Yup, it’s Friday again. I’ve a tendency to come out in a rash at the mere thought of battling my way across country on the A14, especially on a dreich evening such as this — so, in spite of the vertically challenged geography of Fenland, I snuck a peak at the BBC weather for “Cambridge” tomorrow. The walking group are heading over to Thetford Forest, the “largest lowland pine forest in Britain” (cue awed Oohs and Ahhs). It looks rather pleasant, and I badly need to get out of the constructed concrete, tarmac, steel and glass cityscape for a bit, even if the alternative is flat and grey and squelchy.
Here’s the third and final post (for now), in this chronologically challenged series of diary extracts, written in December 2002 when I was in the deep south of South America, starting the circuit of Torres del Paine.
Day one was a fairly gentle introduction with, as it happens, the worst weather of the trip. Overhearing many other travellers’ tales, it seems we were incredibly lucky, experiencing a great deal of dry, calm weather.
The date referred to in the title is December 4th 2002, and the conclusion of a diary entry. I won’t be drawn on subsequent exploits and how they compare to this sojourn in Patagonia, but, as per yesterday’s post, looking back on this elicits strong memories of a very happy time.
Mix the iconic mountains of southern Patagonia, five backpackers more at home in the braes and bothies of Scotland, and a week-long trekking circuit. What do you get? Read on to find out…
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This seems appropriate given the continued wintry conditions…
I’ve not had much time to write lately. Apart from anything else, I’ve been focussing on improving my CSS and PHP skills, so that I can start hammering this blog into shape. With a WAMP stack now running on my netbook, and a repeatable process for copying my live blog contents across from the host, I can play around to my heart’s content with PHP scripts and CSS files, without worrying about wrecking the live site.
Three months ago today, I was enjoying a weekend in Northern Snowdonia. Specifically, at Rowen Youth Hostel, which revels in a fantastically scenic location, perched on the steep western slopes of the Conwy Valley. The Carneddau range, comprising by far the largest contiguous area of high ground over 3000 feet south of Scotland, is on the doorstep.
This is big news today. I’ve only recently been following various blogs and news sources re. this proposal, and in the posts I’ve been reading, I kept asking myself the same thing. Where can I find detailed maps of the proposed route? The answer lies here, along with a huge amount of information direct from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Chances of me ever finding the time to run through much of this? Slim. Nonetheless, it’s good to be able to refer back to some specifics when trying to corroborate or counter various views on such a divisive project.
Well, OK then — technically it might not be a Corbett (being located in Dubai rather than Scotland), but the Burj Khalifa (formally the Burj Dubai) which opened today, undoubtedly meets the altitude and reascent requirements, standing at 828 metres (2716 ft).
With large parts of the UK seeing lying snow at some point over the last two weeks, it’s been a refreshingly wintry finale to 2009, and it looks set to continue into 2010. The snow in Cambridge has been gone over a week now, but sharp frosts and clear skies are back again.
Having had what felt like endless weeks of unseasonably warm, excessively wet, and irritatingly windy weather here in the UK, I wasn’t expecting much from the last weekend of November in North Wales. With this corner of the UK not known for its propensity to deliver suitable holidaying weather, I was well up for (and would have been quite satisfied with) a couple of days sat in front of a roaring open fair, quaffing ale, and talking nonsense with my mates.
What’s the most effective way to alienate members of your target demographic with your ads? Try treating them like gormless morons.
( This article relates to Adobe Lightroom version 2, running on Windows XP )
Adobe Lightroom has a frustrating flaw when used on devices with limited vertical screen resolution. Most of today’s netbook computers fall into this category, typically having only 600 pixels to play with from top to bottom.
Since the substantial snowfall on Thursday evening, temperatures have remained low, with further flurries topping things up nicely — and more on the way Monday evening if the Met Office have got it right!
Mount Egmont, or Taranaki, rises in the west of New Zealand’s North Island, a singular volcanic cone exhibiting a powerful symmetry. So symmetrical is Taranaki in fact (provided one isn’t viewing the mountain perpendicular to the parasitic cone of Fantham’s Peak), that it was used as a stand-in for Japan’s Mount Fuji in the film The Last Samurai. So, what better way to get to know Mount Egmont than to circumnavigate it, and then celebrate with an ascent?
The shadow cast by the Earth is vast — a cone over 1 million kilometres in length, which, on occasion, intercepts the moon’s orbit, and reveals itself in the form of a lunar eclipse. It is, however, possible to see part of this shadow cone much more frequently than the rare occasions when Sun, Earth, and Moon happen to line up in just the right way. You just need to know what to look for.
If you’ve visited the WildVista blog at all over the last couple of months, you’ll notice the major change in the site’s design that I put live yesterday. From the beginning, I envisioned a site that was less like a typical reverse-chronological blog (I’m not writing a real-time diary), and more a magazine-style site with categorised articles and regular features. And so, I’ve now applied (and modified) the Mimbo theme to the site.
Among the great joys of trekking in the backcountry of New Zealand, is that one can, through some effort (and what the man in the street would consider totally uncalled for privations), become intimately acquainted with a primeval and at times breathtakingly beautiful landscape.
It’s been three weeks now since I got back from France, having completed a 6-day trek in the Vanoise Alps. This was everything I was expecting and more, and, despite a worrying lack of fitness, made for an immensely enjoyable holiday. More details in later posts, but for now, here’s a link to the photos [...]