Family Christmas & Boxing Day Hunt Meet

Alastair BegleyEquestrian, General Short Link

Well time for my last blog post of the year, after a very enjoyable family Christmas at my Gran’s house along with my Aunts and cousins. For the first time I actually got my camera out due to the 5D3 being so good that it can take photos at f/5.6 with no flash indoors and not be too noisy which meant that some lovely natural photos could be captured without people getting annoyed at the flash. On boxing day I headed to the boxing day meet with the Ledbury Hunt which is the meet that I always used to attend when I rode, but have now not been on horseback for 5 years! It was great to see so many people out on horseback despite the ban, and it was even better to see so many members of the general public out to view the hunt at the meet.

A fantastic 2012 in 100 Photos

Alastair Begley100 Photos, General Short Link

Well its coming up to the end of the year and with no trips planned until new year this seemed like an appropriate time to summarise my 2012. I have done so much this year, taken up two new hobbies which have taken over my life, rock climbing and ice climbing. Rock climbing very quickly became my hobby of choice this year, I have progressed very quickly and within a year have gone from never having lead trad climbing to beginning to consolidate climbing at E1, this year I have done: I have had a few lucky moments though with a 25 foot fall in Pembrokeshire on Manzoku and a ground fall from 6m at Haytor on Haggis but thankfully I walked away from both with only bruises. I am looking forward to what next year brings and am currently training hard in indoor climbing gyms over the winter months to ensure that I enter the next climbing season as fit as possible. As well as rock climbing this year I also have started ice climbing. I got into ice climbing in a weird way as I lead my first. Read the full article…

Winter Climbing On Snowdon

Alastair BegleyNorth Wales, Winter Climbing Short Link

With the recent cold snap there has been a lot of talk around down south about the beacons coming into winter condition. As I had holiday which I had to take before Christmas I took a punt at the start of the week and booked Thursday off as it was due to be the last cold day before the thaw. However when Wednesday night came reports were coming from locals who had been to scout out the conditions on Wednesday and it turned out that nothing was in good nick so rather than spending the day at home we headed up to Snowdonia for the day, this involved setting my alarm for 2:15! We arrived at Pen-y-Pass car park at around 7 with a beautiful starlit sky and started walking towards Trinity face along the miners track. It was a beautiful walk in as dawn broke and then as we were walking around the lakes the sunrise started with a beautiful horizon and the top of Snowdon being kissed by the sun, it definitely reminded me of alpine days. Once we got to Llyn Glaslyn we noticed the waterfall up. Read the full article…