New gear: wires, crabs

I was in Wales last weekend with the 4C's in the Rucksack Club hut in the Llanberis pass - more on that anon - and passing by Joe Brown's in Capel Curig stopped to poke around. They have an excellent selection of gear, I've not seen better elsewhere, probably better than Outside in Hathersage. Anyway I've begun my project to renew my gear, some of which dates back to the early 90's so is up to 35 years old. Although I do have a lot of newer stuff. First up is a set of wires, technically Wallnuts, from DMM.

And some crabs aka carabiners.

Note what isn't desperately obvious from the picture: they are smaller than standard, by a little, thus lighter, hence "Wisp". Looking at the online prices, Joe Brown's was actually slightly cheaper, something to remember.

Llanberis

To Llanberis with the 4Cs, to a Rucksack Club hut just above the town on the outskirts of the pass itself. I got all keen and threw my ice gear into the car but it was too warm for that: through the cloud one could vaguely see snow high up on Snowden but only in patches. Pix are here.

Friday: arrive. An easier drive than expected; I didn't listen much to music but mostly to my thoughts.

Saturday: [GPS] we settle on Tremadog, largely based on agreement between Keith Sands and Charles Moreton; I don't have strong opinions nor it seems to Pete Atkinson, the Italian guy, and I've now forgotten who else was there this was a month ago don't forget (I'm writing this on Feb 28th). Wx is grey, and rain is predicted from around noon. In fact it doesn't start and that gently until about 4, but this does set our expectations. We go to the upper tier, Craig Pant Ifan. My logbooks says I did Bulging Wall HS 4a, Falling Block Crack S 4 and MTN S 4a. One of those was something Keith, and then Pete, backed off. Soir: we walked down to the Vaynol arms; it was too busy to serve food, but I'd already eaten, so while they went further into Llanberis I sat and had a quiet pint.

Sunday: [GPS] it rained a lot overnight, and inevitably all the rock was going to be soaking wet. With cloud covering the hills we didn't have a Howard level of enthusiasm for multi-pitch Diffs, and after much discussion K+C decided on an out of the way crag, Craig Y Tonnau. This was actually quite cute, I lead one V Diff - Diane's Approval - but the rock was running with water and we all got rather cold hands, to the point of starting to lose feel. And so we felt that would do, everyone feeling mildly guilty at not doing more. With the others I stopped for coffee in Betws y Coed, then headed off early; I went back via Joe Brown's in Capel Curig - see new wires - then back to the Hut for a quiet night alone; I slept in the living room.

Monday: I'd left my options open but with the wx remaining iffy I decided to go home, via a walk along the beach at Porthmadog to nearly Criccieth; and a mosey through Porthmadog, which left me wanting to try the narrow gauge trains and relive my youth. And so home.

Of the hut

A nice place, well equipped for our purposes, pretty cold when we first got in and needed the fires going. Here's the "strangers" dowm upstairs; no blankets bring your own sleeping bag of course:

Here's the main "comfy" living room:

And here's the "dining room" and entrance way:

And the kitchen:

And from the outside:

New running shoes

Happy New Year. Having lost my beloved Boston Adizero 9's to old age, mountain walking and erging, themselves replacements for the 8's,

I had bought some Altra's in July 2024:

These are nice, without too much absurdly overbuilt heel as almost everything has these days, though a little bitey on the ankles; I've had to cut them back a little. But I still hankered after the Boston's, though you can no longer buy the 9's. Or so I thought! But recently I found some online (Joom) and bought them:

They are nice, although when wearing them I do find them a touch flat :-). I may now be eligible for Imelda status:

Book review: Not Even Wrong

Not Even Wrong by Peter Woit (damn! That is one determinedly old-skool website) is about The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law. I read his blog; it is great, even if I disagree with most of his political takes. I've even listened to some of his lectures on Youtube.

This book is about 1/2 about developments leading up to the Standard Model; about 1/6 thoughts-beyond-the-SM; and about 1/3 String-theory-and-what-is-wrong-with-it. If you blip over the really difficult bits it is fairly easy reading, especially if you have already got some background in strong / weak forces, and some kind of understanding of group theory. If you try to read through all the hard passages (I couldn't), it is hard work, because all that stuff is genuinely hard, and because of course he can only gesture towards explanations in a book like this.

As a summary of to-the-SM I think it is good; it is presented through a symmetry / groups approach, and he gives a lot of credit to Hermann Weyl. I realise now that the SM was "finished" in 1973, and accepted by say 1979, and yet I, going to university around 1983, thought that quarks were only conjectural. Knowledge takes a long time to percolate out, or at least it did then.

His basic complaint is that little of physical substance has happened since then, and so in that sense the book - published in 2006 - is largely up to date. The only thing missing I think is the discovery of the Higgs; there's a point where he notes that one (of several) objection against theory X is that we might not find the Higgs, and / or the mechanism might not work; I think it is now know that it does, though I know I don't understand the details. Since 2006 we've had two more decades of lack of progress in string theory, which IMHO vindicates his essential complaint.

He is polite in almost everything, and I believe tries to be fair to the stringy folk.

Book review: Nettle and Bone

Wiki tells me that Nettle & Bone is a 2022 fantasy novel by Ursula Vernon, writing as T. Kingfisher. The novel has been described as a dark fairy tale. It won the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Novel. It is, somewhat self-consciously, indeed a fairy-story-esque novel; "dark" is doubtful; the tone is almost always light and fluffy, and there is a reasonable sprinkling of gentle humour. I don't think it is as good as Uprooted or Spinning Silver but in its own way it is charming. As a negative the prose doesn't quite live up to the story.

I picked this up almost in despair at finding anything in Waterstones that I wanted to read, and found myself enjoying it in its various aspects. For one example, the Fairy Godmother who is weak and near useless only because she refuses to use her real talent for cursing people, and who finally comes into her own at the end when she slips in a "will grow up fatherless" curse on the child.

Some of the Goodreads reviews get a touch carried away about the story being "about" the oppression of women or somesuch; that's an element in the story but really, I think, just an element of the story.

Newsletter 2025

Some people are kind enough to send us newsletters. This is a return, of sorts. I also did this for 2024, if you're interested in history.

The big news for 2024 was Miriam retiring. The big news this year... was me retiring. So far this is going well and I'm not bored.

Miriam spent most of spring on three months away on Retreat, finishing up being Ordained into her buddhist Order.

Of the infants: Daniel remains at Darktrace, with a recent promotion; and Miranda remains at Natwest helping AI make other people redundant, ditto.

We had a summer holiday en famille in Sweden plus little Mi, canoing around Stora Le, a large lake, and indeed the name literally means big lake. There are 428 pictures in the unlikely event of you wanting to see. We cooked over open fires, swam, and slept out in hammocks. And this bookended with weekends in Oslo, and Goteborg and Stockholm.

We've all managed more climbing this year. D is now good enough that, were he female, he would be winning local competitions; the rest of us are at a lower level. Amongst others we made it to Stanage and Froggatt; I made it to Pembroke with the 4C's; and using my new-found free time I wandered around France and Italy and later, the Tirol, finding the snow that my heart desires. I'm still rowing; we went down one over all this year.

On a sadder note, Baby Marbles is no more; she will be remembered each spring when the daffodils come up.

Book review: Pavane

And oldie from Keith Roberts. I liked it enough that I've just ordered The Grain Kings, which I also read oh so many years ago. These are not super high quality stuff, but they have a flavour which modern stuff lacks.

This is an alternate-history "novel" constructed from some loosely-connected short stories: Queen Elizabeth was assasinated, the Armada succeeded, the Catholic Church controls the world; edicts such as Petroleum Veto restrict progress. But in a way it is really about the Isle of Purbeck and Corfe Castle. I think I'd like to visit there in the spring. Let's see if I remember.

Mixed into the stories of traction-engine folk, with their lovingly-described tending, and the signalling, and the lords and ladies, there is the Faery folk as an edge presence, nicely handled, almost as a ghost story when first introduced. Possibly not quite consistently - this is fixup after all - because the Seneschal turns out to be one. Trivia: in the end, the Seneschal turns out to have a primitive radio; but it doesn't do much and it isn't clear how he got it, or who he talks to. This seems to be an oddity. I think this is part of a not-quite-realised plan to have tech start creeping in.

Wiki says "The location and flavour, nostalgic yet tragic in outlook..." which fits fairly well; tragic is too strong though. As everyone says, the coda - "explaining" the Church's cunning plan to restrict science just long enough that humanity has time to mature and not to nuke ourselves to death - jars; I recommend not reading it.

Trivia: given the detail about headers and duplex and routing protocol from the semaphore chains, I'd expected him to have some kind of technical background, but it seems not.