I’ve been following — and promoting — Ben’s walk through Spain this summer. Ben has given up work to concentrate on becoming a professional photographer. On his website now are a selection of photographs and the beginnings of a photo essay on the trip.

Well worth looking at these. I’m sure you’ll agree that Ben’s doing OK at matching up to his ambitions!

Ben Collins — Spain Adventures 2010

Wolverhampton today.

The old and the new

Discarded but still here.

Water, reeds and waste.

Wulfrun Coal Yard

Natural reclamation

Cygnets

“What are you catching?”

“Not a lot!”

In the heart of the Black Country.

 

Coseley Tunnel

Bridge cottages

Coseley ‘Oses’

Watery ramble.

Remnants of a great past.

Rural Tipton

To Stourbridge

Ducklings

Modes of travel.

The Black Country of the West Midlands was not only the cradle of the industrial revolution. It was the manufacturing powerhouse of Great Britain and its Empire. The early canals of James Brindley served the early mass manufacturing of Hockley Port and the subsequent ‘mainline’ canal linked up the Potteries of Staffordshire, the furnaces of Wolverhampton and Bilston, the small workshops of Dudley and the industrial commerce of Birmingham.

It was not a pretty place but a place of practicality, hard work and hard lives. Echoes of this not too distance past can be found in the traits of local West Midlanders to this day. Black was the colour of the sky as the furnaces belched out their emissions into the sky. Locals will quickly tell you the story of Queen Victoria insisting that the blinds of carriages be drawn while the Royal Train passed through. The area featured in Charles Dickens’ 1841 novel The Old Curiosity Shop in which he described how factories “… poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air”. An American Consul described the area’s furnaces making the sky “black by day and red by night”.

For local a walkers of all types the walk along the mainline canal is a popular one, not least because of a tradition of raising money for charity by stopping at every pub along the way!  When I first walked this stretch the mainline was still an industrial powerhouse. It all changed very quickly with the collapse of manufacturing in the early 80s. The steel works were raised to the ground and many of the manufacturing plants closed. The chemical works south of Wolverhampton have now long since gone.

Today many of these sites remain empty and desolate. Some industry clings on but those sites that have been developed are likely to feature housing, distribution of light industrial units. But the main changes are environmental.

The worst of the Thatcher years saw the establishment of a number of temporary employment programmes that were well used by local authorities and local environmental groups. Sites were grassed over. Bends in canals were planted with reeds to provide a welcome habitat for water life. Canal towpaths became green walking corridors and cycle tracks. Thirty years later this new environment has become thoroughly established and a walk along the ‘mainline’ is now a very different experience.

Weekend fisherman still escape here from the responsibilities of the family home and older lads are still taken out and inducted in a world where you can sit all day and never catch a bite. But these days they are whiling away the hours in an almost rural habitat and their watery companions are more likely to be geese, ducklings, moorhens and Coots than shopping trollies and discarded tyres.

Reminders of the past are ever-present though. Great expanses of cleared land remain presumably too contaminated to be used quickly. Here only the buddleja  thrives. You will come across horsers — or ‘hoses’ grazing on patches of land cheek-by-jowel with built-up estates.

But you can also walk for miles withouth seeing any modern development at all. True, the sound of roads is never far away but then again this is also a feature of the North Downs Way!

For great stretches the canal reminds me of a waterside walk in Warwickshire or Staffordshire. And in what seems like a time traveller’s trick small settlements around bridges now reveal themselves in a form that must be very close to what they would have ben when first constructed.

A walker is never bored on this walk. There are fellow walkers and cyclists to chat to and fisherman to compare notes with. There are canal travellers — leisure and business — to greet, and that bird life to admire.

This canal route has been here throughout all modern times. But it is scarcely recognisable from the route I took as a young lad.

Thanks to those of you who pointed out that these files idn’t work. Lazy coding!

All now works!

In a fit of ego and vanity I have added some audio files to the 2010 Trail Journal. Here you can here expanding on the joys of walking through places such as the Monadliath and the Balmacaan.

TGO 2010 Trail Journal

The plan was to amble around the Welsh Borders this weekend, using campsites – not many wildcamp options around here. Everywhere is full! So, time to sort out garden and perhaps do some urban walking

For those of you with a weak disposition, here is a warning. This is a very geeky post and, perhaps, more than a tad obsessive. Feel free to turn away now!

I get a lot of emails about gear, usually following something I’ve written about here. Recently, I’ve noticed a trend for people to talk about some substantive piece of kit and then tag on a question about stuff-sacks! Which stuff-sacks would I recommend!

This is a difficult area mainly because manufactures change their lines quite regularly. I suspect this is because many of them commission in buy in bulk, have stock for a few years and then simply move on at a later date. Over the last five or six years I’ve found some great and light sinylon sacks from Golite, Granite Gear and others. More often than not when I’ve gone to replace sacks or buy new ones the product I really rated is no longer available! So, if you’re concerned about stiff-sacks the first rule is to shop around — which these days means shopping around on the web.

Exped bags are very popular. They are tough and have a good waterproof role top. But they are heavy. By preference I wouldn’t use these often although I do use them for heavier duty stoves and cooking equipment as they are very strong. I prefer lighter sinylon bags though.

I search for my bags through the usual channels. Hike Lite often have good stuff here. I find the Granite Gear sacks to be very useful and light! Backpackinglight.co.uk have Exped as the mainstay of their line up but Bob regularly stocks lighter sacks although they may not be branded makes. As ever, drop Bob an email or chat to him or Rose on the phone. Winwood Outdoor also have good stuff, and their website is good at letting you know what is in stock.

But you can get lighter than sinylon. I’ve got some good sacks made of spinnaker fabric but more recently have been exploring cuben fibre sacks.

Cuben fibre is very strong and completely waterproof. But cuben needs to be worked by people who really know what they are doing! Ron Bell at Mountain Laurel Designs is now offering a great range of cuben sacks. These are described as envelope shaped but — when full — they look like tubes. For years I have kept my down sleeping bag and down jacket in a large Mountain Hardware plastic pack liner (these are branded differently in the USA). These are light-ish and waterproof. Not only are Ron’s cuben sacks light but they are compact and take up room. The problem with large capacity sacks or packs is that they tempt you to use the space! Volume is as much a curse as sheer weight for the ultralight hiker.

Ron’s cuben sacks are a bit pricey and it seems a bit odd to be importing stuff sacks. However, if you are ordering anything else from Ron then you really should consider adding some of these sacks to your order. A tip here. The MLD website recommends a certain size sack for your sleeping bag. This may seem too small but trust Ron; it will fit!

There may be people closer to home who will supply, or make, cuben sacks for you. I’ve lost touch with him recently, but Wayne at teamio might be able to help.

Skeptics who have continued to read this may well be rolling around the floor in laughter …

… but remember, ultralight hikers get to that point by being obsessive about every little bit of kit they carry. And they’re reasonably balanced individuals

It’s your hobby. Why not look at ultralight stuff sacks? You can shave more grams than seem possible by re-thinking your packing. Compact sacks mean less volume and ultimately contribute to the need for a lighter pack.

Version 1.0 of the Trail Journal for this year’s TGO Challenge is now online. There are a few additions to be made but as the code is driving me nuts I though I’d put it up anyway.

Hope you enjoy it. If you feature in the text — don’t deny it/ It’s all true !!!

2010 TGO Challenge, from Dornie to Montrose.

No sooner had I published my review of Routebuddy Atlas than John Hee writes a piece about the practicalities of using these things. I’d meant to include something about this in the review but thought it was getting a little long. And then I saw a comment from John Davis who shres some of John’s skepticism.

I’m a skeptic as well to some extent. I know John uses the same GPS as myself — a Gecko — and in the same way, just to get hold of a grid reference. And in some ways this is what I use Routebuddy Atlas for. Taking a spot reference is helpful and more so if you can see a representation of the map itself.

John asks about battery life and, yes, this is a problem (and more of that below). But to my mind the small screen is more of a practical problem. You really don’t get to see that much of the map! And, as John has pointed out, there is the little matter of the rain.

Over the last couple of years I’ve walked with Colin Ibbotson and Phil Turner both who use computer mapping on phones and small mobile devices. Both have used them in the manner discussed above and there’s no doubt that the map on the phone helps get a real fix as to where you are — it is faster than using a Gecko. But the attraction also seems to be a greater integration with other social media. Phil spends a lot of time searching for a signal not only for the GPS but to send Twitter updates and blog updates as he walks! Probably not for everyone but many younger hikers seem to use this stuff intuitively in this way.

Both Phil and Steve Horner used their phones extensively on this year’s TGO Challenge. They got around the battery problem with a cheap but effective solution, a charger which took two AA batteries (I think) and used these to charge the phones overnight. Not a perfect solution but it kept them going with more social media time that I would ever contemplate.

So, these things are not necessities and you might argue that they don’t add that much in terms of tools to use on the hills. Personally, I’d still carry my maps — and these folks all carry printouts from Computer Mapping companies.

I see these being used more often by casual ‘Country Waker’ ramblers. I have a friend who uses one when walking coastal paths. I’ve tried explaining he can’t get lost so long as the see is on the right side, but he likes the reassurance of the system. And if this helps give him the confidence in going out further then it has to be a good thing!

I certainly wouldn’t be using one of these as a GPS tracking routes and so on, although you can. I suppose if you are out for shorter day walks battery life isn’t a problem. For me the advantage is to just get a graphical fix as well as a OS co-ordinate. But I have used the machine when I’ve been ambling around a rural area unexpectedly!

As I said in my Routebuddy Atlas review the quality of the map display on the iphone 4 is extraordinary. This is way of the future I guess, but perhaps more in terms of a lighter weight or slightly smaller ipad type tablet.

I’d be interested in how others use mobile mapping on phones or dedicated machines like Satmap.