Pickup at 7 and we’re off for the latest 40th birthday extravaganza. Yet another of our number has reached this dubious age, and we have been offered to share in celebrating in the manner of his choosing.

For this one, we are going to attempt to climb the 3 peaks of Yorkshire. Not all at once – that would be stupid, but over two days, with various other forms of entertainment to slot into the time.

Our trip to the Dales is uneventful until we reach Settle, where we are diverted off through the village towards Kirby Malham. The road we wanted to take forks off the main road just after Settle, so we head off on our diversion hoping to join up with it shortly. It’s dark and we both have gotten a little vague in our geography of the Dales, and after some time blatting along the country lanes we begin to wonder where the hell we are going. We know that while there are roads going up the Dales, there aren’t that many that cut across, and we have travelled 7 miles without any sign of the ‘diversion’ heading towards our destination of Horton in Ribblesdale.

Then after a while we start to see signs for Malhalm. At least now we have an idea of where we are. We head up the left of the Cove and at the top we see at sign for Settle. Back we go on this road, only at the top of the moor to be confronted by a highland cow wandering along the side of the road. We comment that running into that with its massive horns would not have been good, and we become a little more cautious. Then without warning we come upon a whole herd of black and white cows all over the road. They are strung out along the road for several hundred yards and we dodge through them in the dark.

The road starts to go back down. I never realised that Settle is surrounded by steep hills, but we left it going up a steep minor road and are now going back down into it on another. We’ve travelled 15 miles from Settle on the diversion only to come back to it, to meet the road 1/2 a mile past it we should have been on.

Now we are heading for the pub in Horton, we arrive at the campsite and turn down into it. It appears to be completely full and there is no space to park. My plans of putting up my small tent are scuppered and I am going to be sharing the communal large tent(s) that have been provided.

We head back to the pub and leave the car in the car park where there are a couple of spaces. Inside the pub is very crowded, and our friends are finishing off their pub tea on a table in the centre of the room where they look very hemmed in. We go to the bar, and though there are three bar staff, and not that many people waiting to get served. The staff are incredibly slow, and seem to be more interested in shuffling glasses around rather than serving the customers. This attitude is to continue throughout the night – each round taking 1/2 an hour to procure – my own I am charged the bill on the handset, but then because it hasn’t printed a receipt I am charged again in cash. There is no confirmation of the bill being cancelled and I am offered no reassurances that I wont be charged. The German girl seems to have no idea of how bar staff do their job, and having paid in cash, she then goes off and serves another customer without giving me my beer. So I have to wait yet longer in quiet dispair being finally demanding my beer before she goes off to serve yet someone else. The night draws to a close around 1am, and we head to our tents to catch some zz’s before our big walk.

At 6am the campsite awakes. The partying the night before had gone onto after 3, with a large contingent of Leeds fans walking the 3 peaks for charity. Also a crowd in a teepee have been chanting war songs late into the night while dancing around the fire. I awake to hear an argument from a tent close by, where someone has spilt coffee into someone elses boots. The discussion balloons into a general character assassination from both parties,and I wonder how the rest of their weekend in close proximity is going to go.

We get up and sausages are provided (Pateley Bridges finest), cups of tea and coffee, and we are fueled up ready for the day. 5 us camped the night before, then another 4 turn up on the day. I look around the group, and am slightly alarmed to see several of them appear to be being fed by intravenous tubes, perhaps we wont get far, but they also appear to be the ones wearing the most professional walking kit. It is explained to me that walking has move on technologically since I last walked the Three Peaks in the year dot, and it is no longer fashionable to turn up with a yellow cagoule and Army and Navy boots, but you have to have all the latest gear including the drinking tubes they are carrying. Not all of us are kitted out equally, and comments are made about one guy who is wearing jeans and ‘looks like he has just popped out for a paper’.

As we are doing the walk over two days, we are basically not doing the walk properly, so we decide to catch the train from Horton to Ribblehead to start there. We aren’t charged, and we walk off, down under the viaduct, choosing to walk to the left of Whernside where we plan to go up the side, rather than straight up the face. We wander down the valley looking for a way onto the start of the path up the hill, and after much map scrutinising (we have 3) we give up on the maps and cut across some fields to get to where we need to be.

We are close to the side of the mountain, and it is pretty steep. This is the part I have been worrying about – climbing straight up the side of a mountain. I walk quite regularly on the flat or around Ilkley Moor, but do very little hill walking. Last time I had gone up the side of a mountain was Ben Nevis with my sister, a keen mountaineer, and by the time I had got to the top of the incline, I couldn’t lift my leg, and found the completion of the Ben Nevis circuit very difficult.

The climb sorts the party into a rather different order from the level of walking kit. Two of the least well equipped are in the first group with two of the best, I am struggling towards the rear of the group, my heart is pounding and hurting a little, and I am gasping for air, but at the top I recover quite quickly and can walk along the ridge at a nice pace. The first major hurdle is overcome and I seem to have survived.

Close to the top of the mountain the group have waited and we all come back together for mars bars and to try Jim’s ‘cheaper than major brands’ stimulant drink. It is quite unpleasant but not as bad as a certain well known brand. The weather is beautiful, fantastic sunshine and a brilliant view looking back towards Pennyghent straight ahead and Ingleborough on the right. We are all very happy.

On the way up the climb we have passed many walkers. Many of the Leeds fans are going by, and several of them say to me it doesn’t get any easier going down. I think they’re are probably talking to me because I am gasping for air, and they don’t look too fit themselves – must be all those football ground pork pies.

Our route is in reverse to the standard route, and we go down the way they have climbed. Our climb was very steep but going down it is a long less steep path back to the viaduct. As we look back up it, we are quite glad we did it that way – the pain was short and sharp, rather than a long drag. We sit with a view to a waterfall fringed by red flowering trees. It’s rather nice, and we eat chunks of cheese in bread buns.

As we go down, we look back and one of our party has disappeared. Then he lurches back into view appearing to stagger. As he get closer, we see he is coated in mud up on side to his waist. ‘What happened?’ we ask. ‘I slipped off the path trying to let a dog and walker go by and sank straight into a bog’.

Getting back down, we can see a catering van by the road and we discuss what type of ice lolly we are going to have. Getting there – it is more a burger van, no lollies but it does sell 99’s, so we each get one. We sit on the grass as the superbikes scream by, and plan our next peak.

Penyghent is 7/8 miles distant but it is already well into the afternoon. It is getting dark at around 7pm, and with a 2 hour walk to get to the foot, it is doubtful if we can get up and down it in the daylight. We consider our options. We can walk for it and try and make it. Walk down the road towards Horton and go to the pub, or catch a train back to Horton and then walk up from Horton. Jim heads off to find the train times but the next train is not for an hour, so we decide to walk down the road. Getting up there are some stiff limbs – we have been sat 20 mins and it takes a while to get back into the walk.

The road is unpleasant. Now the superbikes are blasting past feet away and every corner and brow is dangerous. We come to a track to the left after a while and head off down it. It is much more pleasant. We walk through the fields and now there is a reddy tinge to the sun as it gets lower, it is a nice light. We walk towards some cows. But some of them aren’t cows. Two at least are bulls and they are pretty big. Some of us take a path to the right of them away from them, but Alan dressed in red sports wear walks to the left. One of the largest beasts starts snorting and wheels around. It is a little scary, but no one is touched.

After a while the track becomes a road – 6 miles to Horton – a very long six miles and I am glad to get to the end. We have walked 14 miles today including Whernside. We have all made it, and we dive into the Crown where cider seems to be the favoured drink, pulled by the voluptuous and sensual Italian looking barmaid. The pub is full of Leeds fans. No scarfs or shirts but plenty of bald heads. They are there for the night, and we have a table which we will hang onto most of till we leave. The food is far better than the night before and we get served in good time. This is a much better pub.

Everyone is tired now, so a 1am-er isn’t going to happen, people peel off from around 10, some making it through to around 12. Around 10.30 we decide to check out the pub from the first night. The German girl is there again, and once again service is a struggle ‘I am losing the will to live’ says one guy when he comes back empty handed. We play pool, and after a while the German girl comes in with a young farmer who we overhear has a wife and children, but they seem to be quite cosy in a bantering way. She seems to be dealing with this situation about as incompetently as she is a barmaid, and he doesn’t seem like a particularly nice piece of work.

Next morning we are down to 5 and we get up to see that the whole valley is covered in mist. After more sausages and cups of tea the mist starts to lift and we can see the base of Penyghent. Three decide to walk, and two of us are undecided. Tim has blisters and I have blood blisters. Still after a while we all go. We go across the fields to the foot of the climb. It is a steep scramble up the rocky side of the mountain, a wind is blowing today and it is a very different day from yesterday. I am gasping going up and take short rests after a climbing for a while, but we all make it – ‘if those children can do it we can’ – ‘yeah but they haven’t had 40 years of abuse’.

The top is crowded and we head down the side. As we drop off the top a pair of cyclists go past us going straight up the mountain. They are very slim lean looking men – ‘hard men’ I would say. As we drop further, more and more of them go by – it is the cycle race that caused our detour on Friday in Settle, and at least 400 of them are competing. They climb up past us, and then after a while the first ones come screaming back down the mountain decending very quickly. Jumping out of the way, we watch waiting for the first collision between riders meeting one another. Miraculously none happen. We hobble back to the village, our blisters and walking on the side of the verge to stay out of the path of the cyclists making it quite slow progress. The end of the walk is through the gathered crowds for the race, I am little disappointed no one thinks to cheer me to the end though

The reworking of the site continues … a new layout largely driven by increasing screen sizes and the requirement for sites to resize to work on many resolutions. Most of the photography on the site – over 1000 images was scanned at 300px high, and isn’t going to get rescanned in a hurry – the new design needs to take into account the fixed fairly small images but increasing screen space that site pages need to take up.

So after less than a year I find myself redesigning the photography part of the site, the design which I still quite like, though I’ve spent too much time working on it and am a bit fed up of the black and gray.

The rest of the site is done to the new layout – no loss on the design for that part of the site; the content has been culled, restructured and reprioritised – now the parts of the site that are going to get new content are more readily available. The whole site has one design, off one style sheet, with one master template; and while I’m not so happy with the new design it will be possible to modify the whole sites look easily and regularly as I get tired of it and feel it needs a refresh.

Still a couple of weeks before everythings done … but things are moving along nicely.

A last look at the old design before it disappears:

here is the preview video for the Fungaloids game. Programmed originally by Michael Orwin, this is the remake for PC submitted to the Retro Remakes 2003 competition

Download Fungaloids here

Cheapscape, freeloader, penny pincher … yeah yeah yeah … fact is the Undertones at Bingley fest on the free day was the band I wanted to see. I spose because bands from around 79 influenced my musical tastes for the next … years. The Undertones were high on that list. Original lineup, except for the ‘new’ singer (since 1999) replacing Fergal … I was wondering how they would sound compared to yester-year. After seeing ‘From the Jam’ at Bingley a few years back, I was prepared to give a band with a replacement singer a go. For From the Jam, their replacement for Paul Weller, sounded like Weller and had some much needed energy being younger than the man – it was a good gig. The Undertones new singer also sounded like his forerunner – with the same cracked warble … and it was looking good going into the first couple of songs. Then the problem started … he began strutting around the stage like Mick Jagger … except he was a fifty year old bloke doing something very old and unoriginal … Mick owned his strut. The songs were good, but looking at this guy was painful. His continual hip thrusts, and rockstar poses just looked crap and pretty embassasing. My perfect cousin and Teenage Kicks went down predictably well – with all and sundry jumping around … the bearded 50 year old biker in leathers jumping around with some young ladies in front was my favourite … accompanied by the stench of weed the couple behind were blowing straight at me. It was a good gig, marred by the singers posing … he should watch a video of himself – some of his moves worked and some looked really terrible. Best thing for me was material I hadn’t heard that was really good – I don’t know which album(s) they were from but there were some cracking songs that never reached me as a 12 year old.

Here’s the preview video from the ZX81 Caverns game:

Download Caverns here