Guided Walks in the Peak District

Guided Walks in The Peak District

One of the recurring questions that we have been asked throughout this years Peak District Walking Festival is, “are you leading any other guided walks?”

Mountain House Holidays are pleased to announce this years summer programme of guided walks in The Peak District.  All of this years guided walks are priced at £20 per person and the one visiting the famous Rockhall Cottage built into the Roaches includes a bacon sandwich and hot drinks!

In addition, Mountain House Holiday run Navigation Courses and Mountain Skills courses through their training company, Peak Navigation Courses.

Mountain House Holidays is run by Jane Livingstone and Michael Hunt, both qualified International Mountain Leaders.

Navigation Courses

Our Winter and Spring programme of navigation courses has now come to an end.  This year we have been busier than ever with more courses run and more students attending.  It’s good too that we have made some good friends from those attending the courses and we look forward to the autumn programme that starts this coming October.

It’s always good seeing people “get it” and discover that they can navigate, finding stone circles and obscure aircraft wrecks on the moors.  This spring we had one of our very first students come back to us for some revision and night navigation practice before taking her mountain leader assessment.  Needless to say she passed!

The coming programme includes introduction, intermediate and advanced night time navigation.  Details can be found at the Peak Navigation Courses website.

Peak District Walking Festival gets off to a warm start!

Our first walk for the 2011 Peak District Walking Festival proved a warm, but very enjoyable one.  The walking on the moors above Howden reservoir was at it's best, despite the menacingly dark skies which threatened to spoil the day.

Sales of our walks are going well, particularly the big aircraft wrecks on Bleaklow and Kinder, the first of which has sold out.  There are places available on Friday 6th May, so book yours while you can.

November snow in the Derbyshire Peak District

Woke up to around 8" of snow in Foolow, The Peak District this morning, deeper in the drifts. Excellent, and a chance to get out on the snowshoes later! 

 

No busses and not much traffic. It's great in the village with folks walking out greeting one another. Here's some pictures to enjoy.

 

Making the most of our Satmap GPS

Earlier this year, the kind folks at Satmap offered an Active 10+ bundled with a couple of memory cards at cost price.  Jane has been using it over the summer months and we took it on our intermediate navigation course over Kinder Scout last saturday, where it really came into it's own.

The course navigates over the Kinder plateau, seeking out some of the well hidden aircraft wreckage in order to practice a range of navigation techniques.  The Satmap is perfect for checking out bearings and distances, which it does with ease and speed.

I can't claim that I have plumbed the depths of the Satmap, but I have grown to like it very much.  One of the reasons we opted for the Satmap were the extensive range of maps, however my only reall quibble is the need to change memory cards when moving around the country.  We still use Viewranger on our mobile phones, and it is extremely easy to add mapping on this device - almost too easy, if you have an iphone and itunes account!  With Satmap you have to buy the map on a  memory card, wait for it's delivery and swop them around.  However a small price to pay for a gadget which does it's job very well, is much more robust than the phone, and easy to use when outdoors on a cold winter's day.

There is more information and the chance to try out the Satmap, Viewranger enabled phones and a couple of Garmin GPS machines on our Making the most of your GPS course in the new year.

Challenging Navigation - Easter Saturday 2010

Intermediate Navigation Course, a tour of the aircraft wrecks on Kinder Scout.

Today we enjoyed Kinder Scout at its wintery best with three clients on our intermediate navigation course.  We nearly failed at the start as a film crew were trying to tell us that the (public) road and parking at Barber Booth was closed so that they could film an episode of Jane Eyre.  However clients and ourselves did manage the rendez-vous and begin the course more or less on time.

From Upper Booth we ascended Crowden Brook to the “edge path”  where we began our navigation legs via two wreck sites before a perfect leg to Crowden Head.  Deep snow proved hilarious at times and more than a few times people disappeared into thigh deep drifts.

From Crowden Head we crossed to the River Kinder and on to Kinder Gates before finding another wreck site near Kinder Low. Noe Stool and a further two wreck sites involving cunning navigation and even “contouring” across some steep ground before descending The Cloughs to the bottom of the Jacob’s Ladder Path.

A grand day out and well done Andy, Steve and Phil!

Christmas, snowshoeing and New Year Peak District Navigation Courses

Off to Spain on Sunday 20th; hopefully for some snowshoe and snow hole digging, in preparation for the last part of Mike's IML - and Christmas celebrations of course.

Next years Mountain and Moorland Navigation courses in the Derbyshire Peak District start early in the New Year, so book your place now!
Technorati Tags: navgation course, learn navigation, Peak District, Derbyshire

Peak District Walking Festival

The 2009 Peak District Walking Festival was held between 25th April and 4th May. We offered to lead 4 walks, two for people with limited mobility walking the dales between Tideswell dale and Litton, and two starting from Foolow.

On the first Saturday, we were joined by 10 keen walkers, 2 of whom had done the same walk with us for the past 3 years. We led them through Tideswell Dale, Water-cum-Jolly and then on to Cressbrook Dale to the challenge of scaling Peter's Stone, before heading up Tansley Dale to Litton. All enjoyed the effort, and pronounced it a successful start to the festival.

On Tuesday evening, the weather was threatening to be a real challenge, however we all managed to stay dry for the pleasant walk through fields between Foolow and Eyam, then following the new Geological Trail path to Horeshoe Quarry and back along Tideswell Lane. Mike had been part of the original team campaigning for the British Mountaineering Council to take over the management of the quarry, so was in a unique position to share both it's history and hidden gems such as the newt pond and patches of summer bee orchid. We had been very proud to discover that the walk had been picked out as one of the highlights of the festival by East Midland Trains, in their customers magazine.

Saturday 2nd May saw us following the same route as the previous week, however on this ocassion we were treated to some beautiful flowers for which Cressbrook dale is justly famous. One participant sent us a very pleasing email after the walk "just to say 'Thank-you' for today's delightful walk. The walk, the area, the information, the company [including Flossie and Nipper] and the flowers were all wonderful. What a perfect introduction to the White Peak. I am astonished at the profusion of the flowers, especially the cowslips and orchids. Thank-you again.

The last day of the festival for us co-incided with Mike's birthday, and saw us on one of our favourite walks through Bretton Clough and onto Eyam Moor. Again the weather stayed dry, and we managed to get everyone to the Stone Circle without getting lost!

Once again a great event, which we are please to be able to support.

GPS Training course

Over the past few months, we have become increasingly impressed with the View Ranger GPS and mapping software which we now both have on our mobile phones - it even works in Spain (though sadly no mapping as yet)!

Just before Christmas, we had a long chat to Rob Turnbull at Outside about the lack of opportunities for GPS trainng in the Peak District. After some research, we decided to put together a course using both Garmin and View Ranger enabled devices, and Memory Map to upload tracks and create route cards.

Night Time Navigation Course on Big Moor

Two intrepid walkers joined us for our first Night Time navigation course on Big Moor above Curbur Edge in the Derbyshire Peak District. Mike set a challenging course, but all felt they had gained a great deal of confidence in their ability to use the navigation skills they had learned on earlier courses, and actually enjoyed the experience of walking on open moorland in the dark.