A lovely jolly to Keenya!

Last week I went on a trip with school to Kenya to do some charity work with a school near Nairobi, followed by 3 days on safari in the Maasai Mara. It was an amazing experience overall, Kenya is very interesting and I'd certainly consider a trip back there again. On the last night we had an 'meat extravaganza' - I ate beef, pork, chicken, ostrich, camel, crocodile and buffalo in one sitting. The next day I had a dodgy stomach, I wonder why?

The photo below shows me lookning unbelievably smug in front of the Great Rift Valley, which is really quite big.

Beautiful Welsh cwm

Well, late on the words, but nice to reflect on what was another ace weekend of weather, which we were fortunate enough to be walking in Wales for. Saturday saw an early start from MK and after driving there, we had the firm intention of doing a route up the Caniefon Arette. This would have been great, but we misjudged the actual arette and basically did a variation/scramble up the down route for the Idwal slabs... Was a good route though and we Topped out on the West end of Glyder Fawr and then headed round to Y Garn, after a spot of lunch. Stunning views down the valley.

Then it Was off to Ffyninon Wen (i think) to our yha, which was brand new and very well appointed except that there were no kitchen facilities... You could have food gourmet cooked though - not the YHA way and I'd much prefer a kitchen! We braved watching the Rugby world cup in a N Wales pub, which could have been spicy, but was OK...

Next day we had decided to do the Crib Goch route up to Snowdon, as Rich hasn't been up before and the weather was perfect, if not a bit windy with some truely epic views of the summit and others!

Jay unfortunately had to bow out half way up as he had killer blisters and was really going through the mill. Southern Softy. Only damper really, other than Daryl's absence. Another excellent IBFC trip!

On a more serious note, I got an email from freind James Linford with a shocking bit of news from his trip to Wales last week:

Sadly, on the Friday, a 10 year old boy died after taking a serious fall on Crib Goch. It was wet, windy and very cloudy. A man and three boys had wandered off the main ridge and got stuck in a steep area of loose rock. They tried to climb out and one lad fell to his death. We were some of the first people on the scene and were very involved in looking after the rest of his group and looking for the casualty. Kelvin and I found his body and did CPR until mountain rescue arrived. He died from severe head injuries. The dense cloud prevented a helicopter rescue. Our group worked really well together; looking after the others, communicating with mountain rescue HQ and dealing with the casualty.

Be careful out there.

English driving sportscar country pub, wot wot

Not only did I get to spend me birfday swanning around in the med with Rents, the International Bob of Mystery and me Julie, I got bought a day in the best motor the worlds ever seen, in my opinion, and they managed to get it in the right colour! British Racing Green.

Taking care to to emulate the recent driving sucess of Lewis Hamilton in China or certain other IBFC members in the rainy sheep loving part of the UK we had an awesome day round the back lanes of Surrey and West Sussex. Problem is now I want one even more.

May have been slightly anal about the route preperation to make sure it was all twisty A and B road goodness, co-driver Townsend coped admirably.


Ahhhhh


Mostly spent the day grinni ng like the village idiot, see above


probably not practical for bike transport.....................or driving to Gambia


wrong side of the road....................for the right reasons.............................................Dave

Solo walk.

After the couple of weeks I've had, I thought it best to head off to N Wales on my own for a walk with the intention of bivvying out for the first time. After much weight watching and repacking to achieve as light a weight backpack as pos, Including changing the steel tent pegs for aluminium ones, I was off. Weather couldn't have been better and I managed to get to the top of Pen Yr Ole Wen via the corrie to the east of it in no time at all after a bit of a scramble. The view was epic and I pitched the tent and was in bed by 8:30. Woke up at 6 and was walking at 7 before the sun was up which was quite magical. Didn't see a soul the whole way round Carnedd Daffyd, Carnedd Fach and Carnedd Llewellyn. Back down to the car near Llyn Ogwen by 11am and off home, via an interesting lunch stop. But thats another story...