A bit nippy for the time of year

It's a bit nippy of late but no complaints from me. March 23, 1916 was really nippy with a max of 1.1 degrees Celsius.
It's the wind and lack of sunshine that makes you put on two sets of cloth. Last night the effect of windchill was near minus 20 C. and I still don't complain. Britain has much worse weather conditions at the moment. Snowdrifts 15ft high in Cumbria, cars buried in snow. Extreme windchill on Cairngorm, Scotland, of -26 C. with gusts up to 100 miles per hour (160km/u). Walking on ridges and high terrain would be impossible.

Watching several webcams the West Highlands don't seem to have much snow. At least no more than usual at this time of year.
47 days from now I'm going over Ladhar Bheinn and Luinne Bheinn.

Snow for the seventh time this winter. I want to speak to the manager !

While it rained for 24/24 hours a couple of days ago and we've seen the digital mercury hit 16 on the thermometer a few days before that it's now snowing again in the Netherlands. The north and the south have a considerable amount of snow again but so far where I live - the middle - the streets are still black. Windchill is minus 15 at night however.

Preparations for the Challenge are going according to plan except that I'll probably won't be able to find the time off to do a two day walk and do some (illegal) wildcamping at night.
Eight weeks from now I'll be leaving for Scotland. Why does that feel so close ? I get this odd feeling there's hardly enough time to do the things I want or must do. I know there is, it just doesn't feel that way.

I've made a potcosy and a bagcosy, that is a cosy for a pot and a cosy for 'boil-in-the-bag' type of food. I'll post some pictures soon.
Overall weight of my rucksack, including food for 4 days, will be 15 kg.   

Snow. Again. And sleet....

...and rain, hail and icing and snow again. All with a bitterly cold, strong wind. And another 19km of walking. I feel stronger every day.
After walking in our local forest with my wife and our dogs she, and the dogs, drove home and I walked around the Naardermeer, a natural lake/swamp and Holland's first nature reserve, est.1901.



After a pinkish sunrise the sky was soon overcast. Snow was predicted at the end of the morning. It was a few degrees below zero but felt much colder.

The walk around the Naardermeer is called 'Het Laarzenpad' (The Wellies Way) because parts of it go through pastures and wet areas. The pastures are trodden by cows and were frozen solid. Crossing it for 1km was more difficult than walking on a Scottish boulderfield. 

At 11.30am it started with sleet which turned into snow 20 minutes later. The wind was coming from the side but didn't bother me too much. I was comfy in my Paramo Alta I jacket and Goretex trousers.

 

 

The lake was frozen and the howling wind made beautifull patterns on the ice. The last stretch I walked straight into the wind but I made good progress despite the difficult circumstances. I arrived home at 13.00pm covering 19km in 3hrs45mins.

 

More snow



More snowfall yesterday and last night. Up to 18cm (7 inches) in places. Brings back memories from when I was a young lad. I had a nice walk with the dogs.

 

 

 

 

January record

Just 4 days ago a period of 13 days of continuous temperatures below zero ended and last night saw a recordbreaking 13 degrees above zero. A January record including daytemperatures !
We had a reasonable amount of snow but I've never seen it disappear so quickly.
Of course winter isn't over yet, we'll have to wait and see what's instore for us the coming weeks.

Practise makes Perfect : a 30km walk

I had the very rare opportunity of walking for as much as I wanted yesterday. Snow had fallen two days before and it was below zero so I decided to stretch my goal for the day a little bit.
Het Voetstappenpad is a nice circular walk around Hilversum (The Netherlands) through heath, forests and a bit of Hilversum itself.
The lenght is 25km and parking north of the walk the total lenght of the walk would be 30km.

Het Gebed-zonder-End

The temperature was minus 5 degrees but luckily there was hardly any wind so there was no windchill. I was carrying my backpack stuffed with jeans and filled waterbottles to reach the weight of 14kg. I was wearing a North Face Gore-tex trouser over synthetic longjohns, an Icebreaker Merino baselayer and midlayer and my Paramo Alta jacket together with Scarpa SL3 boots and a cheapish pair of walking poles and a thin fleece hat and gloves.
I never felt cold at all and sometimes even had to open the jacket to cool down a bit.

Bussummerheide

I started at 9.30 at a leisurely speed. There were a lot of tracks of small deer and rabbits in the snow. The human footprint you can see in the picture is the waymark of the Voetenpad, originally established in 1938.
I had my SatMap Active10 gps with me to test the batteries in cold conditions. I used rechargeable batteries that weren't freshly charged but all bars were shown on screen. The path is very well waymarked but I thought it was best to use the gps anyway. I had it turned on all the time in energy-save mode and the batteries only ran flat 600m before reaching my car again. During The TGO Challenge I will only turn it on when needed so I think I can get at least 2 full days walking out of 3 normal AA-sized batteries.  

Westerheide

Despite the lack of sunshine I was enjoying myself. I kept saying to myself this was all f...king fantastic, having decided to do this only 12 hours ago. The company was great (there was nobody around) and the views were stunning.   

Charolais cows

I didn't meet any Highland Coos, instead I met some Charolais cows who thought I was bringing something nice to chew on. I tend to ignore cattle, and in exchange they ignore me, but this time they followed me for a while at very close range. I had my poles ready to scare them off but didn't get the change (?) to test the theory.  


Dr.Albert Schweizer forest road

Kilometre after kilometere passed and I kept feeling good which was a bit of a surprise to me because I had injured my right knee 15 days ago. Despite the terrain being difficult to walk on from time to time - months of rain had turned the paths into deep mud and tracks of mountainbikers and walkers had frozen solid to form a sort of boulderfield - I didn't experience any pain in my knee. 

Hilversum's Wasmeer viewpoint

After walking for three hours I took a lunchbreak of 15 minutes at the Hilversum's Wasmeer viewpoint, south of Hilversum. As I was packing to leave two elderly men entered the viewpoint. One was obviously being 'guided' by the other and the newbie remarked this was a nice flat area. I thought : "It better be otherwise the Laws of Physics don't apply around here. It's a lake for God's sake !", but I kept my mouth shut.

The Hoorneboeg

Another 2 hours 15 minutes of walking on 'boulderfields' started to take its toll and at 3 o'clock I had another 15 minutes break. Calves, knees, hips and shouldermuscles were making clear they'd had enough of it but I still had to walk another 6km.


Me, Halvar Icebeard, getting a bit knackered 

I simply put one foot in front of the other and ending in my neck-of-the-woods meant I could split the remaing km's in manageable pieces : the pond, the left-turn at the road, three oaklanes, the campsite.... .

Spanderswoud

Eventually I reached the car having walked 30km for which I needed 7 hours. Time moving was 5hrs35mins, average speed was 4,3km and moving average was 5,3km/hour.

Today I expected to have sore and stiff legs (I remember coming down the stairs at Glenbrittle YH after a long day in The Cuillin) but that didn't happen. I actually feel good.
Some more of these walks and I'll be ready for the Challenge in May.

Winter has arrived.

Yesterday and the day before saw the very first snowfall this season. Only ten days ago the last leaves were blown from the trees. Yesterday the ground was still sodden from previous rainfall but today molten snow was frozen solid on firm surfaces making walking difficult from time to time.



 

The temperatures are around zero and a little rise is expected for the next days, followed by a colder period. I was cosy in my Paramo Alta jacket and the dogs, Atilla and Djengis, enjoyed the snow also. 

 

Part two of the treefelling that started the previous winterperiod has restarted a few weeks ago and some of my best friends have been chopped down. Beautifull Douglas Fir with 4ft wide trunks.
I don't like it.

Coldest night since 1956

Last week we had a little dusting of snow locally - 1cm - before a high pressure area settled in Europe. After a very late start of winter we've had frost now for almost a week and yesterday what started as another dusting of snow in the morning turned into 20cm/8 inch in Lelystad, 50km from where I live. This night temperature in Lelystad was as low as minus 22,8 C. (at sealevel!), the coldest night in The Netherlands since 1956.
The demand for electricity will be high but I don't think there will be any produced by wind.

Former estate 'De Schaffelaar'

11 year old Cameron participates in a chess tournament in Barneveld today and I had a look beforehand for possibilities to walk the dog nearby. At the edge of Barneveld, in the province of Gelderland, lies former estate 'De Schaffelaar' (210 acres). The original castle was destroyed by the Spaniards in 1585 and a new house was erected. In 1767 the garden was created by a student of Andre le Notre, who designed the palace gardens of Versaille, and the house was rebuild and 33 year later destroyed by fire. In 1852 a new house was build in neo-Tudor style. Currently the house is now owned by the council of Barneveld and the gardens are in care of the 'Geldersch Landschap' society.  

Today was cold but calm and dry at last after several days of storms and rain. It's only 5 weeks ago that waterlevels in The Netherlands were so low that ships couldn't navigate properly on smaller rivers and even Rhine and Maas were difficult to navigate. However, waterlevels are so high at the moment that they had to open dykes in the northeast of The Netherlands to store excess water in polders. Excess water is normally pumped to sea but the lowwater level is too high to do so because of the northwesterly storm. People had to be evacuated.

A windy day at Parnassia beach

Yesterday we went to Parnassia beach, just north of Zandvoort. We that is my two sons, my little daughter, me and the dog. A storm was blowing, mainly in the northwest. Not a 'real' storm with winds upto 55 mph but strong enough to enjoy it. After driving for 45 minutes we reached the coast.

We got sandblasted while walking through the dunes before reaching the beach. It wasn't fun. Once on the wet sand the boys and the dog where enjoying themselves but my little girl wanted to return to the car immediately. It was indeed colder than I expected, 10 dgrC., but with a significant windchill.

I acted as a windshield to protect her. After 6 or 7 minutes we retreated to the car. I carried my little girl on my back (a good backpacking exercise) and we got sandblasted again climbing to the top of the dunes.

A flash visit to the coast. Next time without the kids ? 

Siberia

It looked like it in our local neck of the wood but the temperature proved otherwise (+3).

After a fresh dusting of snow last night the weather had clearly changed. On 'the day after' only my eldest son, Gillean, was up for a daunder with me and the dog this morning. After leaving the carpark we started looking for, and following, shoeprints in the now soft snow. We gave them names like Plus1, Plus2, V, Wave or Square, after the prints the owners of the shoes left in the snow. Prints of small deer, squirrel and rabbit were seen also.

After half an hour or so we decided to go cross country. We enjoyed ourselves ploughing through the snow. Virgin country was crossed and the going was slow. We pretended to be in prehistoric Siberia looking for food for survival and being aware of predators like wolves that could hunt us down. We regularly stopped to listen to the sounds of the forest and the melting snow falling from the top of the trees might, in our imagination, have been caused by dangerous animals who would certainly eat us alive if we were foolish enough to get caught.    

Thanks to our excellent survival skills we managed to get out of the forest alive. We could hear the wolfs howl in the deep, dark forest. It was a narrow escape.

Cold

-12 C. last night. According to a weatherexpert december has been 'unstable' and he predicts januari will see a longer period of subzero temperatures.
In a few moments I'm off to hibernate, ehhhh.....to work.

Winter returns

Winter returned today with a vegeance. We drove Cameron to school for his last schoolday of 2010 and my wife Katinka, my daughter Kayla, our dog Atilla and I went for a walk. We were just in time for sunrise and we saw some stunning skies. I hope the pictures do justice to the beauty of this morning.

As soon as the sun appeared above the horizon these incredible colours returned to normal. Clouds were moving in and we could see more snow coming from the northwest. There wasn't much wind and the temperature was close to zero degrees Celsius. The walking was pleasant. 

After an hour and fifteen minutes we returned to the car and drove home. It didn't stop snowing until about 4 p.m.. The snowcover is 10-20cm thick and traffic has come to an halt in The Netherlands.
More snow is forecasted for tonight.