Looking North

I’ve been thinking about the North again, reflecting on my previous trips, and anticipating the two trips I’ve got to the far North over the next couple of months. Before I go much further I’d better define "North". I toyed with using the Arctic Circle as my definition of North, but eventually decided that 60 degrees north made more sense. 60 degrees means I can (just) include the northern extremities of the UK in North. Lerwick (60.2N) on Shetland is just north of the line, there’s even a sign on the side of road between Sumburgh and Lerwick to mark the spot.

I first got to 60 North in 1972 when I toured southern Norway with my parents - we went through Bergen (60.4N), and the most northerly point I can find evidence of is Eidsbugarden (61.4N) in the Jotunheimen mountains.

My next trip that far north was in 1984 - this time a skiing trip to central Norway, flying to Oslo (59.9N) then getting the train to the area near Vinstra (61.6N). My recollections from that trip are very vague, and most of the photographs from the time seem to include evidence of a significant amount of alcohol which might be a factor in the quality of recollection.

It was almost 10 years before I ventured north again. It was June 1993 when I spent a week (notionally working) in St Petersburg (60.0N). It might be just stretching a point to include St Petersburg itself, but we did go out along the coast towards the Swedish boarder one evening which certainly took us over the line. That was the first time I was conscious of the "White Nights", when it never really gets dark and I was able to take photographs of the Neva at 11 pm.

After that it wasn’t until 2004 that the North came calling again, and since then I’ve made 8 trips that have crossed the 60 line. 2004 involved a return trip to Norway, again crossing to Bergen, this time rather than heading cross country towards Oslo the trip was much more north focussed. We turned left out of the ferry gates in Bergen and headed north through Alesund (62.5N) and Trondheim (63.4N) until we reached the Arctic Circle (66.5619N). That felt like an important landmark, and it really was a struggle to make myself turn the car round just after we crossed the Circle.

2006 was my first visit to Iceland, flying into Keflavik (64.0N), then spending time in Reykjavik (64.1N) before heading along the south coast as far as Hofn (64.2N) and up to the original geyser at Geysir (64.3N). At some point we must have gone straight past the Eyjafjallajökull (63.6N) without giving it a thought.

In 2007 I stepped up the pace somewhat clocking up three trips which crossed my North boundary. The first two were both to Shetland, spending some of the time just south of the line at Sumburgh (59.9N), some time in Lerwick (60.2N), and getting as far north as Hermaness (60.8N) on Unst. The British Isles pretty much runs out at that point. The two Shetland trips were also at extreme points in the year. First in January, when the Shetlanders get back in touch with their inner Viking for the Up-Helly-Aa festival, and then in June when there is the Shetlandic equivalent to the "White Nights", the "Simmer Dim". A little later in summer 2007 my inner Viking took me back to Iceland, again to Reykjavik (64.1N) this time as a stepping stone to eastern Greenland. I spent time in Kulusuk (65.6N), notable as being one of the very few places on the east coast of Greenland that has a real runway - a leftover from the American Cold War activities, and at Tasiilaq (also 65.6N), one of the few real towns in eastern Greenland. You can tell it’s real town because it’s got proper roads, you can’t go anywhere on the roads, they stop at the edge of town, but they are there.

I kept the pace up in 2008, again clocking up another three North trips, back to Shetland again - Virkie (59.9N), and Lerwick(60.2N) - in the height of summer to watch the puffins and gannets, and to Helsinki (60.2N) in November and Tromso (69.7N) in December. The Helsinki trip was a city break, with the only goal being to enjoy discovering the city. The Tromso trip was a thwarted attempt to see and photograph the Northern Lights. It rained and I failed on both counts - and got a souvenir case of pneumonia to mark the occasion. I did however get a little bit further up the coast to Skjervøy (70.1N), marking my first crossing of the virtual line at 70 degrees north.

Since then I’ve not managed to get to the North, but the next few weeks should remedy that. We’re heading back up to Shetland again. We’ll certainly get as far north as Lerwick (60.2N) and maybe a little further. Shortly after that I should (volcanoes permitting) be heading up to Longyearbyen (78.2N) in the Svalbard archipelago, and hopefully as far north as the 80 degree line.

So what keeps dragging me back to the North? Aside from wanting to get in touch with my inner Viking. My father’s family come from Tain (57.8N) in the north of Scotland - maybe there are genes from further north there too. I’ve got at least two theories about the pull of the North. The light is fantastic (at least in the summer), there is daylight for most of the 24 hours and the air is usually (Icelandic volcanoes not withstanding) amazingly clear. One of my strongest memories from the Greenland trip was getting off the plane in Kulusuk, and realising how far I could see - that clarity really came through in some of the pictures I took. The other factor is people, or more critically the lack of people. Southern England is full of people and the roads are full of cars - the further north you go the quieter places are, and the pace of life is slower too. There also isn’t much sign of wilderness here in Oxfordshire (51.8N) - and a little bit of wilderness always leaves me feeling better.

I’m looking forward to my upcoming trips to the North, and I’ve got a really strong urge to plan some more.

The North

NOT Barcelona April 2010

Today should have been my day for blogging about my latest trip to Barcelona and perhaps for posting a few new pictures from Las Ramblas or the waterfront - Eyjafjallajokull saw that off.

I’m going to pass on speculating about whether this is the Icelandic economy getting its revenge or even whether this is really how the Gaia hypothesis is going to work.

The ash cloud from Eyjafjallajokull has, for me, had a few positive consequences, although various friends who are either stranded overseas or have long haul trips in the very near future are probably struggling to see any positives.  It’s given me a chance to play with the new camera I eventually got via Amazon last Monday (the last mile really does still challenge the online shopping process), to buy a decent lens to go with the camera (from a bricks and mortar dealer), and to reflect on the assumptions I make about the ease of air travel.

Over the last three years I’ve made something like 30 international trips that involved flying.  At the slightest provocation I’ll head for an airport clutching my passport and, despite grumbling about the fact that yet again I’ve not got a free upgrade, I’ll sit back and wait for the plane to push back and look forward to the new sights I’ll be seeing in a few hours.
 
The extended closure of UK (and most of northern and central Europe) airspace for the last four days with the prospect of ‘normal’ service being a considerable way off really does start to challenge assumptions about being able to do this. A number of travel bloggers have started talking over the weekend about the "end of air travel for several months" or even a "return to the 1900s (but this time with Web 2.0)" - this might be a bit over the top but it does provoke thoughts about doing stuff more slowly.  I'm not quite sure that my soul moves at the speed of a camel, but the assumption that heading off around the world should mean long haul flights and jet-lag might need to change.  In recent months I’ve mused about going round the world by train or going on safari by boat.  Both of these examples are quite do-able now although the competition for the limited spaces might get a bit tougher and I'm going to need to ask my boss for much longer vacations.

In the short term, I’m certainly looking forward to heading for my next US conference by liner from Southampton, rather than by Airbus from Heathrow.

Or more likely attending by video conference from my desk. :-(

North Devon April 2010

There’s nowhere we’ve been to more often than North Devon.  Despite my habit of keeping notes of where I’ve been, I really don’t know how many times we’ve walked along various bits of the North Devon coast, particularly around Morte Point and the Bull Point Lighthouse.

I started my regular Devon visiting in the mid-80’s when my wife and I would visit a somewhat eccentric elderly aunt (of hers) who lived in a slightly run-down wooden cottage, a building that was once apparently the Woolacombe golf course club house before it was - somewhat implausibly -  moved onto the cliffs just outside Mortehoe.

For us, Mortehoe was the default place to head to in both spring and autumn, not too far from Bristol where we were living at the time, but far from the crowds (at least if we were there out of season).  When Freda passed away we thought about buying her cottage but decided against it because it seemed at the time to be a bit too far from Oxford but that distance hasn’t stopped us returning regularly since.

We try and get back to Mortehoe every couple of years (although we missed out on the 2008 visit) now staying at the Watersmeet Hotel which really is on the coast between Mortehoe and Woolacombe.  The Watersmeet is a slightly old-fashioned country house hotel "built in 1907 as an Edwardian Gentleman's residence by the sea" (as it says on the website).  The location is fantastic with every room promising (and delivering) a sea view, and the spectacular dining room faces west, looking out to sea giving you to chance (weather permitting) to watch the sun dipping into the sea as you dine.  After a long walk in the sea air and a good dinner, the sound of the waves at high tide on Coombesgate Beach pretty much guarantees a good night’s sleep.

As usual when staying in Mortehoe we walked to both Morte Point and Bull Point, and walked for miles along the beach at Woolacombe.  On some visits we‘ve had only the occasionally dog-walker on the beach for company, on this occasion (we were there for the Easter weekend) the beach was littered with hardy picnickers (windbreaks, fleeces and woolly hats) and surfers (wetsuits clearly needed).

Being in North Devon for the Easter weekend also gave us the chance to see things that aren’t on offer at other times of the year - the lambing at Borough Farm, and the Exmoor Border Morris dancers outside The Ship Aground in Mortehoe.   A fantastic weekend, and the weather even decided to co-operate.

We’ll certainly be back in Mortehoe again - maybe we don’t need to wait until 2012 to do it.

Devon April 2010

Estoril March 2010

A short break from the UK winter - and a chance to add another country to my list.  Somehow I hadn't managed to get round to visiting Portugal before.  I also hadn't realised Estoril's place in English literature - both Graham Greene and Ian Fleming spent time here - and Fleming's Casino Royale was inspired by his espionage activities in and around the casino.  I didn't see any evidence of spies, maybe they've moved on to other more glamorous gambling locations, but I definitely did enjoy the chance to have early morning walks along the sea front.  Getting up at 06:30 is so much easier if there's a sea front walk on offer before breakfast.

Estoril gets a place on my (long) list of excellent seaside destinations to visit out of season - most of the time I only had sea-birds and the very occasional slow-moving jogger for company.

The real reason for being here was for management meetings linked to the EU-funded ASPECT project - a follow-up to the workshop in Budapest last November, but I did take a camera to keep me company on the morning  walks.

Portugal March 2010

Cairngorms February 2010

A holiday in the north of Scotland in winter is always a bit of a lottery - the temperature can vary from close to double figures (in centigrade) down into the teens below zero, the cloud cover from clear blues skies to heavy cloud (along with persistent rain - or snow - that can last for days on end) and can offer anything from dead calm through to gale force winds.  Sometimes all in the space of a couple of days.

The last February holiday I had in the Cairngorms was about 25 years ago and despite lugging skis all the way up from Bristol on the overnight train I and my companions spent our time walking in the mountains since the high winds had blown away most of the snow.  My recollection of that trip was that it was clear and sunny and also bitterly cold - our real challenge was how to chop up the frozen logs so that it was possible to get them inside to thaw out.

This time round we again started the trip with almost implausibly blue skies but with almost no wind - and temperatures falling overnight to -15C, which was more than enough to freeze solid anything left in the car. Apples survive freezing and thawing much better than bananas - although deep-frozen bananas would appear to be an ideal healthy dessert.  At least we didn’t have the challenge of log chopping - the Grant Arms Hotel in Grantown-on-Spey provides very effective oil-fired central heating.

During the first part of the week we visited Loch Morlich (where I once went canoeing, was solid enough to walk on) and Lochs Garten and Mallachie in Abernethy Forest (again both more suited to winter than water sports).  We also did woodland walks around both Nethy Bridge and Grantown.  All of these walks were in glorious sunshine with lots of beautifully crisp snow underfoot.  We also took advantage of the clear sunny weather to go up Findhorn Bay and to briefly visit Culbin Sands.  The most spectacular scenery was on the road north from Grantown and the A939 towards Tomintoul (often described as the first road to shut when the snow comes).

Around mid-week the weather changed pretty much completely - temperatures jumped to just below zero, the cloudless skies filled in and the snow started falling and just kept going - during the first snow-day we were able to keep moving around and visited both Anagach Woods and got at least as far as the bird feeders at Loch an Eilean if not to the Loch itself.  By the morning of the second snow-day there was about 30 cm of snow on the car and on pretty much everything in/around the Cairngorms - and although we had another walk through part of Anagach Woods and looked at the Spey it wasn’t possible to do much more than that - and certainly very few of the cars in front of the hotel moved far.

After snowing for about 48 hours continuously (dumping a total of about 50 cm on the town - and well over 2 metres on the ski slopes, sufficient to bury the ski train) it did eventually relent allowing us (and several other folks in the hotel) to decide that it was time to try and head south.  At this point the A9 was closed in both north and south directions, and the various hill roads out of Grantown to the north and east (the A939 had indeed shut first) certainly weren’t passable in anything other than a high clearance 4x4.  The escape route - once we’d been helped out of our own personal snowdrift - was to head west, going down the A9 to Kingussie then across to Fort William on the west coast.  This isn’t the most obvious route south from the Cairngorms - but was open and very dramatic in places particularly through Glen Coe and over Rannoch Moor.  A 10 or 12 point stag standing in open snow-covered ground near road beside the Glen Coe ski area was particularly spectacular - shame there wasn’t any way to stop and take pictures.

As we got further south the snow mostly stopped - and by the time we made it to Edinburgh it had become messy persistent sleet.

In an effort to prolong my trip a little longer I went slowly through the snows south of Edinburgh, before spending a fantastic few hours at the WWT Reserve at Caerlaverock on the Solway Firth watching huge numbers of whooper swans and barnacle geese.  The swans spend the winter in Scotland and head north to Iceland for the summer.  The geese follow a similar itinerary but go to Svalbard in the summer – hopefully I’ll get to see them again later in the year.

Cairngorms February 2010

Types of Snow – the Inuit are suppose to have names for lots of types of snow – how many have the Scots got?

Snow

Notes.
1. We stayed at the Grant Arms Hotel - and the Bird Watching and Wildlife Club there provide lots of really useful information about what’s around and where - and encourages residents to log what they’ve seen too.
2. Our bird list for the 4 days in the Cairngorms got to 31 species – I was particularly pleased to see Crested Tits in Abernethy Forest.
3. Next time I go to the Cairngorms in winter I’m going to turn up in a 4x4.

The Stuff of Dreams

Life is always full of dreams - some get fulfilled but others somehow don’t and remain with us, sometimes for many years.

I left my childhood with three unfulfilled dreams.  I wanted to join the British Antarctic Survey, I wanted to join a Norwegian brass band and I wanted to get stuck in Aviemore.

The Norwegian brass band idea was probably not really my thing - and almost certainly had more to do with location than any deep understanding of Scandinavian music or of brass bands for that matter.  I did manage to get mixed up with a group of other kids of my age from a Norwegian band on the ferry from Newcastle to Bergen - and still wonder what might have happened if I’d run off with the band rather than joining my parents on a caravan tour around southern Norway.

I’m not altogether clear why the BAS thing didn’t happen - I did fill in all the paperwork when I was finishing my physics degree but never quite got round to sending if off.  This meant I spent the next three years of my life sitting in small dark rooms playing with computers and microscopes in Bristol rather than wandering around the ice in the far south.  Maybe recent trips to the Antarctic and the Falklands have got this out of my system, at least a bit.

Getting stuck in Aviemore was always The Big One.  Year after year my family would spend either Christmas or Easter, and sometimes both, staying in one of the hotels in Aviemore and depending on the weather spend the days walking or skiing on or around Cairn Gorm or Ben Macdui or even canoeing on Loch Morlich (that was one late and strangely warm Easter).  On every trip I would hope that we were going to get stuck there.  One year we managed to not get there at all - the snows prevented us getting north from Edinburgh, another year the road was closed just behind us as we went south, and to add insult to injury my school headmaster at the time got stuck in Aviemore - which meant that I got home in time for the start of term but he didn’t. But in all those visits we never managed to get stuck in Aviemore.  With the benefit of hindsight, I was probably picturing a very particular sort of getting stuck - the sort where it’s not possible to get home but where all the local facilities remain fully operational.

Which brings me to now.  I’m sitting in a hotel room in Grantown-on-Spey about 14 miles north of Aviemore - snow has been falling steadily for about 24 hours and is forecast to continue doing so for another 24 hours, the car had about a foot of snow on it this morning and when I last looked the snow gates on the A9 were closed.  By most definitions we are stuck here.  We’re actually due to try and head south tomorrow but most of the locals seem to think that this latest fall is going to carry on for a few days yet and that getting south (or north or east or west) isn’t a great idea.  

So is this the stuff of dreams? Maybe I am going to get an extra day or two up here which might even put off going back to work at the start of next week.  We did get out for a walk this morning in a mild blizzard which was fun when the wind was behind you but a bit bleak heading the other way.  We did get to see goldeneye and goosander on the Spey this morning both seemingly oblivious to the snow, but standing watching them was only really realistic for a few minutes.  And the fantastic scenery we were able to both see and get out into a couple of days ago is now pretty much inaccessible (and certainly invisible).

This is clearly one of my dreams coming true - it looks like I really am going to get stuck in or near Aviemore but like lots of dreams it’s not going to be quite as good as it might have been.  However I can finally cross it off the list.

Which, I guess, just leaves the brass band - should I try the cornet or the trombone?

Big Kid in a Candy Store

Recently I spent some time at the Destinations Show in London - I hadn't been to the London version of the show before having previously only done Birmingham.  In lots of ways it's a seriously dangerous place for me to be - my enthusiasm for trips almost inevitably bubbles over learning about new destinations and contemplating revisiting places I've been too before, and I can feel the credit card twitching in my pocket.

There were a few companies (and places) I expected to see represented and others I didn't expect to see there.  I probably do need to apologise to the nPower employee who tried to engage me in a extended conversation about my domestic energy provider - but really, what where nPower doing there?  I was much more interested to find out about trips by jeep up the Karakorum Highway or heading across Central Asia on horseback than to contemplate gas and electricity. And no, I really don't know what I pay for my electricity each month.

In the "missing" category I was hoping to see the folks from Discover the World again, and the RMS St Helena - and I was hoping that the Falklands Islands Tourist Board would be there to back up the heavy advertising they've been doing in the UK.

The region that surprised me most (by the scale of the presence) was South America - and particularly Colombia.  I was still picturing drug barons - but I was quite taken by the slogan "The Only Risk is That You'll Want to Stay".

Like lots of people - e.g. Wanderlust - I felt a need to put together a list of 10 new/reinvigorated travel ideas from wandering round the show (so in no particular order).

1. Eagle Festival in Mongolia

Thought the scenary looked fantastic - and Mongolia definitely fits into my pattern of heading off to places that most other folks don't want to go to.  I'm pretty keen to try and get to the Altai Eagle festival - would have some really good photographic opportunities.  The folks from Panoramic Journeys were very enthusiastic about this being a good place to visit in the autumn, and were also pretty sure that I really needed to stay for a month (or "maybe six weeks") to really see everything that Mongolia had to offer a photographer.  I wonder if gers are anymore comfortable than yurts.

2. Monks and Rhinos in NE India

I've been to India a few times before, but only to the 'main' part of India - and I hadn't really given much thought to the Assam area (I might have been able to point to it on a map but not with much confidence).  Travel the Unknown weren't a company I'd seen before - but some of their rather less usual destinations do appeal.  Their collection of trips to Assam and Arunchal Pradesh has certainly got my attention - with an interesting mix of culture and wildlife.  

3. Eastern Bhutan

I really enjoyed talking with the folks from Blue Poppy - we'd used them via Cox and Kings when we went to Bhutan a couple of years ago.  It was interesting to hear a bit more about the eastern end of Bhutan - which we didn't manage to get to on our first visit - it's further off the usual tourist circuit (is any part of Bhutan on a usual tourist circuit?).

4. Karakorum Highway in Pakistan

Long long ago I did manage a trip to Pakistan - spending a few days in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, before going up to Peshawar and not quite making it to the Khyber Pass.  Peshawar is pretty much off the tourist route at the moment - but it was good to hear from TravelPak that some parts of northern Pakistan are good to go to at the moment.  I was particularly interested to hear about a possible trip up the Karakorum Highway towards the Chinese border - almost joining up with the trip from Kashgar last year.

5. Self-guided touring in Japan

I first found out about self-guided tours in Japan at a Destinations Show a couple of years ago - I'd always assumed that language meant that Japan (outside the big cities) was only doable on a group tour.  However there are a number of companies offering self-guided tours - everything is booked and planned - and you get a phone contact to bail you out if you need it.  The companies I talked with this time were InsideJapan and IntoJapan.  

6. Faroe Islands

This has been on my list for a while - but it was interesting to hear more from Atlantic Airways who fly direct (in the summer) from Stansted to the Faroes.  Atlantic Airways did fly from Stansted via Sumburgh in the Shetlands - but I gather they needed to stop doing that because it was often too foggy to let them land on Shetland and they kept winding up with stray Shetlanders on Faroe.  National Geographic Traveller came up with the label of "The World's most Appealing Islands" - the pictures and descriptions would support that.  Looks like a really strong candidate to to add to my island collection - and not too far away.

7. National Parks in Tanzania

Another destination that was already on my wish list - there were a number of companies making really interesting pitches about visiting various of the Tanzania National Parks - everything from pretty basic tented camps to seriously expensive camps and lodges.  The two companies I talked for longest with were Simply Tanzania Tour Co and Cox and Kings (who we've used on several previous trips to India and Bhutan).    

8. Photo safari in Sri Lanka

We'd wondered about Sri Lanka a few years ago - post tsunami when there was a lot of push to rebuild the tourist industry.  There were two reasons why Sri Lanka attracted my attention this time - firstly that the island is now said to be safe to visit all over (which certainly wasn't the case a few years ago), and a fun sounding Exodus photo safari looking for Whales and Leopards - there can 't be too many places that combines these.  I'm due to do a photo trip to Svalbard with Exodus later this year - maybe Sri Lanka as a my photo trip next year.

9. Whale Watching in the Azores

Picking up both the whales and atlantic islands themes again - the Azores sounds like a good bet - offering whales all year round.   Again lots of people offer this - I talked with Sunvil Discovery.

10. Wildlife Tours in Iran

I've been to Iran before - a week long visit to Shiraz, with a chance to have a look at Persepolis, and while I had thought of visiting there again I hadn't thought of Iran as a place for a wildlife holiday. Persian Voyages had other ideas and have at least one interesting tour combining natural history and Iranian culture.

I talked with lots of other people too - and my brochure stack also included Jordan, Cape Verde, Nova Scotia, Chile and the Trans-Siberian Railway.   The folks from Promote Shetland were there too - trying to cope with the volume of interest driven by Simon King's Shetland Diaries.  I don't really need my interest in Shetland encouraged - we're already due to be up there for (at least) a couple of weeks in the summer.

So many possible trips - so little annual leave.

Flights of Fancy (and other means of transport)

One of the problems with the UK is that it's just too small.  I can drive from Oxford to the southern-most tip of Cornwall on the same day, I can make it to northern Scotland in under two days, and even our blessed train companies can match sort of range in a couple of days.  Maybe this is why I've got a fascination with long journeys - and particularly with trying to do more ground based travelling.  When we first visited India nearly 20 years ago we pushed our travel companies really hard to figure out ground-based itineraries (and when one of the trips coincided with a pilots strike this turned out to have been a really good idea).  The plus for us then was that we got to see a lot more of rural and village India than we would have done otherwise - and the food on the journeys was certainly better.  It was probably better for the environment too - but I don't remember that being talked about in 1991. When did we acquire 'Carbon Footprints'?

In the 'maybe' pile at the end of my desk I've currently got plans and ideas for three long, mostly ground-based, journeys.  There was a fourth idea - involving the Silk Road and the Karakorum Highway, but the trip to Xinjiang last year seems to have got these out of my system (temporarily at least).

The first long journey doubles as an ego trip (Is this where the term "ego trip" comes from?).  I thought it might be fun to go to the Ross Sea via Mackenzie Country.  A little bit of investigation suggested that while it is possible to get to the Ross Sea via South America and the Antarctic Peninsula it is only occasionally possible and is stupidly expensive, so it would make more sense to get to the Ross Sea from southern New Zealand (that's how Captain Scott and all the other early Antarctic explorers got there), and if I'm going to have to go to New Zealand I might as well spend a bit of time there in Mackenzie Country too.  Getting to New Zealand is pretty difficult these days without spending some time on planes - even the Man in Seat61 only offers a few suggestions about looking for passenger places on freighters, but there are ways.

The second folder hooks into my desire to spend some time talking photographs of wildlife in Africa - the easy way is to jump on a plane at Heathrow and fly due south for 10 or 12 hours.  A much more entertaining way to contemplate this (in my book at least) is to look to the last Royal Mail ship still in regular service which shuttles regularly between Ascension Island, St Helena and South Africa - with the occasional loop back to Portland in southern England.  The added bonus would be the chance to spend a bit of time on Ascension Island or St Helena - I spent a few hours on Ascension last year but didn't manage to leave the airport, next time it would be fun to stay a bit longer.  The real attraction of this would be to spend a bit of time seeing what life was like on a really isolated island.  St Helena is due to get an airport at some time, but the current economic climate means that it won't be any time soon.  

The third folder (which is actually at the top of the pile at the moment) is mostly about Japan, which is ideal for train-based travel - with the observation that it ought to be possible to get there by train (and boat) too.  The Eurostar link is the obvious first step (snow in Kent permitting) - then sleepers across Europe to Moscow and then the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok.  In theory at least it's possible to get a scheduled ferry from Vladivostok to Japan - but I gather that it's actually pretty challenging to book a passage on it.  So maybe I'll agree to fly for the last leg of the journey if I've done the first 12,000 km by train.  I did wonder about completing a round the world rail trip by finding a way to get across the Pacific, and then crossing Canada or the US by train (another 6,000 km) before heading back to the UK.

The real problem with all these journeys is the time they take (and the money too) - Phileas Fogg and Michael Palin both gave themselves 80 days to get round the world - and I suspect that doing any of these trips without resorting to jumping on a plane to get home who take this sort of time too.  A friend recently suggested that going round the world on 80K would be a very pleasant way to do the journey - I wasn't sure if she was talking in dollars, pounds or euros.  I don't think it would take quite as much as £80K to do any (or even all of these) but it's going to cost more than a couple of weeks in the Med.   

I haven't quite figured how to break the time-money conundrum (I'd like to have both), but I'm working on it.  Then I'll figure out if there are enough blank pages in my current passport. 

Big Garden Bird Watch - early

Most years we do the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch (this year it's 30th & 31st January), but this morning turned into a rehearsal.  An hour peering out of the windows produced a huge amount of bird life, no doubt some of it provoked by the fat-ball bribes we've been distributing around the garden since the cold weather started.

Today's list was 2 chaffinches, 2 redcaps, 2 jackdaws, 5 house sparrows, 3 long tailed tits, 3 goldfinches, 4 blackbirds and half-a-dozen starlings plus a couple wood pigeons, a wren, a dunnock, a great tit and a collared dove.

There's nothing particularly spectacular in the list, but it was good to see some goldfinches back (no idea where they went in the snow), and it's been a while since we've seen long-tailed tits in the garden.

We'll be doing the BGBW next weekend - but it probably won't result in nearly such a good haul.

Another Snow Event

In what seems to have now become another regular event - the country (at least the bit I'm in) has ground to a halt again under a layer of snow.

At the moment there is 8-10 inches of snow on the ground (with drifts significantly deeper than this in places) - the most snow I've seen in Oxford in the 20 years we've been here.

 The presence of lots of snow certainly makes everyone more friendly, and makes the place much more photogenic.

Headington Snow January 2010

The Moleskine Promise

The turn of the year is an obvious time to reflect on the last 12 months, and to give some serious thought to the next 12.  It’s also the time when I move from one Moleskine to the next.  To the uninitiated the Moleskine  is just a (usually) black notebook, but for me (and others I’m sure) it’s where I capture my thoughts about my travels, including where I've been, where I am and where I’m contemplating for future trips.  I’ve tried a few notebooks and travel journals over the years, but the Moleskine is The Real Thing.  It slips into pockets and bags easily, is just the right size for boarding passes and my passport and it can cope with the wear and tear that travel can inflict. It may not be very Web 2.0 - but it is one of my travel essentials. It’s my aide memoire to help me label photographs after the event, it’s where I capture scenes when I can’t use a camera, it’s my companion when I’m eating on my own, and it’s my travel planner when I’m sitting in airports or on planes.

The just-retired Moleskine (with the FC sticker on it) took me as far east as Beijing, as far west as Montreal, as far north as the Cairngorms, and as far south as Sea Lion Island in the Falklands.   On 10 trips it and I have clocked up about 40,000 air miles, and spent 67 nights away from Oxford (including 2 on boats, 4 on planes and 2 in yurts).

As I flick through the old Moleskine I very quickly get pulled back into the experiences I’ve had over the last year and the people I met up with on my journeys.

There’s a little map showing where I abandoned my car in a blizzard at Brize Norton airbase (which I did need to find the car again).  There’s a reminder of the glorious heat on Ascension Island (a contrast after being literally stuck to the runway in Oxfordshire - the wheel-chocks were frozen to the ground).  There’s a reminder of the excitement of sitting amongst the Gentoo penguins on Sea Lion Island, and amongst the black-browed albatross on Saunders Island.  There’s a reminder of the impossibly salty curry served on Alderney, and of the just inedible breakfasts offered along the Silk Road in Xinjiang (I’d never fantasised about muesli and cold milk before). And the observations on how Budapest has changed since 1997 - then lots of US-style burger bars, now lots of US-style burger bars plus western coffee shops albeit with significantly better cakes than we get in the UK.

I also got a bit caught up in visiting places beginning with B.  Barcelona, Beijing, Bishkek, Boston, Budapest, Birmingham and Bromsgove.

There are reminders about the fun (and frustrations) of travelling with groups of people.  I’ve enjoyed meeting up with people who make my travelling efforts look positively amateur, and talked enviously with folks who make a living travelling.  I’ve also enjoyed having time to absorb being in new places without the distraction of crowds and companions.

There’s also a slightly smug entry about being able to get into a Business Lounge during a long lay-over at Istanbul airport where I was able to have a shower and get a bowl of cereal with cold milk. Sorry.

And there are even a few cryptic notes about work in various places - mostly ramblings about IMS specifications and about OERs.

The notebook also highlights my satisfaction in getting to places and doing things that have been on my to-do list for years.  I got to travel along the Silk Road and (at least) some of the Karakorum Highway (I’ve got old guidebooks for these dating from 1993 and 1996).  I got to photograph hump-back whales breaching off the Boston coast - and my bird photography came on leaps and bounds (OK - it’s difficult not to take decent bird photos in the Falklands).

So where is the new Moleskine promising to take me this year?

At the moment two trips are booked (to Shetland and to Svalbard) - so I should get further north this year than last but other than that the plan is blank.  I’d like to get to Japan - and it would be fun to go by train and boat rather than plane. I also feel that my travel pedigree is a bit lacking since I’ve still got one continent missing (Africa).  I’ve also got a real hankering to get back  to Antarctica & the Falklands (and to visit South Georgia for the first time) and to see more of Bhutan. And I’ve not been across the Pacific Ocean. And I’d like to spend more time in the Middle East....

Probably won’t get to do all of these this year. But where-ever I do get to will be captured in my Moleskine.

Happy travelling in 2010 - and may all your journeys be long haul.

P.S. In 2008 I came to the conclusion that my travelling carbon footprint was something like 16 tonnes of CO2 - in 2009 this dropped to just over 11 tonnes (7 from flying and 4 from driving).

Denmark December 2009

Finished my travelling for 2009 by spending a week in western Denmark - which got the same heavy pre-Christmas fall of snow that hit southern England, but where low temperatures ensured that the snow covering persisted to Christmas and well beyond.

The Danes have a much stricter definition of a 'White Christmas' than do we Brits.  In Denmark (I'm told) there needs to be 1 cm of snow covering 90% of the country - rather than the occasional snowflake floating around somewhere in the country at some point on the 25th December.  2009 was the first Danish White Christmas for 14 years.

I learnt lots about what makes a traditional Danish Christmas celebration - there's plenty of food and drink involved - and huge amounts of rice pudding. :-)

We had a very picturesque arrival in Esbjerg as the ferry needed to push it's way through lots of sea ice to reach the harbour, bringing back images from both Greenland and the Antarctica.  Are DFDS ferries ice rated?

The most dramatic landmark near where we were staying is Elia (www.elia.dk) - a modern sculpture / lightning conductor / artificial volcano which occasionally spouts forth flames.  It declined to erupt while we watched.

Denmark December 2009

Cairngorms National Park December 2009

Big Cat Diary - Scottish-style: Lynx, Amur Tiger and Highland Wildcat. These are three of the attractions currently in the Highland Wildlife Park near Kingussie in the Cairngorms National Park. My only previous visit to the Highland Wildlife Park was sometime in the mid-70's just after the park opened, at that time their focus was to showcase wildlife that would (at some time at least) have been visible in the Highlands. The Park is now part of Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and has seen several recent migrants come up the A9 from Edinburgh Zoo.

The Park now has a family of Amur Tigers and most recently a polar bear called Mercedes in residence, and I gather there are plans to move more 'tundra' species further north too (presumably on the assumption that the Cairngorms are a little closer to tundra than can be realistically achieved in Corstorphine).

My brief trip up to the Cairngorms was driven by the desire to see a Highland Tiger (aka Wildcat) - as a result of sponsoring one earlier in the year, and by the need to fit in at least one trip to Scotland in 2009.

The light wasn't great for photography, but a few snaps follow. I'll try and get back early next year when there is some snow on the ground.

Cairngorms December 2009

My guides around the park were GoWild-Scotland - thanks to Aaron for his guidance in making the best of the available light.

What makes a photograph interesting?

I put most of the pictures that I want to share onto Picasa, but I've been putting a few onto Flickr for a while, mainly because I liked the geo-tagging that Flickr supported - and seeing the red dots littered across the map.  I spent a while this weekend playing with some of the other features that Flickr offers, and came across the concept of "Interestingness".  Serious Flickr users debated this feature years ago but my exploration of it did start me thinking about what makes a picture interesting and why I choose some pictures to share and not others.

The twenty most interesting (according to Flickr) pictures include eight from the Falkland Islands, three from Antarctica, a couple each from various Scottish Islands and Argentina - I don't particularly disagree with any of these choices but I am intrigued about what put these ahead of others in my collection.  These aren't the most regularly viewed pictures nor the ones that others have flagged as favourites - and I must admit I haven't yet gone off to look at the various patents that Yahoo have filed in this area to understand the ranking.

 I put pictures onto Picasa (or Flickr) for a variety of reasons. They're there as my 'been there' flags, pictures that represent the geographic extent of each trip and the "famous" places I've visited on the trip.  Although my visit to Beijing a couple of years ago was in the summer and the visibility was lousy, I was always going to put up pictures of the Great Wall even though if I wasn't particularly proud of them.  I also put up pictures that I particularly like or which evoke strong memories.  These are often wildlife pictures - I got a real buzz out of the whale pictures off Boston in the summer and the bird pictures from the Falklands earlier in the year.  These two reasons are really just reasons why I would put pictures up, but not really reasons why anyone else would want to look at them never mind contribute to any concept of interestingness.

The third reason for putting pictures up is (I hope) slightly more altruistic and potentially more interesting to others - it is to give a flavour of the experiences I've had, the places I've been seen or the people I've been visited.  I think this is particularly true of the places I think of as unusual - I do tend to opt (when given a choice) to go to places that most other folks don't go to, and I see part of my "role" as sharing my experience with others.  Part of my criteria for "interesting" would be to highlight things I want to talk about after the trip.  From the Central Asia trip I felt a real need to talk about what's happening to the Uighur people in Xinjiang in western China, but I didn't want to share some of the people pictures just in case there were implications to my doing this.  My compromise on that trip was to include pictures of the various bits of Kashgar Old Town as they still are alongside the freshly bulldozed areas being cleared by the Chinese authorities in the name of progress.

When I'm enthusing about the places I've been to, I also occasionally catch myself thinking that I don't really want lots of people following me there.  Places like the Falklands and Bhutan are fascinating places to go and visit and I'll be going back to both of them, but part of the interestingness of these places (and hopefully my pictures) is that they are relatively unusual destinations.  However neither of these places has a big tourist infrastructure and a huge influx of visitors would certainly change them.  In these cases I get torn between offering interesting pictures and wanting to keep the secrets to myself..

My 20 most "interesting" pictures are linked below

Interesting Pictures?

Watching The Albatross

I'm not sure I'd go quite as far as Robert Cushman Murphy who in late 1912, asserted that he now belonged to "a higher cult of mortals" because "he had seen the albatross", but I do consider myself to be lucky to have seen a variety of albatross over the last couple of years.

My first sighting of the albatross was from MS Fram heading south from Ushuaia towards the South Shetland Islands in November 2007 - on that trip I saw four different species (Wandering, Black-browed, Sooty and Grey-headed). However, I saw all of these at a distance and, truth be told, I was pretty reliant on the accompanying naturalists to confirm which I was seeing.

Those first sightings were enough to encourage me to head back down to the Falkland Islands earlier this year so I could get a look at one of these species at close quarters.

I spent a few days staying at the Neck on Saunders Island in the northwest corner of the Falklands.  The attractions on Saunders include colonies of gentoo, magellanic, rockhopper and king penguins, as well as Johnny Rooks (striated caracaras), king and rock cormorants - but the real draw is the huge breeding colony of black-browed albatross. These awesome birds nest on mud-turrets on a steep hillside facing northwards towards South America - and I was able to sit close to the colony (which they share with both rockhoppers and cormorants) watching the adult albatross sweep dramatically back in from the sea. They stumble through a landing process, most charitably described as ungainly, before going through their welcoming rituals with their partners and then turning their full attention to childcare. The beak-tapping ritual reinforces the bond between the adults - but the real magic is the delicacy of touch demonstrated after feeding when the adult's huge curved beak is used to pick away left-overs from around the chick's head.

I was at the colony in February when the down-covered chicks are not yet quite ready to fledge, but are almost the same size as the adults. The chicks spend much of the day sitting balanced high on their mud look-out posts waiting for the adults to return with another load of freshly caught squid. One of my strongest recollections is walking along the tracks high above the colony aware that many pairs of chick eyes were following me - and if I dared cross the invisible line that the chicks considered to be the safe distance they would very vocally encourage me to take a few steps back up the hill.

A few of the photographs I took around the colony are linked below.

Saunders Albatross February 2009

I spent several days on Saunders Island, and was privileged to be able to spend a lot of hours just watching the comings and goings at the colony, particularly watching the chicks waiting for the adults to return from their long-range foraging trips. This makes the activities of the Albatross Task Force even more important in my mind and I'll be encouraging folks I know who are interested in bird-life to help support the project. We (collectively) need to do everything we can to help protect these magnificent birds as they search for food across the Southern Ocean - I'm trying to figure out how and where I can get to see other albatross up close, but in the meantime I'll continue supporting the ATF.

Travel Envy...

Envy is a terrible thing. My first real pang of travel envy was when I was 12 or 13 - I and my family were on holiday in Aviemore in the Cairngorms. It happened that my school headmaster was on holiday there too. When the snow closed in towards the end of the holiday season my family got out towards the South just before the roads were closed, but the Head and his family got stuck. I made it back to school in time for the new term, the Head made it back several days later. Felt very unfair at the time. Still does.

Had similar thoughts today seeing the news reports that the Kapitan Khlebnikov has managed to get stuck in the sea ice near the Antarctic peninsula. I'm already envious that these folks are getting to travel to Snow Hill on the KK before it's retirement - and the bonus of getting safely stuck will give them serious bragging rights when they get home...

Bromsgrove and Birmingham November 2009

There's been something of a pattern to my trips this year - Barcelona, Beijing, Bishkek, Boston, Budapest - and Bromsgrove and Birmingham fit right into that pattern.

These two trips (both work-related) covered different aspects of my work role.

The Bromsgrove trip was to spend a while talking with a group of Open University Associate Lecturers about the range of collaborative tools the OU makes available to them now, and to speculate about the new tools that might become available in the next two or three years to either complicate what they're doing further or to help them manage the torrent of information. I enjoyed the session - and I hope my audience got something from it too.

The Birmingham trip was a visit to the Brave New World of the JISC/CETIS Conference - last year I made a comment about being surrounded by twitters this time I was one of them. As always this meeting brings together a really good mix of new technology experimenters and folks responsible for running production systems - and provides plenty to think about.

Budapest November 2009

My last visit to Budapest was in June 1997 - the city has changed since then. One of my strongest memories was that we couldn't find any of the traditional Budapest coffee shops we'd been promised - they all seemed to have been converted into western european (and US) burger bars. This time it had all changed - and the US burger chains have all been supplemented by Starbucks and Costa Coffee - not traditional perhaps, but at least I was able to get a reasonable cup of coffee. The bonus was that alongside the cappuccinos and lattes it was possible to get some decent local cake.

I was in Budapest for a two day workshop on standards for exchanging elearning materials - and (I suspect) as a result of good planning by the organisers, the one point during my time there when there weren't sessions to attend coincided with a time when the skies cleared and the cold drizzle stopped.

I walked the length Andrassy ut on the Pest side of the river - from Heroes' Square (which was in mid-rehearsal for Armistice Day) down towards the Chain Bridge, then along past the Parliament Building. Budapest has more than it's fair share of statues - the most moving I saw were the Shoes on the Danube by Gyula Pauer - commemorating Hungarian Jews shot and thrown into the Danube in 1944.

And it was a useful conference too!

Budapest November 2009

Cordoba October 2009

The trip to Cordoba wasn’t just a quick break in the autumn sunshine clutching a camera, although it was fantastic to be able to wander around in shirt sleeves and to eat outside late in the evening. This trip was about writing rather than just being a tourist. Over the last few months (which have significantly more sedentary, in travel terms, than earlier in the year - 30-something days annual leave each year just isn’t enough to feed a serious travel habit) I’ve been contemplating writing more about my trips in addition to documenting them with pictures.

Searching for some assistance, I signed up for a long weekend course on travel writing with Travellers Tales . The location (based in Seville and Cordoba) was certainly an attraction - I’ve been to Spain three times over the last couple of years, but never ventured south of Madrid.

In hopes of keeping the carbon footprint of the trip down we looked at trying to get to Andalucia by train - perfectly doable (See the Man in Seat 61) but it does take time and it we just couldn’t make it fit into the work diaries. Heading south would have been OK, but getting back north required too many train changes and more time than we had available. Our second option, in an attempt to keep out of the clutches of Ryanair (other budget airlines are available) was to fly to Madrid and use the AVE (the Spanish high-speed train service) to complete the journey. The AVE is a delight compared with most of the UK domestic train companies, but figuring out the quirks of the RENFE website is an art form all of its own (Seat61 has lots to say on the subject). The trick being knowing when to stick with Spanish version of the site, and when to jump into the English version. I’m still not quite sure why the tickets south in ‘Turista’-class cost significantly more than the tickets north in ‘Preferente’. Having criticised the Spanish railways website - I’m pretty sure there isn’t a Spanish-language version of the TrainLine website.

The Travellers Tales course was extremely good - a mix of tutorial/seminar and research in the streets, alley-ways and buildings of Cordoba, writing time (and time to read what you’ve been writing to tutors and fellow students) and lots of time to talk about travelling and writing. Highly recommended.

I did take a few photos in Seville and Cordoba but a return trip to spend more time behind the camera is certainly in order.

Cordoba October 2009

If the writing here is any better than before Jonathan, Dan and my class-mates get the credit - if it’s no better (or even worse) I take the blame.

Orbis September 2009

Haven't managed a trip recently but did need my passport to get airside at Stansted Airport recently to have a look at the Orbis Flying Eye Hospital.

Orbis September 2009

I've been supporting Orbis for a number of years - ever since I came across their plane at an airport somewhere on the Indian Sub-continent (either in India or Pakistan, I guess), but this was the first chance I'd had to have a look at the plane (a very heavily modified DC-10) close up. The plane is a mixture of lecture theatre and teaching hospital with wings - capable of both delivering and teaching modern eye surgery. It's a really inspiring project both technically and educationally - and I wish the volunteers every success on their next trip (to Rajasthan in India).

The organisation have fund-raising offices in several countries, including both the US and the UK. The UK branch website is at www.orbis.org.uk

Missing a Muse

Over the last five years I’ve taken at least one photograph every day – when I’ve been travelling there have been lots of different things to photograph. When I’ve been at home I’ve taken pictures at work, in the house and round the garden.

However my fallback has always been to take another picture of the exceptionally photogenic cat that we acquired when we bought our house just over 11 years ago. At that time Solomon was five or six years old (we were never sure which), and had always lived in the house. Solomon finally passed away on Sunday morning, he was probably 17 years old. Here are a few of my favourite pictures from the huge number I’ve taken over the last few years.

Boston & Montreal July 2009

Spent two really good weeks in the US and Canada. First week at the Sakai Conference in Boston, and the second at the IMS GLC Quarterly Meeting in Montreal. These were both really good meetings and were in two of the most european cities in North America (and that's a compliment).

Did manage to find a little bit of time to take a few pictures in/around Boston and Montreal, and went whale-watching during the weekend between the conferences.

Boston July 2009

Whales July 2009

Montreal July 2009

A Whole New Geography July 2009

My blog posts are mostly about places I've been - this one is about places I've only just found out about, and I don't expect to be visting them any time soon.

The in-flight info system on my trans-atlantic Air Canada flight (where I'm sitting typing this - although I'll post it a bit later) tells me more about where I'm flying over than any other in-flight system I can remember using - it feels like I've discovered a whole new layer of geography (apologies to my geography teachers from many years ago if they told me this).

I've just passed over the Porcupine Bank - and I'm now heading towards the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture Zone. Some of the other places I can see on screen are the Immarssuak Seachannel and the Great Meteor Tablemount. I knew there were lots of geographic features under the North Atlantic - I've just never known what any of them were called, and since this is an Air Canada flight, I even know what some of these features are called in French (Rive de Porc-epic, Chenal de Immarssuak and Butte du Grand Meteor).

Suddenly there are an awful lot more place names to think about.

Wimbledon July 2009

A real bonus - an offer of Centre Court ticket on Men's Final Day very gratefully accepted. The silver cloud from Andy Murray's semi-final loss to Andy Roddick.

Sat in the middle of a 15,000-strong collection of tennis fans and celebs, ranging from Alex Ferguson and Richard Branson to Rod Laver and Bjorn Borg, to watch the marathon match between Roger Federer and Andy Roddick. For the first four sets it really wasn't apparent how Federer was going to complete his 15th Grand Slam title - which must have been worrying for the folks who turned up in the "Federer 15" shirts.

During the fifth set it wasn't clear how either player was going to prevail, other than as a result of the other collapsing from exhaustion. That was pretty much what happening - as Federer won in the 30th game of the final set I couldn't tell if Roddick was reeling from disappointment or exhaustion.

As the final set rolled on a number of the folks around me made apologies and needed to head to the airport to catch flights - I was starting to worry about whether I was going to be able to make my flight on Tuesday morning.

My seat was in an ideal position (in terms of the light) to take photos - a few are below.

Wimbledon July 2009

China and Kyrgyzstan, May/June 2009

My second big trip of 2009 – after the coastline and wildlife of The Falkland Islands in February this trip was about as far from the sea as it’s possible to get – Urumqi claims to be the ‘city farthest from the sea in the world’.

We flew into Beijing, spending just a few hours there before flying back west again to Urumqi – then we took to the road heading west along the northern side of the Takla Makan desert through Korla, Kuqa and Aksu – then south across the desert to Hotan before tracking the south side of the desert to Yarkand and Kashgar. From Kashgar we briefly went south along the Chinese section of the Karakorum Highway, before turning north over the Torugart Pass into Kyrgyzstan. We spent a couple of nights in the mountains staying in yurts before finishing up in Bishkek.

I’ve included links to a selection of the photographs I took on the trip – just click on the images below to see more from each section.

	Places
	Markets
	Takla Makan
	KKH
	Kyrgyzstan

Highlights

Seeing and crossing the Takla Makan. Peter Fleming did this by horse and camel and took several months, we went across one of new ‘desert highways’ in an air-conditioned bus in about 6 hours. The Takla Makan really does fit all the desert stereotypes.

‘Doing’ at least part of the Karakorum Highway. I bought the KKH guidebook in the early 1990’s when I visited Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province – so it was high time I travelled along at least part of the route.

Seeing Kashgar before all the old bits get demolished. The name (for me) conjures up images of camels and a dusty oasis town – there are still a few camels, and it’s still dusty in places, but there are now an awful lot of new buildings too. A lot of building and demolition work going on at the moment involves removing big chunks of the (mainly Uighur) old town – lots of 500 year buildings are being bulldozed as potential earthquake hazards. They can’t be that vulnerable to earthquakes if they’re been there for 500 years.

Learning about Uighur culture. I didn’t know a huge amount about the Uighurs before we booked the trip – it was fascinating to learn about the culture and to meet lots of very friendly and welcoming Uighur people.

Staying in a Yurt These are the traditional tents used in the high mountains in Central Asia – I’ve now spent two nights sleeping in them. And I remember at least some of the reasons why I retired my tent and promoted myself to places with hot and cold running water.

Having a city-break in Bishkek. OK, it’s a long way from the UK for a city break – but Bishkek is an fantastic place to spend a few days, a mix of Central Asian cultures, Soviet-era architecture and western comforts.

Lowlights

Chinese Breakfasts. I love Chinese food – and almost all the evening meals were either Chinese or (more commonly) Uighur, but I really can’t manage Chinese breakfasts. The group got to the stage of fantasising about muesli with cold milk – and the reaction on discovering that we would get the option of porridge once we crossed the boarder into Kyrgzstan was close to hysteria.

Long-drop toilets. There are some occasions when I feel the need to offer thanks that I have a really awful sense of smell – this holiday provided many such occasions.

My other half has posted some of her thoughts on the trip http://susannareeceknits.blogspot.com/

We did this trip with Explore! – ‘Crossroads of Asia’ – and thanks to all our companions, to Ali and Olga our local guides – and particularly to Craig our Explore! Tour Leader.

Barcelona May 2009

My first IMS trip of the year - and for change on the eastern side of the Atlantic - i.e. not too much travelling time and no jet lag. Excellent meeting and lots of really good Spanish food to accompany it. Despite the full programme did grab a couple of quick outings to take a few pictures.

Barcelona May 2009

Alderney March 2009

Once more onto the Beach. After three weeks back at work it seemed like a good time to head to the coast again – this time not quite so far south. We were repeating a holiday from 1994 – using the same airline and staying in the same hotel. Aurigny still fly the same Britten-Norman Trislanders between Southampton and Alderney – the stretch version of the Islander I used in the Falklands. The Belle Vue Hotel is still run by the same folks that were running it in 1994 too. The island really didn’t feel like it had changed too much since 1994 (but perhaps that’s related to flaws in my memory!). One thing which hadn't changed was the weather, we had splendid weather in April 94 and during our March week this year we had blue skies every day too.

We spent a splendid slow-paced week walking along the coasts and paths of Alderney – saw over 40 different bird species although they weren’t quite as amenable to photography as the Falkland ones.

Alderney March 2009

Only problem now is that I can’t see how to keep up this work:vacation ratio for the rest of the year.

Falkland Islands February 2009

When the snow lies deep and crisp and even across Oxfordshire, it’s a good clue that it’s time to head south. I headed pretty much as far south as I could get on a direct air link from Oxfordshire specifically to the Falkland Islands flying on the MoD air-bridge with a brief stopover in the Ascension Islands. After trudging through deep snow at RAF Brize Norton it was rather pleasant to get to spend a couple of hours sitting in the sun on the ‘Transit Patio’ on Ascension Island before flying on south to Mount Pleasant near Stanley.

The Falkland Islands aren’t (at any time of year) as warm as Ascension but it was a very pleasant 16-18 C in mid February – and on most days the sun shone and the wildlife was amazingly accessible. I never visited anywhere where the birds are so co-operative. Many centuries of seclusion from ground-based predators has made the birds, particularly, easy to see. Back in the North I rather expect any passing snipe to either hide in the undergrowth completely or at very least to disappear into the distance at the slightest provocation – with the magellanic snipe I encountered on Sea Lion Island their idea of an evasive manoeuvre was to jump about 2 feet then carry on feeding.

I spent a total of 11 day in the Falklands – three days on Saunders Island, four days on Sea Lion Island and the rest based in Stanley.

I was fortunate to get to spend my time on Saunders staying at the Cabin at the Neck – a magical place to stay within sight and sound of gentoo, magellanic and king penguin colonies and very close to a rockhopper penguin and black-browed albatross colony. There is also a huge elephant seal colony just a few miles up the coast on the appropriately name Elephant Point. The guide books suggest that the Cabin is going to be pretty primitive, but they’re out of date! These days the Cabin has hot and cold running water, central heating and mains electricity – I’ve lived in worse. I wouldn’t hold out much prospect for Room Service though the nearest other buildings are 10 miles away (which here equates to an hour in a Land-Rover – the vehicle of choice for most people in the Islands).

After Saunders I travelled by FIGAS (Falklands Island Govt Air Service) down to Sea Lion Island on the southern edge of the Falklands. This was the first time I’ve stayed at a hotel with an airstrip but no car park. Sea Lion was major change from Saunders – it feels less remote and rugged but in fact it’s much less disturbed than Saunders Island and still has lots of the tussac grass that once covered most of the Falklands – this provides shelter for lots of smaller birds as well for a few larger mammals such as sea lions (you’d expect that given the name of the island) and elephant seals. Neither of these animals take kindly to being stepped on – and they’re both impressively large with lots of teeth and in the case of the elephant seals spectacularly bad breath.

The bird-watching on Sea Lion is something I’ll remember for a very long time, and the undoubted highlight was lying on the beach just after dawn as the gentoo penguins came to investigate the new arrival on the sand. Having established that I wasn’t good to eat they opted simply to stand watching me watching them – wildlife photography with a wide-angle lens is a whole new experience.

The other real characters on both Saunders and Sea Lion Island are the Striated Caracaras – one of the world’s rarer birds of prey (except on the Falklands). These birds are very confident and incredibly curious (a combination which probably explains their rarity) – they will attempt to carry off a substantial camera bag should the opportunity arise and they are well able to move a heavy bag even if they can’t get off the ground with it. This strength is put to rather better effect (from the caracara’s perspective) at other times by pulling the heads off penguins!

Back in Stanley I had the opportunity to visit a major King penguin colony at Volunteer Beach – this is described as being the most accessible King Penguin colony in the world – which meant that it required a hour on gravel roads, then 90 minutes in a Land-Rover with a very good driver to reach the colony (all assuming you’ve already got to Stanley). I had a wonderful couple of hours at the colony and on the beaches nearby before the crowds descended! My guides (Arlette Bloomfield from Falkland Islands Holiday and Tony Smith from Discovery Falklands) had wisely advised that I needed get to the colony as early as possible before the cruise ship crowds arrived – they were absolutely right. The guidance I’d been given about keeping your distance from the penguins and waiting until they came to you clearly hadn’t sunk in with at least some of the cruise ship passengers. What’s the penalty for harassing a penguin?

The Falkland Islands are now firmly on the cruise ship itinerary – there are economic benefits to the Islands in this but there are downsides too. A big cruise ship can easily double the population of Stanley when it arrives and completely transforms the town – local advice was to either leave town or stay in doors. In addition to this any attempt to get significant numbers of people to a site such as Volunteer Beach is clearly going to be problematic. As we drove to Volunteer Beach it was clear how much damage had been done by 4x4’s to the ground between the road end and the penguin colony. On the day I visited the colony there were well over 40 vehicles parked up near the beach and something like 120 or 130 people milling about amongst the penguins – I can’t see how this is sustainable!

My first trip to the Falklands was a fantastic experience – at one time (many years ago) it was just somewhere in the South Atlantic where we fought a minor war, for me it’s now THE place to go and see, hear and photograph a fantastic range of wildlife. The only real question that remains – on my next trip do I revisit Saunders and Sea Lion Islands or do I make time to get to some of the other 700 islands?

I’ve put together three collections of photos from this trip – a small selection from the vast number of images I took.

The first set will I hope give an impression of what the Falklands Island is like at this time of year (early autumn in the southern hemisphere).

Falkland Islands February 2009

The second set is a collection of penguin pictures from Saunders and Sea Lion Islands and Volunteer Beach.

Falklands JustPenguins February 2009

The third set is my attempt to put together an illustrated bird-list for the trip – there are 37 different species shown here. I saw a few more but they didn’t hang around for long enough to be photographed!

Falkland BirdList February 2009

A word about logistics – I organised this trip through Falkland Island Holidays in Stanley who sorted out all my local flights with FIGAS, the accommodation throughout the trip and even my ‘meal packs’ on Saunders Island. I sorted my MoD airbridge flights with the Falkland Island Government Office in London. On Sea Lion Island I stayed at Sea Lion Lodge, and my chauffeur and guide to get to Volunteer Beach was Tony Smith of Discovery Falklands.

Useful URLs
Falkland Islands Holidays www.falklandislandsholidays.com
Falkland Island Government Office www.falklands.gov.fk
Sea Lion Lodge www.sealionisland.com
Discovery Falkland www.discoveryfalklands.com
Falklands Conservation www.falklandsconservation.com

Snow Event February 2009

I'm not quite sure how much snow (and associated disruption) is required to make a Snow Event - but that's what the media have been calling the weather in the UK over the last few days.

It's made the commute from Oxford to Milton Keynes much more entertaining, and provided more photo opportunities than a typical February week.

Snow Event February 2009

Oxford January 2009

Travelling this month has pretty much been limited to browsing the guide book collection.



However several weeks of enforced inactivity (flu & pneumonia) has given me the chance to reflect on the statement I made in early January last year - "I don't think I'll be doing quite so much travelling in 2008".

So how did I do...

It depends how you measure - in 2008 I "only" clocked up 65,000 airmiles, well down on the 102,000 I did in 2007 (and I only spent 60-something nights away from home, as opposed to over 100 in 2007 - there's a correlation there I'm sure).

On other measures the change isn't quite so clear - 2008 involved 10 trips which meant 39 flights, 2007 11 trips and 41 flights.

So what about my carbon footprint - the 10 trips in 2008 included 6 work trips and 4 leisure ones - the work ones generating 7.3 tonnes of CO2, and the leisure ones 3.2.

My car also made a contribution to global warming last year - about 18,000 miles last year (or about 5.8 tonnes of CO2). About 85% of that was my daily commute.

I'm sure I'll be doing less travelling again this year - plans at the moment only get me to about 20,000 miles. We'll see.