Kinder 80 Launch In Pictures

"Local school children dragged the average age down somewhat, but it was hard not to notice that the audience and speakers as a whole verged on the senior end of the age range. Perhaps not surprising, but slightly concerning never the less."

Perhaps having the launch event at the weekend, when those of us in between childhood and retirement are less likely to be at work, would have given a better spread of ages? Not sure it really is something to be overly concerned about...

Posted: 24/04/2012 at 17:55

Yes, you're part right, I think, the timing was less than ideal. Also it was an invitation event rather than a public one, but it does say something about the upper echelons of the various outdoor organisations that most of the younger people there were working for the media.

Was chatting about it all with outdoors journalist Ed Douglas and his take, which I tend to agree with, is that the modern equivalent of the Kinder Trespassers are the environmental and anti-capitalist campaigners. That's not to decry the work of the Ramblers or the BMC, who do a great job on our behalf - contrast, say, mountain bikers who have no effective national representation.

Posted: 25/04/2012 at 11:15

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TR: Wednesday 25 April 2012 Trespass - Kinder 80 'From Both Sides Now'

We should have been arrested! Or perhaps sectioned!! The weather was pretty poor (I'd say disgusting, but don't want to appear to be a wuss). Windy; rain turned to hail, turned to horizontal sleet and then could plausibly be called snow (though not for long).

Skip & I had registered for this some weeks ago. Poor Paddy merely let slip that he'd be in Buxton yesterday morning, so we simply swept him up into the plan over a mug of coffee. (He was intending to go down to Ashbourne and walk some trails from there before the Backpackers AGM at Ashford in the Water, this weekend).

We went up from the Edale side (as did the Sheffield contingent of the original trespassers), with 30-odd other motivated folks.  A similar number came up from the Hayfield side, meeting at Edale Cross. We weren't shepherded onto the plateau as the Rangers didn't want to take any risks - personally, I'd have enjoyed the irony of the 'trespassers' demanding to be allowed down

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Posted: 26/04/2012 at 10:55