Oooh... me knees!!!

Me and my partner tackled Stac Pollaidh last Wednesday afternoon, with the help of the excellent info on www.walkinghighlands.co.uk.

In a former life, I was a little bit of a walker, but now at 40-something and about 19 stone, my best days are long behind me.

This is by far the most difficult walking challenge we have faced together, although I should stress that at least some of the difficulty was down to age and lack of fitness.

For the record, the circuit took us 4 and a half hours, which included a ten minute stop at the "saddle" for lunch, and numerous stops on the way up (and on the steep down!) to gather our collective breaths.

We also had a 10 minute hiatus weighing up the weather, as it was fairly crappy!

If you are of similar vintage to us and are thinking of doing this walk, then be warned, it is VERY steep in places and is VERY hard work.

However do not be put off, as it is eminently doable if you are reasonably able - and the path is very clear and relatively easy.

We arrived at the car park with low cloud all around and a positive gale blowing in from the Summer Isles. The crags were coming in and out of view and we never did see the tops of Cul Beag, Cul Mor or Suilven.

We struggled (quite literally) up the first 100m or so and our initial thoughts that we might not be able to manage this were strengthened - but we were enjoying being out, and were happy to do what we could do.

The path around the foot of the eastern summit had a number of short steep sections, that took our breath away in no small measure. I should say, though, it was the lungs rather than the legs that suffered.

As we climbed higher, the cloud dropped lower, and soon it began to rain. This was the time when we were most likely to pack the whole job in... there was no point simply walking into the cloud. But, out to sea the cloudbase looked higher and so after 10 minutes standing around (and getting a bit chilly!) we continued - to do at least the loop.

As we reached the brow and received shelter from the mountain itself, we were able to take in some of the surroundings without fear of being blown to Norway.

Although the day was very grey, the views were nevertheless impressive. For experienced walkers this will come as no surprise, but for those like me who have not ventured out like this before, it was very satisfying to look down of the lochs and lochans, and across to the other mountains in the kind of panoramic landscape reminiscent of a Colin Baxter photograph... though not nearly so well lit!!!

This was reward enough for us as it was... but as we rounded the back of the mountain, the fork in the path meant we had to make a decision.

Ignoring for the moment that I actually missed the left turn up (perhaps dismissed, rather than missed?) we took a look at the proposed route.

My partner was not too keen, but she said I could go if I wanted. I said it was not worth doing if we were not going to do it together (and if we weren't both going, I wouldn't go alone)... and so, together we went up.

I confess, that about 4/5ths of the way up, I turned round and thought... I'm not going to be able to get down - but knowing that I had no choice, decided to concentrate on my feet and "ignore" the worrying terrain.

Shortly afterwards - two and a half hours after setting out - and with something of a sense of achievement, we reached the ridge. Of course, this meant we were no longer sheltered from the gale!

We had a bit of a scaredy-cat look down to the car park, then hunkered down in the lee of some rocks for a small spot of lunch.

It had never been my intention to scamble up the eastern summit, but even if it had, I would not have made the attempt in these weather conditions. It was far too blowy, and still a little damp.

Lunch taken, and northward panorama inwardly digested, we set off down.

I had noted on the way up, that the suggested path down looked a bit dicey... as if there had been a recent rock fall. Even so, I was concentrating on my feet by now (although the path did not feel nearly so vertiginous as I had expected) and missed the turn.

This meant, of course, that we met up with the loop path where we had joined, and then had to climb no small amount to continue on the anticlockwise circuit.

Passing the bottom of the suggested path from the ridge, it didn't look half so bad from that angle... but hey, we were there now.

Another few yards, and we were once again out of shelter and in the teeth of the gale once more... if anything it was even stronger. But, the cloud was lighter, and the rain was no longer in the air.

Having achieved the major goal of the walk, we continued back to the car park with almost a spring in our step... but not forgetting the sting in the tail.

That steep climb at the start had to be descended at the end.

And in terms of difficulty, tiredness being a factor no doubt, that was the trickiest part of the whole walk.

But we managed it... reached that car, and whilst we would break no speed records, felt suitably impressed with ourselves.

Even the sun came out!!!

In the family way (II)

As you know, if you've read my similarly entitled previous entry, I'm doing a bit of research into my family tree.

When I married, for reasons as they where, I decided to use my future wife's surname, rather than keep my own.

Now, you can choose to go by any name you wish here in the UK, except under certain special circumstances where you must use your legal name.

For we males, that is likely to be the name on your birth certificate, complete with any mistakes that may have been made at the time. For our oppos... the rule is the same, but on marriage, the husband's surname becomes the wife's legal surname.

Again, it don't really matter, unless you have to use your legal name, and the three examples I was given were:

1. Applying for a passport
2. Criminal proceedings (it is your legal name, after all)
3. Marriage (which you've guessed by now. I'm sure!)

So, in light of this, the reality was I had to change my name by deed poll, so that my legal surname would be the same as my intended's and she would still take "my" name, but of course there would be no change.

As a complete aside, me and my sister and my daughter quite enjoy playing the "all three of us have different surnames but none of us are married - work that one out" game with new people. Well, it amuses us.

Anyhew, all of which (above) is a bit of a long-winded way of saying that my birth family name is "Batty".

Batty is a fine northern name, and those of you familiar with the very north western part of Yorkshire may have come across it in the geographical name Batty Green. I think Batty Green these days is little more than a small open area close to Ribblehead, although I understand there used to be a temporary township of the same name there, and the name itself was considered for Ribblehead Station (on the Settle-Carlisle line) before the latter was finally decided upon.

Certainly, (at least one of) the regional birthplace(s) of the name is that area of Yorkshire, and perhaps previously, Cumberland.

I have managed to trace my paternal lineage to the 1790s and my great-great-great-great-great grandfather, one Thomas Batty of Burton-in-Lonsdale, but everything I know about Thomas, with one exception, I have told you in this sentence.

It's interesting, and a bit scary, to note that I am related to Thomas in the same (although not patrilineal) way as my daughter's granddaughter's granddaughter's son will be to me, should he care to look back from his vantage point in the early 2200s!

The only other thing I know about Thomas is he had a son called James Altham Batty.

(I guess... and it is only a guess that James Altham's mother's maiden name was Altham, but as I said... 'tis nobbut a guess.)

Now, James is a very common name, Altham is not rare, and Batty, at least in the Lonsdale region is as common as... well... muck.

But "James Altham Batty"? There can't be that many of those, can there?

I don't know exactly when James was born, but I do know he was baptised on 22nd April 1798 in Thornton-in-Lonsdale.

I know he married Mary, and together they had 6 (as far as I can find) children, William, Margaret, Mary, Robert, Thomas and my direct ancestor Christopher.

From decennial censuses I know he lived throughout his life in Burton-in-Lonsdale, found employment in one of the (many) Burton Potteries and whilst I am not 100% certain (you'd be surprised just how many James Batty's were born in 1797-8!!!) in 1870 in Settle a James Batty was registered as having died, and is therefore very likely to be my great-great-great-great grandfather.

I know he had at least many as 29 grandsons and granddaughters (I'm still finding them), that some of those branches of the tree, instead of spreading towards my home-town, instead spread in the direction of Whitehaven, Oswaldtwistle and perhaps Bolton, whilst others remained in and around Burton and Thornton.

(I even know there was a strong possibility that Altham was pronounced Alt-ham rather than Al-tham.)

So with the advent of the good ol' tinterweb, you'd think I'd have a great chance of finding out some more about him, and perhaps even getting to grips with Thomas and his ancestors.

So, I google James Altham Batty, and what do I get?

Nothing, natch, nada!

Nor even for Baty, Batey, Batie, Battey, Battey, Battye or even Battie.

Well, of course I get loads, but nothing on J.A.

However, one name crops ups with startling regularity - Aegidy Batty, born about 1688 in Clapham, Yorkshire - barely 7 miles from Burton.

What a COOL name!!!

Do YOU know ANYONE called Aegidy?!?!?!?

What's more, Aegidy can be traced patrilineally at least 110 years further back to John Battie in the 1570s, and (tantalisingly) another path goes back to a Agnes Altham!

Yet others reach to the 1530s... stating the obvious, I know, but that's almost 500 years!

And the related family lines? There's the Irwin family, the Aland family, the Henrie family, the Smith family, the Stubbs family... it seems just about everyone in the WORLD is related to Aegidy, but can I find a connection?

Can I eckers like... and it's my blinking name!!!

I'm beginning to wonder if I exist.

Is There a Doctor in the House? (II)

Hmmm...

I had one of those milestone-moments today, of a medical variety.

I've had a sore shoulder for a couple of days, like you do, but this was a bit more annoying and inconvenient than usual, and to be honest I was just a bit concerned about the best course of action in respect of my gym sessions.

Should I work through the pain, or should I give it chance to settle down?

Well, on Monday, the ibuprofen wasn't really touching it, and I decided to make a GP's appointment... today being the first day available for an early slot.

When we first moved to our current address, and therefore had to move GP surgeries, it just so happened that my belle's sister's place of work (a local special school) were registered at the same practice.

So, she knew the senior practice doctor, one Mr. Dewar. He was referred to as "Mr." as his wife - "Mrs." was also a GP at the surgery.

She told told us he was "a lovely doctor", and sure enough he was, just about everything you could wish for in a doctor. A genuinely lovely man.

I say "was", not to indicate any particular sad demise, but simply because about six months ago, Mr. and Mrs. left the practice. Maybe they moved on... they didn't seem to be at retirement age... maybe they are now following another path.

Oh by the way, Mr. Dewar turned out to be Mr. Dua, and was (and doubtless still is) an Indian gentleman.

Anyway, I made my appointment, and being the first since the Duas left, I was scheduled to see one of the new doctors - namely Dr. Cameron.

Well that's what the lady on the phone said.

Turns out the practice seems to have policy of employing "Indian" doctors with confusingly Scottish-sounding names, as Dr. Cameron is actually a similarly southern Asian gentleman by the name of Dr. Kamran.

And I'll tell you what, he's from the same school of lovely doctoring as Dr. Dua, if this morning was anything to go by. Really impressed!

(By the way... do you suppose there's a surgery somewhere in Mumbai where Dr. McAgee practices?)

I did notice - maybe this will change - that he calls only the patient's surname when it is their turn, and he called mine...

...but I wasn't quick enough out of the blocks, as a fellow patient of the female persuaion beat me to it.

Anyway, shortly after she re-emerged, I was called by my full name.

Dr. Kamran introduced himself, shook my hand and apologised for keeping me waiting, and then set about the business at hand.

After a few questions, a bit of manipulation... of course things are never quite so bad as they were when you made the appointment... he gave his diagnosis and recommended treatment.

I'm having muscle spasms, which are the beginnings of an injury, but my treatment is fine as it stands... painkillers and rest - that way it should go away and not become a chronic problem.

He gave me a knowing smile as he suggested I avoid going to the gym for another week!

Mind you, none of that was the milestone-moment.

No... in spite of the millions of years of education and training doctors must undergo before they are let loose in the GP's surgery, Dr. Kamran is quite categorically, in fact undeniably YOUNGER than me!!!

Oh dear.

Anyway... he's a lovely young man... he'll go far.

All Linuxed up and everywhere to go!

That (below) was, as I said, the main reason for neglecting my blog.

One other reason is releated to the fact that I've finally ditched Windows.

It's taken some doing, and it hasn't been an unmitigated success, of which more later, but the deed is now done.

About a million years ago, I used to have a Commodore Amiga, and whilst I was by no means ever a "techie", I used to have a bit of an idea what I was doing.

Then, after a about 10 or 12 years, Commodore finally pulled the rug out from underneath the Amiga community.

I think they actually went bust, but old Amiga fans will know that they were pretty unspectacular when it came to promoting the BEST home PC of the time, and if they were similarly proficient elsewhere in the business... well p***-ups and breweries come to mind.

But all that was a lo-o-o-ong time ago, and after getting some old gear from work, I knew I would one day replace the average and grossly over-priced OS from the Microsoft stable.

You see, not only was I an Amiga owner, but I'm also a Yorkshireman... and we are, shall we say... er... frugal.

In the dim and distant past was PD, or public domain software, which was available for all kind of games, tools, games, applications, games, creative software, games and indeed, if you looked hard enough, even games.

This was all written by spotty 15 year-olds with a degree in high-level programming from the University of Sitting-in-me-bedroom-24-hours-a-day, and it kept well-adjusted types like mesen* off the streets for longer than was necessarily healthy.

I mean, I could program a bit, but these guys were a godsend to the thrifty.

Of course, you pay a gazillion dollars just for the honour of having MS software fail as if not more often than other software, and I certainly wasn't prepared to fund the Seattle elite any more than I had to.

(Let's just be fair here and applaud Mr. Gates for his genuine philanthropy, which should be recognised and appreciated, but let's not forget, he does own the world, or something!)

So, back to my OS... I knew I was ditching and also the jungle drums suggested that if you ain't gonna buy an AppleMac (Yorkshireman Alert!!!) then why not go Open Source.

LINUX!!!

So, I got myself a set of Mandrake CDs (rather than download on 56K dial-up) and took the plunge.

And then panicked on the installation when it said; you're about to wipe everything - press yes to blow up the world, or something along those lines.

I persevered with Windows for a few more weeks, while in the meantime dusting off some of those long-forgotten brain cells that used to know a bit about computers, and tried to get the lowdown on Linux.

Then, about three weeks before Christmas I came across a Linux Format magazine that came with Red Hat Fedora 6 and step-by-step instructions on loading.

Not only that, but you could initially set up a dual-boot system, in case you forgot to archive something.

So... me and my good lady set a couple of hours aside, and started this new installation...

Only to find out that I hadn't got enough partition space for dual boot, and couldn't remember my admin accesses to change the settings!!!

I HAD to over-write.

GULP!

OK, get everything saved off that I'm likely to want to keep...

Done...

Attempt three.

We did it... we got there... we filled in some of the missing steps in the step-by-step instructions, and hey presto... new Linux OS!!!

Whoopee!!!

Er... hang on... my modem doesn't work.

Turns out, it wasn't a real modem, but a WinModem.

After a bit of swotting, a trip to PC World was called for, and fair dos, they lined me up with a Linux compatibale modem.

Which I plugged in... and... nothing.

For three days I wracked over this, before it finally occurred to me I had entered the wrong phone number!!!

Finally, finally, finally, I put everything right, and as you can see by these two recent posts, I'm back online.

But, as I said... is wasn't a wholly unmitigated success.

I distinctly remember save all my birding database records off as spreadsheets... but I don't as distinctly remember copying them to CD.

Either I've lost the CD... or... erm, oops... I've lost my data.

I fear it's the latter!

Ah well...

Oh yeah... and that same "CD" is the one my email address book is on... so to any of my buddies who read this, and still have my email address... would you kindly send me a message so I can get going again.

Technology... dont'cha jus' love it!

* for the non-Yorkshire fluent, this = myself

In the family way.

Hmmm... s'been a while hasn't it!

Well the intervening break was caused as much by lack of inspiration as anything else, but also the nights began to draw in, got busy (well busiER) at work, other things came up, yada yada yada... you know the routine.

I heard something on the radio recently suggesting that there are [insert number here] billion dormant blogs cluttering up the old tinterweb thingy, and figured I ought to spring mine back into life.

So, what's been a-happenin'?

First of all, well, in fact most of all, I caught genealogy.

It's something I've fancied doing for a while (I mean for years and years) but never really knew how and where to start, nor managed to get into gear.

The first series of "Who Do You Think You Are?" got me thinking again... but not acting. However the second series was the spur.

Actually, that's not strictly correct. It is true that directly after watching episode one (Barbara Windsor) I just upped myself off the sofa and hit the old cybervault, but that was just the initial kick up the backside.

After forking out for some credits (the main thing that stopped me in the past) the first thing I did was to check the "Who lived at your address 100 years ago?" list.

Oh... OK, no-one did as our house has only been around for 5 years or so, but I racked my brains for previous addresses that were good candidates. That drew a blank also, but my thoughts turned to my maternal grandparents.

A little insight here... family tree research is a little tricky for me, as there is something of a lack of rellies upon whom I can rely for snippets of information.

Both my parents died some time ago (although my mother during here life was helpful in a typically backhanded sort of a way... she was great - mums just are - but she was a funny woman!) all my grandparents are likewise departed, and although both my parents had a supply of siblings, they are either similarly unavailable for comment, or else difficult to speak to.

I admit that last barrier is somewhat self-inflicted as I am naturally shy with people I don't know well (some of you will understand not knowing family well!) and also... well, it would be too strong to say I am the black-sheep, but there was a particular time when I didn't tow the family-line, shall we say.

OK... I changed my name.

Didn't go down well in some quarters!

So... what do I have to go on.

First of all, the family myth that I am descended from Oliver Cromwell.

As a member of a large internet forum, I was finally in a position to put that to the test by the simple expedient of asking.

Turns out my mum's maiden name was Ireson, and that was somehow Cromwell's name.

Well, the myth was not immediately shattered, but a fairly sizable blow was struck, though some light was cast.

Cromwell's sister married Henry Ireton (not Ireson) - well did mum say Ireson or Ireton?

Sure enough, my maternal grandmother's death is registered under the name Ireton, so the myth has legs?

Well, no... it seems that a) that was the only time the name Ireton was used, she was born Ireson, and b) Mr. and Ms. Cromwell were "without issue".

Hey ho, there you go.

Who's up for reporting "a)" to the family?

Anyway, back to who lived where 100 years ago. Well as I type "100" years ago is actually 105 and a half years ago - that is to say, the 1901 census.

Neither of my maternal grandparents were born then, but maybe my ggps lived there???

Er, no...

But up the street, lived someone I was able to form a link to... that's what really got me hooked!

When we used to visit my gps, we very occasionally would visit someone unknown to me (I was about 6) "up the street".

Well according to the 1901 census, there was a household up the street with the same surname as my grandfather (not unusual) but with a couple of lodgers, one of whom was the brother-in-law of the grandfather-like-named "head" of the household, with the same two forenames as mum's dad (VERY unusual!).

I have no documentary evidence (yet) as definitive proof, but I will hang every hat I have on that being the ggps.

Oh... one other nugget of information provided by my mother. My middle name is "Christopher", and I was so named after "Uncle Jack, who everyone called John, but whose real name was Percy". I kid you not.

Yep... Percy was alive and kicking in that household in 1901.

And from there, I've been able to go back about 5 generations. Pretty cool!

On my dad's side, I had almost zero information, other than his mum's name was "Annie" and where she came from.

Even so... back about 8 gens there to the late 1700s.

Not discovered any potential inheritance yet, though!

Anyway, while we're at it, I might as well regale you with the latest piece of emabarrassing behaviour that's causing amusement amongst various family members with whom I am still on speaking terms.

I was showing my daughter what I'd done, and she asked if we could search for her mum (my ex).

I said OK...

Right you have to get in my head a bit here, but go with it.

Ah... but mum wasn't born in the UK, so she won't be on... OK marriage to new hubby... ah, no, they got married in the US, so they won't be on... oh, but was that just a celebration and the legal wedding happened in Britain?

Let's have a look...

Ah... there she is look, marriage registration!

Hang on... that says 1987? Daughter born in 1990...

"Who in earth was your mum married to before you were born??? Oh... that'll be me!"

!!!

That last bit I actually said out loud, and as I recall, my daughter actually held here head in her hands.

She's proud of me.