Where is the sun?

The weeks of miserable weather are starting to depress me. June was officially the wettest month on record and July hasn't started any better. Yesterday evening there was going to be a climbing meeting at Brimham Rocks, but inevitably it was rained off. On the plus side, I did get to go to the Ingleton Climbing Wall and get a bit of indoor practice. The wall is surprisingly large and was fairly quiet, so I was able to get on a few routes and do a bit of work on my stamina.

Hopefully the sun will shine again soon so I can get back out on some real rock.

Copper Dragon

It's a bit of a tradition in the Craven Mountaineering Club to go for a well-earned pint after climbing on a Tuesday evening. I've had pints in a couple of pubs over the last few weeks and have noticed that they are selling a cask ale that is brewed in Skipton.

Copper Dragon Brewery is a small local brewery and I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of their Best Bitter, which I can definitely recommend if you've spent an evening pulling yourself up rock faces! I've done a little research and the brewery produces 5 different types of cask ale, so I'll be looking out for them on my weekly visits to the pub.

Climbing at Pot Scar

Yesterday evening, I had a very enjoyable evening of climbing at a small limestone outcrop called Pot Scar. I'd spent most of the day painting my kitchen and had lost track of time, so it was a pleasant surprise to get a phone call asking if I wanted to go out. The weather was pretty nice, cool but sunny - not too bad considering the large amounts of rain we have had to suffer the last few days.

The climbing at Pot Scar was very good, with plenty of routes around the grade I'm happy climbing. I led a couple of routes (a Severe and a VS) and seconded three other routes (a MVS and two VS), so all in all not a bad evening. It was just after 10pm when we finished up and headed to the pub, a lot later than I realised - the long evenings are quite noticeable when the sky is clouded by thunderclouds.

Photo Albums

I have a few photo albums on my kodakgallery site - I've added them to the photo album links at the side.

Local Climbing

I had a walk up to one of my local crags yesterday evening - Deer Gallows, a small gritstone outcrop on the moor above Embsay. The club was meeting there to do a little climbing, so I decided to walk up the hill to join them. It's about an hours walk to the crag, all uphill and I somehow missed the main path to the crag an ended up having to fight my way through bracken to get there - quite tiring!

The crag is small but very pleasant and surprisingly sheltered given its position on the top of the moor. I arrived quite late, so didn't climb any routes, but I did do a couple of the boulder problems and tried a couple of others. Having to rely on the friction takes a little getting used to and the damp grass didn't help very much. But I had fun anyway and then joined the group for a pint in one of my local pubs - the Elm Tree at the top of Embsay village. A nice way to spend an evening!

Walking in the Southern Lake District

I went out on Saturday with the Craven MC to the Kentmere area of the Lake District. It's very beautiful scenery around that area and we had a long-ish (16 mile) but easy-going walk from Staveley village. Not many people came out, probably because the weather had been so awful in the days leading up to the walk, but we were pretty fortunate with the weather, only having a couple of short, light showers the whole day.

I need to get myself a digital camera for all my walking and climbing trips - my old one broke and so I have no record of my last few excursions...

I think I must have tweaked a muscle during the day though, as Sunday morning I could hardly move my left hip. Must be getting old...

Big Kitty

I was just thinking about the names for the Mac OS X operating systems...

OS 10.0 Cheetah
OS 10.1 Puma
OS 10.2 Jaguar
OS 10.3 Panther
OS 10.4 Tiger
OS 10.5 Leopard

Seems to me they are running out of big cat names for any future upgrades...

A bit of investigation has found that Apple have trademarked Lynx and Cougar, so I guess that there'll be at least 2 more OS 10.x to come. I guess they also have Lion left too, but after that what? OS 10.9 Garfield ?!?

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Technological Advances

I'm an Apple fan and have been using my little iBook laptop since 2001. I'm a bit of a believer in the phrase 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it...' and so was been running the original OS 9.2 operation system since I got it. The operating system was pretty stable, very few unexpected crashes or gliches, so I was quite happy. My computer may have be compared to an OAP with a touch of arthritis, but it plodded along happily and got the job done...

Since I moved to Embsay though things have had to change - in order to connect to the internet I had to enter the world of OS X. Yes, I had to take the old man out of his tweed jacket and flat cap and put him into an Armani suit...

Back in 2001 my computer actually came with an OS 10.1 installation disk, but I never used it because way back then there were very few programs available for the new operating system. So, I bit the bullet and installed OS 10.1 - it all went quite smoothly until I tried to connect to the internet and found out I need OS 10.2 - isn't that just typical...

OS 10.2 is no longer available from Apple - they can sell you OS 10.4 Tiger and are working away on OS 10.5 Leopard - both too advanced for my little ol' G3 processor, so a couple of weeks of eBaying passed and a package dropped through my letterbox and I set about updating to OS 10.2 Jaguar. Again everything went smoothly and at the end of it I installed my internet software, plugged in the ethernet cable and hey-presto! Internet!

It's taken a bit of getting used to, but my little computer runs happily enough and I can find my way round my computer now. I was so happy in fact, that I decided to get myself a small deskjet printer for my 'home office' I found a really good deal on a HP all-in-one printer/scanner/copier and got that. 'Marvelous', I thought and set about connecting it to my computer, only to find out that to run the printer in needed to be running the OS 10.3 operating system... bugger...

So another week of eBaying passed and another little package dropped through my letterbox and I set about updating to OS 10.3 Panther. Again everything went smoothly and I can now print, copy and scan...

So, I'm a happy camper with my little home office and I've got myself out of the Macintosh stone age in the process. Just don't believe manufactures when the box says, 'Minimum Requirements: OS 10.1'

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Weather gadget

Seeing as the British are obsessed with the weather, I've added a little weather gadget to the sidebar of my blog - now I can see how cold it really is and just how long the rain is going to last...

Really you only need to look out of the window for an accurate forecast of the Yorkshire weather:

1. You can't see the top of the hill - it's raining...
2. You can see the top of the hill - it's going to rain...

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No bouldering today

I was going to go and check out the bouldering at Crookrise today - it's a gritstone outcrop near the village of Cowling about 8 miles away from me. However, the weather gods are against me and decided to send a day of non-stop drizzly rain. Looks like we're in for a few days of the same, so will have to get out the waterproofs and head out for a walk instead... At least I got out yesterday evening, to a small limestone outcrop in Lancashire called Witches Quarry. A nice small climbing venue with a good range of grades. I only climbed on some of the easier routes, but had a pleasant evening rounded off with a pint of local ale!

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Photo Albums

So, I've been using Facebook for a while now and have quite a few photos on there... I've set up a section that links to all the albums I have on there at the moment. As I add photos, I'll update the links...

My first post

Well, I'm new to this blogger thing, but I'll give it a shot and put up links to my photo albums and put down a few of my thoughts...