Saturday's route in green (top-right to bottom-left) - I forgot my camera so there aren't any photos!

Sunday saw us take up arms for round two of the battle with the Welsh countryside. It's fair to say that the countryside definitely took the upperhand to begin with. Parking at Aberglaslyn, we aimed for Yr Arddu on our way to Cnicht. Calling the terrain around Yr Arrdu a "godforsaken wasteland" is probably going a bit far, but it's definitely rubbish for running! We finally escaped the heather and made it up onto Cnicht. A great run down to Llyn yr Adar was followed by continuing undulation in a northwards direction for the rest of the day. The arrival of snow at Moel Merch, despite it being warm enough to run just in a vest, imbued us with a renewed sense of urgency, and it was with relief that I pulled up onto the last big summit of the day, Carnedd y Cribau. Another fast drop, this time to Pen-y-Pass, saw us once more waiting an inordinate amount of time for a Sherpa bus back to the car.

Snowdon Massif from Llyn yr Adar. The far skyline was our route the previous day. © Haydn Williams 2012

Brownie points were earned by giving a lift to an old lady who'd tried to walk a bit further than her aging legs could carry her; with a good deed for the day done, we headed home. I leave you with some quotes from Greg, arranged in order of how amusing I found them:

1. (Running along Crib Goch): "Well if you fell from here, you'd really only graze your knees."
2. (This might be my new mantra when trudging along knackered under inhospitable weather): "Still snowing, still going."
3. (On approaching crags below Yr Arddu. Rudest comment of the weekend): "It's almost *too* nice to be Welsh."

The first step is obviously to install Eclipse. To ensure compatibility with all the plugins mentioned, I found it necessary to download the standard version of Eclipse and then install the PDT tools afterwards. The dedicated all-in-one PDT version of Eclipse didn't play ball with everything I needed it to.

Version Control – Subclipse
I use Subversion (SVN) for version control, and Subclipse seems to to be the de-facto client for Eclipse. However, there are some pitfalls to be aware of. If you install Subclipse and then try to add a respository in the SVN Perspective, you may get an error telling you that you need version 1.7 or higher of the JavaHL library. This is part of the Subversion binary, so your copy of SVN must be out of date. If you nip over to Collabnet for the latest version you'll find that they only have 1.6, so instead you'll need to visit WANDisco. Once 1.7 is installed, you should then be able to connect with Subclipse using the JavaHL library. Thanks to peeps on Stackoverflow for pointing this out.

Unfortunately JavaHL still failed for me, telling me that the network connection closed unexpectedly. I tried to use the SVNKit adapter instead of JavaHL, but it turns out that SVNKit isn't supported in version 1.8 of Subclipse, (the most recent version). I therefore uninstalled Subclipse v1.8 and installed v1.6 instead. That still didn't work because apparently SVNKit doesn't currently support SVN 1.7 (see previous link). Anyway, this turned out to be all a bit misleading, because when I tried it everything just worked.

Debgugging – Xdebug
If you want to debug PHP, then you'll need either Xdebug or Zend Debugger. I chose the former for reasons I can't quite recall. But setting it up required the following steps in Eclipse:

1. In Preferences > PHP > PHP Executables, set up your PHP executable. Mine, the default Lion version, was at /usr/bin/php, and php.ini was at /etc/php.ini
2. In Preferences > PHP >  PHP Servers, set up your PHP server. I had to delete the "default" one first.
3. In Preferences > PHP > Debug, set your debugger, server and executable.
4. If you've changed the Xdebug port from the default of 9000 for any reason (I had problems with my initial Xdebug install, and that was one of the suggested fixes), don't forget to correct it in Preferences > PHP > Debug > Installed Debuggers.
   
   

Debugging with Xdebug. The 'debug' panel shows the methods which are currently running, while the relevant code is shown below. Panel on the right shows variables and their current values.

Coding Standards – PHP Code Sniffer

To ensure that your code is up to standard(s), you can install PHP_CodeSniffer with PEAR:

pear install PHP_CodeSniffer

There's more detail on their homepage, including information on the –report flag to get a summary of the errors in your entire project instead of all the detail for every file. I'd recommend creating your own customised standard so you can exclude errors you're not bother about (variables with single-letter names, for example). Once you've done that, you can also make your standard the default to be used each time you run PHPCS.

PHP Code Sniffer summary report.

Coding Problems – PHP Mess Detector

PHP Mess Detector does a good job of finding nasty bits of code. This includes 'dead' code that's never run, complicated loops / nested ifs,  It's worth reading the section on how to create a custom ruleset, because the defaults may include tests that you want to exclude.

Unit Testing – PHPUnit

Unit testing is a great habit to get into, and test-driven development takes this to its logical conclusion. PHPUnit and SimpleTest both provide unit testing in PHP; I chose PHPUnit because there seemed to be more material online about how to use it. To install PHPUnit you can use PEAR. Unfortunately PEAR wasn't installed on my Lion system, but you can install it using wget.  Unfortunately wget wasn't installed on my Lion system, but you can install it with a number of terminal commands.

Once wget is installed and then PEAR is installed and then PHPUnit is installed (!), you can set up Eclipse to run it as an external tool. However, it's much nicer to get it integrated into your Eclipse installation. To do this, I used MakeGood. The instructions on their website are pretty easy to follow and essentially boil down to:

1. Install the MakeGood plugin from within Eclipse, using http://eclipse.piece-framework.com as the URL
2. DON'T  ignore the lines about having to specify a PHP executable; I did (because I already had an executable defined), but for some reason the executable had disappeared from my Eclipse preferences and so I had to add it again after much head-scratching.
3. DO display the MakeGood 'view' in your Eclipse window as soon as possible – it has a nice little message which explains what might be stopping you running your tests.
4. A message about Stagehand_Testrunner led me to install that separately, using PEAR (instructions are on the Stagehand website)
5. Despite adding my PEAR folder as a library to the project build path, I was still getting a message saying that PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase could not be found when I ran a test. I resolved this by adding /Users/Haydn/pear/share/pear/PHPUnit to the build path too, and using require_once in the test class:  require_once 'PHPUnit/Autoload.php';

MakeGood showing a successful test in Eclipse.

Once PHPUnit is working correctly, if you want to test database operations too then you'll need the DbUnit extension. There's extensive help regarding this whole subject area in the PHP Unit manual. Note that SQL Server isn't supported by default.

 

Documentation – PHPDoc
If you're documenting your code then you'll want phpdoc – installation instructions are on their website. Just use the two PEAR commands on their homepage, and ignore other websites (which generally omit the '-alpha' reference). If you try and generate some documentation but get an error about GraphViz not being installed ("Unable to find the `dot` command of the GraphViz package. Is GraphViz correctly installed and present in your path?"), go to the GraphViz website to download a .pkg file for Lion and install it. If you get a message about timezones, ensure that the correct one is set in your php.ini file (e.g. date.timezone = Europe/London).

 

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE project>
<project name="MyProject" default="test">
    <property name="docs_dir" value="docs" />
    <property name="log_file" value="MyLogFile.log" />
    <target name="dtd" description="Creates a DTD for this build.xml file.">
        <antstructure output="project.dtd"/>
    </target>
    <target name="clean" description="Deletes temporary and compiled files.">
        <delete dir="${docs_dir}"/>
        <delete dir="output"/>
    </target>
    <target name="messdetect" description="Runs PHP Mess Detector on PHP files.">
        <exec executable="/Users/Haydn/pear/bin/phpmd" failonerror="true">
            <arg value="." />
            <arg value="text" />
            <arg value="anciliary/PHPMD_custom_ruleset.xml" />
        </exec>
    </target>
    <target name="codesniff" description="Runs PHP Code Sniffer on PHP files.">
        <exec executable="/Users/Haydn/pear/bin/phpcs" failonerror="true">
            <arg value="." />
            <arg value="--standard=MyStandard" />
            <arg value="--extensions=php" />
            <arg value="--report=summary" />
        </exec>
    </target>
    <target name="test" description="Runs all PHPUnit tests.">
        <exec executable="/Users/Haydn/pear/bin/phpunit" failonerror="true">
            <arg value="test" />
        </exec>
    </target>
    <target name="document"  depends="clean" description="Generates documentation for PHP files.">
        <exec executable="/Users/Haydn/pear/bin/phpdoc" failonerror="true">
            <arg value="-d" />
            <arg value="." />
            <arg value="-t" />
            <arg value="${docs_dir}" />
        </exec>
    </target>
    <target name="build" depends="clean,messdetect,codesniff,test,document" description="Run everything.">
    </target>
</project>

Arno and Rob hit the first summit of the day - Y Garn on the Nantlle ridge. © Haydn Williams 2012

From there, we traced a route southwards over a couple of other tops on the ridge, then down to the Princess Quarry and over Moel Lefn, Moel yr Ogof and Moel Hebog. After crossing Cwm Cyd and reaching the top of Moel Banog, Rob and Arno took the direct route back to Beddgelert whilst Greg and I pushed on over Cwm Bychan before dropping into the village and recovering with an ice cream.

The best bit of the day? The amazing descent from the ridge. © Haydn Williams 2012

We covered 20km and between 1500m and 1800m of ascent (depending on whether you believe my GPS or my OS-mapping software!). The height estimate seems a little high, given that I still felt pretty good at the end of the day (especially strange after my complete meltdown on the Edale Skyline the week before).

That evening I hopped on a Sherpa bus to go and pick the car up, and then took it for a spin. Dad had kindly continued my recent run of "borrowing nice cars for trips to Snowdonia", and given me a Focus ST to play around with. Suffice to say it was pretty swift and actually turned out to be more fun than the Boxster.

Focus ST. Pretty *and* fun. © Haydn Williams 2012

Sunday started beautifully, with not a cloud in the sky as I dropped the others at Idwal for their walk up to Cneifion Arete. I parked further along the Ogwen valley and moved quickly up the north ridge of Tryfan (which is the obligatory Snowdonia route in blazing sunshine). My "easy day" got a little harder as I despatched Tryfan in just over an hour, and decided to continue onto Glyder Fach. I could see Greg and Arno on Cneifion Arete from the top of the upper cwm headwall, so carried on over Glyder Fawr to Llyn y Cwn.

I panicked a bit when confronted with this sight on arrival at Cwm Cneifion. Needless to say, Greg was behaving impeccably and the helicopter looked to be doing training rather than rescuing. © Haydn Williams 2012

Still with time to spare I pushed on over Y Garn, and got back to the car about five minutes before Rob, who'd walked up Senior's Ridge and returned over Y Garn too. I just had time for a quick power nap before Greg and Arno returned from the escapades on Cneifion Arete, and we all trundled home tired but content.

My point-and-shoot camera's mediocre attempt at doing justice to the panoramic view from the Glyders. © Haydn Williams 2012

The start of the route at the start of the day. © Haydn Williams 2012

I hadn't found time to recce the first half of the route, but felt OK as far as Lose Hill. From there – on the part of the route I did know – I fell completely to pieces. Greg passed me on the summit of Mam Tor and ripped off down towards Mam Nick at a hefty pace. I got progressively slower, and ended up walking from Brown Knoll all the way to the end. Despite downing several energy gels and an entire pack of jelly snakes, I just couldn't get my legs working.

Approaching the finish, I knew it was a poor result. I generally like to get in the top third or quarter of a race: for the Skyline I came 258th out of 299. Ouch. It was entirely my fault, because I really should have done some training, and a nice wake-up call that proves I can't just assume that everything will be OK come race day. Nonetheless, at least I now know the route! Greg had a great run and narrowly missed his four-hour target (by four seconds!), and we both enjoyed the unseasonably lovely weather. Next year I'll be back on track.

First up was the Powerfan Plummet, a climb up a 100ft pole followed by a jump off whilst attached to a 'parachute simulator'. It essentially brakes your fall, and proved quite interesting but not as adrenaline-inducing as we'd hoped!

The pole from which you jump to begin the 'plummet'. © Paul Cordell 2012

James pretending to be more scared than he actually is. © Paul Cordell 2012

Day two was a pleasant dog walk around Llyn Gwynant in the morning (albeit resulting in a trip to the vet for one member of the party), followed by some wet laps of Idwal in the afternoon. Becs, Paul and James walked around  with the dog, while I ran three laps in increasingly strong wind and rain. Nevertheless, I had great fun!

Running along the northern end of Llyn Idwal. Apologies for the poor quality - it's a screen cap from a video, and with rain on the lens, but essentially it was very very wet. © Haydn Williams 2012

An all-abilities wander along the river at Betws y Coed on day three was a gentle half-day to offset a more strenuous walk up to a bothy in the Carneddau in the afternoon.

Nothing says 'holiday' like hiding in a log. © Helen Sumner 2012

James, Jono, Gareth and I wiled away the evening playing cards, and woke to blue skies. The descent back to the car along Cefn-tal-llyn-Eigiau was rather scenic, and included some lenticular clouds too.

Me, Gareth, James and Jono outside the bothy. © Haydn Williams 2012

Enjoying the descent. © Haydn Williams 2012

After some lounging around we ventured north to Caernarfon, and I proceeded to put in a poor show at the karting track. I usually get reasonable lap times, but I was feeling tired and so by round two it became a bit of a mission just to hold on into each corner! We were still all pretty evenly matched though, with half a second between our best times. That evening's dog walk was livened up by a 'buzzing' from a Chinook helicopter, and a dramatic sunset over Snowdon.

Low-flying Chinook over Llynau Mymbyr. © Haydn Williams 2012

Day five started lazily, but soon increased in pace as we visited Beddgelert to see what the new forestry commission biking trails are like. They're all at the tame end of the spectrum, but with people starting to feel the effects of a fairy hectic week that probably wasn't a bad thing. My hopes of getting to the Marin or Penmachno trails for a good blast were dashed by the presence of a wobbly crank arm and the ripping of a large hole in the sidewall of my rear tyre. Darn slate!

The obstacles get a little too technical to ride. © Haydn Williams 2012

The weather continued the week's theme of 'cloudy ' when we woke up on day six. Parking at Pen y Gwryd for the morning dog walk and heading up towards Carnedd y Cribau, we soon climbed above the cloud and could see the pocket of poor visibility in which the cottage was sitting.

Our cottage is somewhere at the bottom of that cloud! © Haydn Williams 2012

Caesar enjoying his morning walk. © Haydn Williams 2012

After dispatching that, we headed over to Penmachno for a trip around the Rhiwbach slate mine (technically a quarry, actually), run by Go Below. This wasn't a standard tour, involving as it did tyrollean traverses, abseils, a bit of climbing, and via-ferrata style roped sections. All very exciting, and not a hint of a handrail, concrete step or electric light anywhere in the mine. Highly recommended.

James and Paul strap in to head to the mine. © Haydn Williams 2012

James heading into Rhiwbach slate mine. © Haydn Williams 2012

Me on the tyrollean traverse. © James Devine 2012

James abseiling down to the chamber floor. © Haydn Williams 2012

Intrepid explorers / tour clients. © Haydn Williams 2012

This is the only remaining incline bridge made of timber IN THE WORLD! All the others are either made of stone or have rotted away. © Haydn Williams 2012

The beast which took us to and from Rhiwbach. An ex-army gun tractor with a 3.9L V8 engine, that's served in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Germany. Mental. © Haydn Williams 2012

We emerged at the top of the mine that afternoon into glorious sunshine, which continued all the way back to the cottage. Snowdon just looked too tempting as we approached from Capel Curig, so I grabbed my running stuff and set off from Pen y Pass up the Pyg track. I got as far as Bwlch Glas, but turned back at that point to help / watch a rescue of a climber with a suspected dislocated shoulder from the broken ground between the Pyg track and Crib Goch.

Sunset from Bwlch Glas. © Haydn Williams 2012

The precision and control demonstrated by the crew of the RAF Sea King is something that you really can't appreciate until you see it up close (and I'm speaking as someone who watches a lot of Highland Emergency!).

The RAF Sea King about to despatch a winchman to an injured climber below Crib Goch. © Haydn Williams 2012

By the time I'd spoken to various Llanberis MRT people on the way down, it was going dark and I was treated to a lovely sunset and a torch-lit run back to the car at Pen y Gwryd.

Night falls over Snowdon and Llyn Llydaw. © Haydn Williams 2012

1. Check race details before setting off. I drove to Llandegla on Friday night, only to find that the second Dash in the Dark had been cancelled due to adverse weather conditions.
2. Ensure adequate nutrition. No milk at all in my parents' house meant that breakfast of cereal and/or porridge was off. I replaced these with a Cadbury's Caramel egg from a petrol station.
3. Don't jump on your equipment. A boot / buckle / floor interface resulted in pieces of broken rucksack plastic all over the car park before I even set off.
4. You can tie yourself into your rucksack if the waist strap buckle is broken. But it's hard to get back out again. Very hard.
5. Weather forecasts can be wrong. This weekend, for example, where cold temperatures and lots of snow will in fact turn out to be boggy and very warm.
6. Website 'location' features aren't necessarily evil. It turns out a friend was in Cwm Idwal at the same time as me this morning, but neither of us realised. Maybe some advertising beforehand wouldn't have been a bad idea.

Corner Gully, Cwm Cneifion. This was one of the more complete gully lines. © Haydn Williams 2012

Becs on Rushup Edge. © Haydn Williams 2012

The paragliders were out in force; I counted twenty in the air at one time as I returned to the car (and saw one crash-land into a dry-stone wall, but he was OK!). My entry for this year's Edale Skyline has recently been confirmed, so I just need to recce the rest of the route now. Saturday was spent at the Peak Edge Hotel, a new establishment which seems to be the only contemporary hotel in the entire Peak District! Heartily recommended though, with lovely rooms and cracking food on the room service menu (nothing says post-run recovery like curry with half rice / half chips!).

Ice under the trig point on Brown Knoll. © Haydn Williams 2012

On Sunday we returned home via Sherwood Pines. Becs hired a bike and we did a lap of the blue loop, then she retired to the car to warm up while I had a quick blast around the Kitchener trail. It was bitterly cold; the horrible damp pentrating kind that seeps into every fibre of your body, but it did have the welcome effect of making the trails pretty easy going. Despite running the previous day and having already done 10km on the blue loop with Becs, I rode a new personal best of sub-50 minutes, so had a nice finish to a lovely weekend.

My office, dining room and bedroom. © Haydn Williams 2012

I walked from the station to the accommodation, where I met up with the rest of the group and we set off for our respective days out. Lots of people were on courses covering everything from beginner's skills through to winter  climbing, while others were off on more difficult terrain. A lack of snow meant that lots of usually-easy gully routes were actually quite difficult, so Matt and I decided to tackle Fiacaill Ridge (II).

Savage atop the first pitch of Fiacaill Ridge. © Haydn Williams 2012

We had reasonable conditions, and Matt led the two pitches with aplomb. The powdery snowy meant we didn't need axes or crampons, but I'll confess that I still found the clambering hard work! A very enjoyable route, and after descending the Goat Track we found ourselves back at the ski centre in plenty of time for cake.

A pair of supposedly 'rare' Ptarmigan. We saw more of the buggers than you could shake a stick at. © Haydn Williams 2012

After some brief excitement with a flat minibus battery, food and warmth finally got to me and I retired early for some much-needed proper sleep. Saturday was bright and sunny, with a great forecast, so Matt and I recruited Ben for a walk over Cairn Gorm and on to Ben Macdui. Conditions were excellent, with good going on the snow and easy navigation in great visibility.

Cairns on Cairn Gorm. © Haydn Williams 2012

Despite numerous stops for photographs and a generally laid-back approach to the day, we despatched the route in good time and once more retired to the cafe for cakes. An early return to the hut even saw us with time to sort out gear and snatch a quick nap before the others returned from their respective days out.

Ben, Savage and myself on the summit of Cairn Gorm. © Haydn Williams 2012

Ben and Matt crossing the plateau towards Ben Macdui. © Haydn Williams 2012

Sunday's forecast was excellent too, albeit with a little wind. As soon as we arrived at the ski centre, it was clear that the forecast was wrong. Matt and I tagged along into Coire an-t'Sneachda with a group headed for Ben Macdui, and went up the Goat Track. We found a slightly steeper approach to the right of the main path, and it was nice to finally get my axes into some proper snow for the first time in two years. Alas, it was over all too quickly and we left the Ben Macdui group to battle headwinds while we looped around the lip of Coire an Lochain and down into the cwm.

Looking south from the summit of Ben Macdui. © Haydn Williams 2012

Once there we played around on a snow slope to test how far out calves could go before finally exploding. We soon tired of self-flagellation and returned to the ski centre. There, we were greeted by a cafe staff member calling our dedication to cake "ridiculous", and questioning whether we had actually been out anywhere all weekend. How rude (although probably entirely fair)!

Rosie waiting for the rest of the group at the top of the Goat Track. © Haydn Williams 2012

A late departure meant I didn't arrive home until 2:20 on Monday morning, knackered but pleased with three really good days. There's even been snow in North Wales now, so fingers crossed this is the start of winter proper!

Handily, the NHSLA makes available data relating to the number and value of claims, released each year as "Factsheet 5" in the "NHSLA Factsheets" section (doesn't work in Safari). Factsheet 3 gives graphs by specialty, although not raw numbers it seems, and includes the possibly surprising fact that nearly 40% of claims last year were abandoned. I've combined the high-level raw data from 2003/04 to 2010/11 into one large dataset and then performed some extra manipulation to sanitise it a little (see the end of this post if you want the details).

The number of claims has escalated in recent years, as has the amount of money being paid out,  and hopefully the charts below show these trends in an easily-digestible format. One word of warning though: think carefully about the numbers involved. The second dashboard shows the amount paid out in total across all schemes, which last reached £860 million pounds, and the figures being circulated for potential liability across all current cases top £16 billion. Numerous publications have looked into the reasons behind the changes, ranging from increased numbers of claims in times of recession, to increased – or non-existant – upper limits to claim values. This isn't my area of expertise, so I'll leave it to others to interpret the stats accordingly.

Speaking of stats, the NHSLA themselves put some good information on the front worksheet of each "factsheet" that they publish, and I would encourage anyone digging into these figures to read that blurb too. Note that, as discussed above, I have amended the data in the interests of collating it into a single dataset, so whilst I accept responsibility for any errors and/or omissions resulting from that process, the raw data provided by the NHSLA  should always be taken as the gold standard for anyone drawing major conclusions from the information presented here.

The first dashboard looks at the numbers of claims received, including a comparison of whether a PCT with a larger population has more claims, while the second focuses on the cost of these claims overall, and the damages paid out.

Notes on the Data:

The standard data has been manipulated a bit to create my final version.  Note that the requirement to change the data shouldn't necessarily be viewed as confirmation that it is inherently flawed; most of these amendments were made to facilitate analysis rather than correct errors. The revised dataset used to create the dashboards above can be downloaded here(MS Excel spreadsheet, 3Mb). The following changes have been performed: