Team poster

There are now less than 100 days to go until Trailtrekker 2010 - Scary times! To help publicise our efforts, and to give everybody a laugh at our expense, we've produced a poster of The Q-Team (fans of The Matrix movie may get a small feeling of dèja vu!):

click to view the full-size image!

You may wonder what the strange patterns on the right hand side are. These are 2-Dimensional barcodes that can be read with many camera phones (some have the software pre-installed but if not, you can download a reader to install on your phone here - they will even text you a link). If you have the software, scanning these barcodes with your phone camera takes you straight to our virginmoneygiving website. Why not check it out? :-)

For feedback purposes, I have also added a thermometer-style totaliser.

Skipton Treasure Map

The Treasure Map is now up in Skipton - Many thanks to all the donors so far! :-)

Horton Or Bust (again!)

On Saturday, the two Jameses embarked on a 20-mile walk from Gargrave to Skipton. The second long Trailtrekker training walk, this was a little shorter than the 25-miler we did last time but it involved a lot more climbing (two almost-700m peaks) and there was a LOT of snow on the tops!

The route represents the stage between Waterstop 1, past Checkpoint 1 in Malham and on to Checkpoint 2. 

We set off at 8:20, from Gargrave (a small town just outside Skipton, about 4 miles into the TT route).

It was very cold and misty, but the sun broke through quite quickly!

Gotta love frozen puddles - better than bubble-wrap!

Going over the tops towards Airton
















Malham Cove














A very frozen Malham Tarn - some crazy fool had actually walked right onto the ice! (can't see the footprints on this pic - they were further along!)


















 James at Malham Tarn














 The Farm before heading up Fountains Fell
 













Looking back from the route up Fountains Fell
















The flanks of Fountains Fell are notorious for the potholes and shakeholes, typical of limestone areas. Given the large snowfall would have hidden a lot of these, it was quite a nervous part of the walk! We stuck closely to some footprints on the path! In places, the snow was at least 30cm thick.

The summit of Fountains Fell also has a lot of old mine shafts. I understand the area was mined for coal in the 18th and 19th centuries! A lot of the shafts are open, hence this warning sign which advises walkers to stick to the path...The two piles of stones on the horizon mark the top.


















Pen Y Ghent in the distance, as seen from the summit of Fountains Fell. You can actually make out a couple of walkers on the top if you look closely.













Descending Fountains Fell towards our next adversary: Pen Y Ghent!
















Really quite a lot of snow! I haven't done much winter walking before, so it was great to take it all in! Especially as I absolutely love snow!



















A photo of Fountains Fell from the route up Pen Y Ghent (you can see the descent route towards the left hand side.

A quick rest-stop



















The top of Pen Y Ghent. On this occasion, as with many other training walks, we missed out on the top and headed down to Horton the quick way!














Heading down to Horton with the sun starting to set!

Our ride back!

This was a really good walk actually, if a little bit hot once the sun had burned all the morning mist away!
We'd originally planned to do 22 miles (i.e. complete the full ascent of Pen Y Ghent) but due largely to time constraints, we missed out the very top. The deep snow on Fountains Fell was very hard work to move through and it had obviously drifted quite a bit in places! At the end, I was very glad we didn't have another 42 miles to walk on this occasion :-)


Excellent fun though! Hopefully we can get another walk sorted out in 3 weeks or so. In the meantime, we need to ramp up the fundraising side of things! Hopefully we'll have some updates in this area :-)

Malham (and back!)

Just after xmas, the Q-Team were rocked by the news that Joel would have to withdraw from the Trailtrekker 2010 event. Joel was instrumental in everything the Q-Team did, from blog-writing, to fundraising, to promoting our efforts. His contribution will be sorely missed this year!

The remaining members of the Q-Team (minus Ady) were joined by some work colleagues for a 24 mile walk from Skipton to Malham ...and then back again! This would represent the route from the Start of Trailtrekker, past Waterstop 1 in Gargrave and on to the first checkpoint at Malham.

The adventure began around 9:30am.

The first part follows the Leeds - Liverpool canal to Gargrave

It was very sunny, but very cold and the canal was frozen over in places.

We reached Gargrave in just under 2 hours and stopped for a snak and a drink. Some of the team decided to head back to Skipton, leaving James R, James S, Emma, Rob and Lee to continue on to Malham.

Passing the River Aire on the way to Airton.

(from Left-Right) Lee, Rob, Emma and James S

The bridge at Airton - only about 3 miles to Malham from here.

The River Aire was very cold!!

My camera battery died at this point - I was hoping to at least get a pic of Malham Cove! :-(











We eventually made it to Malham abround 2:30pm and stopped for 10 minutes or so to have lunch and mindful that it would soon be dark, we began the return journey in fading daylight.

Around 5:00, we made it back to Gargrave, just as darkness was really starting to set in.

The long slog back to Skipton seemed to go on forever and most of the team were struggling with various degrees of discomfort. We finally made it back to Skipton just after 7pm, to complete our 24 mile walk!

With hindsight, this was really quite a long walk for a first training walk :-(

There is clearly much to be done before June arrives!

Merry Xmas!

Merry Xmas! - I have decided to make a donation towards our £3,000 target instead of sending Christmas cards this year. To go with it, I made this brief video using Blender (an open source animation package!):



After Xmas, I'll be looking forward to some 'serious' training, but for now, where did I put those mince pies? :-)

The Q-Team: Back for More in 2010!

After a fantastic Trailtrekker in 2009, the Q-Team are back for more punishment!

We welcome a new face, James Swiffen, into the team following Rich's decision not to take part in the 2010 event (this was for geographical reasons rather than a lack of interest!).

Stay tuned for team training updates!

In the meantime, Joel and James recently completed a short walk with James' six year old son Hayden. The walk was 8½ miles from Skipton to Cononley and followed the River Aire from Skipton to Cononley.