The McKenzie's Blog…

Mega Scotland 2010 was very good to say the least. We’d got ourselves checked in about 11am or so I suppose.  We had a bit of a lazy morning on Saturday, but who can blame us after the 10hr marathon drive from Heathrow to Kinross.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well that’s what I’ve been doing, well trying to when I get the time.  I’ve been managing to get out a couple days a week at lunch time when time and weather permits.  I’ve been keeping a walking log which shows the route I’ve walked and distances as well as a my total walking distance.  You can see the spreadsheet by CLICKING HERE.

On May 1st I managed to get a few hours to get out alone and go walking.  I’d planned a 3.5mi walk but it turned out to be a 5.5 mile walk.  What a great place to go walking.  There were two separate wooded area’s.  Once was Archers Wood

About this wood

Parts of Archer’s Wood are believed to be remnants of the original British wildwood, a ditch and bank in the northern section is a scheduled ancient monument and, true to its name the wood was a sanctuary for highwaymen. Even today you look to the north and imagine a 14th century Cistercian monastic grange that once stood there. Flat and easy to access, the site is dominated by oak, ash and field maple and served by a figure-of-eight network of rides so it’s great for gentle walks. Be sure to stroll along the main ride to spot the rare and beautiful wild service tree – and look out for foxes, woodpeckers and nuthatches.

The other was Aversley Wood, both just outside of Sawtry, Cambridgeshire.

About this wood

A woodland gem in England’s least-wooded county, expansive, impressive Aversley Wood is well worth the steep trek (sometimes boggy in winter) required to reach it. Believed to date back to the Ice Age, it is one of Cambridgeshire’s largest ancient woodland sites and a full tour is not for the faint-hearted – but very rewarding, with impressive fenland views.

You can see the full route of the walk with notes along the way by going to www.stepwhere.com.  I’ve been using this site for storing and planning my recent walks.  You can see all my public walks by going to my user name, M1XZG.  The process I’ve been doing with the site is planning the walk online and loading the track onto my GPS, then, when I’m out walking I record the actual track I walk and upload that to www.stepwhere.com. 

To see some photos from the walk of the woods you can CLICK HERE for my www.flickr.com gallery.  Here are a couple of the photos.

If you get out walking why not share your routes?   Also, why not check out www.walkingforum.co.uk – it’s a fantastic site for all manner of walking discussions.

A detailed account of the walk …

Read the rest of this entry »

I have decided that this will be the year I finally get out and do some things I’ve been wanting to do.  Mostly that’s walking in the hills and some wild camping.  The walking I’m thinking about are doing some Wainwrights. There are heaps to choose from, no idea which ones I’ll do, but I’d like to plan to do a couple of days perhaps 2-3 with a couple of nights wild camping.  I’ve recently watched the video below and it’s inspired me to do it this year.  I have most of the gear and having lost some 48KG over the last 18 months I’m feeling a hell of a lot better.  I still need to get more fit, so must get back to gym

Check out blog postings over at Dean Read dot net. Here is the video of their Ennerdale Wainwrights video.

I don’t have a plan as to when I’ll do it, but I’m thinking mid-late summer.  Need to plan to do some day walks first and get an idea on what I’m in for.  The other “problem” is also finding someone to do these with.  It would be pretty foolish to attempt this sort of thing alone with the lack of experience.  So, I need for another nutter up for some fun too   If that’s you, lets chat, drop me a comment.

We started out a weeks camping by leaving the house about noon on Sunday. The drive to the camp site, Brickyard Farm Camp site (Banham, Norfolk, NR16 2HQ), was only about an hour or so from home. Even at the reduced speed we had to travel at because of towing the trailer. After a stop at Sainsbury in Thetford for a few last minute supplies and lunch as well, we arrived at the camp site at about 1400hrs, plenty of daylight left so we could take our time getting everything set up.

Lisa and Emma immediately found the horses in the fields to go and see plus a swing set to play on as well. I was a bit worried for a while, there were no other kids around. Then, a family came trooping back into camp. They’d been out to the Banham Zoo. It’s about 1/2 mile down the road. Anyhow, Lisa and Emma quickly became acquainted with Hanna, 7yrs old. They spent the next 3 or so hours playing all sorts of games and running around the farm.

The camp site itself is a small family run business. It’s run the brother of our neighbour, very nice folks. They popped around to check on us and see how we were settling in. Quite layed back, they haven’t asked for money as yet. The site is, as I mentioned, small. Only about 6 or so pitches, most with electric. We didn’t bother with that, I’d brought the 120amp battery with us. More then enough power for the week to run a laptop if needed and charge the phones. I brought a 12v florescent lamp as well but likely won’t need it.

The kids are knackered. They’ve had a busy afternoon that’s for sure. Tomorrow we’ll be walking to the zoo and checking out the animals and whatever else they have there.

Well that’s about it from here tonight I think. the big people are knackered too and ready for bed now as well.

Watch this space for the day 2 report. I won’t be posting pics on the blog, but check on facebook, flickr and mobypictures and of course Twitter.com/m1xzg for updates.

Btw, this is all from my phone, there are likely spelling errors, I will fix them later. Don’t think I have a spell check on here.

Posted by Wordmobi

So, while looking for a small and light weight stove for hiking / SOTA whatever I decided to pick up a Hexamine pocket stove and give it a try.  I usually have a Camping Gaz type stove but it’s big, bulky and you need to carry compressed gas cartridges with it.  These themselves are big, bulky and can’t really just be chucked in a bin when they are finished as they are still a risk of exploding.

I’d really like a MSR Whisperlite but they aren’t cheap, however, they are very versatile.. best you read about them on the manufactures website (click the link back there).  At some point I’ll likely get one of these, but not right now. 

For now I’ll have a go with this Hexamine stove.    This the very same one I have picked up for £4.00

To night I decided to do some timing experiments to see how long it takes to boil water in both my crusader cup and a small aluminium kettle.  The Crusader cup took 6m20sec to bring 1L of water to a boil and the Hexamine cube held the boil for 3 minutes.  Might want it to boil longer if you were sterilizing water, but just pop another cube of Hexamine and it would be good for another 9 mins of burn time.  The kettle, which has a lid, only took 4m30sec and the same 9 min burn time on the cube so that means 4m30sec of the water being held at a boil.

A couple of pics and a couple of videos can be seen below.. click to enlarge or see the videos.

Well, now just have to try it out in anger one day in the field

Today after I finished work, I decided I needed to get out for a walk.  Emma was sleeping and Yuki was hoping to get some sleep before she started work in the evening.  Lisa didn’t at all want to have a sleep.

So, I decided to take her with me.  The question was where too.  I decided to take her to Wicken Fen again.  We’d gone there before (Wicken Fen…) with Lisa’s school.  That visit was good for the kids but we didn’t really get to see too much of the place.  Today when we went back we’d ended up walking about 1.25 to 1.5 miles around part of the area.  Lisa had a good time but sure was tired.  Surprisingly she didn’t fall asleep on the way back home.

There are some pics and a video from the day HERE – here are some samples.

Yesterday I took a walk around part of Grafham Water, however my GPS logging of the walk didn’t really pan out.  Some have considered to be a pretty great and impressive person, but even I can’t walk on water, I don’t consider that a failing though because I like to swim, and well it tough to do when you can’t get past the surface

Anyhow, I took a load of pics which you can see if you CLICK HERE.  Some samples of the pics.