Walks

Old Man of Coniston

It's talk-to-the-wife time. I'm in front of the fire in the lounge while the voices coming from the kitchen and dining room suggest that Jon and Matt are clocking in with Hannah and Janeane respectively.

It was a third consecutive day in the hills for me today. It was Jon's second and Matt's first.

We took a route up Wetherlam from Coniston, then round the horseshoe to Swirl How and The Old Man of Coniston. The weather was similar to yesterday, the hill-fog forcing us to make do with Jon's descriptions of the view from the ridge rather than experience it ourselves.

Jon and Matt two of a large group of people who I met at a youth group when my family moved to Tonbridge aged sixteen or so. I've known them more than half my life. As a group, we rarely all get together (Greenbelt tends to be the time you'll find most of us in one place) so we catch up through email, telephone conversations and odd weekends like this.

Both are much better hill-walkers than I. While I probably walk greater distances in the year than each of them, very rarely does my walking get more then a couple of hundred metres above sea-level.

So today's been good, demanding exercise. It's exhausting, but great to get a different perspective on the world. Besides, I could just about see the coast when we were on our way up.