Carsington Water

Another of Paul Chandler's walks, this time a circuit of Carsington Water.  It was quite a fresh morning and supposed to be overcast, but the sun was actually shining as we set off from Sheep Wash car park, heading towards the main visitor's centre (where I had a wee break and we cracked out the bananas) and the dam.

Looking back towards the visitor's centre, through the sailing club

The southern end of the reservoir

We stopped at the building on the east coast that has all the stuff made of wood in it - sounds normal I know, but everything's made of rough cut wood, it's really cool!  I'd been there before when we were on a  Bird Race, but most of the others hadn't.

I was beginning to wonder if we were going to have a lunch break when we stopped at a couple of benches in a field near Sitch Farm.  From there, we continued away from the water's edge through woodland to a fork in the track.  Paul had turned uphill up the right-hand branch, away from the water, but there was a general revolt and the rest of us took the low road - he gave in to pressure in the end!!

We crossed the B5035 and followed the road into Carsington.  I don't think I've ever gone through the village from that direction before and there are some really nice cottages,

one of which had a very unusual lintel under the window.


A little further along the road, we came to the entrance to Hopton Hall - apparently the snowdrops are well worth a visit in February - but the wall that runs along the road is really quite spectacular.  It's known as the "crinkle crankle" wall and Niki and I speculated that the curves were to trap the sun's warmth to grow particularly delicate fruit trees.  Having done a bit of research on the derbyshireuk.net website, the wall was actually for 'forcing' fruit trees to flower and produce fruit early, so we weren't too far off.

The "crinkle crankle" wall

Hidden Earth (Sunday)

After a day's caving in Swildon's (or not in my case, as I forgot my furry suit  :-( ), we (myself and Paul, Keith and Pete, Simon and Mike) headed over to Churchill (with a slight hiccup on the way when I had to pull over and trot huff and puff back down the road to drop the key off).

We arrived to find people milling about looking surprisingly healthy, although when we hit the cafe for a greasy spoon breakfast, Jess was looking a bit pale and tired.  Apparently Big Jim, on the other hand was still in bed 'damaged' - serves him right for starting at lunchtime on Saturday!!

Anyway, we had a look round the sports hall at all the trade stands and displays, and somehow Keith and I found ourselves having a go at the Speleo Olympics.

Start on the floor, up and over, and finish on the floor!

I've never been in a ball pit quite like this before!!

This perspex 'tube' looked extremely straight forward,
but was actually quite tight once you were in it!

Getting into this tube was one thing...

Getting out...

was quite another!!!!

And then I had to help Keith out too

We thought we'd done really well and we stood there congratulating ourselves until the guy timing us (oh yes!), came over and told us we'd not only forgotten the tackle bags in the box at the bottom of the black tube, but that we were supposed to take them back through the other three obstacles.  Bugger that!!!

I had really bad bruises on my arms and left leg for a fortnight afterwards.  I don't think I've got that badly bruised doing the real thing!!!

Walk around Matlock

Having changed my working days, I was able to join Paul Chandler and other friends on one of his midweek walks.  We met at the cable tramway shelter in the edge of the park near Crown Square.  Frankly, if Paul, Peter and Rich hadn't already been there, I wouldn't have had a clue where we were supposed to be meeting, I'd never realised that the funny little building was a tramway shelter, but apparently it used to stand at the bottom of Bank Road, where the tramway used to run.

We waited for a while for Martin and Paul's cousin and his wife, but ended up setting off before they joined, Martin part way up the hill and Mark and Vicky near the top.  From there we turned west along the hill...

View south towards High Tor

climbed a bit more, went along a sports field and dropped down through Hackney to cross the A6 and drop down to the river.  After a pleasant wander across the fields, we emerged between the Square & Compasses pub and the bridge in Darley Bridge, crossed the bridge and stopped by the river for a cuppa (and, in my case, half my lunch!).

We shortly left the road again and headed southeast up and over the hill behind Oker, passing Graces Well on the way.  No-one knew anything about it, which is unusual... research needed!!  [Couldn't find much on the interweb, but it was apparently named after a Grace Greatorex and was, indeed, the water supply for cottages in the area before mains water.]

Crossing the road, we re-entered the fields and emerged on the road again right next to the turn off to Snitterton Hall, which Martin, in particular, knows well.  We took the track that heads up the hill towards Leawood Cottage, the old Op Mole HQ and then straight up the side of the hill, which was pretty steep, and suddenly everything started looking familiar - we'd arrived at Jug Holes.  Most of us went exploring into the main large entrance and had a poke around at the entrance into the lower series, where a large crack has appeared in one boulder above the climb, looking extremely dodgy.

Rich and ?? - I think he was after Paul's sandwiches (the dog that is!)

After a spot of lunch, we continued up the path to Salters Lane, crossed over and picked up the Limestone Way, which we followed over Masson Hill and back down into Matlock.

Looking northwest towards Entoven's

Matlock Bank

Passo Tres Croci Son Zuogo

We packed and left Haus Vallentin after breakfast and headed east up the Falzarego Pass for the last time and down into Cortina.  We ended up going almost completely around the one-way system and had, in fact, been spat out the far side of town before we managed to work out how to get to the road we needed.

We finally arrived where we needed to be and found somewhere to park.  The walk appeared to follow the contours pretty closely, so I was hoping there wouldn't be too much up and down (particularly the down, I did enough of that yesterday!).  We hadn't gone very far when we spotted some old WWI fortifications of some description.

Judging by the bullet holes behind where Paul is standing, they had seen some action!  Access was supposedly not allowed, but clearly people had been inside and I went in a little way (it was pretty wet and slimy) with the teeny, tiny light on my keyring, which was bright enough to show that a passage went off the back of the room on the left and down into the hill.  Very tempting to a caver!!

 

A few hundred metres further on, the track, wide enough for three people to walk side by side, narrowed down to a small path.  The drops on the left hand side became quite hefty and in one or two places it made me sweat a bit as we tiptoed along over roots and loose stuff.

 Treacherous tree roots!

The walk continued to contour along the bottom of the cliffs, into clefts where small streams crossed our path.  In one small valley there was even snow!!!!

After possibly 3km, we reached a short section of via ferrata, which Paul investigated while I was photographing some...

Monks Hood

and...

Wolfsbane

He came back to say that it was more of a handline than anything, but we always knew that we'd have to turn back at some point and so we decided that it may as well be now.

The view across the valley on the way back

Gardena Pass, Rifugio Puez and Vallunga

Down for breakfast and I made sure I had extra this morning, seeing as it’s a big walk. Because I was till aching, I also popped some Ibuprofen - Boyd swears by them!! Paul realised that we’d forgotten to order rolls last night and I mentioned it to Ruth, who very kindly went and made us some. We got our stuff together and drove out through La Villa, stopping off at a place on the way to finally post the postcards. Drove up the Gardena Pass, which seemed fairly familiar and then on down in Selva, which definitely wasn’t.

We found the road easily enough and somewhere to park, just down the road from the cable car station. The fact that this wasn’t the P on the map completely escaped me until later, but actually it didn’t matter. We needed to pay E4, but neither of us had any change at all, so we drove up to the cable car station, paid for our tickets separately, and used the change to pay for the parking. Then we walked back up the road and caught the cable car up to the top + a bit of the Gardena Pass. We saw a couple of marmots on the way, which was a treat.

The view back down the Gardena Pass

Headed off along the path that runs below the VFs and then took path 2, up and through a rocky valley, up and down a bit and then up again to a fence line.

Looking back through the rocky valley

It was a very cold wind at this point, so I put my waterproof on and rolled up the sleeves. Through the fence line was the ‘escape’ valley, but I felt absolutely fine and still strong, so I said I’d like to push on to the Rifugio and the main Vallunga valley.

The view down the 'escape' valley

Looking across the head of the 'escape' valley to the highest point of the walk

We headed off around the head of the ‘escape’ valley and then up again to a cross, the highest point on our walk at over 2,500m.  From there the terrain was positively lunar, with so much rock exposed that it almost looked like snow.  Part way across this area, which was fairly gently undulating, we stopped for a bite to eat and ate our rolls, which were a bit messy (tomato everywhere!), but lovely.

From there we continued on and initially I thought we were going to have a very steep drop and rise into a valley that appeared on our right (kind of south east),

The valley to our right

but then I realised we were going to follow the ridge in between this valley and Vallunga.

A preview of Vallunga - they don't call it the long valley for nothing!!

From there it was a fairly steady rise to Rifugio Puez – saw another marmot, whistling as it ran down the edge of a cliff - and although it was by now quite cloudy, it was still sunny, although still a cold wind, so we sat inside.

I discovered that I’d caught the sun again because I hadn’t been wearing my hat. The Factor 30 is fine as long as I keep my horrid hat on. We discovered afterwards that we’d only missed the others by about 15-20 minutes, as they left about 1:45pm and we arrived about 2pm.

I was still feeling pretty good at that point, but now the bit I’d been vaguely worrying about as I really wasn’t sure how my knees would hold up.

Down and down and down, right across the head of the valley to

join the path that comes down in the far corner.

In fact the path was quite long, but because of that it was also a bearable steepness, so we contoured around

the head of the valley, over a big lump and met with the path that went straight from the col we’d crossed earlier. Wouldn’t have fancied coming down that way, it was all scree and looked horribly loose.

From there we followed a lot of scree alongside water worn gullies and kept dropping steeply until we got into the trees. From there it started to level out a bit and I suggested a second stop to give my knees a rest. Paul pointed out that it was 3:40pm and we had about three miles to go, so we continued... we didn’t really have much choice.

Once we got onto flatter ground in the grassy sections, Paul set a furious pace, which I managed to keep up for a while – we still had more than two miles to go – but eventually we had to slow a bit. After another brief stop we just kept going, meeting more and more people who were walking up from the car park that we meant to park in. Actually I’m glad we didn’t because we’d probably have walked back along the road to get the cable car and the way we ended up doing it was much more pleasant and took us straight back to Biscuit Tin at 5:15pm, a total time of 6½ hours, with a total stoppage time of probably nearly an hour. Not bad considering the book suggested a time of 6 hours, particularly after the fiasco yesterday. Weird how completely different two days can be.

We got back to Pedraces in about three quarters of an hour and had time for a shower and a start on the packing before going down for dinner, which was fish and chips. Waggy had seconds of nearly everything, it’s a wonder he doesn’t explode. Sat with them for a while after dinner while they worked out what they’re doing tomorrow and then headed upstairs to read.

Around Sas de Putia

The usual breakfast routine over, we hopped in Biscuit Tin and drove north, for a change, to San Martino and then left (west) to Passo della Erbe. It was very busy when we arrived and it looked as though you could only park between 7:00am and 2:00pm, but then we realised that you have to pay if you park between these times. There were even coaches pulling up disgorging hordes of walkers; Paul likened it to Pen y Pass and a walk up Snowdon. Sadly this proved to be true.

Where we were meant to be headed (to the top!).

Unfortunately it proved to be one of those days when I just wanted to wee all day (or I would have done if I’d continued drinking!) and there was NOWHERE to go.

The first part of the walk was quite pleasant despite the hordes, but then we turned a corner entering the valley up to the pass and the view did NOT inspire me with motivation or confidence. Well I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.

Looking back down the valley.

I basically put my head down and plodded all the way to the top, reminding myself of how I'd managed on the Inca Trail. We reached the col and decided not to try for the top, but to do the circuit of the peak.

By two-thirds of the way round what was probably only about 8/9km, 10km at the most, I was completely knackered. My legs are still aching like hell. At times, it was as much as I could do to put one foot in front of the other, my muscles were so tired.

Needless to say, I didn't have a late night!

Sass de Roccia

Still not sleeping brilliantly and having all sorts of quite vivid dreams. I blame too much food, too late in the day. Must try to curb my snacking when we get back (she says with a large packet of crisps at her side!!).

Drove out through Corvara, the Campolongo Pass and Arabba this time, which made a very pleasant change from the Falzarego Pass. Down the valley from Arabba, we dropped down to the valley bottom and up the southerly side, to a dead end road up the hill from Laste. Parked up and walked about 200m up the hill to some large pinnacles of rock that have lots of bolted climbs on them, though all high grades, sadly.


Found the ‘gash’ in the rock, a very tall, narrow rift, that leads up to the start of the VF (1A) and headed off up the stemples.

At the top of the pinnacle we crossed a small bridge and continued up the wires to finally cross a second bridge across the main rift and reach the top of the crag.













It wasn’t very long or very difficult, but it was fun, which is more than can be said for yesterday’s effort. 


We had a poke around the hut at the top and wandered about the top, stepping over some very deep looking cracks in the rock, then we headed back down.

When we got to the bottom, we continued down the main gorge to the bottom where we found another set of stemples, with a very thin wire leading to the top of them and then... nothing. We re-traced our steps back up the steep slope and aborted, leaving by way of the initial gash in the rock. We then stopped and had lunch.

After that we started heading down to where the gorge comes out, but it got very steep and awkward, so we again retraced our steps and headed out along the side of the valley past where some people had been climbing earlier.

I then came over all knackered, so we decided to call it a day and headed back to Pedraces, with a stop in Corvara for coffee.

After the usual shower / rest, it got to 6:45 and Paul got hungry so we walked down into the village to see if anywhere was open to eat. There was no sign of the other four either, so we went back to Haus Valentin, jumped in Biscuit Tin and headed off up the road to La Villa, which was open. By chance, the pizzeria that we chose was the one that Boyd and co were at. He thought we’d recognised his yellow car, but it was pure fluke. My appalling lack of Italian was again highlighted when it came to ordering food and drink – it’s pretty embarrassing frankly, but a bit late to worry too much about it now! – but the food was good and it was the others who got a lecture from the waiter on how to say please and thank you – how embarrassing.

Back at the hotel, I went straight up to our room, but Paul went down and had a tea with the others. I think the beer was still run out.