At the beginning of November Martin and I drove to Capel Curig in North Wales to get in a good weekend of hiking. We stayed at Capel Curig Youth Hostel and on our first day hiked up Y Foel Goch just to the east of Tryfan.

There was a lot of snow on the ground, from a snowstorm that had blanketed the UK a few days before, including London. It was slow going as we climbed, but we eventually made it to a wide ridge with great views through the low clouds over to Tryfan.

Surprisingly for a November weekend, it was sunny on Sunday morning, and we take an easy route that started right at the hostel, and up to a series of low hills and wet, boggy ground. The route took as higher, over Crimpau, Craig Wen, and up to the ridge of Craigiau Gleision. The views were the best I have seen in Snowdonia, and there was a perfect panorama of mountains against a blue sky.

On Monday we drove to Pen-y-pas, the most popular place to start the ascent of Snowdon and the infamous Crib Goch. I’ve done this before, but I must admit found it very unnerving. This time we had only a few hours before we had to return to London, so we started on the Miner’s track, which runs from Pen-y-pass to Llyn Llydaw and then on to Snowdon. At the lake, we started uphill, and got the to top of Craig Llyn Teyrn, at the end of the Horns, and had a wonderful view down the valley to Llanberis.

Photos on Flickr

Flickr link
Flickr map

We picked the best 3 days, not starting directly at Newcastle, but heading by train to Hexham, and walking from there, west, towards Carlisle. The walking is lovely, although the abundance of sheep mean that you need to keep on eye where you walk!

At the end of Day 1, near Once Brewed

The sun comes out!

A break for lunch

Day 2 begins

A friendly cat

Me at the end of Day 1

The scenery near Carlisle is less dramatic but still beautiful

Wenlock Edge is an escarpment running north-south from The Wrekin and cuts across some lovely countryside. We headed across-country on our walking route, following a map and using my GPS.

We stayed at the small youth hostel in the village of Ratlinghope, which in the winter is only open on weekends. It was suitably cold, and most of the guests, who were all hardy walkers, huddled near to the fire. Martin and I luckily had a dorm room to ourselves so no snorers to worry about!

The next day we drove to the town of Church Stretton, and started out on a lovely hike to the top of Caer Caradoc, which was formed of volcanic rock, but was not actually a volcano. (Caer comes from Welsh and means fortication.) There was a light dusting of frost on the top and the wind was very cold, but the 360 degree view was worth it, all the way east to Birmingham and west over the Long Mynd.

We descended off Caer Caradoc, and climbed up on to Hope Bowder Hill, and then down to the south-east of Church Stretton. It was a lovely walk and by this time Martin had decided that he would be quite happy to live in Shropshire.

Here are two links to the walking pages on walkingbritain.co.uk, which provide good walking directions for these, and other walks in Shropshire and the UK.

Wenlock Edge page at walkingbritain.co.uk and Caer Caradoc and Hope Bowder Hill page at walkingbritain.co.uk.

Here is my GPS track of both walks, in Mapsource GDB and GPX formats.

Shropshire January 2005.gdb Mapsource file
Shropshire January 2005.gpx GPS file

I spent a lovely New Year’s holiday in Ireland with my family and extended family. We stayed in the house I bought two years ago with my father, and ate breakfast everyday looking out over the sea to Scotland.

The weather was as it usually it is Ireland, very dramatic, with dark clouds and rain, followed by blue sky and sun. Then rain. Bill and I took some brisk walks along the beach,

All of my photos from this trip are on my Flickr page.

I joined Charles Garnsworthy and Reiko Koyama for a winter stroll through the Chiltern Hills north-west of London. We started at Saunderton train station, and headed north along the Ridgeway path. This path follows an escarpment of hills which was used in pre-historic times as an early migration and tranport route. At that time most of England was covered in dense forest and this higher ground would have provided the easiest and clearest route from east to west.

The three of us stopped in at Bledlow and visited its Holy Trinity Church where we given mince pies and a detailed tour of its interior.

At the Lions pub we had a hot meal and continued on our way, enjoying more mince pies courtesy of Charles.
Even though the paths were muddy, the sky was mostly clear, with some wonderful vistas of blue sky with the lows rays of the sun lighting up the trees.

Mapsource GPS file
GPX file

When I planned my series of walks and hikes for this year, I didn’t realize that Armenia would attract the most number of participants. I believed that a few people would ask about the trip, but due to the distance and obscurity of the country, nobody would actually come.
As it turned out, there were five of us. Isobel Tanaka and Yumiko Ichikawa was joined by Renald Gregoire, all current members from Tokyo. At the last minute, former IAC member Allan Miles took time out from his cycle tour of France, Spain and Portugal to fly to Istanbul and travel overland through Georgia to Armenia to join us.
I don’t think anyone quite knew what to expect. Modern Armenia suffers from extreme obscurity to say the least. Although it was once a large kingdom that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Caspian and Black Sea, and was an important element in the formation of much of European architecture and language, it was nearly obliterated at the beginning of this century during the Genocide, and then became a part of the Soviet Union until independence 14 years ago. While Armenia is famous throughout the countries of the ex-Soviet Union, most westerners couldn’t point to it on a map. Furthermore, it suffered a devastating earthquake in 1988, a terrible war in the early 90s with neighbour Azerbaijan, and a crippling ‘brain drain’ since independence mostly to Russia and the West.

I tried hard to explain Armenia or at least what it meant to me to my four trip participants. I told them it was a mixture of beautiful scenery, an ancient culture, and a proud people who have survived where others live on only in history books. But this doesn’t describe Armenia. It is a curious mix of the Middle Eastern (although the Armenians themselves don’t like this label) and the European. On the surface they are European, highly educated, cosmopolitan, and the capital Yerevan is brimming with universities, musical conservatories, opera houses, galleries and museums. Literacy is higher than most European countries at 100%. Dig a little deeper, or better still, travel out into the countryside, and you see a conservative people, patriarchal, very religious (Armenian Christian), with flashes of the Middle Eastern temperament.
Look deep into the eyes of an Armenian and this is what you see. Watch them talk and you see their emotions expressed in the waving of arms, the men outstretching their right arms and upturning their palms to express surprise. Upturning both palms signifies indignation. As Renald put it very well, they can be a little intimidating at first to the uninitiated, but speak a few words and their hearts pour out in kindness.

Coffee culture

Yerevan is a city of wide boulevards and leafy streets. At the centre is the enormous Republic Square where once Lenin stood guard. Now a large Shinjuku-style TV screen offers locals images of BMWs and washing machines, and opposite the Marriot hotel with its foreign guests has a permanent line of large black SUVs parked outside.
We all arrived within 24 hours of each other. I came from London, meeting Renald on the way in Vienna, and Isobel arrived via Moscow with Aeroflot. Yumiko had left Japan a few days earlier, to climb Mount Elbrus which is in the northern Caucasus on the Russian-Georgian border. Technically – for the north Caucasus range of mountains is the border of Europe and Asia – it is the highest mountain in Europe.
Allan turned up last, falling victim to Georgian bureaucracy in his attempt to transit the country.
For the first few days we wandered the city, quenching our thirst at the abundant cafes which line the sidewalks. We alternated on thick, rich Armenian coffee, brewed like Turkish or Greek coffee in small pots over hot sand, and half-litre bottles of Kotayk or Kilikia Armenian beer. Each day we met some of my Armenian friends, who took us to discover Armenian cuisine. One day it was the Old Yerevan restaurant serving traditional Armenian soups, grilled meats and fresh, thin lavash bread, to the accompaniment of musicians dressed up in traditional costumes for the visiting Diaspora tourists. The next day it was the brash Caesers Palace restaurant with gold door handles and bubbling fountains trying to outdo Las Vegas and cater for the local ‘new rich’ who have more money than taste. Of course most Armenians are very poor. The statistics are shocking. Some 50-60% of the population lives below the official poverty line, and survive by doing several jobs. The average monthly income is something like $40, but this, as with all statistics in Armenia only represents the official economy. Armenia is one giant black market, with few people paying taxes.

To give the group of taste of rural Armenia, I took them on a day trip to the mediaeval churches of Goshavank and Haghartsin. We joined a vanload of tourists, mostly Diaspora Armenians – descendants of refugees from the Genocide in 1915 who fled to Europe – and bumped along small roads to the churches nestled in green valleys. On the return, we stopped for a pre-arranged lunch at the home of a local family, and were served a large lunch of lavash, salads, dolma (mince meat wrapped in vine or cabbage leaves), yoghurt, and fresh vegetables. In the van we listened to upbeat Armenian music, and the Diasporans sung along.

The focus of the trip was to be the southern Zangezur chain of mountains, and I had arranged a van to take us to the small village of Tatev, situated at 1,600 metres on the side of a gorge next to a monastery from the 9th century. On the trip south, lasting about 4 or 5 hours, we stopped at a series of churches. Khor Virap is situated on a small hill near the Turkish border which separates Armenians from their national symbol, Mount Ararat. Next stop was the wine-producing town of Areni, and we visited a winery for a wine tasting. For lunch we stopped at Noravank, another church built high on the side of a canyon with a small café attached. We ate kabob (skewered mince meat) and more lavash, washed down with beer and coffee, before setting off.

At about 4pm we arrived in Tatev, slightly shaken by the jarring 1 hour climb on the road down into and up the other side of the gorge.
Victoria, the daughter of a family I had stayed with on my first visit to Armenia in 2000 had come with us (she has worked for a travel agency and had arranged the van), but she was heading back to Yerevan with the driver. Yumiko was keen to show her how to make and drink macha (traditional Japanese green tea), so she produced her portable tea-making kit and entertained Victoria and our bed and breakfast hosts, Tamara, Gayane, and Zarine.

For the next week we stayed in Tatev, and used it as a base for exploring the surroundings mountains and valleys. The bed and breakfast was simple, and hot water had to be heated in buckets in order to wash, but the food was wonderful and in abundant supply. Everything was extremely fresh, mostly having come from their own kitchen garden. The cheese was very salty, like feta. The bread was made by the family each morning, and we were given large juicy tomatoes, of the kind that have long since disappeared from our supermarkets.

The small village of Tatev has dirt roads, and no post offices or such services. The inhabitants live mainly by tending to their fields and raising some cows and sheep. Renald, Isobel, and Yumiko got up early each morning to go running. They ran along the road to the monastery, and often saw some men from the village taking the cows and sheep up to the pasture for the days grazing.

Our first days walk was around 15 kilometres, and we climbed west from Tatev up through fields of dry grasses to the brow of a hill for a picnic lunch. The weather was warm, with bright sunshine and we could see the mountains for miles around. The ash-coloured mountains to the north were contrasted by the green hills to the south. Southern Armenia is squeezed between the two parts of Azerbaijan, with which Armenia fought a war in the 1990s. The borders are never more than around 20 kilometres away, although everything is stable and quite safe.
The next day we embarked on the first of our two overnight treks. Isobel had brought curry from Japan, Allan rice from Yerevan, and we added to this bread, eggs, vegetables and basturma, a spicy Armenian sausage.
We camped at 2,400 metres, a thousand metres below the peak of Mount Aramazd, which we had wanted to climb. However, my poor choice of route and the thick cloud above us made this impossible. Our curry and rice went down a treat as the temperature fell rapidly after sunset. Yumiko put on her down jacket and walked around camp looking like she was on the summit of Everest.

Our next hike was a simple 2 hour walk to a ridge above the gorge, where we had an eagle-eye view of the monastery, the river Vorotan far below, and the surrounding peaks. Isobel made everyone happy by producing 5 bottles of cold Kotayk beer that she had secretly brought from the bed and breakfast.

For our next overnight hike, I chose a route up through green pastures above the shepherds and their sheep. An old Soviet-era bus crawled along a dirt road on its way to Tatev, and so surprised were the passengers to see westerners with large backpacks and trekking poles, that the bus stopped and they handed us bags of apples.
Renald being the one with the most energy, went ahead of us and climbed to the top of the ridge, while Yumiko, Isobel and I opted for the easier circuit, although we were equally rewarded with a splendid view to the south towards the Iranian border.

Descending, we picked up Allan who had been sunning himself in a small valley, and hiked down to the nearest village. This village was even smaller than Tatev, and there were no cars, just a few donkeys and horses. The startled inhabitants pointed downhill when I asked them in my limited Armenian about drinking water. Filled up with water, we went in search of a camping spot. This we soon found on a grassy hill overlooking the gorge and Tatev. Spread out to the north of us were the dry hills and mountains leading up to the Azeri border. After dinner, with Armenian wine provided by Isobel and coffee by me, we sat and watched the stars come out. Soon the entire Milky Way was easily visible, and shooting stars appeared every now and then. In the far north we could just make out clouds being illuminated in different colours by fireworks in far off Yerevan for the Independence Day celebrations.

Our week in the village of Tatev had come to an end and we headed back to Yerevan the next day. We met a journalist friend of mine and discussed politics, poverty, and Armenian rock music. At an Iranian restaurant all tried the ‘hubble bubble’ or water pipe with some apple flavoured tobacco.
Yumiko was the first to leave, flying out on Aeroflot to Tokyo. Renald, Allan and Isobel took a guided climb of Mount Aragats, the highest mountain in Armenia at 4,095 metres. They were guided by two Russian mountain guides, both of whom were impossibly over-qualified. One had designed the telescopes on the Mir Space Station, and the other had commanded a mountain unit of soldiers during the war with Azerbaijan who had constructed a radio transmitter on the mountainous front line and then retreated over the mountains by night in the winter.
Camping at 3,600 metres they had snow, and returned to Yerevan after a long cold night.
We spent the last few days sitting in cafes and visiting the Brandy factory. Armenian brandy is famous, and was reportedly Winston Churchill’s favourite tipple. Stalin shipped it by the case to him each year.
Renald left the next morning in the early hours, followed by Allan after breakfast, off back to Georgia and further adventures. Isobel departed at midday on her journey via Moscow, and I was left alone, catching the early morning flight the following day.
It is true that Armenia is sometimes not the easiest of places to travel in, but it repays the investment made by the adventurous traveler well. Our little group of adventurers took everything in their stride and formed a jovial group whose company I will miss. I think good journeys need three essential ingredients; a good location, good food (and beer…) and good people. It will be hard to beat this trip for all of these reasons.

When I look at a map of Iceland it looks to me like a map of a fictional country, like the maps in The Lord of the Rings or other fantastical tales. The towns are small and seemed to be lost in the remote corners of the countryside, next to the dark andgrowling sea. Great volcanoes like Hekla and Snaefells control the land except for where the glaciers obliterate everything. The great Vatnajokull glacier with its tongues of ice covers are large portion of the south-east of the country, a vast expanse of white except where nunataks (mountain peaks) appear like desert islands.

It had been my ambition for many years to visit Iceland. I’ve always had a strong attraction to the north, and Iceland is quite a bit north. However with the exception of one tiny part is not actually within the Arctic. As I flew north from London to Reykjavik, darkness descended over northern England. But then a strange thing happened. It got lighter, as we descended through the cloud and the green moss-covered lava fields near the international airport at Reykjavik appeared it was almost light again. Indeed I don’t remember seeing total darkness until my return to London. While there is not 24 light, it never really gets dark, with a sort of endless twilight.

The trip to Iceland was arranged with Mike Gellerman and Isabelle Brilman, but Mike called had to change his plans at the last minute. The first night was spent at the youth hostel in Reykjavik. Iceland being an extremely expensive place, hotels were out of the question. A newspaper costs $3 and a can of coke costs $2.50. Even breakfast at the youth hostel costs $15. Instead we bought food at the supermarkets and cooked for ourselves. Mike had said prophetically that you don’t go to Iceland to eat. That statement hung over us during our travels around Iceland.
Icelandic cuisine is famous for its outrageous delicacies, putrid shark buried in sand and boiled sheep’s testicles. However the supermarkets were full of a wide array of yogurts and milk products. Mjolk is milk, while AB Mjolk is yogurt. Surmjolk is sour milk, and there are a lot more. Made from Icelandic milk of course.

Our journey was split into two parts. For the first week we would do a famous long-distance trek through the interior of Iceland; an uninhabited no-mans-land with no paved roads and no trees. In medieval times, if you committed a crime, you could be declared an ‘outlander’ and banished from Iceland. If you could survive 20 twenty years on the run, which meant hiding out in the vast wilderness, you would be pardoned. And there were people who survived, including one Grettir Asmundarson.
For the second week we rented a car and headed north-west to area known as the Westfjords, a defiant part of Iceland that spreads its fingers into the Greenland Sea.

A few things you should know about Iceland. It was first settled in the late 9th century by Vikings from Norway. The Icelandic language is as spoken by those settlers. It has not changed in 1100 years and Icelanders can read famous Sagas written in the 9th and 10th centuries as a easily as a modern book.
There are something like 230,000 Icelanders, half of them living in Reykjavik. That is something that only impresses on you when you start to travel around the country. There are very few settlements outside Reykjavik that could even call themselves a town, and most are mere villages. It is such a sparsely populated country that as you travel around it you keep expecting to find more people than you do. A town that proudely stands out on the map at the head of a deep fjord turns out to be a mere 500 souls living for some unknown reason on a patch of flat grassy land with only a dirt road and one ’shop’ that seems to sell everything and nothing.

Our walk took us from Landmannalaugar to Thorsmork, a 4-day trek over mountainous terain in the countrys interior. To get to Landmannalaugar we took us bus, one of the four wheel drive buses with huge tired and are raised up high. The tracks which pass for roads in the interior are only for specially-adapted vehicles, even normal four wheel drives would have a hard time. The rivers are not bridged meaning you have to drive through the river.

The Thorsmork is popular with Icelanders and foreigners alike, and rightly so. It is one of the world’s great walks. Four days that take you past bubbling hot springs, black lava fields, green grassy hillsides, and through surreal landscapes of black and green pointy mountains that made me quiver with thoughts of dragons and demons circling in the sky.
The day treks are about 15 kilometres and take about 5 or 6 hours, nothing too strenuous, and mountain huts are positioned at strategic positions along the trail.
All food and supplies have to be carried from start to finish, and as the rivers are not bridged, there are several places along the trail where the river has to be forded. The rivers are naturally cold and quick flowing. The proper way to ford a river is to hold hands with the person you are walking with and cross together, looking upstream so that the flow doesn’t bend your legs. That’s not the way we did it.
I would walk across first, and then turn back to watch Isabelle and snap a funny photo.

Fording the river

At the end of the walk, we travelled back to Reykjavik for a night in the big city before foresaking civilisation again. Our bus forded several rivers in the way back, not placid streams but rivers fed by glacial runoff, grey and fast flowing, and at times the water came up to the steps.

Highland landscape

We saw spent the evening in Reykjavik. Being the capital city, it’s vibrant and there’s plenty to do, but the population is only around 130,000 (more than half the national population) so in reality it’s a large town.
After picking up our rental car, Isabelle and I head north. Highway 1 forms a complete circuit of Iceland, but this was only completed in the 70s. You get a sense of what Iceland is about by driving on it. It’s a simple two-lane road, but there is no hard shoulder. As all surfaced roads in Iceland, the edges are marked by tall posts for when it snows. The road twists and turns and requires a high degree of concentration to drive on. Indeed in guidebooks and pamphlets for tourists you see instructions on how to drive in Iceland. This is because there are plenty of hazards that you don’t find in most countries. Sheep walking onto roads is an obvious one, but one of the most dangerous is where the tarmac road suddenly becomes dirt. You have to slow down before you hit the loose stuff or your car can easily loose traction. And it is surprising how quickly you come across dirt roads. Turning off Highway 1 towards a small youth hostel on the north Icelandic coast we had a 30 km drive along a single-track dirt road. As the sea came into view ahead a bank of cloud rolled over a high ridge to our left. Every few kilometres we would see a small house off in the distance. These small farms appeared totally isolated, and we couldn’t imagine how they survived. Iceland does in many ways seem to marginal. It was quite poor until relatively recently, and even with economic improvement many farms have been abandoned even by the hardy Icelanders.
At Osar we found the red-faced farmer who ran the hostel. The summer season is very short in Iceland, running for most of July and August, and country people seem to appreciate the extra cash they can make from providing accommdation to the tourists who come here.
A very cosy pine cabin had been built newly this year, and there were English, Spanish, and American tourists staying there. A ten-minute walk away was the star attraction, the seal colony. A sand bank provided a kind of rest and relaxation area for the seals. Adults and their young lay contentedly on the sand, looking at us over the narrow expanse of water that seperated us. Sometimes they would curl their bodies, resembling some kind of yoga.
As the tide came in the seals would wait until the water had surrounded them before heading off into the sea to look for a fish dinner.

Even as Iceland looks quite small on a map of the world, it is a varied country and travel times make it feel very large. We chose to spend the next week in the Westfjords area, which points out into the sea towards Greenland. Whereas the centre of Iceland is ‘newer’ rock, flows of lava and sulphurous vapours, the Westfjords are much older, and have been sculpted by glaciers and the weather.
We headed first to Nordufjordur, tiny settlement at the end of the road that my guide quite simply described as one of the last places in Iceland.
The weather was overcast and rainy as reached the settlement, after a white-knuckle (very scarey) drive over mountains and along a narrow gravel road beside the sea. A small house offered ’sleeping bag accommodation’, very common in Iceland, generally a house that is well-appointed with hot showers and a kitchen. I camped but Isabelle has the house to herself for the first night. The warden was a widow who only spoke Icelandic, a rarity. Incredibly she took credit cards, producing a small manual credit card machine from an old shopping bag when Isabelle asked. It seems that everyone here takes credit cards, most people looking surprised and answering ‘of course’ when we asked them.
Over the next few days we walked some windy walks, and I bathed in a geothermally heated pool right next to the frigid and menacing sea.

From Nordufjordur we headed to Isafjordur, the commercial hub of the Westfjords. We were nearly tempted by the Thai restaurant mentioned in our guidebook, but but by this time had become used to the routine of buying yogurt and the odd fruit and vegetable, and cooking for ourselves. At our next stop, the fantastically situated Korpudalur youth hostel, we grilled marinated lamb steaks outside. The hostel is situated in a wide valley with scree-covered peaks rising in every direction. The sun shone through small holes in the cloud cover and lit up small sections of the mountains. The tops of the mountains had been heavily eroded, making serrated ridges.
The next day the weather improved, and we walked to the end of the one of the peninsulas to discover a bucolic valley with a tiny chapel. We tramped through ankle-high grass and moss, jumping over small gurgling streams, their banks covered in flowers. It was perfect; there were no buzzing insects that you can find in other northern countries, and no signs of man except for the chapel (which was locked).

Continuing on in our anti-clockwise (counter-clockwise) direction, we arrived the next day at the braoad sandy beach of Breidavik, near Latrabjarg. The Latrabjarg cliffs have the largest bird colony in Iceland, being home to thousands of puffins, guillemots, and other sea birds. It’s the puffin that every comes to see, of course.
The little birds are undeniably cute and (perhaps) cuddly, but it’s the way they look at you then jump off the cliff, soaring far out to see that endears them to visitors. They fly back, and make a spectacular landing as they skid to a halt.
The Icelanders eat them, of course, as they eat everything else that lives on or near the island with a few exceptions. Years past the local farmers would rappel down the cliffside to collect the birds’ eggs, or trap the birds themselves.

The tiny island of Flatey was our last stop before heading back to Reykjavik. The island lies in the middle of Breidafjordur, a large fjord which seperates the Westfjords from the Snaefellsnes peninsula. The island is less than 2 kilometres long, and has a permanent population of 4, although it increases in summer as some Reykjavik families own summer houses there. Even though cars can not be unloaded from the ferry, it wasn’t a problem. We got off and left the car keys with the ferry captain. They took the car off in the next port, Stykkisholmur, and held the keys on the ferry for us.
We trudged along the only road on Flatey, naturally a dirt track. The first house we saw had a sign advertising accommodation. Linna came out and greeted us in stilted English. There was no way you could hurry Linna, she moved slowly and talked slowly, and if you tried to change the subject or move to leave she would just carry on at her own pace. Hurrying was unknown to her perhaps, and who could blame her, living on an island with 3 other people and not a lot to do.
I left Isabelle and Linna discussing the price of the accommodation something like this: ‘How much is it?’
‘3000 or 4000 Krona, which do you prefer?’ Isabelle looked puzzled, ‘3000′. ‘Well, let’s see, we’ll talk about money later…’
We found the only cafe on the island, and had waffles and hot chocolate which took nearly 45 minutes to make, and was brought to our table by an angelic young lady with blue eyes and long blond hair, who I made the mistake of saying ‘merci’ to such was my confusion. I then corrected myself by saying ‘takk fyrir’ – thank you very much in Icelandic. As we tried to pay next morning and waited for the ferry, Linna told us they raised Eider ducks for their down (feathers), but we only saw about 10. Several times we asked to pay and motioned to leave but Linna, now joined by her husband with his long white beard and weathered face, ignored this and brought out her photo album. pictures of her grand-daughter being confirmed at the church.

If you ask what makes a place like Flatey special I can’t really tell you. In reality it’s a tiny piece of flat rock stuck out in the middle of the sea covered with some grass and a few houses. Isolation is probably the best quality, and getting on the ferry here certainly makes the other ferry passengers stare at you. Their eyes are saying ‘you stayed on that island?’
It is amazing to learn that 120 people used to live on Flatey. Don’t ask me what they did there, something like fishing perhaps but Linna tells us that the locals still hunt seals and puffins, which they are not allowed to sell, nor are they allowed to sell fish. But that’s the story all over Iceland, small communities of people who seem to be living in these incredible locations for the sheer hell of it. Of course nowadays you can live anywhere if you have money, but these people subsisted in these places with no outside help, and that’s very different.
They didn’t have deliveries of Swiss chocolate, beer, ice cream, dental floss and washing detergent.
Of course the Icelanders lived nowhere for the hell of it, but for some reason that I can only guess at. Iceland was settled back in the late 9th century by Vikings looking for new land as their homeland of Norway could no longer support them all. One lone Viking named Floki came and tried to settle, but all his cattle died in the first winter, and upon climbing a nearby mountain to look for new pastures he saw only icebergs in the neighbouring fjord. Disheartened he called the place Iceland and went home to Norway. Settled in time, Leif Eriksson, son of Erik the Red, sailed from Iceland and found Greenland. Trying to promote the new land to his friends at home he called it Greenland. Of course Iceland is green and Greenland is full of ice, but there you go.

I am off to Armenia in two weeks…

The Pyrenees are preferred by many to the Alps, due in part to their less-developed and less commercial atmosphere. Culturally and historically they are also more interesting; they are home to at least three distinct cultures (Basque, Occitan, and Catalan) each with its own language, and today are a bastion of those who want to preserve their regional cultures. One sees graffiti written on street signs proclaiming Basque or Occitan independence, and the names of towns and villages are often written (on the French side at least) in French and Occitan. Langue d’Oc, or the the language of Occitania, is the old language of the south of France. Historically, there were two main languages in France, the Langue d’Oil which was spoken in the north of France, and the Langue d’Oc. The north won out over the south, and its language prevailed. Modern French is the Langue d’Oil. The south of France, much like the South in the US, guards its culture and customs fiercely, and is always suspicious of interference from Paris.
This gives the south in general and the Pyrenees in particular a distinct feel; with a great pride in local customs and culture.
I walked through the high valleys and mountain passes to arrive at Gavarnie, probably the most famous spot in the Pyrenees, and with the predictable numbers of tourists from every nation. The Cirque de Gavarnie is a magnificent amphitheatre of rock that forms the Franco-Spanish border and towers over the small village of Gavarnie. I camped for a few days next to a mountain hut above the village, and spent a few nights at a gite d’etape (hostel type accommodation) nearby, doing day hikes. The hosts at the gite d’etape served up wonderful home-cooked meals each night to a clientele of hikers and climbers. Each day the different groups would go off to climb another peak or trek over another pass. Each evening they would return, buzzing with energy, devouring the 4-course meals amongst excited discussion of the day’s adventure. It reminded me much of IAC trips I had been on. At one point, someone told the story of two woodcutters they knew from a local village who would go up in the hills each day, talking with them their packed lunches, and 5 litres of red wine. Each evening they would return, the 5 litres of wine all gone. Thirsty work, cutting trees.

The Cirque de Gavarnie

One day took me on a hike up to the Spanish border. I trudged up, occasionally spotting marmottes, the small furry animals that live above 1800 metres in the Alps and Pyrenees. Equivalent to the Prairie Dog in the US, they made a high-pitched cry when I approached, standing up on two legs to investigate this strange invader of their territory. At last they would run to their holes and dive in.
It wasn’t until I had actually reached the border, which is not marked in any way, that I could see Spain. It was noticeably drier than the French side. Indeed, Spanish shepherds still bring their cows over the high passes each spring to the French side so their cattle can spend the summer on the green pastures. This interdependence of communities on the French and Spanish sides goes back centuries. When the French-Spanish border was finalized in a treaty in the 1860s an exception was granted to the communities here. In times if war or conflict, the communities could cooperate and aid each other under any circumstances. Even if the people on the Spanish side were under attack by the French army the French villagers could aid their Spanish brethren!

At the border, I gazed into Spain. There was a simple mountain track descending down the valley to a small road at the bottom. After only a few metres I was approached by a tourist. He pointed to the mountains and spoke in full speed Spanish. I hunched my shoulders to show my lack of comprehension. He continued. I wasn’t sure what language to speak; I knew he had come from the French side like me.
Around were the high peaks of the Pyrenees, not as high as those in the Alps, but impressive mountains all the same. The great Vignemalle, Pic du Midi d’Ossau, and Monte Perdido, or the Lost Mountain, which stands at 3,355 metres on the Spanish side.

Following my Pyrenean walk, I descended from the mountains to the warm foothills south of Toulouse. My destination was the Haras Picard du Sant, a horse farm run by an ex-Parisian which raises the Merens breed of horse. I visited the farm to meet its owner, and discuss the possibility of taking small groups of visitors there, on ‘rural experience’ holidays, where they could learn about the horses, learn to make traditional jams and other foods, and perhaps take part on the bi-annual ‘transhumance’, the spring and autumn moving of the horses to their summer pasture. Every year, the horses are lead on a three-day trek along country roads and through villages to the Pyrenees, a distance of about 60 kilometres.

Merens horse farm

The farm, with the beautiful black Merens horses was enchanting, as much for the passion with which it was run by the mother and son team, and by the stunning views of the Pyrenees.

Hilltop village

Going back about a month, I left Normandy on a long drive around France. My objective was to do research for my planned walking tour business. I had to drive to different areas, look for the good walking routes, and collect information on accommodation, transport such as buses and trains, etc. and talk to tourist offices. In the course of this trip I drove 4,100 kilometres, and saw quite a lot of France.
One always thinks one knows a country more than one really does, and so it was with me and France. I visited regions I had never been to (Burgundy, the Loire Valley, the Lot) and went back to areas I had been to previously (Cevennes, Pyrenees, Dordogne…).
I covered France in a clockwise motion, starting in Burgundy which is south-east of Paris, and heading south to the mountainous Cevennes with its stone houses and hillsides dotted with sheep. I then went West to the Lot through the high Causses plateaus without going as far south as the Mediterranean. From there I went to the Pyrenees, which I have my eye on as a place to buy a house. Heading north I took in the Perigord and the Loire Valley before arriving
back in Normandy. Now I am sitting on a cross-channel ferry, heading to London for 5 days to do some work and for a few meetings.

Vinyards in the Beaujolaid region

One can see from such a journey that tourism is such a massive industry in France. Every region has its pretty villages stuffed full of tourists from abroad. It is almost as though some parts of France are one gigantic outdoor museum. Driving for about 45 minutes in the Dordogne I counted one German, one Belgian, 5 British, and 15 Dutch cars. For some reason the Dutch love France (probably the same reason as the British), and come here in large numbers. What’s odd is there are three or four times as many Germans as Dutch but you hardly ever see Germans.
My favourite regions on this trip were the Cevennes and Pyrenees. These are the two areas that I would consider living in myself. The Cevennes is in the south-centre of the country, part of the upland area called the Massif Centrale. The mountains are more like hills, and there are no real peaks or scenery like the Alps or Pyrenees, but they have gorges, and the hills reach up to around 2,000 metres, so the winter is long and tough and one can do skiing (both downhill and cross-country), and also snow-shoeing. It’s a very poor area, as there is little agriculture and it is too cold for wine. The Cevennes has become famous for walking because of the diary written by the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson in the 1880s. He wrote his famous ‘Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes‘ after spending twelve days travelling through the hills and small villages with his donkey, Modestine.

Today the route he is supposed to have taken (the exact route is unclear) is a long-distance walking path, and hikers, both French and foreign, trek from north to south, some of them even renting a donkey, although Stevenson’s tales of his stubborn friend would put most people off the idea.
I stayed in a gite d’etape here, a uniquely French invention that I think should be exported the world over. Somewhere between a youth hostel and a bed and breakfast, the gite d’etape is designed for the walker, long-distance cyclist, or even those with donkeys. The atmosphere is always friendly, the food not fancy but some of the best you will have in France, and the prices incredibly good value.

A home-cooked meal with strangers

For the next few days I stayed at the Eagle’s Nest, the French base for the company that run the Kasbah du Toubkal hotel in Morocco, which I visited with Mike Gellerman several years ago. I had written to the owner back in April, and we met to talk about some business opportunities.
The French location is not a hotel, but a field study centre for schools, and the all-English staff were very welcoming. I felt as if I was back in England except for when the cheese went around at the end of the meal.

The Pyrenees, a mountain range that keeps the French and Spanish at a respectable distance, is somewhere that I have loved since I first went there many years ago. The mountains are older than the Alps, less dramatic perhaps, but it is also much less developed, with less foreign tourists, and the ski resorts here are mostly used only by the French. The Pyrenees are also home to many ancient cultures, most famously of the Basques, whose homeland occupies much of the northern range. Next are the Bearnais, an independant kingdom in mediaeval times, and the Cathare country, where the 13th centur heretical Cathare sect was brutal suppressed by the Catholic church. Lastly, where

the Pyrenees meet the Mediterranean is Rousillon, where the people spoke Catalan from neighbouring Spain.
The Pyrenees are home to independant-minded people, people who love their traditions and don’t care much for Paris or central-government. I came here to look at places to buy a house, and found some lovely villages, just within my reach financially. My preference is to buy a small house in a small village, not something too isolated, as many English people do. I think it’s better to have some people around you especially if, like me, you will spend time In away. In this area they get enough snow to do cross-country skiing and snow-shoeing nearby, and hiking and mountain-biking in the summer. The Spanish border (and Barcelona) are not too far away, and the principality of Andorra is one hour by car.

Pyrenees foothills

Leaving behind the cool mountains of the Pyrenees, I headed north, staying one week at the house of a family friend. My host, Francoise, had to leave to attend to business in Paris, so I used her house, north of Toulouse, as base for exploring the surrounding countryside. It was hot, around 35, but the thick stone walls kept the inside of the house cool without the need for air conditioning or fans. I would come back each afternoon and cool off by the swimming pool, looking over my days notes and maps. From where I was the Dordogne and Lot areas were to my north. These areas are characterised by gentle green landscapes dotted with hilltop villages. These villages are mostly still ‘living villages’ as I call them, that is they have not been totally given over to tourism. Generally there are a few cafes, a boulangerie (bakery), boucherie (butcher’s), etc. and the village still has a life of its own. In the more famous villages, however, the shops sell only souvenirs, such as foie gras (geese livers) and art.

Cafe life