Newsletter 28 – October 2008

NUNEATON MOUNTAINEERING CLUB

NEWSLETTER 28                  October 2008

Website http://www.nunmc.org/

Edited by Colin Green

PROGRAMME     NOVEMBER 2008 – FEBRUARY 2009   Matt Liggins

November 14th – 16th                         Howgills / Lakes.  Novemberfest Weekend.  Tarn Outdoor Centre.  Contact Matt.

December 13th                                      Peak District with Eileen.  Location TBA

January 10th-11th 2009                         Lake District.  Langdale YHA weekend.  Contact David.

February 19th – 22nd 2009                   Scottish Highlands.  Southern Cairngorm area. Newtonmore Hostel. We have exclusive use of the hostel.  Limited to 10 places.  See Matt.

And there’s much more than this going on.  Visit us on a Thursday evening from 8.30pm at Attleborough Liberal Club, Bull Street for impromptu activities, or ring Andrew on 01827  717 648 or Matt on  024 76 758 322 if you can’t get down. And don’t forget our website at http://www.nunmc.org/

A.G.M.

If you weren’t down on 16th October then you missed it.  However 18 others attended with two apologies so it was well attended and business was conducted smoothly.

MEMBERSHIP DUE NOW

This is due now and has been increased from £15 to £17.  You can thank the BMC for all of this increase and I hope that we will be making representations to them as they may well be minded to increase fees next year too.

In the meantime send your cheques for £17 payable to Nuneaton Mountaineering Club to:

Eileen

Alternatively visit us any Thursday from 8.30pm at Attleborough Liberal Club, Bull Street Nuneaton.

NEWSLETTER

Will now speed to you via e-mail whether you want it to or not (Speak to Matt if you feel this is a personal invasion of your e-space).  There will also be a hard copy version to encourage you to read it!  Alternatively you can get an edited version on the website.

The newsletter will be more regular but shorter.  There will still be accounts of walks, weekends and other expeditions but I will not chase after them.  If they come I will publish but otherwise the juggernaut will move on.  Hopefully information will get to you quicker and more often.

 

10th ANNIVERSARY OF NMC 

The first recorded NMC walk took place on Saturday 27th March 1999.  There were 13 members present but sadly I only positively recorded two other names.  We went in a council minibus organised by Peter Lloyd to Arenig Fawr and it may well be appropriate to repeat the walk next March.

There is also a proposal to organise a celebratory meal.  Express your views and ideas ASAP.

PLANNING MEETING

To be held on Saturday 15th November at the Novemberfest meet.  However you don’t need to wait until then to put in your ideas for the next six months of the programme or even be at the Novemberfest.  I submitted my cunning plan to Matt at the A.G.M.

Also, while we need people to take on the responsibility of running events just because you make a suggestion doesn’t mean that you have to organise it.  Suggestions anytime from now onwards.

COMING-UP

There are still places left for the Novemberfest, 14th – 16th November so book now to avoid disappointment.

We’re at the Tarn Outdoor Centre between Sedbergh and Kirkby Stephen.

Likewise the trip to Scotland in February 2009 is selling out.  There is another hostel in Newtonmore for overspill but at this one we have sole use.

No need to book the day walk to the Peak District on 13th December but the January 2009 weekend trip to the Lakes will require deposits soon.

POLAND AUGUST 2008  Eileen

As you will see from Richard’s report we all had a great time in Poland.  After a few days in Krakow we headed for Zakapane and the mountains.  On our first day there we all took the cable car up to the ridge and then walked the rocky 6.5 km (Height Loss = 925m.) back down.  I do not think that Rita has forgiven Richard yet for this as this was the last time that Richard and Rita came walking with the rest of the group.  After a day off on the Sunday Ann, Keith, Nick, Les and myself took the minibus to Gronick and followed the Dolina Malej Laki (938m) valley up to Kopa Kondracka  (2005m) and then along the ridge to Kasprowy Wierch (1987m).  Although we only walked 10.5 km on what the book classed as “moderate” there were a lot of steep up hill sections (height gain 1452m).  It was also very cold and windy along the ridge so we all opted to go back down on the cable car.

The next day was warm and sunny.  We walked up to and had our picnic and a sun bathe by the lake at Czary Staw Gasienicowy before climbing up to the ridge via Karb (1853m) – Swinicka Przelecz (2051m) and Posrednje Kopa (2128m) and along the ridge to the cable car.  We got to the cable car station just minutes before the last car of the day left which was lucky for us otherwise we would have been in for a 3 – 4 hour descent which none of us fancied.  We had been near the highest peak on the ridge but spent too long over lunch and had not had time to climb it.  Les and Keith said that they would return the next day and bag it but they never did.  Ann and I wanted to complete the ridge so took a minibus to Kiry and completed a very strenuous 15.5 km walk  from Polana Cudakowa (952m) to Ciemniak (2096m) along the ridge to Kopa Kondracka (2005m) and  walked back down to Kuznice (1025m).  We certainly earned our dinner that night.

The walking here is spectacular but as we only had a few days we concentrated on the ridge that marks the border with Slovakia. All the paths are way marked and there are even sign posts at junctions and at the top of the mountains so very easy to navigate.

 

POLAND AUGUST 2008    Richard Dean

On the trip were -Ann, Eileen, Les, Keith H, Nick, Richard & Rita.

The first two and half days were spent at Krackow staying in a nice little hotel in the Jewish quarter.  The city is similar to Prague with magnificent buildings, churches, statues and large squares full of restaurants with outdoor eating.  The climate is good with temperatures at 27-29 degrees C.

One excursion was to Auschwitz the World War 2 German concentration and extermination camp.  This is now a museum.  After watching a short video taken by the Russian liberators of the camp we were left to wander around 20 or so blocks which each used to hold around 400 prisoners but now are dedicated to show what the living conditions were like.  Some of the blocks were just full of the personal belongings of the victims such as shoes or suitcases with the owners name and address painted on.  One block held the punishment cells, one for starving prisoners to death, one airtight to kill by lack of oxygen and one which had just enough room for 4 men to stand, not sit, and this they spent 12 days in.  The tour finishes with the gas chambers and incinerators and the gallows where the camp commandant was hanged by the liberators.

The next day we took a bus to Wieliczka salt mine first worked in the 13th century.  The fee to go in is £10 for Polish tourists and £15 for English.  I wonder what the European government would do if we did that in England.  There are 350 kilometres of passages in this mine but tourists are taken around 3 kilometres of this with some chambers having carvings in the rock salt.  Two chambers are chapels with many large chandeliers.  We were told that 5000 people a day visit the mine which equates to £60,000 a day income.  When I asked the guide where did the money go to she said “maintenance”.  We had to miss some of the tour because we had checked out of our hotel and put our cases in lockers at the bus station ready to catch a coach to Zakopane about a 2 hour drive away and we only just caught the last one.

Eileen is writing an account of the walks but briefly Zakopane is a great place for walks of any grade because the Tatra Mountains close by form a long ridge up to around 6,000ft high (which is also the border with Slovakia) and along the base leading out of town is a road parallel to the ridge.  Minibuses leave every 10 minuets or so and for between 70 pence and £1.10 you can be dropped of at the bottom of many river valleys leading up the ridge.  The walks are colour coded on the maps together with posts on the ground.  There is also a cable car going directly to the top but there was usually a long line of people waiting to ascend.  I found two mountain refuges at around 3,000ft where you could get food and drink for not much more that down in the town.

The town was very lively at night.  The streets were lined with restaurants and bars with entertainers such as jugglers, artists, living statues, violinists etc.  On Saturday there was a market and one particular product stood out.  It was fried smoked sheep’s cheese called Oskipiki.  Hard to believe but there were 47 stalls selling nothing but that plus a bit of honey.  I tried one piece but found it inedible.  There is one main thing to avoid in Zakopane – the musical trios that seemed to be in most bars.  Polish music is an acquired taste and we did not acquire it.

We spent the last day back in Krakow and some of us had a boat ride on the river.  We had caught a tram to our hotel from the bus station.  The trams are very cheap, about 70p for any journey, but we had a surprise when we came to do the return journey for the flight back.  The road had been dug up so there were no trams.  We dragged our cases for about a mile before we found a road with a tram on it and this was only about 100 yards from our destination.

In all another great NMC trip.

 

 

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