Welcome To The Year 2007

Looking out to the Three Peaks

The new years is here and over on the west coast of the UK it arrived in some style, with winds gusting up to 70 mph. Where does the time go? We had every intention of going on a few fell walking trips as well as doing a lot more sea fishing over the Christmas break but before we knew it, it was time to go back to work.

It doesn’t look like we’re going to have any snow this winter either – we’ve not even had frost in lowland Lancashire so just to remind everyone what snow is the above picture was taken in March last year when we went walking over Fairsnape and Parlick.

Wendy and Millsy (and Shacky) at the River Alt

Our promise to ourselves this year is to do more sea fishing, fell walking and birding and – if possible – to be out in the countryside even more than last year. A tall order but we’re willing to give it our best shot!

As well as the usual we’ll be going on another bank holiday Bass quest to Anglesey at the beginning of May and for a change we’re going to Devon for our summer break, we’re already looking forward to that and it’s still half a year away! I’ve even bought an OS map of the area.

So here’s wishing you all a happy and prosperous new year, Stuart.

A ‘Good Friday’ on Clougha Pike

Clougha Pike Summit

By Saturday we’d had enough decorating and headed north up the M6 to walk up Clougha Pike, which is the large hill to the east of Lancaster on the other side of the motorway. We parked just north of Quernmore and headed east up Windy Clough. Once we’d got to the northern end, in a moment of madness we went over Black Fell and headed around the summit of Clougha to Grit Fell.

The views of the moorlands we’re fantastic and the wildlife is showing all the signs that spring has finally arrived. We saw a lot of Grouse, in full breeding plumage and even saw a couple of house martins souring in the breeze. It’s amazing that this area used to supply millsotnes for the local area and there is even a broken one on top of the fell – image having to carve that only to have it break at the last moment!!!

Wendy on Grit Summit

This is Wendy at the summit of Grit, good views but tiny cairn (Wendy is only 5′1″ tall!). From here we made our way back north to the summit of Clougha Pike where Wendy took the rather fetching photo of me posing against the trig point (above). It was then all the way down the hill and back to the car. A great day out, and considering it was easter weekend, very quiet – we only saw 7 other people on the whole walk.

Spring – a damp start and no fish

Flint, Setting Up

Well since the last post we’ve been fishing at Cleveleys, Blackpool but as the weather was so bad and the fishing even worse the camera stayed in its case. I know this will seem odd but I don’t think I’ve ever been so wet while fishing – things are still drying out today – 2 days later. And just to make matters worse the amount of weed getting caught on the line was unbelievable. At one point there was so much it pulled my rod and tripod into the sea and filled my reel with sand, it is currently drying on the coffee table in bits.

This first picture was taken a couple of weekends ago during at match at Flint, North Wales, where the Flounder should have showed but the huge amount of fresh water coming down the River Dee meant that they mostly stayed out to sea – at least for me and Wendy.

Airbus A380 Wing on the River Dee

We did get to see this trundle past though, a very large barge / transporter carrying a wing for an airbus A380. Not something you see every day. It went down the river and turned right at the mouth, we think it probably ended up at Liverpool dock to be moved onto a larger ship to be transported to France and assembled but we could be wrong.

So overall the fishing hasn’t been great and after a good start to the season myself and Wendy have blanked the past two matches, oh well, there’s also the next time…

And just in case you were wondering about the walking aspect of this blog, the weather hasn’t really been to clever recently up here in the North West but here is a photo showing why we go out when the weather gives us the chance.

Looking out to the Three Peaks

This was taken about 3 weeks ago when the snow came down and shows Wendy looking out towards Pen-Y-Ghent, one of Yorkshire’s ‘three peaks’ from the journey up to the top of Fairsnape in Bowland, Lancashire. The views were stunning and it was good to be out when almost everyone else was in, if you know what I mean. My father is a ranger in this area which has many good walks and a great visitor center at Beacon Fell Country Park