As I pass the M6 turnoff for Stoke (J15) I always yell "Hello Andrew" - my eldest lives about 1 mile from the junction. You never know - he might hear me:-)

As the the more ups than downs. I developed a set of rules for fell walking that became known as 'Gnomes Laws'. Verify it with Spot the Dog if you don't believe me.

The very first law was that there is ALWAYS more up than down. It is to do with the expanding/contracting universe. It always expands when you are heading up and contracts when you are going down;-)

The second, btw, was that the sun was cold. As proven by the fact that the higher you get up a mountain, and therefore closer to the sun, the colder it gets. There were more but the rest were nonsense...

Cheers

Dave the Gnome