Early announcement of walking plans for this year can be found here

A number of people have shown interest in having a photobook from the walks this year. For the past three years, Fran and Tom have put a selection of photographs from that years walking tour into a photobook and sold it at cost price. Normally around £30-35. Previous years have been one week tour.

This year, we have done three sets of walks: the Big Session walk out of Buxton, the Ridgeway and the Lakes.

We propose to gather together a selection of pictures from each of these three into one photobook. As before, we will add JJ’s blogs to give some commentary to the photographs.

There have been many lovely photographs presented on Facebook. For a photobook, we really need the original photographs to get the quality when printed.

If you have photographs to contribute to this then please get in touch via info@jj-rr.org

You can either send in a cd, we can transfer them via “cloud storage”, or we can meet up.

The aim is to have the book ready well before Christmas. Please get your photographs to use by the end of October to give us time in November to create the book.

Fran & Tom

John writes: “Some fantastic photos and great comments tell their own story of our time in The Lakes. My thanks to the people of Threlkeld and all you walkers who surpassed yourselves in this inspiring and amazing landscape. 3 gigs within 300 metres of each other and all packed. My perfect tour!! Keep rambling. JJ”

… onto the summit of Blencathra. Led by Colin, supported by Boff and Ross, ably assisted by Aggie

Photograph by David Heppingstall

What a fantastic day! So pleased that everyone made it to the summit of Blencathra. Another divided walk – and our group had a great view of the other team scrambling up the exhilarating ascent via Hall’s Fell Ridge. We were there to applaud them and I felt very proud of them!

The weather has been incredible – I am so relieved when I think of how wet and windy October in the Lakes could have been. Instead it has been almost unreal – so still and beautiful.

We had a great house concert last night… I had a text from Benji Kirkpatrick, who couldn’t be there, saying that in his absence someone else needed to take over the telling of dreadful jokes on stage. As it turned out, this role was embraced by Lindsey!

Big thanks to Graham and Vanya for sharing their house with us – it’s been a treat.

Now the mood is exuberant as both groups of walkers are together, heading downhill …. towards the pub! 

JJ

Here we are, the early morning brigade, about to walk up Clough Head and over to the Great Dodd. The Vale, which others will set off in later, in another 45 minutes, is just off to our right. Unbelievable day … if anyone walking with us is new to the Lakes, I hope they don’t think the weather is always like this. It’s incredible. Great session last night, lots of songs as well as lots of tunes, great to have other musicians with us, Nick Passmore and so on, Rowan sang, the women’s choir sang… But now we have to get up that hill – that’ll sort everyone out! This group is going up to 700 metres there, and then 850 metres later – so we’ll be just under 3,000 feet by the time we get onto Stybarrow Dodd and Great Dodd. Then we’re going to go down Sticks Pass and meet the other group which will have done a slightly easier route, so we all meet down at Legburthwaite, in the car park, near to the Lodge at Thirlmere. This is the first of the divided walks – looking forward to it and we’ll see who’s with us at the top! JJ 

Photos: see if you can guess which team is doing which walk!