I have been keeping a diary of sorts from my walks and climbs since my late teens. I now have 10 volumes spanning all those years. Only brief entries are needed to bring each day back to life. Companions, route, weather, and incidents all paint a vivid picture in my mind—some years a thousand climbs, many years a thousand miles.
My first entry – 1967. September 5th. Pennine Way. Mel. Alston to Hadrian’s Wall. 22 miles. Camped in Milecastle 44. Wet and windy. Good beer in Greenhead.
A few years ago, I partially digitalised the record, allowing me to quickly assess the information stowed there. And since 2012, I have been posting some of my adventures here on WP. I was a little late to the digital age.
New Year’s Eve will pass me by with an odd firework in my dreams. Elsewhere…
When I was a child, all we had was a tall, dark stranger, the bloke next door, coming across the threshold for good luck and a glass of whisky.
Well, a new year has almost dawned, 2026, and I have a new notebook for my entries—a somewhat irreverent one from one of my sons. 
Tomorrow will be my first foray, and a happy New Year to you all out there.
I like the new notebook, I hope you make good use of it. Since my early teens my dad always got me a small page-a-day diary for Christmas and I wrote it up daily for many years – my writing was so tiny I could have fit the complete works of Shakespeare on one page. However life and circumstances changed and so did the diary writing until the early 1990s when I got a filofax – remember those? That phase lasted about three years and I haven’t written a diary since, now I have no patience to do so although my son gets me one every year.
I’m welded in to recording my days out. Lets hope I can fill the new book.
Happy new year! Love that you’ve kept all those journals for so long!
I’m forever looking back in them.
I admire your organised approach. I have numerous sources in differing formats, some partly digitised.
Best wishes for the new year.
You have so much archived.
Have a great 26.
And you both.
Happy New Year to you too.
Great idea. We forget so much. Happy New Year!
Given the cover of your new notebook, perhaps you should have signed of your post with “thank you for your attention to this matter”. Of course, your thoughts are much more sensible than those of the usual user of that phrase.
Fake news.
Hi,
We are looking to do a circular walk on the Fell that I have found online. I am struggling to exactly locate the Jeffrey Hill/Longridge Fell Car park. Is it the lay-by on Forty Acre Lane opposite the side entrance to Crowshaw House? If it is, is the path onto the fell and up to Spire Hill Trig Point on the same side as the car park? Many thanks in advance for any information/clarification you can provide.
Best Regards
Andrew
Andrew. Thanks for asking.
There are two options for parking, each giving a slghtly different circuit.
There is a large carpark at the end of 40 Acre Lane, Jeffrey Hill opposite Cardwell House. SD643405. Then follow the sometimes boggy track up and eventually by the wall to Spire Hill. Follow the crowds up and down.
The other roadside layby parking is on the Old Clitheroe Road near Intack/Crowshaw House. SD663396. Take the forest road and bear left to reach Spire Hill, retuen a differebt way past Green Thorn. This gives a better circular walk.
The weather is fantastic for the views at the moment.
Enjoy
BC
Thank you very much for your prompt response BC. If we start at the Cardwell House parking area, is the kissing gate to start the walk on the same side as the car park or across the road? On Google Maps, I can only see a gate at the end of the lay-by (i.e. the same side of the road but am unclear if this is in the direction we need to go.
At Cardwell/Jeffrey Hill, the gate is adjacent to the car park and leads directly onto the fell.
Again, many thanks for your help. I appreciate it.
Best Regards
Andrew
I wish I’d done the same. I briefly recorded my cycling trips in my teens, and I have a handful of notebooks from LDP walks, but for other trips out my memory is extremely sketchy and I kept no records, until I started the blog that is. You’re new diary is beautiful, it’s huge, bigly, they’re all saying that nobody has ever had one like it.
I like thinking big.
Happy New Year, BC, and enjoy the diaries, both old and new…
And to you both.
Despite all the blue skies, I have not made an entry into the new diary; muscle problems are stopping me from getting out. I’ll start the new year a little late.
Happy New Year. My journal entry for that section of the Pennine Way, albeit 22 years later, Sunday 17 September 1989 ‘ a long hard day of 22 miles, dry and sunny, the wall very impressive’
Brilliant.
Here’s to more ‘long hard days’
I’ll drink to that!
I always kept diaries in my teens and twenties though I don’t have them now, they were full of nonsense.😀 But I do keep a nature journal and of course a blog. Happy New Year!
Keep up your blog.