Looking up at the hilltop convent in Archidona There is a short but quite steep walk up to the convent above the town of Archidona. This vicinity also has a number of defensive walls from earlier times, and those above the convent have recently been restored, quite sensitively and thoroughly. It is worth the…
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Snow Mania – Winter in Britain: 1962-63
A few memories linger from that winter. The first tiny, tiny flakes of snow that fell tentatively from a heavy sky, then thronged in a graceful dance, and finally cascaded down relentlessly. The unexpected wildness of deep drifts on the steep bank of the playing fields shared by the two schools, the Junior and Senior…
Langtang _ Day 1: Thursday 13th February, 2020 -Dunche to U Kyang
Madhu said there was no point in trying to get transport to Syabrubesi from Dunche, as it is infrequent and already full, but this was just as well as it provided the opportunity to make a new approach into the Langtang Valley, and we had the time. As we left the town, we could see…
Langtang in Winter _ Day 2: Friday 14th February 2020 – U Kyang to Lama Hotel
A bittersweet experience on a trek is the knowledge that height gained is often sacrificed in height lost. Thus today we could see the long descent to the floor of the Langtang valley where the path would join the main trail. Finally in the valley was a lodge where we could have a hot cup…
Langtang in Winter _ Day 3: Saturday 15th February – Lama Hotel to Langtang Village
We were invited to sit in the kitchen while waiting for breakfast. Cooking was done on a semi-open fire, and surprisingly there seemed to be little smoke from the wood used. It was a cheery sight, and though a bit wasteful of wood the blaze got the breakfast ready fast. The path crossed landslides triggered…
Langtang in Winter_ Day 4: Sunday 16th February 2020
A high wind in the night, then stillness. Sleep came with difficulty in the mountain air. Then a bright morning with no wind; warm in the sun. The valley opened out to a Scottish highland glen, with its boulders, its rushing river, its small hydroelectric scheme with insulated pipe. A majestic stupa crowned a rise….
Langtang in Winter _ Day 5-7: Monday 17th February to Wednesday 19th 2020 – Tsergo Ri and return
This was the climax of the trip. Would I get up without any altitude symptoms, weakness, headache? Pepe, a young Catalan from Barcelona, joined us at the start. We gave him some suncream. Then he streaked ahead. It was just a long, long ascent. The only tricky part was when you reached an intermediate saddle…
In search of the Ganesh Himal base camp
To approach the inner sanctum of the mountains, we first had to descend quite steeply through the forest and cross a couple of rivers. The total ascent for these two days could therefore have been about 2200m, though without any altitude effects, since we were not staying at the top elevation of 4000m, but returning…
Further into the unknown region: The Ganesh Himal base camp.
Nile to Domje: While many of the most famous treks in Nepal are circuits, for example Annapurna, Manaslu, Kanchenjunga, there is also interest in going down the way that you came up, for example in the Everest base camp trek and the Langtang trek, due to the surprising new viewpoints you may have missed on…
Tsum Valley: The Upper Sanctuaries
Chhokang Paro to Nile: So now that we were in the upper valley, did the atmosphere provide subtle emanations linked to the remote, untouched nature of the place, and to the constant vibrations transmitted from the places of inner devotion, the gompas with their adherents always in solitary, meditative retreat from the maya and illusion…
Tsum Valley Approaches: December 2023
Jagat to Lokpa: we were still in the common area for trekking around Manaslu. Frequent mule trains descended, unladen, usually placidly, but at times there was jostling and kicking. We could see that this traditional means of transport will be replaced by the gradual extension of the road towards the villages in the Manaslu valley….
Toward the Unknown Region: the Tsum Valley in Nepal
Yes … a touch melodramatic, because the Tsum Valley in Nepal is only unknown to those who have yet to explore it. But the idea of the ‘unknown region’ is a symbol for adventurous travel, and maybe for deeper exploration, since Toward the Unknown Region is the title of a poem by Walt Whitman, and…
Autumn Leaves at the Birks o’ Aberfeldy
Scotland: a while since I’d been here, some sixteen years. Aberfeldy was familiar territory from the first eighteen years of life spent in Perth, and thus a remembered spot, associated with youthful ascents of Ben Lawyers and Schiehallion. How damp it felt after the much drier air of Andalucia. ‘You must go up the Birks,’…
Autumn Walks in Andalucia
Once a year, the local hill-walking club in Archidona climbs the mountain known as La Maroma, the highest in the province of Málaga at 2069m; I am keeping up this tradition as well, as it’s a way to test stamina with each year over the age of 70. It is a majestic creature, and can…
Autumn Winds
October: time of change in the northern regions, pivot towards winter. Clocks fall back; a sudden, darker onset of evening. And wind. Great movements of air boiling in the Atlantic, scattering the heavy lingering heat of summer from the Iberian peninsula, temperatures dropping from 28 to 16 in the space of a couple of days….
Winter in Ullapool
Ullapool is a small settlement on Loch Broom in the north western highlands of Scotland. A fishing port and the largest town in the district, it has a current population of around 1500, which has slowly increased over the last thirty years. Helen Gosch, the ceramics artist who has made her home on Ibiza, lived…
A short September walk above Lanjarón
It was the first outing of the Senderistas after a break in August. Thirty people turned out to go on a walk along the water channels above Lanjarón, a village of some 3200 souls, which is now famous for its brand of mineral water. Lanjarón is a town of hotels and it looked as if…
Joys of Cleaning
Contemplating the emotions and sensations around our normal reluctance to get going on cleaning the house, brought up some memories of my time as a professional cleaner. Short as it was, there were lasting lessons. The years of travail in mid-1970s Edinburgh partly revolved around the lack of a career plan, but as with current…
The Joys of Cleaning the House
There must be some irony in this title, surely? It is an activity perfectly designed for procrastination. I’ll do it tomorrow, or sometime later this week. An activity also started when things are truly desperate; it is, as in chess, a forced move, when the King has no alternative but to move to a certain…
Snow over Scotland
Every childhood winter was spent in a frenzy of longing for snow to fall. Granny said that it would snow if the clouds were tea-coloured. I would pester her: “Granny, is it going to snow?” But sometimes she would say with finality: “No, it is too cold for snow.” What law of nature, what observation,…