Martin and I took advantage of a January weekend to spend two days in Shropshire, near the Long Mynd. We had very un-British sunny crisp weather, albeit very cold. On Saturday morning we met in North London and drove the 140 miles to Wenlock Edge, a low escarpment south of Shrewsbury.
Wenlock Edge is an escarpment running north-south from The Wrekin and cuts across some lovely countryside. We headed across-country on our walking route, following a map and using my GPS.
I joined Charles Garnsworthy and Reiko Koyama for a winter stroll through the Chiltern Hills north-west of London. We started at Saunderton train station, and headed north along the Ridgeway path. This path follows an escarpment of hills which was used in pre-historic times as an early migration and tranport route. At that time most of England was covered in dense forest and this higher ground would have provided the easiest and clearest route from east to west.
The three of us stopped in at Bledlow and visited its Holy Trinity Church where we given mince pies and a detailed tour of its interior.
At the Lions pub we had a hot meal and continued on our way, enjoying more mince pies courtesy of Charles.
Even though the paths were muddy, the sky was mostly clear, with some wonderful vistas of blue sky with the lows rays of the sun lighting up the trees.
My last IAC trip before I leave Japan will be to Yamagata, in the north-east of Japan. We are staying at Pole Pole, deep in the mountains near the Japan Sea coast. We went there in December for the New Year holiday, and had a wonderful time.
Photos from December.
I took Bill and four friends to Yatsugatake for snowshoeing during his visit.
We stayed at the “Owl” lodge, “Fukuro-no-yado”、and spent two days snowshoeing up high on the top of Yatsugatake.
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Meakan-dake is a mountain in Eastern Hokkaido. We went by snowshoe from the car park at the hot spring and headed straight to the top. However, the last part near the top on the northern side is too steep for snowshoes, so we went around to the south, and then climbed from there. There is a fabulou 360 degrees panorama from the top.
On the way down, we took too long in the deep snow, so it was dark when we got to the lake. Stay on the path on the northern side of this lake.
GPS tracks:
Mapsource GDB file
GPX file