and there was; 2 of my colleagues (Jodie & Emma) from work who are planning to attempt the 3 Peaks challenge later in the year wanted to "walk up a hill" somewhere close by as driving to Wales (the closest proper hilly area to us) wasn't possible this weekend - and Beacon Hill was the closest, highest and easiest to walk up and around.
The sign of things to come?!
It's not a particularly high hill standing at only 261m but it's fairly high for Hampshire, being a flat ish county with its highest point standing at only a few meters more, and is both a walk you can do straight from the car with easy access to main roads and has the added benefit of a nice circular walk around the old earthworks of Beacon Hill Camp built around 1000BC.

 The whole area is home to a variety of ancient earthworks, forts and Bronze Age barrows as well as the tomb to George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon famous for uncovering Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 with Howard Carter. 

 The walk itself (as you can see in detail from the Social Hiking & ViewRanger log at the end of the post) was fairly short; 2.3km with an altitude gain of 134m.  Walking around Beacon Hill was more so that Emma could start to assess her fitness as she's not done much/any hill walking before - a warm up to our trip to Pen-y-Fan in a few weeks time.
It was certainly a test for waterproofs and balance on the muddy, chalky slopes if nothing else!
Montane Fast Alpine Stretch Neo - amazing jacket
Being such a short plod up, around and back down the hill I didn't take anything with me apart from waterproofs and phone to record the trip on ViewRanger and I decided to give my new Montane Fast Alpine Stretch Neo Jacket a proper test in the elements and I'm pleased to say that it stood up very well.

 I'll be writing up a more detail "first impressions" blog on the jacket soon but in summary the build quality is fantastic and as I normally run very hot when walking I've been really impressed by its breathability - a quality that is often claimed by many waterproof garments but, for me anyway, is not always as good as I'd hoped for.

 Full route and stats on Social Hiking, recorded on ViewRanger via GS4;
Location: Burghclere, Hampshire, UK

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wild camping on Cadair Idris

Image
Leaving Romsey behind at 2pm on a Saturday may seem like a crazy idea when the aim is to travel to the foothills of Cadair Idris in Snowdonia National Park but there is method to my madness! The idea was to arrive around 6pm, park the car and then head up to Llyn Cau (Lake Cau) and set up the tent for a night of Wild Camping and then set off early the next morning on a circular route to the summit of Penygadair (893m) via Craig Cau and Mynydd Moel (863m) before returning to the car and heading home! So it was almost bang on 6pm that I pulled into the car park just off the A487 at Minffordd - unfortunately there is no ticket option for an overnight stay so paying £6 to the (very eccentric) owner of the campsite a few hundred yards down the road achieved the required parking spot for the night. Heading off up the very steep steps that follow the course of the Nant Cadair river from the visitor center takes you up to around 400m and the split of the paths where you fork off to th
Read more

You can't win them all - short walk to Llyn Cau at the foot of Cadair Idris

Image
You always hear it don't you, said by other people, they're the classic words of mountain wisdom: "knowing when to turn back is the most important skill" and for most people who walk, hike and climb in the hills and mountains this saying is never anything more than that - a saying or a phrase to remember just in case.   But sometimes a situation presents itself and you find yourself thinking and remembering that phrase and you realise why it really is the most important skill you can take with you into the hills. Monday 26th August 2013 From the small cottage in Snowdonia national park where we were staying for the August bank holiday weekend we headed out towards Dolgellau and car park at the foot of the Cadair Idris range just off the B4405 in the small village of Minffordd (pronounced "Min futh") which was to be the start of our walk. We'd planned a circular walk from the car park; up towards Llyn Cau ( where we've wild camped before ) vi
Read more

Winter walk on Pen-y-Fan

Image
Back again! Pen-y-Fan summit Somehow it's taken me nearly 3 months to write this walk up so, for those who were with me on the walk, please excuse any bits that I've missed and put them down to poor memory, nothing else! In preparation for a more arduous walk in the summer (a Triathlon of sorts on Ben Nevis to be precise) and as a "intro" to the mountains for Gareth, who'd be part of the Ben Nevis team and who had no real mountain walking experience, I'd planned a trip to Pen-y-Fan and a slight variation on a mountain I've walked up numerous times. The plan was to head up to Wales fairly early and start walking before 9am ideally - mainly so that we'd encounter fewer people on the hill and also to make the most of the snow that would hopefully still be on the mountain after a few days of rain and warmer weather. As mentioned earlier I'd planned a slightly different route for this walk as all of my previous walks on Pen-y-Fan have started
Read more