17 Dec 2012 – Lliber

Only eight of us for our last walk before Christmas.   This “Fat Mans Agony” walk is our traditional Christmas walk, because one of the houses has always had a large blow up Santa in the garden.   We all, or at least Jan and I, were disappointed that he was not there this year.

The morning was cloudy but dry, and cold enough to want to start without too much delay. 

Despite the cold Peter was eager to take off his outer layers to expose his new T shirt.   The logo is “I’m not only PERFECT I’m IRISH too!”   Two things we were all well aware of because he had reminded us so many times in the past.

The climb is longer than I remembered, and we were soon removing a layer or two. 

As always we had many stops to recover and get up to date on what had happened since last week.  It’s amazing that we never seem to run out of things to talk about – particularly Jan and Sylvia. 

Even on an overcast day like this the views are still pretty impressive.

When we had our banana stop Pat produced these huge ear muffs.   I am not sure it was really cold enough for them, but I guess they were easier to wear than to carry.   It may have been cold enough for ear muffs, but Peter was determined to show off his T shirt. 

Peter found what appeared to be part of the jawbone of a very small animal, and both Jan and Tom were eager to decide what animal it might be.

Pat enters “Fat Mans Agony”, which gets much narrower later on 

Pat looks like she has had too much “Christmas cheer”, but in fact she was completely sober and the expression is just a trick of the camera.

It’s not really as dangerous as it looks in this photo, though we all spent a lot of time on our bottoms during this part of the descent

Everyone paying a lot of attention to the track and being careful where they put their feet.  Except Peter who ambles down the path with his hands in his pockets!

Looking very much like a bunch of extra’s from “Last of the Summer Wine” as we settle down for a well deserved lunch break.

Tom spotted a pair of frogs, who seemed to be very good friends.  This prompted a detailed examination of the whole pond, which proved to have not only a large selection of frogs but also some fish.  

Monday 7 January 2013

 Our first walk of the New Year will be Marnes Circuit.   Meet at the blue bridge just after Pinos at 10am.

Jan and I would like to thank all of you who have followed the blog again this year.  We started the blog in May 2009 and since then have had more than 15,000 visits.  That is an average of more than 10 a day!    We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and look forward to many more enjoyable walks in 2013.