Walks in 2008
2008 was another year in which walking holidays had to be fitted around my attendance at conferences, this time in Edmonton, Potsdam and at various locations in the UK. Nevertheless we found time to walk the Cleveland Way and what is conventionally the 'first leg' of the South West Coast Path as well as spending a week with Helen in the Brecon Beacons.
At Easter we headed off to the Peak District to combine a walking holiday with the opportunity to spend some time with Michael and Heather in Sheffield. We stayed at Jaret House, a recently and beautifully renovated B&B in the centre of Tideswell, home of Pete and Annette [by 2020 it had become a holiday cottage]. It started to snow heavily as we drove from Sheffield to Tideswell on the Saturday, and we woke on Easter Sunday (23rd March) to a winter wonderland! We had a glorious day of walking in the snow, following a 16-mile route through 7 different dales: from Tideswell to Litton, then into Tansey Dale and Cressbrookdale; along the Monsal Trail through Monsal Dale; up the beginning of Deepdale; along to Ashford in the Water; across the fields to Monsal Head, then retracing our steps for a short distance along the Monsal Trail and back to Tideswell via Water-cum-Jolly Dale, Millers Dale and Tideswell Dale.
Richard returned to Sheffield a fortnight later, to move Michael and Heather to their new flat and I had a pleasant break with my sister Chris in the New Forest, staying at Wayside Cottage in Burley [closed by 2020]. Then, in late April, Richard and I set off again to walk the 'first leg' of the South West Coast Path, from Minehead to Westward Ho!. That's the first leg in geographical terms, and assuming that you walk the South West Coast Path in an anticlockwise direction; we'd walked our first leg of the path (the extreme south-west section, from St Ives to Penzance via Land's End) in 2007. Thankfully the weather in late April was rather better than it had been in late March; indeed it was excellent walking weather (not too hot, not too cold, not too wet) and we thoroughly enjoyed the variety of the section of the Coast Path from Somerset and into Devon. We're hooked now - we definitely want to walk the rest of the South West Coast Path (all 630 miles of it) at some stage - I'm not sure when we'll get round to it though.
We were walking again in June, this time the entire length of the Cleveland Way from Helmsley, around the North York Moors and down the coast to Filey. Highly recommended and again we were lucky with the weather.
In July I headed to the summer meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers, which was held at the University of Alberta in Edmonton i.e. in Canada not the USA. Of the 1000 or so delegates just two of us were from the UK - and I managed to sit next to the other one (Wendy Sadler of Science Made Simple in Cardiff) on the flight out! The conference was great and Wendy and I had a day exploring Edmonton the day before it started (visiting the food festival and the Alberta Legislature building - as shown in the photograph) After the conference finished I spent an afternoon at Fort Edmonton Park, a 'living history museum' depicting various stages in Edmonton's history, from when it was set up as a fur trading centre by the Hudson's Bay Company.
About 18 hours after getting home from Edmonton I was off again, with Richard and Helen for a week in the Brecon Beacons. We'd rented Granary Cottage 1 at Ystradgynwyn, just 7 miles north of Merthyr Tydfil, but effectively in the middle of nowhere - approached by miles of single track road from either the north or the south. The weather was very hot for the first few days of our stay and on the first day we walked from the cottage, completing a circuit that took us to the unremarkable summit of Fan y Big, but with amazing views of Pen y Fan. On the following day we walked the first part of the 'Waterfalls Walk', further to the south. We had to abandon the walk part-way round because of the heat, but not until after we'd admired several waterfalls and walked behind the water at Sgwd yr Eira. (Note: to do this you may have to ignore repeated 'path closed' signs, but a National Park warden had assured us that the path would be fine - and it was. At your own risk though!)
Richard accompanied me to my second overseas conference, the EARLI/Northumbria Assessment Conference in Potsdam, in former East Germany near Berlin. Potsdam is a curious mixture of attractive historic buildings (including Frederick the Great's Sanssouci Palace and Scloss Cecilienhof, where the Potsdam Agreement was signed in 1945) and concrete blocks from the communist era - but overall it is an attractive city, definitely 'on the up'.
Work also took me to Durham and Edinburgh (twice each), Carlisle, and the Bear of Rodborough Hotel near Stroud - and hence the opportunity to explore old haunts, to discover 'new' parts of Britain, and to enjoy some pleasant train journeys up and down the East Coast main line. However, for the second trip to Durham, in November, Richard accompanied me and we drove, stopping off for walks near Richmond in one direction and near Knaresborough in the other. And while I was working on the Saturday, Richard walked in Teesdale, passing by Cauldron Snout. We also had a purely leisure trips to Altrincham (for a School reunion) and to Harrogate (for a reunion of friends from our university days at Durham), fitting in some walking on both occasions.