Windy

Not me personally, but the weather!

The wind seems to have been a major feature of our weather lately, along with some clouds and rain. We had sort of planned to go away camping last weekend, but our usually apathy put paid to that and in the end it was probably just as well, I thought, as I lay awake in bed in the middle of the night listening to the howling gale outside.

We had gone camping a couple of weeks ago in the Lakes, with the idea of walking up on the Langdale Pikes but having nearly been blown over a dozen times when about half way up the hill, decided against it. This was then... That day, unfortunately, the batteries on Rob's windspeed monitor had given up the ghost, so we had no record of the actual windiness that forced us off the hill. It was probably slightly windier than Grasmore and definitely windier than Mam Tor (these are our previous 'very windy' experiences).

So, this Sunday we headed out for a walk around Dovestones reservoir (11.7miles) which is a local spot very popular on weekends and bank holidays as you can walk around for a couple of miles in the valley on the flat, but it is also possible to scramble up the hillside (if you don't mind steep slopes, rocks and a bit of slime and sheep poo at close proximity) to walk around the edge of the cliff-like edges overlooking the reservoir. We've been here loads, but it's still a nice place to come and blow the cobwebs away.

Blow is right, we measured a maximum windspeed of 51.2 mph up on the tops with an average blow around 20-30mph. These strength winds aren't enough to blow you over (unless perhaps you are a petite little thing, which I am not - although I am not quite a giantess, despite what some critters might say) but makes walking pretty hard work and I didn't want to get too close to the steep drop. I'm not scared of heights, but I am scared of hitting the ground at the bottom...