Being ideally placed for days out walking in the South Lakes as well as outside my back door here in Thwaite I buy the Westmoreland Gazette as a weekly newspaper because it always has shed loads of information about the outdoors and if and where the Fell Rescue teams have been out. In winter they seem to barely have their rucksacks off their backs and must have very understanding employers. There's been an interesting debate for several weeks now on the letters pages to do with outdoor equipment and how much tougher and skilled the early walkers and climbers had to be before all this technical clothing and equipment arrived on the scene. Comments like....'Gear Not Needed' or... 'Kit Was Truly Basic But It Did The Job'. Well in my experience no it didn't hence the terms...'Breaking in Your Boots' or... 'I Sacrificed Luxuries Like Food for The Freedom of Movement'. You don't have to now and it would be stupid to go out onto the fells without.

I think some of this debate is to do with Ambleside and the number of outdoor shops there are. The locals have nicknamed it 'Anorak City' but a good few of them are employed by these same shops and if I need anything its the first place I head for as competetion on the street invariably produces some good deals.

Anyways what's this all about I am not a fashion victim but I do think the quality of equipment especially clothing adds to the pleasure of a day out on the fells. Even in the worst weather you're pretty much guaranteed a dry warm end to your walk. I have several shells and the latest in XCR but always reach for my Alpine Extreme in a heavier Gortex fabric for winter walks, it is my old faithful and will shortly come of age I've had it that long. So are some of these winter fell rescues to do with the ease and availability of extremely good outdoor equipment that may in some way give their buyer a false sense of security or ability, and thus fill a gap in his or hers mountain craft skills, who knows?

There's not much going on around here at the moment and the days are wet, cold and short so for the walkers amongst us here's a few walking related facts...

• An average height person weighing in at around 165 pounds walking at a 3 mile per hour pace will experience about 192 pounds of peak force per foot strike. So over the course of a mile this accumulates to 425,856 pounds peak force transmitted to your lower extremities. Research shows that walking with poles, an individual can reduce the force per foot strike by 5.76pounds peak force. Thus over the course of that same mile, the lower extremities are spared approximately 6 tons of peak force. (Look out Ambleside here I come!)

• The foot has more sweat glands per square centimetre than any other part of the body.....250,000 sweat glands each foot. Each foot produces about a cup of sweat every day, this combined with bacteria produces gases similar to those produced by bacteria in making cheese! (Thank goodness for breathable boots)

• There are about 300,000 lightning ground strikes a year in Britain. On average someone is struck every 6,000 strikes and killed every 10,000 strikes. There were no deaths in 2000 and prior to that the next clear year was 1937.

• The idea of the Pennine Way came after two American correspondents wrote to Tom Stephenson who was then the outdoor correspondent of the Daily Herald. They asked if Britain had anything similar to the 2,500 mile Appalachian Trail. Tom who became the first director of The Ramblers Association came up with the idea of ... a long green trail between the Peak and the Cheviots.