Walk from Horsley, Northumberland.

To get ready for the Christmas Dinner, this is the walk we did from Horsley in Northumberland.

Distance: 4 miles
Start & Finish: Horsley Village, Northumberland.
Finishes with a steep slope uphill.
Soggy ground heading up the hill towards the end.

Runkeeper Route: Map

Pub stops available in Wylam, and two pubs and a cafe in Horsley itself.

Setting off from the village, head East along the main road, just before you exit the village, turn right up a farm track with a foot path sign to Wylam 1 1/2.
Turn left at the end and head straight on to the left of a field, with a waymarker.
Continue straight on past the first wall and across the field passing through a disused gate in the second wall and then turn to cross the next field diagonally, looking for a style on the southern side of the field that will appear shortly.
Once across follow the path to a footbridge across the river and up a short slope.  Head diagonally across the next field towards a style and then head for another style before the road.

Follow the road downhill into Wylam and at the junction turn left to pass by The Ship Inn, and just after The Ship turn right up Chapel Lane and continue until just after you pass over a railway bridge.  Turn right and head down the slope to the disused railway and head west towards Wylam Bridge over the Tyne.  Don't cross over the bridge, instead take the path to the right off the railway and stay on the northern bank still heading west along the path before arriving at the road and continuing along a thin foot path.

When the roadside footpath disappears head off the road down to a footpath at the river side,  pass a house to your right.  Immediately after the house turn right and follow the drive between the house and the pumping station re-emerging onto the road and turn left onto the footpath.

Just before the cottage on the right look for a path signposted Horsley Wood, take this uphill and take the first left and at a warning sign for low power lines take the right fork.

Follow this somewhat squishy (when wet) path up the hill until you reach a junction of trails, take the trail that leads up hill towards and passes to the left of Horsley Wood Cottages, continue up the trail past the twists outside the water treatment works and return to the village.

New laptop or upgrade?

For a number of years I have had a core i3 laptop, that I bought refurbished on the cheap.

At the start of this year I felt that it was starting to get a bit old, slow and a random overheating problem kept occurring.  I could do with something a bit more beef, especially since I was having issues running some Linux distros in Virtualbox.

Having spent a while looking for options and working out which spec would be ideal for me, I had drawn up a list of things that I would like to have.

1.  Preferably 17", minimum 15.6" (the current is 17").

2.  Minimum 8GB ram.

3.  At least one, preferably 2 USB 3 ports.

4.  SSD or at least a hybrid drive.

Having looked around for a while and pricing up a number of possibilities I could never find the right one for me, definitely not in the price range that I was expecting to pay.

I had also always toyed with picking up a Chromebook for the road, but that would not be on the cards if I purchased a new laptop that would be unjustifiable for a while.

One night I looked at the possibility of what I could do with my current laptop, by upgrading the memory and changing the HDD to an SSD.  Whilst thinking about this, remembering that it was a 17" laptop I decided to check the specs on the manufacturers website to check what upgrades were supported.  The real watershed moment was when I noticed that there were not one, but two slots for hard drives, a quick shut-down and opening up the panels on the underside revealed the truth that staring me in the face was an empty hard drive slot.  A quick search on SSD reviews and the timely appearance of PCPRO's feature how fast a PC do you really need spurred me into action and off I roared to the websites to purchase the two things I felt I wanted.

1.  A Samsung 840 Pro SSD (80GB).

2.  8GB of RAM.

Whilst I was out set a backup of the 500GB HDD that was in the laptop and then headed out to purchase the goods.  On my return, excitedly, I inserted the RAM and the SSD, and set about installing Windows 7 on the SSD.  Once complete I did a quick reboot and was shocked that one of the main causes of my previous annoyance the boot time had dropped to around 20 seconds - WOW.  Although some of this could be down to the fresh install and the extra RAM, but still - WOW on an over three year old cheapish laptop.

A quick format of my old HDD, pointing the documents links to the old HDD and off the SSD before restoring my files taking the time to put them in better order and after a few more months of use I am still happy.  Additionally an overheating issue that used to exist has yet to rear its ugly head yet.

Overall these updates have been a huge boost to my current laptop and will keep it going till the end of Windows 7, at which point I expect whether to stay with windows or move across to Linux (I do have access to a Window 8 PC that I can make my decision then).

This freed up the cash to purchase a Chromebook which I use on the road (Chrome Remote Desktop is useful to access the grunt of the home PC when I need it).

How I remain connected on the road will come in a later post.