Posts Tagged ‘Walking’

Unfinished business finished

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

The last time I was in Tenerife, I had a bit  of a disagreement with a local montain. The mountain was called Guaza, and it lived at the edge of Los Christianos. It’s still there, and when we saw each other this time around, I felt it was time for a rematch.

Last time, I had quite innocently tried to climb it, and it hid the path and got me lost on its rocky sides. It then filled my arm with cactus jags, and I had to go to the first aid hut on the beach to try and get them extracted by a professional with tweezers. I had a sore arm for a few days (fortunately they didn’t contain anything poisonous), but needless to say my pride was also badly wounded.

So it was kind of inevitable that I would have another go this time. And today I had a very nice walk over the hill and round the coast to Las Galletas. I googled it up and found that there is a route, and that it is about 9 miles long and should take 4 hours. I also discovered that people who organise walks don’t do it in the summer when it is too hot. But summoning up the courage of my church’s kamikaze walking group, who never turn down any challenge, I bought a couple of litres of lemon tea, put on my emergency hat (as my face is a little sunburned already from yesterday) and headed off. And I had a lovely walk. I listened to a month’s worth of Friday night comedy from Radio 4, saw the lighthouse, and got the bus back from Las Galletas. According to my ever faithful Runkeeper, I walked 8.6 miles in 3:40 or thereabouts
I am all pleased 🙂

Cregagh Glen

Monday, May 30th, 2011

Hello internet! How’ve you been?

I was off work today, so I decided to go for a nice walk. I managed to be outside for an hour and a half without getting rained on!

I walked to my local forest, Cregagh Glen, which I discovered today is run by the National Trust.

As usual, it’s pretty rough – trees have fallen, and fences have broken; some of the bridges still don’t have guardrails, and there’s quite a bit of litter from the local drinkers. Well, a little less now, since once of the items I saw was a plastic bag, so I lifted it up, and filled it with bits of rubbish that I found on the way down).

But despite the bad parts, it’s nature, and it’s lovely.

Walked right to the top, and enjoyed the view over Belfast from the top of the hill, but had to use some of my football special to put out a fire that some moron had lit in the bushes. But I hadn’t walked there in ages, and I enjoyed being out and about.

According to runkeeper, around 4 and a half miles in and hour and a half. But who cares – today, it was just about a nice walk.