First off I climbed Whitfell. I did it from the car park at the top of the Fell Road more or less as Wainwright recommends. Up Buck Barrow. On to Whitfell bypassing Burn Moor. Then over Burn Moor and on to Kinmont Buck Barrow and so back to the start. There was a path underfoot except when crossing Kinmont Buck Barrow. All very straightforward except the moment coming down off Kinmont Buck Barrow when I went up to my thigh in walked didn’t look too bag a small patch of boggy ground..

There was quite a lot of day left so I decided I would go and walk round the lagoon at Millom. I parked in Heverigg where the OS map shows a car park and a toilet. From there alonmg the shore a bit and then along the outer barrier, past the lighthouse. The was built in 1905 to protect the lead mines within it from the sea but since the mines closed the inside has flooded to make the present day lagoon. T the end of the barrier I went to visit the trig which is at the foot of an old windmill. Then a path leads round past the old lighthouse eventually coming to the big caravan park on the north of the lagoon where the way goes past the front of the Herdwick pub and then the grounds of the caravan park. Another very easy very peasant walk

WIth Helen. Mow Cop is the name of both a small town in Cheshire and a hill on which said town is located. I gather the first word sounds like the Chinese dictator, not like what you do to your lawn. It is distinguished for its ‘castle’ which is not a castle but a folly  erected in 1754 by a local bigwig and by a sticky out bit of rock called the Old Man o’Mow. There is a car park just below the castle in High Street which would appear to be named for its altitude, not its importance. We parked there then went to have look at the trig point. Well, I went to look at trig point while Helen, who has yet to understand why trig points are exciting, followed in some bafflement. The Old Man is just below this on the Gritstone Trail. After being on this very briefly we took a left to headownhill on the South Cheshire Way to the Macclesfield Canal. This took us took Scholar Green where we reached the Rising Sun pub just in time for lunch. Lunch done and back on our way, we crossed the bridge and headed back up the hill up Spring Bank. At Meadowsde Lane we turned right meaning to follow the footpath continuation of that but found it closed. So left instead down Birch Tree Lane then footpath running parallel to Station Road, then Top Station Road, then High Street again and so home.  Not a very demanding walk but a very pleasant one.

I found - just - a small place to park by Calvadnack Farm off to the West. From here I nipped across an empty field to get myself onto access land. It isn't far to the top but it isn't much fun what with the gorse and the brambles. But nothing campared to yesterday's horrors on Watch Croft. Came down the same way, more or less, but by now was beginning to discover little sections where  there was almost a path.

Then I drove east to collect my final Cornish Marilyn, Hensbarrow Downs. I thought of approaching from the north but places to park are not abundant on the B3274 between Trezaise and Stanalees. So I took the minor road out of Trezaise signposted to Greensplat and parked at its highest point about a km south. From here a path leads very easily to the trig point. I gather this was once the top of the hill. It no longer is as the landscape has been throoughly reshaped by the China clay mining that is going on all around here and there is a landscaped erstwhile slag heap to be climbed to reach the highest point. This was easily done. There is a small buildikng just beyind the trig point, a bit to the right of which a path leads eaily up a gully that reaches a short steep section after which roads tracks and easy grassy slopes lead the rest of the way.

I parked in the car park by the ruined mine buildings at Carn Galver and took the path up the stream that comes in from the SW to the north of Watch Croft. I had read somewhere that there is a path branches off this that takes one to the top. And I thought I had found it, I certainly found what seemed to be the start of the path. But not really. It quickly petered out and from then on the ascent was utter hell, fighting my way through a foiest of  brambles and gorse and general horribe deep, spikey vegetation. Eventially I made it to the top whichm according to hill-bagging.co.uk is a wee rocky tor about 25m SW of the trig point. At the trig point I found a path heading west towards a ruined building from where an excellent path led easily back to the road about a km west of where I was parked. If you want to climb this hill be sure you go the way I came down and at al costs avoid the way I went up.

From Plyouth where I was staying I drove to the Roughtor car park via the top of Kit Hill near Callington so brown Willy would be my second Marilyn of the day. It was a nice day. It was New Year's Day. The car park was pretty full. There is a memorial here to Charlotte Dymond who was murdered here in 1844 most likkely by her boyfriend Matthew Weeks who was convicted and hung for the crime. Brown WIlly is not very far from the car park but inconveniently there us another hill, Rough Tor, in the way that must either be circumambulated or transabulated. I like the look of the latter more. A good path led me to the top with its surreal furniture of shapely tors Another took me easily down the other side and easily up to the top of Brown WIlly. There was talk oce of changing the name to something less provocative of schoolboy humour but the locals weren't having it and it stuck. Apparently it is a corruption of Bronn Wennili which means Hill of Swallows. I returned eassily over the top of Showery Tor, the lowest of the lumps comprising the Rough Tor ridge.

With Fumiko. I met up with Fumi at Backstube & Café vonLuck which is a pleasant little coffee shop round the corner from Grunewald station. Coffee drunk, we headed back under the station underpasss to where a track called the Neuer Scholdhornweg beads off from a car park at the edge of the woods. After a mile or two this led to another track called the Teufelseechaussee where we took a right to come to another car park. From here a track wound up to a view point on the side of the Teafelberg. The top of the Teufelsberg itself, with its old American listening station left behind from the Cold War, is not publicly accessible. It is Berlin’s highest hill, man made from the rubble of ruined West Berlin after World War II. From here we walked down to the Teufelsee. We met a very naked man off for a dip.

Then we headed through the woods aiming to emerge at the side of the Havel just to the north of the little peninsula of Schildhorn. There are loads of paths and tracks around here  few if any of them signposted but keeping an eye on our direction we ended up in the right place. Here we turned south and followed the water’s edge until we were just below the Grunewald Tower where we climbed up the hill to have a look at it. The 55m tower was built in the last years of the nineteenth century to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kaiser Wilhelm I.  In 1916 the frail and elderly Queen Consort of Romania, Elizabeth of Wied, took two and a half hours climbing to the top, dying the following day. From the adjacent car park a track is signposted as leading back to the Teufelsee via the Pechsee. We followed it there and soon picked up the Neuer Schildhornweg back to the Café vonLuck  for a quick drink before the train home.

I was in Berlin and fancied a bit of a walk so I did this. Friedrichstrasse to Alt-Tegel is an easy journey  by U-Bahn up the U6 line. Alt-Tegel is also the name of a street which I followed east past coffee shops and restaurants and then the pretty Village Church to reach the lakeshore and the Greenwich Promenade where a dislocated red British phone box and letter box are set up to make the visitor feel like he really is in Greenwich. Walking north along the shore a bit one comes to a bridge and, keeping on the same way, Gabrielenstrasse. Here too I kept straight on but got a bit confused over the way I would recommend instead turning right briefly at Gabrielenstrasse to pick up the path that follows the shoreline more closely. Then you will find you way easily, as I did more hesitantly, to the Waldhütte restaurant..

A road goes off to the right from here. And a very short way down it a track goes off to the right marked with a sign saying “Landschaftsschutzgebiet” with a picture of an owl. This is the way. It leads through the woods, passing what a sign proclaims to be the highest tree in Berlin. A bit before that some more signs tell the visitor about the extreme storm that hit hereabouts in 10th July 2002. Eventually the path emerges on the Havel See.  If in doubt there are signs saying ‘Wanderweg 7’ stuck on trees here and there.  On reaching the Havel See finding the way gets very easy indeed. Turn left and follow the path along the shore all the way back to the Waldhütte. At one point a little after the headland  the path was closed but a quite detour – left up Scharfenbergerstrasse then right down Tegelorter Ufer brought me back onto it.  At the very end  the path by-passes a little peninsula with some expensive looking real estate on it

With Ulrike. We took the underground to Wembley. I had messed up packing for the weekend so the first thing we did was walk up Olympic Way to the stadium where there was a shop I could buy a couple of bits of clothing> Now we were ready. Back down Olympic Way, then Bridge Road and up Barn Hill. In Barn hill Open Space we quickly found the trig point, the first of three. From here much of the walk follows the London Capital Ring walk and the signs helped keep us right. As we headed north towards the railway a man chatted to us a bit mostly about how rich the people were who were employing him to walk their dogs. From here we more or less followed the Capital RIng, passing Preston Road Station, through Preston Park, on through Northwick Park.

On from there up the hill to Harrow where the children of the very rich go to school in what are manifestly some very grand attractive buildings. South from here still following Capital Ring signs to Sudbury Hill and south again from there to Horsenden Hil and trig point number two. A little south of here we abandoned the Capital Ring to follow the Grand Union Canal east till we passed a Sainsburys. Here we got back onto the road and followed the Ealing Road a short way north. A left down St James's gardens gave us access to one Tree Hill Recreation Ground where we hooked up with trig point number three. A quick look at the Hindu Temple and Alperton Underground gave us our train home. 

It is a very easy thing to get the DART train from central Dublin out here to Howth so, having a loose day in Dublin, I did just that. I didn't have a proper map but the tourist information kiosk a few yards from the station gave me something which would have to do. Visitors are invited to tackle a number of 'loops' of which the longest, the Bog of Frogs, was today's target, It begins as a walk along the top of a cliff, quite a crowded one, even in November, with a lot of foreign tourists like myself about - I heard a far bit of French being spoken. After a couple of miles there is a path up to a car park called 'The Summit' - though it is certainly not the highest point in the peninsula. The shorter loops head up that way so the cliff top path is suddenly, and pleasantly, a lot quieter. Soon thereafter I passed the road leading out to the lighthouse.

The well signposted route continues to follow the very attractive coast with wonderful views across Dublin Bay to the city and beyond to Sugar Loaf.The route comes very close to the prominent Martello Tower a little before which it turns right inland and heads north back towards the village. I crossed a road and climber up with the golf course off to my left. Heading through woodland a path branched off to my right. Here I abandoned the Bog of Frogs loop and went rogue, making mu own way, as I wanted to bag the Ben of Howth -which IS the highest point in the peninsula. Which I easily did before heading down into the village I had been told to try to Dublin Bay prawns at the Oar House on the West Pier. Yum. Seriously, yum. 

With Anna. There is a big car park on the A593 a bit to the south of Yew Tree Tarn. From here we followed the busy road to Yew Tree Farm round the corner. There is actually a way signposted through the field alongside to get to the farm avoiding the road but we only spotted this as we were getting back too late to take advantage. From the farm a track leads up and left where a path branches off and leads very pleasantly and easily through woods to the top of Holme Crag. We followed this up and we followed it down again. It was nice.