Category Archives: Walks

Waiting for the fog to lift: Bled, Slovenia

Down by the lake there was nothing to see. The fog had descended overnight, filling the valley and hanging above the surface of the water. On the path along the shore runners and dog-walkers appeared as ghostly visions. Somewhere, out there, was the island of a million postcards, the castle on the rocky outcrop and the high peaks of the Julian Alps. Somewhere. But not for us, not yet.

We started to walk, following the shoreline path clockwise around the lake. The road was busy with tour buses travelling the short distance from the town to the place where the wooden boats are punted across to the island and its picturesque church. Above we could see the sun forcing its way through the fog. Visibility on ground level was barely fifty metres, and yet above there was already the first hints of blue sky.

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Up Conistone Dib, Yorkshire Dales

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We stopped at the village crossroads, a walker’s picnic on the bench of sandwiches and misshapen chocolate bars, while a pair of cyclists leaned their bikes against the stone wall and debated on which road they would do battle with speeding drivers next. A car stopped, its driver leaning out of the window to ask directions to a pub somewhere hereabouts. None of us could help, but a local woman in wellies could, sending him back the way he came. Summertime, lunchtime, in Conistone.

We had followed the river from Grassington, from the car park above Linton Falls and then upstream before taking a back road popular with speeding cyclists until we reached the village. After lunch our aim was upwards, following the path around the side of some cottages where family played cricket in the garden, right through the middle of their game. Around the back of the last house the limestone rocks from which this part of the world is built started to close around us. This gorge, formed most probably as a glacial drainage channel, was the aim of the walk.

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Sechs Kilometer (Ost) Berlin: Walking from Warschauer Straße

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There is no reason for this walk except for the locations of two appointments; one in Friedrichshain, the other in Hohenschönhausen. I call them both up on Google Maps and ask for the distance between them. A half second later and I have my answer: Six kilometres and an hour and twenty minutes when travelling on foot. Half an hour on a combination of trams. Fifteen minutes in a theoretical car. Outside it is overcast and blustery, but the forecast is that it should remain dry. Walking it is.

I start out from the RAW complex beside the railway tracks, below the bridge at Warschauer Straße. At home I have a reproduction of a 1902 street map of Berlin which tells me that this used to be a railway maintenance yard, part of a network of lines and stations in this corner of the city that linked Berlin with territories far to the east. Now it is a hub of cultural venues; of bars and clubs and galleries; a poster on an outside wall promises a swimming pool. Inside the walls appear to be held up by spray paint and fly posters.

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The stories of the Simonside Hills, Northumberland

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We walked up through the forest, following a rising track surrounded by trees, waiting for the moment that it opened out and offered us views east to the calm waters of the North Sea that we had left behind a few hours before, and north to higher hills along the Scottish border. As we walked we told stories, imagining the path we were following had been cleared by dragons, or that the dry-stone walls half-swallowed by the undergrowth were ancient territory markers of beasts and beings that existed only in our imagination. We did not know it then, as we walked through the forest, but the Simonside Hills that we were aiming for have long been a place of stories and storytelling, and we were far from the first to have been inspired by this landscape.

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Out from Craster along St Oswald’s Way

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Craster in the early morning. The North Sea is calm, still like a mill pond. Down below the path oystercatchers pick their way across the rocks of what – at a higher tide – we have named ‘Jacob’s Island’ but which is now very much connected with the mainland. At low tide a rusted ship’s boiler can be seen resting on the damp sands, the legacy of a hundred-year-old wreck and a reminder that while the sea may be calm this morning, the rocks along the Northumbrian shore have claimed many ships over the centuries.

Through the village and there is little sign of life on the streets. Outside the cafe a young woman wipes the overnight moisture from the picnic tables on the terrace, preparing for a day of serving tea, cake and sandwiches to daytrippers and long-distance walkers following St Oswald’s Way along the coast. A drinks delivery is unloaded at the the pub and in the smokehouse someone is working as the smell of kippers drifts out from the stone buildings and down towards the harbour.

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Around Holyhead Mountain, Wales

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When sitting in the back of the car as we crossed Anglesey as kids – slowly, because the dual carriageway hadn’t been built yet – we were always searching for the landmarks that meant we were nearly there. There was one point, the crest of a low hill, where the road cut through some rocks beneath a white cottage surrounded by gorse bushes, that we would see through the gap in the front seats and the car windscreen the vista that told us we were close. The Rhoscolyn Coastguard lookout. The reverse cigarette of the Anglesey Aluminium tower. Holyhead Mountain.

A little more than 200m high Holyhead Mountain is easily the highest point on Holy Island, higher than anything on Anglesey, and although that is not particularly tall when compared to the peaks of Snowdonia a few miles away, it is still a striking lump of rock that sits above the port town of Holyhead and falls directly into the sea on two sides. The Romans built a lookout tower there, which gives it its Welsh name of Mynydd Twr… and it appears to have been a place of settlement and human activity for thousands of years. It has had chunks taken out of it as it was quarried for stone and the cliffs below its summit are popular and populated with any number of bird species who share the slabs with rock climbers dreaming of white horses as kayakers ride the waves beneath their feet. We have been coming here for years, mainly to the South Stack Lighthouse and the Ellins Tower RSPB centre, but this time we were going to walk the mountain.

Not up it, but around. Continue reading →

Just like going home – Rhoscolyn, Wales

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Long time readers of Under a Grey Sky will have seen pieces about Rhoscolyn before, and here comes another one, but I make no apology. As someone who left the UK at the age of 22 and has lived in Berlin for almost 15 years, and whose parents no longer live in the town that I grew up in, the idea of “home” has always been an interesting one to me. And if there is one constant in my conscious memory, the one place that has changed through the years but – really, when it comes to my emotions about the place – always stayed the same, then that is Rhoscolyn, and specifically Outdoor Alternative, home to my Uncle and Aunty, cousins and whatever it is kids of cousins are to me or to Lotte (we have this discussion on every visit).

Over Easter we returned again, to that field with the views across from Holy Island to Anglesey and beyond, to Snowdonia. When the weather is good it feels as if you can make out the climbers reaching the top of those peaks. When the weather closes in you can feel as if this collection of buildings along a dusty track is the very end of the world. This time, on arrival, we did as we always do and walked the headland around to the beach, following at the same time the waymarked trail of the Anglesey Coastal Path but also the personal topography of memory and my fellow members of the Red Devils, who explored every patch of heather and gorse, sandy cove and rocky inlet, and gave them names and stories and drew maps that made the place truly ours… and now, as we walked that headland again, I could still picture those maps in my head as I told some of those stories to Lotte.

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Above the city, Prague

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The sounds of the city began to fade as we climbed the steep slope up from the river embankment; the squeal of the trams as they turned the corner to cross the bridge; the siren of a police car racing past the Rudolfinum on the opposite bank; the bells from any number of churches, whose spires rise up above the Old Town and, as we climbed higher, came more and more into view.

At the top we reached Letná Park we could see beyond the narrow streets of the Josefov and around Old Town Square, out to the TV Tower with David Černý’s babies ever crawling up the sides. After a few days of staring up at the castle we now looked across the ridge to it, to Petrin Hill and down the river towards the National Theatre, the New Town, and some modern tower blocks beyond. Continue reading →

A walk in white Wedding, Berlin

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We caught the tram having walked through smooth, unmarked snow on the pavement outside our house. As we walked a cyclist passed, cutting a solitary line ahead of us where the caretaker of a neighbouring building leaned on his shovel and considered the work that was to come. The tram was soggy, with puddles of water surrounding islands of grit, our neighbourhood of Berlin-Wedding passing by on the other side of steamed-up windows.

We took the tram to the end of the line. Is this where we came for my arm? Lotte asked, as she always does when we come to this corner of the city, as we disembarked opposite the Virchow Klinikum. Yep, I replied, but turned her away from the hospital and crossed over towards the graveyard that stands like a gothic warning to patients walking the grounds on the other side of the street. Here the road, our road, makes its last hundred metres as an ordinary city street before it becomes the motorway, next stop Dresden, Leipzig or Magdeburg…
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Snow by the Panke, Berlin

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Overnight the familiar world changes. The city under snow is a different place. Edges are softened. Sound is muffled. Lotte and I walk out from our apartment onto the street we see every single day and it feels like a place in a dream, one which you recognise, where you know where you are but that doesn’t seem quite right. Not that Lotte cares, as she sees the clean, untouched expanse of snow covering the terrace of the hotel next door.

Can I?

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