Scott McQuade - Mancastrian

First of all I'm sorry, I have had two amazing trips and have wrote up on neither of them. Me and Hollie walked the dales way and I went to Lisses at the end of August with Danny and Ben from sheff and Sam and Kai from Stoke....

The Dales Way consists of 6 days walking around 85 miles over very rural terrain between Ilkley and Lake Windomere. Me and Hollie got waved off by her mum (as Hollie lives in Ilkley)and set about walking 12 miles to reach the first camp. It was a very nice walk with nice weather and a nice stop to play about at Bolton Abbey, though we were very pleased when we got to camp. The day proved to be a bit of an warm up... The third day was a much MUCH longer 24 miles but by then our bodies had got much more used to walking and carrying the load of all our gear on our backs. Even so, after around 18 miles we were struggeling. My feet started to blister and Hollie was getting very tired. I stuck my ipod on for a little inspiration and found it much easier to get to the village we were stopping in, and I dragged Hollie along with me. What I didn't know when we got there was we were still about 2 miles away from the campsite, ahh well, we made it.
The next morning we overheard two experiance walkers talking about where they were going to stay that night - they were doing the walk the other way and didn't fancy walking the whole 24 miles to the next campsite. This made me realise just what we had done the day before, especially Hollie, a girl of only 15 managed to outwalk 2 40 odd year old experiance walkers!
The next day was an easy 9 miles or something, in which we met up with Hollie's family for half the walk, and they, being the lovely people they are, treated us to a nice pub lunch that evening - Beautiful! The rest of the walk was okay (after the 24 mile day) and would have been really enjoyable but for my worsening blisters. However the surroundings were still too beautiful to not enjoy and looking back it was very good. I was still more than pleased to get to the lake and even more so when we reached the train station!
It was a new type of experiance for me, I have done similar walks before but only over 2 days and they were never over 10 miles a day with the comfort of my family around. It was an experiance I shall repeat sometime, for sure!
You can find pics and an excelent write up by Hollie here

Lisses - In a nutshell:
I managed to injure my hand (which I now believe is broken) pretty much the night before my trip started - vaulting a rail in the dark I didn't see that one end was completely unattached and I went arse over tit landing badly on my left hand.

Anyway, the trip-
I decided to do all the travelling barefoot. I travelled from Sheffield to Lisses without shoes getting many dodgy looks along the way :). After getting quite lost in Evry (a 2 km detour :|) we finally arrived at the slightly infamous 'Formular 1' hotel at 10 where we got sorted a little before finding no where to eat (everywhere was shut)! This left us on a huge down and feeling not so good about the trip. Things were good the next day though when we realised just how close to the Dame we were!
We got there and even though we new everything was going to be bigger than what it looked in the videos we were still gobsmacked at the sheer scale of it. On the first couple of days we were very timid up on her but as time went by we became much more confident and me ans Sam managed to climb up to the top many times including the easy 'left hand side route', the slighly harder 'right hand side route' (using the circle things), and the far more difficult 'middle route', in which there's one point very close to the top where you have a grip with both hands on a cubical grip and the easiest way to get to the next foot hold is to dangle - what not a lot of people realise is that the Dame Du Lac over hangs towars the top, the curvature at the bottom continues until the top is overhanging, being the main reason why few climb up the middle.

We trained at all the usual spots in Lisses and I even found the woods whilst out jogging at 8am before the others woke. At all the spots we found we were always very impressed at what we had seen in videos, non of them give the movements of the French credit, EVERYTHING is FAR BIGGER and trickier than it looks in videos. I concentrated mainly on precision jumps and climbing the whole trip due to my injury (I couldn't put much weight on my hand but could pull with it - I could climb the Dame but couldn't handstand on teh top:/). We ventured into Evry and found most of the well known spots, which happend to be f**king amazing! And I was so frustrated with my hand.
We met a distinct lack of traceurs over there, I think most had made the trip earlier in the summer, but we only met a few French as well. Some of which trained with the Yamakasi though and took us into Evry where we trained with them whilst Yan Hunatra sat on a wall at the Cathedral spot (for those in the know) serenading with a guitar to his wife and son. Such a surreal experiance! Amazing!
On the way back home we missed our coatch from London - we had plenty of time to spare so stopped off at southbank but the next time we looked at the time it was too late - the training is so good there the time flew by :| We had to pay out for new tickets but got home only an hour late.
Overall a great experiance and I have many a new goal with training - mainly to get f**king strong and become very able, able to perform the movements I train to a high standard without fail.

I am now living in Manchester studying at the Uni of Manc. Life is good here and still feels like one long vacation, even with the hard work of my course. The guys here are really dedicated meeting up three times a week, and training with them is a pleasure! I will do a propper write up about training here another time.

Yesterday I was back in Leeds to do some filming for ITV and obviously to train in Leeds again. All went well and compared to most media work I do this was very good. Appart from doing one little pose and a coreographed team run across a bridge we just trained as we normally would the whole day (+ the odd interview) with two camera men with very expensive equipment running around us getting some good shots. I tried to put some good points across in my interview and just hope they use some in the final cut.
It was cool to train in Leeds again and I loved being able to do some movements I used to find tricky, with relative ease - though I hated not being able to push myself because of my still injured hand. Alex was very impressive. He has got a lot stronger in my absence and is so very powerful! Making certain movements that took me well over two years to do and some only I previously had achieved (nobody else in Leeds). This would be acceptable but for the fact he still is months away from a full years training!!! Such a natural... BASTARD :)

Meh it's too late to write more or to upload any pics/vids!

Peace