Discovery Award Gold - Paddle Awards Discover and Explore

Last November my passion for litter picking took to the water and that led to a new interest - canoeing 

I decided I wanted to be able to  go litter picking on the water in a proper canoe not just a bell boat for the unstable!  I signed up for a beginners session at a water pursuits centre and I have to say, it did not come naturally. But I stuck at it. Week after week. Sometimes alone, sometimes with a friend - canoes are so much easier in pairs!

It was all well and good going up and down the river once a week but by May I decided I needed some proper training, and I do like an award, so I did my British Canoeing Discover Award.  

So now  I could go in straight lines as a sole paddler - not as easy as it sounds!  I could go backwards through cones and sideways. Get in and out without squeeling at the rocking but I still had not actually fallen in and I think this was a bit of a mental block for me, I was constantly worried about what would happen if I did.

So now I took the bull by the horns and did my Explore award.   This involves understanding more about the water, the environment, how the weather affects things, what to wear, what kit you need, how to throw safety lines to help others and most importantly for me what to do when you fall in and how to save yourself.

Obviously I didn't take a camera with me and no one was there snapping so this is a borrowed photo but it does show you the type of boat and the start of a roll.  I kneel in a canoe and sort of perch my bottom on a wooden bar so your legs are tucked under, this has always bothered me about being trapped. It can often take me a while to get my crabby old knees to bend in and out.  

But I did rock my boat over, more than once, and get my head into the air pocket and my legs out. I swam pulling the boat , turned it and to get the water out of it.  I learnt to empty it in and out of the water.  I passed my Explore Award and am much, much less worried about falling in, I know what it feels like - cold and horrid mostly!  

I am immeasurably proud of myself.  I have gone the extra mile for my Discovery Gold Award - it requires 60 hours over 26 weeks - it did not require throwing yourself into a muddy, flowing, cold, litter soup numerous times to see if you drown or not!  

PS the water did not look like this the day of my course, it was not the day of glorious sunshine from the week before, it was the day after a day of massive storms. The water was up at least 3 more foot, running much faster, much colder and was totally churned up with silt and litter washing through- it was a truely gross day to fall in!!! I reckon it should have earnt double points.

I thought having to stop running because of injury would put an end to chasing the Discovery award for a while but as Maria Von Trapp says "When the Lord closes a door somewhere he opens a window" - it just turned out it was a soggy one.

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Journey to the North - Part 4

 Day 6 dawned bright and clear - my original intention had been to just head for home, but there were so many more stones to see, so we bought lunch from the supermarket (again) and headed up hill.

At this point I had a message from the AirBnB host to say she couldn't find her house keys, one check pockets later and I headed back down hill to return them  - told you I don't normally do the responsility part of going away! 

We headed up Heber's Ghyll which was a lovely walk, someone had taken the time to lay a dinosaur trail for children to follow too.

And onto the Swastika stone, the original (very hard to see) and a Victorian copy are both protected behind a barred fence.

The Sepulchre Stone 

Modern Art

Neolithic 'art' at hanging stones.

Another Stanza Stone - The Beck Stone, which was a challenge to find,  made a lovely place to sit and eat lunch by a babbling brook.

I was now burning away beautifully and it turns out that suncream and night cream tubes can look remarkably similar without reading glasses so I was just gently frying my skin rather than protecting it! 

But we walked on until mid-afternoon stone to stone across 5 miles before we parted and headed our seperate ways home.

Bearing in mind the health issues I have had this year and the general covid anst, this was a challenging trip but one that helped me to push boundaries and still come home more mentally relaxed than when I left.

So my Journey to the North for my Discovery Gold Award involved scrubbing toilets, sinks and showers, making tables, cleaning, laying out tents, making boxes. picking litter, walking up hills alone, and spending miles on the moor getting in touch with my neolithic roots.

I made new guiding friends, I extended my love of the north and learnt more about my neolithic ancestors - although I do think some of the more educated expert's interpretations of the stones are a bit off the mark.  I reckon a lot of these carvings are graffiti and nothing more, the drive of every person to leave some sort of mark on the world that means they are not forgotten.  You heard it here first ;) 

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Journey to the North - Part 3

I don't normally 'do' bookings and arrangements, I tend to leave that up to my husband or walking partner. As this trip was for my Discovery Award Gold I'd done the Waddow part all on my own and I also registered for airBnB and found what looked like a suitable place in Ilkley. Why Ilkley I hear you ask? Because the moor is teeming with Neolithic carved stones.  Neolithic stones are incredibly interesting, Avebury is spiritual,  La Hougue Bie is one of the most fascinating places I have ever been to. So it made sense to me that my journey to the north should include the moor.

Ilkley itself is a nice town, it is a spa town and the money is obviously drawn here but it holds a northern feel. I liked it.

My walking partner drove up to meet me there.  We had planned at the start of the year to go up the Old Man of Conniston, but my injuries meant this was the compromise of some walking time together and interesting for him too, as it is a place he had never considered walking in before.

The AirBnB home I had chosen turned out to be better than suitable and was absolutely fantastic with 2 double bedrooms and bathroom completely seperate on a floor of their own and the family left a lovely breakfast each day. They also, because of Covid, stayed out of the way, so this was like being in a lovely house on our own. 

 

Day 5 was a little drab but dry and after a nice breakfast we walked to the supermarket to buy lunch then walked up to the Cow and Calf to start our stone tour.  The cow is the larger of the stone son the left and the calf the stand alone stone.  I find looking at photos of rocks difficult to get a handle on size, but these are big (on day 6 we watched a clearly recreational walker in a skirt climb the calf, get stuck and have to be rescued by some climbers who harnessed and roped her up and slowly helped her back down - going up anything is much easier than coming back down!) 

There are lovely views once up on the moor (when I'm talking about the moor, this could be any part of Rombold's Moor of which Ilkey Moor is just one bit, different sections of Rombold's Moor have different names based on the locality to the towns)

The neolithic markings tend to be ring and cup marks but the rocks are also covered in modern carvings. Some from the 18th century onwards from what I could see, right up to today.  Mostly these are names, some are more modern art.  In some cases they appear to have carved names across the the neolithic marks.  I don't know how I feel about this.  Time marches on, traditions hold fast.  Is it just graffiti or is it a continuation of a culture?

I genuinely felt in awe of JD Wrigglesworth who had the tenacity to carve their full name in large letters across a rock in 1904.   

We headed off from the cow and calf to pancake rock.

Many of the stones have cup marks.  Lots are named and some were quite hard to find.

Some we gave up trying to work out whether we had definitely found the correct stone and just renamed them ourselves, so the moor now includes picnic rock and crocodile rock!

Modern art, can you spot the goat's head?

Some parts of the moor had very easy paths

Some rocks on the moor were very obviously identifiable, like the 12 apostles. 

Some paths were new

I am unable to wear walking boots because of my injury, so I was very grateful for some of the paths through bogs.

The Stanza Stones are part of an art project  by Simon Armitage and are spread across 50 miles. 

I was tripping along happily, whilstling 'On Ilkley Moor baht 'at' to myself when  Chris Chittell, walking from the opposite direction, commented on my lovely whistling. Surreal moment!

I also think I was possibly acting illegally as I was indeed wearing a hat that I had bought in Ilkley on Day 4!

Cowper's Cross was an unexpected find and has an interesting story, it is also evidence of Christianity trying to stamp out any pre-christian traditions and meeting places. 

Badger stone was the stone that initially set me to wanting to come to the moor.   It is very likely that this was a meeting place or market place and it has some of the best markings on it.

Time has washed away our understanding of what these marks truly mean though and it had also washed away the land surrounding the bench nearby.

We wandered on, on and off path finding more stones - until we were also weary 

And we headed down hill back into town for Fish and Chips sat on a wall.

12 miles walking meant I had now covered 45 miles across 5 days and I was starting to get beyond weary myself!

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Journey to the North - Part 2

Day 4 of my Journey up North and the weather was pretty shabby.

It is time I mentioned that my achilles finally gave up the ghost about April this year and I had to stop all running, any long walks and I'd rather lost a lot of my fitness.  I also decided it best not to mention to my physio that I had plans for a rather active excursion!  These plans had not included Pendle Hill but it was there at my feet, well I was at its foot, so it would have been rude not to go.

 Pendle is a hill but it's about as high as a hill gets before it becomes a mountain, being just shy of 2000ft.

Given my injury and my propensity for falling on these kind of walks, having gone down hard on both Snowdon and Ben-Nevis, I wondered how sensible it was my going up alone.  But there one or two walkers around so I set off

I was rather banking on a cup of tea  before I got going but the couldron said no.

Historically, the Pendle witch trials are important and interesting. The trials were well documented, the accused were not allowed to defend themselves, although some pleaded guilty and admitted they were witches, 10 were hanged.  

I decided to go up the challenging steps and come down the less challenging sloped path.  I usually am good at up, it's down that is my slippery down fall - literally.

I have a feeling this cairn, part way up, is something to do with the scouts.

Despite the mizzle, the views weren't bad.

I made it to the top

stood for a ponder

And then down.

I was rather pleased with myself, then I looked at the wall than runs bottom to top and had a bit of a think about the person that built that.  Imagine going to work at the top and realising you'd left your flask at the bottom, my mind wandered...I needed a cup of tea.

And part way to Ilkey I found it.

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Journey to the North - Part 1

It's been a while - sorry! 

You might remember I did my Discovery Award Bronze, I'm not sure I told you I'd finished and received my Discovery Award Silver, although I did write up in 3 parts a Journey to the Sea which was a project I did for it.  I have started on my Gold and this also needs to include a Journey.  With a window of opportunity of an easing of restrictions and a double vaccinated self I decided to do this in the real world!

My family roots are in Lancashire and it is an area that I always feel a sense of coming home in, so I contacted the Guiding Activity Centre in Lancashire and asked if I could spend some time volunteering there. With all large events cancelled, their need for volunteers is much dimished but after explaining I was needing a journey for my award they agreed to have me.  And with this in mind, I was determined to give them every inch I could, to prove my worth.

 I travelled up alone on the Friday, it's a long drive. I was rather proud of myself and I didn't even get in a fluster as I found myself on the Manchester ring rather than the expected M6!

I immediately set to with some litter picking.  

I filled a bag and some of it was old enough to make me feel it was worth the walk around the rather hilly campsites.

I met other fellow volunteers over our evening meal.  This was the first time I had eaten inside (not at home) with anyone for well over 18 months.  Just the covid fears, let alone the general new people social angst was rather challenging.

The view from my room window was wonderfully calming and I was taken by the hill to the left of the picture.

I fell asleep listening to the river running.

Day 2 dawned bright and the mood was good.  But I can't imagine not being in a good frame of mind here.

I was happy to volunteer for toilet duty and after having some training in covid protocols, I set to.

They have a lot of loos!

Job 2 was finding these boxes in different dry stores and putting together what was inside them

It was an interesting challenge and I admit to making a call home to talk about washers and their purpose, so I could work out which screws to use them with, being as there was no instructions whatsoever in the box!

I did 2 on my own and then 2 more with another volunteer.

There was also dry shelters to clean, the cafe to clear up once it had closed, washing up and other jobs but in the evning I managed to squeeze in a quiet walk down by the weir for a bit of R&R.  My watch told me I'd walked about 10 miles from breakfast to bed.

Day 3 also dawned bright and fair and it looked like it would be a busy day for the cafe, we helped to set up and then I pootled off to one of the campsites with my buckets to clean more loos

A DofE group had stayed overnight and I had to give the blocks they'd used a thorough scrub.  I took the opportunity of there only being 2 blocks to clean to bring down the cobwebs, wipes dusty sills and doors and clean windows too.  

I went back down the hill to  help two other volunteers check the poles and joints for 2 very large gazebos that were going to the county show.

Unfortunately they both had to leave, leaving me to finish up and I think it was the dust in the store but I was hit with the worst Asthma attack I've had in quite some time.  It was not much fun trying to come back to good.

I sat for a while with another volunteer making boxes for the sovenier mugs for the shop.

 But it wasn't long before I was ready to rock and roll again.

Back up the hill to clear up the dry shelter that had been used by the DofE group, I watched the teachers (not kids, they had been gone since the morning) faff around for far too long and then tell me they had finished cleaning up.   It was an interesting definition of clean! I then cleaned up and sanitised.

Followed by a field pick of what the kids had left behind - at least 5 socks and a lot of bottles and wrappers!

I headed back down the hill thinking that there was only the cafe to help clear up and be done for the day but it turns out there had been a birthday party in one of the huts and that needed clearing up too - little boys, never knowingly not peed on the floor!

But with a bit of team work from a few volunteers it was finally done.

All of the volunteers except me left and after the evening meal I decided to go for a walk to a nearby village to see if there were any men in top hats and strange moustaches.

The rest of the country watched a football match.

And it rained.

Very very very hard!

A sopping wet me stood and looked again at that hill.  It really was calling.

13 miles said the watch!

Day 4 dawned rather damp and dismal.  I helped with breakfast service and cleared up, sanitised the dining tables and chairs and then relaid for lunch service.

And then it was time for me to leave.  Nearly one hundred years worth of Guides have been going to Waddow Hall for fun, friendship, to learn about themselves, to develop skills and I was one of them.

Now, about that hill.......

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