First, I must apologise to Cath and say thank you, who nominated myself along with a few others for the Liebster Award, for taking so long to fulfil the challenge.

My excuse, work, work and more work!

Oh, and my wife decided to have an argument with one of her rather large glass cooking bowls, resulting in a trip to the hospital. Well, three trips, one to take here to A&E, then the second to visit her the night after the operation, then the third, to bring her back home.

Guess what, the bowl sought big revenge, she ended up with severed tendons and a nerve!

In true female fashion, after surgery, you’ll be pleased to know my wife is back home, safe and well, and guess what, non-stop natter…..

Anyway, I digress and need to move on.

Blogging awards, is not totally a new thing, The Guardian tried it back in 2002, but it seemed to die almost as quickly as it was set up.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2002/jul/29/internet.newmedia

The Liebster Award, is German, though you probably guessed that from the name, has its own, but small website; http://liebsterawards.blogspot.co.uk/ where it shows a few logos that can be used

Normally, chain emails and letters, along with chain tweets (retweets that look more like spam), they get shown File 13, (the DELETE button), but as I know reasonably well enough as a fellow Twitter user Cath, I felt this deserved a little more attention.

So I read the challenge, then did a web search, well, I was curious where this might lead me, not that I expected anything of any note, and Wikipedia had the info I needed. Basically, it is a fun thing; there are no catches, no prizes, no one requests your personal details,its just a good laugh, and possibly some unofficial publicity.

So yes, I’m up for a bit of fun and here goes.

Oh Cath, while I’m thinking about it, I got a little greedy sometimes, so some answers may break the rules a little. But hey ho, its good fun and I know you will take it that way.

My Questions

1. Favourite outdoor place ?

Favourite outdoor place is generally anywhere in the hills and moorland, but has to be away from civilisation. The Peak District, Snowdonia, the Scottish Highlands, The North York Moors and Yorkshire Dales are probably my most preferred places, though there are others, like the Lakes, which I know I would enjoy, but the drive there makes them a little impractical.

But there is one very special place for me, Stanton Moor in the White Peak. Stanton Moor has a lot of childhood memories for me and is also a place where my son, when he was about four, studied a map as best a four year old can and embraced the basics very well.

Stanton Moor

From there, he felt he was an explorer, grabbed my map and set off to explore!

It’s a good job I know the moor better than the back of my hand, or we could have got lost!

2. Favourite piece of technology to use whilst outdoors ?

My favourite piece of technology is the first where I break the rules has to be my Kestrel 2000 Wind Anemometer and my camera.

Those of you who know me, know I love to take lots of photos and post a good many (probably too many) on my Flickr account.

The Kestrel 2000
giving me a wind chill reading of 2.9ºC

The Kestrel 2000, which I find an invaluable tool when out and about, for it gives me the basic weather information that I need, temperature, wind chill and wind speed.

3. Favourite outdoor food ?

Now here’s a challenge, I do enjoy a Mars Bar, but it has to be the Duo, the large one.

4. Outdoors ambition ?

For outdoors ambition, I’ve reached all my goals, having ascended all the main peaks, Ben Nevis Snowdon, Scafell Pike, the Glyderau, Carneddau and many more.

I’ve completed a winter skills course, using ice axe and crampons, along with the associated skills, arresting a fall, recognising different types of snow and what can cause avalanches.

I’ve completed a Mountain Leadership and Navigation course, which involved night time and poor visibility navigation. I learnt a hell of a lot about gear, navigation and leaderships, including roles and responsibilities, risk assessments and lots more, which I used to write my blog "What's in my pack?".

The one thing I would like to have done, was to come away with my ML award, but sadly, after breaking my ankle, it was found that I had the remnants of an old injury in my left leg, which could have repercussions in later life. So being a responsible, I decided that the cost was not a viable option at the time, being responsible, I would never use the ML award on the basis the old injury could render a group I was leading stuck out in the middle of nowhere without a leader.

But I still get out in the hills and across the moors.

5. Favourite place to stay.. wild camp, YHA or hotel/B&B ?

Favourite place to stay, well, its been too long since I last wild camped, but I do have probably one special place, and that is a campsite near Monsal Head in the Peak District.

Monsal Head Camping

The owners, Maureen and Pete always have a warm welcome for me and those who I camp with and the pubs aren’t that far away for a decent evening meal, and post walk beer, after a good days walking.

6. Piece of music, book or film that you associate with getting out ?

This one was a toughie, and again, I break the rules a little. I tend to switch of from music, for that is my urban life, with old rock greats like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Focus, Hawkwind, Black Sabbath, ELO and many more.

The outdoors to me is bird song and the wind. Oh, before you might think, my ability to identify birds by their song is extremely limited. I can probably count them all on one finger and still have one finger spare!

However, I did enjoy watching "Downhill The Movie". That basically follows the capers of four midlife crisis men doing the Coast to Coast walk.

You’ve got to watch it, it really is funny and good.

7. Best comedy moment in the outdoors ?

I was going to use Downhill The Movie, but then I thought that was more befitting the previous question.

While teaching Scouts map and compass one extremely wet weekend, we had one scout, who was just happy to be out and about. He never learned any map or compass work. But this weekend, he decided to find the deepest puddle, past his knees in depth, and walk right through it in his wellies.

The funny part, watching his wellies empty out the water as he crossed the first style!

Just in case you’re wondering, I was monitoring him carefully, for any signs of getting a chill. But coming from a tough family, he was made of really tough stuff and kept going when the others were ready to drop.

8. Who has inspired you to get out and enjoy the outdoors ?

That has to be my late mother. Though in later life we never got on, it was her love for the Peaks and Snowdonia and sharing it with myself and my younger brother that got me hooked.

9. Favourite beverage after a hard day spent outside ?

That’s an easy one, a good cold beer.

10. Being outdoors.. how does it make you feel ?

Chilled and on a high.

11. Where will your next adventure take you ?

Probably to my favourite and nearest haunt: the Peak District, though I’m off to Snowdonia soon for a holiday.

The Rules

As with my predecessors, there’s been a slight modification of ‘the rules’ along the way…

If you have been nominated for The Liebster Award AND YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT, write a blog post about the Liebster award in which you:

1. thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog on your blog.

2. display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget”. (Note that the best way to do this is to save the image to your own computer and then upload it to your blog post.)

3. answer 11 questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you.

4. provide 11 random facts about yourself.

5. nominate 5 – 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have a less than 1000 followers. (Note that you can always ask the blog owner this since not all blogs display a widget that lets the readers know this information!)

6. create a new list of questions for the blogger to answer.

7. list these rules in your post (You can copy and paste from here.) Once you have written and published it, you then have to:

8. Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster award and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of it!)

My Questions

1. Favourite outdoor place ?

2. Favourite piece of technology to use whilst outdoors ?

3. Favourite outdoor food ?

4. Outdoors ambition ?

5. Favourite place to stay.. wild camp, YHA or hotel/B&B ?

6. Piece of music, book or film that you associate with getting out ?

7. Best comedy moment in the outdoors ?

8. Who has inspired you to get out and enjoy the outdoors ?

9. Favourite beverage after a hard day spent outside ?

10. Being outdoors.. how does it make you feel ?

11. Where will your next adventure take you ?

My nominations are:

Now here I do struggle, for Lonewalker seems to follow the same blogs as myself. All the others I have listed haven’t blogged in over a year, or have deleted their blogs!

Atky's Walks & Wild Camps

http://atkypne.blogspot.co.uk/

The Dark Hiker

http://darkhiker.blogspot.co.uk/

Dixie

http://chrissiedixie.wordpress.com/

For my regular readers, hopefully I will be back out walking again very soon, as things start to quieten down at work.

Finally, happy rambling and thank you for reading,

Peak Rambler

Photo Album Peak Rambler Flickr Photo Album

Downhill The Movie

What's in my pack?