Knowing that today would need to be a shorter day on the hill, in order to allow time for traveling back to Oswestry, we decided to make Moel Siabod our target for the day. I’ve taken groups from the school up this particular mountain before, but never in winter conditions and not by this route. [...]

This weekend has been advertised to the Oswestry School cadets as a ‘Winter Skills’ weekend since September. The reality is that we never know what the conditions are likely to be in Snowdonia from one week to the next, never mind four or five months in advance. By Wednesday of this week, I was consigned [...]

It was a great day on the River Dee today. The river was running at a ’7′ on the gauge at the Old Mill, giving plenty of flow, but not making things too frantic. Combining that with a dry day and good company, made for a fantastic day to be out canoeing on the river. I [...]

Looking to make the most of the milder conditions, Chris Hughes and I teamed up for a day’s paddling. We had hoped to paddle from Lanerfyl to Meifod on the Afon (River) Banwy, but inspection of the water levels at Llanfair Caereinion suggested that it would have been a bit of a scrape along the [...]

Last week I got a call from George, who was looking for a bit of help in working towards his Summer Mountain Leader award. I first met him about two and a half years ago when I was leading a wilderness expedition in the Scottish Highlands (sorry, I hadn’t started the blog back then) and [...]

It’s been a little while since I’ve been out on my bike, but it seemed the ideal way to work off some that Christmas excess. Chris Hughes and I decided to head for the Long Mynd area of the Shropshire Hills to explore some new trails. Although everything looked good as we started our drive [...]

It’s been a while since I’ve been out climbing with Ranjit. He was actually responsible for introducing me to the world of climbing a number of years ago now, but we don’t often find the opportunity to get out together these days. However, with things still a bit quiet after the Christmas holidays, today was [...]