BAMWAT Newsletter – Winter 2015

Accounts of selected trips

February - Drakensberg Mountains

Julia, Steve, Natasha, Will, Jilly, Hilarie, Richard G, Christine K, Chris P and Debbie C.

Started well when all 10 of us boarded the same aircraft to JNB. Thank goodness for those A380s.

First stop the supermarket for provisions (Chris Kjumped into action with her lists) and with half thesupermarket in our cars we set off to Thendale HuttedCamp in the Royal Natal National Park where wewere greeted by a group of baboons. Not the mostattractive creatures!!! Quick walk to see Tiger Falls.

First day was low cloud so off to the Thukela Gorgeand our first encounter with the ladders and bits ofwire to drag ourselves up further. Second day wewoke up to brilliant sunshine lighting up themagnificent red Amphitheatre right in front of ourbedroom windows. Today we mastered The Crackwhere team work got us all through the tight gully andon to the top of the plateau.

Time to change camps and more provisions needed!! Via Bergville to Didima Camp in the Cathedral Peak area. Rainbow Gorge was our afternoons walk as we were preparing ourselves for our main challenge of the trip, Cathedral Peak itself. 19k walk with a 1600m ascent. We found our saviour in Bheki a guide who started us off at 6am and without him we would not have got there. For the final ascent he produced ropes for us to drag ourselves up and to abseil down.Great day for all and even a restaurant meal in the evening. Getting the right bottle of wine was a delightful experience!!!! Next day we did Doreen andRibbon falls and some doing the circle trip to Mushroom Rock. Maps are not the most detailed I have seen nor the paths very clear so that took longer than hoped for and the thunder and rain started…at least we got to use our waterproofs after carrying them for days. Final day was up to Baboon Rock where we had our lunch on its head.

Fully recommended area for walking, scrambling, ladders and great accommodation. Easy to get to from JNB with direct roads to the Berg itself.

Christine Padoin

The Three Peaks

Early in the year we'd decided to have a go at the three highest peaks in England, Scotland and Wales, as part of three separate trips during the course of the

year. We managed this, though I don't think that any individual made it to all three.

Julia at Thukela Gorge

Sheltering under Mushroom Rock

First up was the Lake District at Easter.

Christine K, Matthew, Diana and non-members - Jeremy and Sharanjit stayed at the Wasdale YHA.a great place to stay, tucked away in a quiet part of the lakes and situated right next to the lake itself. We were

able to walk either directly from there or after a short drive up to Wasdale Head. We did three main walks allstarting off from Wasdale Head:

• Climbing England’s tallest mountain Scafell Pike

• A walk up Pillar via Black Sail Pass and on to RedPike before descending via Yewbarrow.

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Second - Snowdon in May

RicrardG, Natasha, ChristineK and Tony our way to Wales for what wasplanned to be a long weekend, but the Welsh weather, not so unusually,had other ideas. We stayed in theexcellent YHA Llanberis at the edge of town. On the Saturday with the aid of a short bus trip wemanaged an ascent of Snowdenby the Cym Glas route, in nearperfect weather. Llyn Glas, at the head of the Cwm, is a beautiful littleLake, from there one traverses to

Third - The Ben in June

Fort William is a great place tobase yourself for a walking trip inthe Highlands. The weather wasgreat and Mark, Matthew, Herma,David and Diana were able to doa wide range of walks. We did a walk up Stob Ban in thelow cloud. The next day we wentup Ben Nevis in gloriousweather, some of the group upthe tourist route, and some viathe Carn Mor Dearg Arete.

This was very similar to the walk listed here – http://www.walkingenglishman.com/lakes8.htm

• Great Gable via Sty Head

Considering the time of year, the weather was very good. There was snow on the top of the mountains

still and we experienced the fantastic experience of being up above the clouds that were down inthe valleys whilst we basked in gloroius sunshine up on top of the mountains. We also witnessed the phenomenon of a cloud “rainbow”. Diana Topham

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On top of England Above the clouds

Bwlch Goch, at the Snowdon end of Grib Goch, and joins the massed hordes on the Snowdon Horseshoe for the last hour's excellent scramble up to the top. Overnight the rain set in, and a forecast of 60mphwinds with heavy snow at 2000ft decided us allto cut it short and comehome. Tony Cooper__________________

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We were not expecting as much snow as we found at the top. For details on the route seehttp://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/fortwilliam/carnmordeargarete.shtmlThe next day we did a walk from Kinloch-leven. We climbed Na Gruagaichean and did a lovely ridge walk in the fine sunshine.

On the Ben

On top of Wales

April - Mallorca

We ( Julia, Steve, Chris K, Angela, Debbie C, Ian Hilarie) took advantage of the latest BA network addition to fly to Palma from LHR to get to Mallorca in time to check into a small hotel and have an evening stroll on the promenade and a fish supper. Next morning we headed to the Tramuntana mountains. It was quite a comical adventure with a major cross-country race crossing the road just where we arranged to meet the key holder of our villa. Luckily it came good in the end despite being moved on by the police and driving off without Angela in the car!

We got in 6 day good day walks including the circuit of Puig Roig, the Cuber to Biniatrix gorge (GR221), a walk to include a rather chilly swim in what turned out to being used as a nudist beach, a bit of cable work on Tossals Verds and (my favourite) the Bridlepath Archduke Ludwig Salvator along a ridge with wonderful coastal views. We used a bus to enable a linear walk but they seemed rather unreliable so the next time we cadged a lift off our handyman at the villa. Other than those, all our walks were either from the villa or a 30min drive away.

The villa was very comfortable and spacious with a charming (well-used) pool, mini orchard of oranges and lemons, and a splendid terrace for BBQ and dining. To top it off, the walks came with pre-recordedGPS tracks so absolutely no risk of getting lost; welcome to the future!

Hilarie Sutlieff_________________________________________

August – Tatras

We (John, Benita, Peter, Hilarie and Tony) met in Krakow, another new destination for BA, and had a day's sightseeing in fierce sun, before heading off by bus over the border to Starý Smokovec, the maincentre for the range in Slovakia.

3 days of hut-to-hutting brought us to the tourist village of Štrbske Pleso. where we had 4 nights. The weather was kind, so we got out for good walksevery day,visiting a number of the high huts and high lakes. The accommodation and food was all good and very cheap.

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Our villa

Team on Archduke Ludwig Bridlepath

Zamkovského Hut

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Štrbske Pleso (=lake)

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From the way up Rysy

BAMWAT reaches China

Well it must be a first for BAMWAT members to be on a traditional package tour with 4 star hotels and 3 meals a day. Our October holiday starting at Cheng-du in Sichuan province was packed, varied and re-warding and offered a real cultural experience with some stunning scenery… and we met lots of Pandas, we had superb weather and it was great value.Why Chengdu? Well it's a new route, many of us hadn’t been to China and some of us fancied flying on the 787 and I’d read there was a spectacular gorge to walk alongand pandas to visit. Tony’s advice was to travel North to Huanglong and Jiuzhaigou National Parks, which we did. On flying into the area we arrived into a marginally frozen landscape with snowmen from the previous week. But the next three days were in the high 20s. Our guide Alex started his introduction by checking if we knew we were now in Tibet? Buddhist prayer flags, the high altitude (3,500m) and numerous yaks added to the delight of arriving in this extraordinarily beautiful place. It was such a stark difference from the high rise, busy, cloudy city environment of Chengdu. Huanglong National park offered us a few hours of walking climbing gently up as

water cascaded down through light green pools formed by calcite deposits. Bottles of oxygen were on offer but apart froma couple of headaches we coped without and then descended to 3,000 metres for our hotel.

Jiuzhaigou National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a protected landscape (World Biosphere Reserve). The park thoroughly deserves its ranking ; it is nothing short of stunning. We enjoyed a two day visit

to see all the key waterfalls and lakes. We had travelled at peak season and as expected we were joined by many other predom-inantly Chinese and SE Asian tourists (35,000 of them!) Once through the gates of the park we boarded one of the 350 buses to take us to our first lake. We were aware that there

was only one restaurant in the park!! Amazingly it worked due to the provision of 24 buffet serving runs.Then we ticked the box of being real tourists and went totwo shows. The troupe of Tibetan dancers in the second one looked good enough to tour.

In my excitement about Jiuzhaigou I have omitted to saywe started our holiday with a visit to Dujiangyan ancient irrigation project and Two-King temple with a walk up Qingchengshan ( Sanctuary of Taosim).There we awoke to the traditional climate of low cloud to drive a few hours south through tea plantations to take a quick boat trip to view the Leshan Giant Buddha (71m high) with an afternoon at the Buddhist temples Baoguosi and Fuhusi (which were saved by the Local Governmentfrom Mao’s cult-ural revolution. Itwas excellent totour these withour superb guideJack to explainthe significanceof the temples.We stayed Southof Chengdu atYa’an for our lastday and werethrilled to wake up to one of the area’s rare blue and sunny days. Another great highlight of the tour faced us -a visit to the Bigengxia (Chinese for Green Peak Canyon) Panda Breeding Research Centre, built to compliment the famous Chengdu Wolong Centre. The pandas are housed in large enclosures and we enjoyed seeing them eating their breakfast of bamboo. It was exciting to see them climb trees and then lounge aroundat about 20 metres high. The pandas in the kindergartenwere being cared for like babies and were oh so cute. A walk in the canyon was beautiful and we ended the day with a trip to the traditional town of Shangli.If anyone fancies visiting this area lets us know. The group included Hilarie Sutlieff, William Blair, Angela & Nigel Pearce, Jilly Wood, Huri Tozen, Debbie Conway, Natasha Player, Chris Padoin and myself.

Christine Knight

Car Hire Insurance

When hiring a car CDW (collision damage waiver) is usually included in the basic charges. However there is often a relatively hefty excess for any damage. Every policy needs checking in detail so at the risk of generalising it is now clear that the “additional insurance to cover the excess payment for damage” is expensive and a bit of a rip off.

A potentially cheaper way to cover this excess is to take out a separate policy. A few of us have taken out a £60 annual worldwide policy for the year - if hiring just two cars per year works out cheaper than paying the car hirecompany for that additional cover. You can in addition take a policy for just one trip. We have used iCarinsurance, although there are other offers on the market. Worth a look if you are hiring a car.

Christine Knight

For future trips see https://bamwat.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/trip-list-2016.pdf

Newsletter edited by Tony CooperThanks to all the trip organisers, photographers and others who have contributed

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Huanglong Mountains

Gang at Waterfall

Panda in Bigengxia