• Ramblers outside the Penrith area are very welcome to come on walks organised by members of the Penrith Ramblers. To enable such ramblers to do this, one of the aims of the site is to display the latest version of the walks' programme of the Penrith Ramblers as well as provide a guide to these walks. The site also gives members of the Penrith group the facility to get up-dates to their walks' programme, share photos and receive other relevant information.
  It is intended to place the new walks' programme and the latest newsletter on the site, very soon after they are produced, which is every four months. Also, roughly midway between the times this new material is uploaded, the 'Penrith Ramblers Photo' display will be renewed. It is hoped that the site will have the latest version of the walks' programme at about the same time as members receive hard copy through the post. It is intended also to update the walks' programme, each time new information is received from walk leaders and/or walk co-ordinators. However, because the site is run single handed, this may not occur immediately, so information should be passed on as soon as it is available.
  To save members having to scan through the programme to find out if changes have been made to their hard copy, notices of when changes are made appear on the Home page and details of the changes will be entered in the 'Updates, Notices + Ads' section on the site. This should make it easier for you to mark up the changes on your printed version of the programme. You could even print out an up-dated version of the programme if you wish.To Top

• Another part of the site provides information for people new to fell walking as regards clothing and equipment and how to navigate using map and compass. Basic courtesies expected when walking in a group, the Country Code, what to do in an emergency and other related matters are also covered.

• The site also includes information about the Penrith group itself, when walks are held, where to meet, how to make contact, telephone numbers, grading of walks, etc.

• Finally, features and facilities of the region, where the Penrith Group of Ramblers hold their walks is now part of the main site after site-navigation was changed. This includes information on the Lake District National Park, Eden Valley, The Pennines, The Howgills and The Yorkshire Dales. Hopefully, ramblers who don't know the area, may be tempted to come and visit and join us on some of our walks after reading what the region has to offer.

Please note that the information on the site is provided in good faith and whilst every effort has been made to ensure that it is accurate, you use it without any warranty of it being complete or error free. Information on the region's facilities can change quickly. You may be able to check this information by using the web site links provided.

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1. In the hope of making new visitors a little more inquisitive about what the web site contains, an open 'picture book' containing a sample of pictures (in miniature) taken from the website has been placed on the Home page. Those with javascript enabled can turn over its pages by clicking on any open page. (July 2010)

2. The Website subcommittee met in June 2010 to decide on whether to charge for advertising, which up to then was free. The website costs money to run, (even though the webmaster's contribution is free) and it was decided to be more commercial and make a small annual charge for each 'walking related' advertisement displayed on the site. It was argued that even though members might benefit from discounts being offered in these advertisements, the Penrith Ramblers Group needed to benefit too. (June 2010.)

3. Because the Lake District Area web site now contains the Penrith Ramblers News letter, the News letter page on this site does not display the news letter. Instead there is a link to the Lake District site, thus saving duplication. (March 2010.)

4. A facility to be able to fade the change-over between images was added to the slideshow in July 2009.

5. After a meeting of a subcommittee to decide the future development of the site, navigation between pages and the arrangement of buttons providing the navigation were changed. Some of the information, such as walking equipment, navigation and medical advice were given their own pages, having been removed from other parts of the web site. The 'navigation' buttons were grouped into sections, each section indicated by a different background. After these changes, 'site' maps, which showed where you are on the site were now unnecessary and were removed. Tooltips to the 'navigation' buttons were added. (12th May 2009)

6. References on the site to the 'Ramblers Association' or 'R.A.' have been replaced by 'Ramblers' or 'The Ramblers'. (Update 9th Mar. 2009)

7. Extra sections on 'Preventing aches after a walk' and 'Recognition and prevention of possible medical problems' have been added to the web page, 'Guide lines to walks'. (10th April 2008)

8. In compliance with a decision by the committee, an extra web page showing the latest newsletter has been added to the website. This newsletter can be viewed in both HTML and PDF format. (The latter format shows the newsletter in its original layout.) (25th March 2008)To Top

9. A section on Open Access Land, - your rights and obligations - was added to the 'Guide Lines to Walks' page in October 2007.

10. Ancillary information on how to enable Javascript together with information on the risks involved was added in October 2007.

11. A section on using a GPS was added to the 'Walking Equipment' page in September 2007.

12. A printout facility making it easier to print out any one-month of walks in tabular form was added to the walks page. (3rd May 2007)

13. A slideshow facility was added to the 'Penrith Ramblers Photos' web page in mid February 2007.

14. Deleted photos from the site have not been lost altogether! Each set of deleted photos is now stored on a site run by Photopic. Details of how to view them are on the 'Penrith Ramblers Photos' web page. This facility is free and has been available since mid February 2007.

15. On 17th December, 2006, a facility to check out a grid refence was added to the map reading section of the Map and Compass work page. This can be accessed from the section relating to 'Compass' on the 'Walking Equipment' page.

16. A facility to select the OS map (or maps) relevant for a particular walk was added to the mapping facility. Further details are given on the 'Site Management' page. (7th October 2006)

17. A mapping facility has been installed on the 'Walks ' Programme' page. You need javascript to be enabled to use it, otherwise the information displayed will not have altered and you should notice no difference.(2nd September 2006)To Top

For so-called top speed access to the internet your browser may be set to store web pages after they have been downloaded. Trying to download an up-dated version of the same page now fails, as the browser reproduces the page it had previously downloaded instead. To overcome this, your browser can probably be set up to periodically reload a web page every 2 minutes (say) or whatever other time span you prefer. This is useful for getting the latest news from a site, such as monitoring stock prices. The updates/messages page on this site is not in that category of importance but it could be useful to reload its page to see, if there have been any relevant late changes to a walk before setting out. Other methods are to use the 'refresh' or 'reload' button or empty the browser's cache using suitable software, such as BleachBit (freeware) or manually via the browser's Tools button. With Mozilla Firefox, selecting 'Clear Private Data Now' on closing the browser, will ensure that pages will be loaded from the internet, next time you connect to it.

Members can pass on any messages, which they think will be of interest to other ramblers and have them placed on the 'Updates, Notices + Ads' web page. Messages will be placed on the site as soon as it is convenient for the site manager to do so.

The webmaster welcomes suitable photographs for display on the 'Penrith Ramblers Photos' page. (Information on doing this can be found by going to 'Penrith ramblers Photos' web page and selecting the 'Help and Information' button.) It is not intended to put new photos on the site in dribs and drabs but to introduce them as a new collection roughly midway between the placement of new walks' programmes.

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Several members of the Penrith Ramblers have provided feedback, which has helped to improve the accuracy of information given on the site and reduce the number of typos, grammatical errors, and spelling mistakes. Thanks go to all those who have made a contribution, with apologies, if subsequent changes to the site have nullified their original efforts.
After going it alone for over 3 years, the webmaster is now part of a sub-committee, which has been formed to decide editorial content and future development of the web site. Ideas of ways to improve the website should be put to the webmaster or others on the committee, who will jointly consider their merit, bearing in mind someone has to do it!

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Since the site was first set up, the Walks' Programme page has been modified, so that those who have javascript enabled should get improved presentation. This includes:

1. Striped table rows.
2. A row highlighter.
3. A 'walk location' facility, which is selected by clicking on a button and displays one of four maps showing approximately where a walk is located.
4. A facility to find out which OS map(s) is/are applicable to use on a walk.
5. A facility to print out all or some of the monthly walk tables forming the walks' programme, without being inconvenienced by navigation bars, diagrams or large empty spaces. A pop-up 'help' message is included.
6. Besides the tooltips mentioned below, an extra tooltip is now shown, if your mouse passes over the highlighted area labelled 'Meaning' at the top of the column 'Grd WP'. This gives a brief description of what the abbreviated letter grades stand for.
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The presentation of photographs has been supplemented by extra facilities. Again, javascript must be enabled. These include:

1. A slideshow presentation, which has been added to the section on Penrith Ramblers photos.
2. An optional fade-out facility for use during the change-over between photos during a slideshow..
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3. Expandable photos, which have been added to the walk localities section of this site. (This section contains five pages, which give facilities and physical features of the areas, where the Penrith Ramblers hold their walks.). The photos appear very small but on being clicked will expand to a larger size. The number of photographs is slowly being increased from a low base and the site manager welcomes members to send more photos, to supplement this section of the web site, especially for the 'Howgills', 'Dales' and 'Pennines' web pages. This facility was added in March 2008.
   (Web pages in the 'walk localities' section, which have more than two or three images, i.e. 'The Lakes' and 'Eden Valley', are loaded using thumbnail images for initial display, rather than large images, which are then reduced in size. This initially saves time downloading the page. If a thumbnail is clicked on, a large image will still have to be downloaded. To accomodate this, a 'preloader', coded in javascript, is employed to ensure that the enlargement of a thumbnail is in the browser's cache, before any attempt is made to display it. The code is part of the script 'magnifier.js'.)

Other facilities added include:

1. Tooltips, which have been applied to navigation buttons on all the main pages on the website. These were added in May 2009.
2. An open 'picture book' on the Home page. This displays a sample of pictures (in miniature) taken from various sections of the website. The pages turn over to display further pictures, when clicked on.

The scripting to facilitate these facilities has been tested on the latest versions of Opera, Mozilla Firefox, Seamonkey, Internet Explorer and AOL. ( It is understood that Safari on the Macintosh computer does not function as planned. The web master does not have this system, so is unable to find where the problems lie.)
A section dealing with the security issues of using Javascript and how to enable it was added. (Oct 2007)To Top
The scripting is based on the DOM (Document Object Model), which many browsers now incorporate, though I.E.7's implementation of CSS is not up to that of the opposition and has meant unwanted compromises have had to be made. No guarantee is made that earlier versions of these browsers will work, in which case surfers should notice no change from before the scripting was introduced..
In order to have the mapping facility enabled without having to scroll the window a long way, it was decided to limit the listing of the walks' programme to a selected part of any month's walks, scrollable in its own window.
To give reasonable accuracy, four overlapping maps are used to display the position of the walks. Each of them has Penrith located near one of their corners. The pale blue areas give an indication of land roughly over 1500 feet. The maps are too small to add further height bands. To aid locating walks, most main roads are indicated (in brown) and a few minor roads are also shown, (in mustard yellow), mainly in areas where main road access does not exist.
The position of the spot indicating the location of a walk can only be approximate as some walks cover quite a distance. The spot might be located at a significant physical feature or between significant features if there is more than one given in the walk-description. In order to make the spot visible when placed on regions of the map of different colour, it both changes colour and blinks.
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On some walks, only the leader is in possession of a suitable map showing the region of the walk, which is not considered good practice. (It is left to the reader to think why.) In order to encourage other ramblers, besides the leader, to take the appropiate OS map(s) for a walk, each of the four (screen) maps used to show walk locations can be replaced by diagrams of the appropiate OS maps laid out to cover the same area. To get to the OS map layouts, you need to click on the notice below the 'Region of Walk'. The spot now blinks on the appropiate OS map(s) needed for the walk. Some care has gone into showing where the OS maps overlap, though for clarity, the overlaps may be slightly exagerated in places because of the small scale. If a walk is close to a map edge, you may need the adjacent map too. A walk in the Grasmere area could even involve up to four maps!

With some browsers, such as Opera, you might try using the mapping facility with the enlargment setting at 90%. Except for the smaller scale, the mapping is unaffected and the need to use scroll bars should be less.

On the Map/Compass Work page a facility to check out a grid reference has been included. This uses the same maps as used on the Walks' Programme page. Because of the small size of the maps, accuracy is nowhere near high enough to check out a 6 digit grid reference. However it does enable one to check if you have the correct letter code and if eastings and northings are the correct way round, unless of course they are of nearly equal value. It is also possible to find out which 1:25000 O.S. map the grid reference falls onto. The facility can be accessed from the section on 'Compass' on the Walk Equipment page. From there, you will need to follow the links

Incomplete and spotty photographs.To Top
Unfortunately, the browser 'brontosaurus', Internet Explorer can cause problems, which, this time, are beyond the cure of the web designer. This is the incomplete downloading of photographs from the internet, resulting in only the top portion of a photograph being displayed. (No error message is provided when this occurs.) Another fault is the display of small white dots appearing at random in very dark areas of an image One way to cure this is to use a different browser, such as Opera or Mozilla Firefox, which are free downloads off the internet and do not exhibit this problem.
If you insist on using I.E. and get a photo without its lower part, then getting the latest version may cure the problem. Trying to download it again is of no avail, as the browser only takes the faulty photograph from its cache and makes no attempt to download it again. (This also explains why manually operating the slideshow is more smooth once all the photos have been downloaded, as the photos are removed quickly from the browser's cache, rather than going back onto the internet.) To get a new download, you need to clean the cache first. Software such as 'CleanCache' will do this for a number of browsers including Internet Explorer. It is a free download off the internet. Alternatively, you will have to delve into I.E.s 'Help' file to find out how you do this.
For further information you can read a document on the subject written by Fourmilab. (Incidentally, the author of the document is not yours truly, even though he has the same name!)

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The Penrith Ramblers web site was transferred to a new web host in January 2009. This is a basic shared account. The new web host provides many advantages over the previous one, e.g.

• much larger space so that the site could become much larger, if necessary.

• a much greater data transfer allowance, up to a quoted 'unlimited' amount/month from 1.5GB per month.
  This is shared with other websites but even so it means this site should never be shut down again, as it was in 2008, because the data allowance had been exceeded.

• extra facilities such as PHP support and a quoted 'unlimited' number of MySQL databases.

• statistical data dealing with visits, not just to the site as a whole but to individual web pages, images and scripts, are provided by the web host. Other data in graphical and numeric form, include timing of visits, search engines used, spam crawler visits, etc. The data is now password protected and not available for general display.

Just in case you might be interested:
the web site is managed by John Walker, who is also Membership Secretary of the Penrith Ramblers. He came to Penrith in 1998 after retiring from work in the Midlands, working in Coventry, Leamington, Rugby and Leicester, where he worked as a draughtsman and electronic/control engineer on various design/research projects involving rockets, tanks, cars, telemetry and chemical processes. He became a teacher in Rugby and later Leicester after research in the region was severely cut back in the early 70's.

As previously stated, it is the aim of the site to provide an up-to-date walks' programme.
In order to do this, walk leaders/co-ordintors are requested to inform the manager of any changes to the walks' programme as soon as possible. (The fewer 'TBA's the better!)

Updates will be placed on the site as soon as possible but even so, allow several days. The manager operates single handed and will not be available 24/7. He does like to go on holiday every now and again!

In his role as Membership Secretary, don't hesitate to get in touch, if you require further information on subjects covered on the site, You can also ask for an information pack and application form to join the Ramblers. Or you may prefer to get an application form on line and print it out. You can do this by contacting Ramblers and select 'Join today' and then 'Join on line now'.
If you make contact with the website manager by email and require items posting to you, please include your address! Further details can be found on the web page:
Contacting Penrith Group.

You can phone the manager on 01768 895328. Alternatively, you can  e-mail.

Incidentally, though supportive of his namesake's catch phrase, 'KEEP WALKING', the web master has no other interest linking him with the company.

Signed: John Walker, (sometimes known as Johnny Walker).