Yet another year is nearly over, and it’s been a really wet year – November saw record rainfall and devastating floods in Cumbria. But it wasn’t just November that was wet, the summer was dismal too, making any climbing ambitions almost impossible to achieve (although Jon had a Grand year!). Why is it that the few dry sunny days that we did enjoy always seemed to be during the week? Work always gets in the way – work sucks! :angry: The plan to deal with that is sorted – next year we’ll work much less and climb much more! π
With another year passing the blog is another year older; a grand old age of four!
Here are a few highlights from the past year of blogging…
- This blog has seen over one million hits every month since first hitting that milestone back in February. And that popularity is still growing (so much so that the site’s web host has started strangling the use of computing resources). In November we nearly topped 1.5m hits.
- The blog’s index page has achieved a Google pagerank of seven! Some of this is down to the popularity of the WordPress plug-ins that I have developed (and shared) to help make this site look and operate the way it does. But much is because the blog has frequent updates with great content that others link to. π
- There have been nearly 300 reports from 23 different countries written by 17 authors.
Which posts would you have picked out?
Richard’s Robotic Adventures with Autosub…
28th September – 10th October ’09
Day two of the cruise saw us launch Autosub, meet some dolphins, and have a small adventure retrieving the sub…
The Kat’s visit to Germany…
12th – 20th September ’09
Following on from Rebecca and Mina’s visit to the Lakes, the kats made a return trip to Germany this September…
Our rock climbing trip to Lundy!
1st – 8th August ’09
Our “summer” holiday this year was to join the CC meet to Lundy. What an amazing place…
Dave’s successful trip to the Gouffre Berger
3rd August ’09
At -1122m the Gouffre Berger was regarded as the deepest cave in the world until 1963, it is still the 28th deepest known cave and the 4th deepest in the France. It has been on my personal hit list pretty much from the day I started caving…
Windermere Air Show’s amazing displays
26th July ’09
The forecast was right – it was raining. So, with a leisurely start to the day, a cooked breakfast, and a bit of festering later, we noticed the skies were clearing and we decided to visit the Windermere Airshow…
The Blog Author Rendezvous…
11th & 12th July ’09
Perhaps the most exciting blog event of the year was when the blog’s authors, or as many as could make it, attended an adventure packed weekend rendezvous in Yorkshire. That weekend is certain to be repeated; get your thinking-caps on and start thinking of ideas of what we should do to top 2009’s rendezvous in 2010…
Our awesome trip to the Lofoten Islands…
19th – 28th June ’09
We’ve arrived in the Lofoten Islands, or perhaps their other name is more fitting, the Magic Islands! What an amazing place – awesome granite islands seemingly straight out of the sea in the middle of nowhere…
Richard and Rachel got married!
6th June ’09
Rachel and I got married. We’ve been too busy to blog since.
Thankfully they found time to keep blogging!
Celebrating Cornish rock climbing…
23rd – 25th May ’09
Continuing the celebration of 100 years of continuous definitive guidebook publication the Climbers’ Club held the second of three big celebration events, this time in Cornwall…
German Wildebeests visit the Lakes…
26th April – 3rd May ’09
Watch out, there have been some rare German wildebeests spotted at the Lake District…
The eagerness to check the blog every day to see what adventures have been had is still there; the excitement when there’s a new adventure report is as strong as ever, it’s almost like playing a small part in or experiencing a little of the adventure too!
A massive thank-you to all the blog’s authors, comment contributors, and readers!
Keep visiting. But most of all, get out and have an adventure to keep those reports coming… π