Tagged: sherwood RSS

  • Dave 1:38 pm on February 8, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: , sherwood, ,   

    Sherwood in snow 

    A quiet walk

    I’ve spent the last week off work. This coincided with a lot of snow arriving and lots of people having a fairly horrible time travelling. I was without a car for most of the week after my old one died – I had a few days between a hire car going back and my new car arriving, so I spent that by going for a few walks locally.

    On Thursday, the snow was particularly heavy and I went for a walk in Sherwood Forest. It was nice to see a lot of people out and about, playing in the snow. Childhood memories came flooding back. I can remember sledging at the spot below when I was a kid.

    Sherwood

    Deeper in to the forest, there were hardly any people at all and a lot of the paths were snow covered and footprint free. It was also nearly silent apart from the crunch every time I took another step.

    There are a few more photos from this walk in this Flickr set:
    Sherwood Forest Snow 02/09.

     

  • Dave 7:01 pm on February 19, 2008 Permalink
    Tags: sherwood, ,   

    Sherwood to Worksop 

    Burnout 1

    Most of the walks I do are circular, just out of convenience. There isn’t really a good reason not to do linear walks if you can easily join the circle with another mode of transport. I have done this a few times in the Peak District -typically getting a bus or a train out of Edale. Yesterday I walked from Sherwood Forest to Worksop, then got the bus back to complete the loop. Sometimes, walks are circular and in order to make that circle, you may have to include bits that aren’t really that nice. I’ve been on lots of walks where sections just feel like they’re there to join up the good parts! I’m certainly going to think about linear options more.

    The walk from Sherwood to Worksop wasn’t a direct one really. I did meander in Sherwood Forest and Clumber Park on the way. I measured the route I took and it was about 13 miles, but that could be extended significantly. My path through Clumber Park was more or less in one end and out of the other. That place is big enough to add a fairly sizable distance on to a route like this.

    History Repeating

    The shot above was taken in Sherwood Forest near the beginning of my walk – and is far more pleasant than the burnt out car pictured at top. I do like the photos of the car, even if I don’t like the fact that it’s been stolen,torched and dumped in the forest.

    More photos from the walk

    I was travelling light again, and just took the Ricoh GX100 with me. I love that camera much more than I expected to. I thought it’d be a good camera to have, but I didn’t expect to love it so much. It’s just so nice to use. I can’t believe I’ve only had it 10 days or so. It feels so familiar and comfortable. I remembered this Gadget Show video I watched before deciding to buy the camera (after much deliberation and eliminating possible candidates from a list) in which the host appears to love the camera as much as I do. I’ll make a proper post about that after the ‘honeymoon period’ though!

     

  • Dave 10:44 pm on November 19, 2006 Permalink
    Tags: , sherwood   

    Sherwood Night Ride 

    Sherwood Night RideMost of the time when I go cycling with folks from the MTB Britain forum the routes involve actual mountains or at the very least very big hills!

    For something a bit different I organised a night ride around Sherwood Forest. There were 7 of us in the group and we had a very smooth day out with not a single mechanical event – not even a puncture. All 7 were people I’ve met a number of times on previous rides and great bunch – very capable and also very easy to get along with. All of that helps when you’re effectively stuck with them for most of the day! :)

    Our route started on the edge of Sherwood Forest at about 2:30 PM and we made straight for Sherwood Pines to get in some of the fast weaving singletrack while there was still some daylight. At that stage I think everyone was full of beans and we were flying around up there. After the singletrack we had a go at the Dual Descender which doesn’t really do it for me. I much prefer the singletrack course around the forest.

    From Sherwood Pines we went to Vicar Water and made the completely unnecessary diversion up to the top of the reclaimed pit tip. There wasn’t a need to go over this because there are paths that go around it, but it’s a good challenge. These days I’m never in any danger of not making it to the top in one go, but there is definitely some effort involved in making that happen!

    From Vicar Water through Newlands near Clipstone (it was now dark), crossing the River Maun and making our way to Parliament Oak and on to Market Warsop and then back in to Sherwood Forest and then on to Clumber Park. I find Clumber Park quite eerie in the evenings. Being able to see the silhouette of the large chapel and being far enough away from anything for it to be really quiet all add up to giving me this feeling. You hardly ever see anyone up there when it’s dark. There are exceptions though – tonight we went past one parked car and two couples walking their dogs. A few years ago a mate saw some bloke jump out of the undergrowth at the side of the National Cycle Network path completely stark bollock naked and then run off to get on his bike which was lent up against a tree – and it wasn’t even dark – not that that would explain it any more! Nothing like that happened tonight though!

    By the time we got back I think it was about 7:30 PM and we’d clocked up 34 miles. A few of the group had flat light batteries and some were running on backup lights and some were just staying in the middle of our group soaking up the more than adequate light being pumped out by the remainder.

    I managed to fall sideways twice this evening while being clipped in. It’s still very early days with the pedals and on two occasions I didn’t unclip before teetering over to one side. Both were on to very soft ground though so no harm done, other than looking very silly!

     

  • Dave 1:32 pm on April 17, 2006 Permalink
    Tags: , sherwood   

    Hammer Horror 

    Sherwood Forest

    It’s a bank holiday, it’s quite warm and sunny, and on a walk around Sherwood Forest the best photo I can come back with is a really dark black and white fisheye job which looks like a still from a Hammer Horror film!

     

    • dementia 6:44 pm on April 17, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      I love this shot!

    • StnkBll 1:19 am on April 18, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      I think it is a great shot! Looks like a mystical shot.

      I know – took me a minute – reminds of The Wizard of Oz – the forest with all the monkeys.

    • Roger B. 8:58 pm on April 18, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      Brilliant shot – very “Sleepy Hollow”.

      (BTW, when I saw the title of this post I thought maybe it was about a Bank Holiday DIY nightmare)

    • Deva 1:12 am on April 19, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      Cool shot!!! . . from a fellow blogmadder. :)

    • Diana 3:14 am on April 27, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      I love this photo. As Roger said, it is very Sleepy Hollow.

      It really feels like the forest is coming in around you, nice effect.

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  • Dave 3:41 pm on January 15, 2006 Permalink
    Tags: , , sherwood   

    Out cycling in Sherwood and Clumber 

    Clumber, Winter IRI was planning on getting some serious cycling done this weekend – well, I was last weekend but things have conspired to stop that happening. Last weekend I had some serious computer problems – I thought my hard disk was dying so spent most of the day doing backups and trying to rescue stuff and it seemed ok at the end of the day. The following day I spent fixing my step sisters computer and that turned in to an all day affair, although I did manage to get out for a walk in Sherwood whilst it was running some disk repairs.

    So, after a weekend like that, this weekend I REALLY wanted to get outside. Over the course of the week though my computer was playing up again, randomly powering off – it seemed that my diagnosis of a disk problem wasn’t correct and there was something more serious going on. On Saturday morning it wouldn’t even boot properly – I did some testing by systematically removing disks, memory, any cards that were plugged in but the motherboard wasn’t playing. Bugger!

    So, off I go shopping trying to get the cheapest thing necessary to fix it – which would be a motherboard – due to it’s ancient specification (a P4, 3.06GHz) I couldn’t find anything that would fit both the processor and the memory. That meant either getting a new motherboard and a processor and maybe my current memory would fit, or buying memory as well. A further complicatin was that AGP seems to be old hat now and graphics cards use PCI Express – so something else that wouldn’t fit. And on top of all this, I’d have to take my old box apart and re-build it from scratch.

    So, I started looking at some low cost machines that came without monitors for a close match that I could use as the basis for adding in lots of my components to make the job easier and easier to repair in the future. I found one that would do the trick but it was out of stock so I then started going up spec slightly! The upshot of all this is that I now have a machine with a AMD 64 3700+ processor and the memory from my old machine fitted the job perfectly so it’s also got 2GB of DDR400 memory. My old hard disk fits too – along with the one that was in there (Serial ATA these days – another technology change!) – so there is 500GB of hard disk space in there. So, out of death rises a monster really – and to use a technical term, it goes like stink! I’ll be selling a few old bits on Ebay to take the curse out of having to buy this though!

    So, 3 weekend days wasted on computer stuff, I was going nuts! – So I had to get out today come what may, it could have been raining fire and brimstone and I wouldn’t have cared. As it turned out, it was overcast but quite warm so I had a nice trip through Sherwood Forest and up to Clumber Park and explored a bit up there – so much so that at one stage I wasn’t sure where I was – which is quite impressive because I thought I knew these places quite well!

    After reading Leigh’s blog entry this morning I was even more determined to get outdoors. I’ve definitely felt a bit slobby since Christmas. So, I took the GPS out with me to record a few stats and also have a look at the route when I got back – I don’t do this as often as I should and will try and do more of it this year. I would upload a little map to show where I ended up going but I discover that serial ports are old hat as well so I can’t plug my GPS into the computer until I get a £5 Serial to USB converter from Ebay. Oh well! – looking at the GPS screen reveals the following:-

    • Distance: 24.3 Miles

    • Moving Time: 2 Hours 17 Minutes

    • Stopped Time: 14 minutes 27 Seconds (Dinner!)

    • Moving Average: 10.6 Mph

    • Overall Average: 9.6 Mph

    • Maximum Speed: 27.8 Mph

    • Total Ascent: 372 Metres

    That was all offroad and sections of it were like cycling up a mud slide! (Marvellous)

     

    • Leigh 4:49 pm on January 15, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks for linking me!

      You go over rough terrain, so those are great stats. I did 10 miles, my top spead was 22mph and my average was 14mph. But sily me didn’t write down how long it took! UGH! Remind me not to press all the clearing buttons before I write things down.

      I really need a GPS unit! Incidentally, Garmin now do a unit that has USB. So, that’s the one I may end up with. I’ve been looking at those on eBay.

      Glad you got out on the bike. I’m getting myself re-organised to do the commuter trek everyday!

    • Diana 4:46 am on January 16, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      Do you have a mount on your bike for the GPS? I have a Garmin iQue 3600 which I keep meaning to attach to my bike, but it seems like it’s just a bit big.

    • publicenergy 7:34 am on January 16, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      Yeah, a handlebar mount – the GPS does look quite big when compared to everything else on the handlebar like gear and brake levers, but it works well, and gets a good signal when it’s stuck in front of you like that.

  • Dave 2:27 pm on December 30, 2005 Permalink
    Tags: , sherwood   

    Winter in Sherwood Forest 

    The weather since Tuesday has been interesting. Lots of snow on Tuesday night and on and off snow showers since. Not had much chance to go out on the bike, but have managed to squeeze in a few walks around Sherwood Forest which was nice and managed to take some photos. It sure looks very different covered in snow.

    Gleadthorpe Open

    The coming weekend looks warmer which will get rid of the ice which has been a problem. Cycling in snow is really nice but ice is something else. The infrequency of snow and ice here makes spiked tyres a luxury that probably wouldn’t get much use. I’m looking forward to getting out cycling again though after this gap.

    Sherwood, Snow

     

    • BC 7:26 pm on December 30, 2005 Permalink | Reply

      These photos are just amazing. Incredible.

  • Dave 7:46 pm on December 18, 2005 Permalink
    Tags: , sherwood   

    The Sherwood Chainsaw Massacre 

    English Nature says that beech trees aren’t native to Sherwood so they have to go. There is a leaflet available to read here:

    English Nature Sherwood Forest leaflet (PDF).

    200 hectares of Sherwood Forest is now managed as a National Nature Reserve and one implication of this is to protect teh native species. Beech trees aren’t native and apparently cause problems for some of the native species.

    So, when walking around the forest recently there are large areas of the forest where a the beech trees have been removed leaving some of the old oaks looking very lonely amongst the carnage.

    I would hope the mess is short term and that this is good for the forest in the long term. Time will tell. To me it seems like a lot of changes all at once and I do wonder if it’s a shock to me is it going to be a shock to the species they are trying to protect?

    The image displayed in this post is an old oak tree that was previously surrounded by beech trees so it is now clearly visible for the first time in my lifetime. It was taken with an infrared filter.

    My set of photos about this

    sherwood,english nature,nature reserve,beech

     

  • Dave 7:30 am on November 23, 2005 Permalink
    Tags: , sherwood   

    Sherwood Forest 

    .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }
    .flickr-yourcomment { }
    .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }

     

  • Dave 10:02 pm on November 22, 2005 Permalink
    Tags: , , sherwood   

    Sherwood and Clumber 

    This coming Saturday a few people from the MTB Britain Forum are coming over to do a ride around Sherwood Forest, Sherwood Pines and Clumber Park. This is going to be a cross country route and will make a change after recent weekend rides in Nant Yr Arian and the Peak District. The weather could be very cold and snow has been forecast by some people. That could make the day even better!

    A number of the group are keen photographers as well as mountain bikers so I’ve planned a base route to take in some of the prettier areas in the parks mentioned above. One additional place that we will have to stop by is Vicar Water where the Buried Statue is placed. This is one of many artworks placed on the National Cycle Network.

     Clumber Bridge

    There is a searchable database of artworks on the network on the Sustrans web site. Of the ones I’ve seen locally, the Buried Statue is the most impressive. The other one that is fairly close by was quite underwhelming.

    There are plenty of other photogenic areas though. Clumber Park is especially photogenic with the longest avenue of lime trees in Europe looking marvellous in autumn.  

    Sherwood Forest looks great too and even has some nice singletrack hidden away here and there to keep us entertained. Sherwood Pines is a place where I spend more time riding than taking photos. It does have it’s picturesque places but it also has lots of nice singletrack that I enjoy and I don’t often feel like stopping to take pictures when I’m riding that!

    You can see more photos of these places here…

    Clumber Park | Sherwood Forest | Sherwood Pines | Vicar Water

     

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