(Photo: View over Salzburg and the northestern ridge of the Bavarian Alps / Dave Long)
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From the Gaisberg in late December
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Escape to the Alpujarras
“Mountain air and winter sun, chestnut trees and almond blossom, whitewashed village houses and reflective surfaces in the distance that may be the sea but could also be those plastic greenhouses that own the coast towards Almeria…” These are some of the scribbles in my notebook from the times we have been in the Alpujarras, these valleys only a short drive from Granada or the Mediterranean coast, and the words on the page fill me with dreams of escape and have me checking the cost of flights to Malaga. Continue reading
Stone Monkey
Worth a look: Johnny Dawes video from the Guardian.co.uk
Climbing for me provided a means of self-expression. Ability, too, can mean wider social acceptance, even if only in a superficial “one of the gang” way. To a young, socially immature person, that grew as a cancer, to a stage where my climbing was taken out of my hands to an extent. The end of this lies in photographs, sponsorship, ugly tights and a dead end with a bolted door.
Quote from his website. His memoir has recently been released, and the Guardian also wrote a profile of him that was put online last week and has now been updated to include the video – which is quite astonishing, especially the footage of him climbing bolders with no hands or, at one point, on one leg…
New Year’s Day, Berlin
(Photo: The Panke river on New Year’s Day)
As this is Germany it is a peculiarly organised form of chaos. On New Year’s Eve the locals (and the rest of us, but mainly the locals) launch the city’s debt-worth of fireworks into the sky, filling the night air with an almighty racket and a thick cloud of gunpowder-tinged smoke. The next morning the pavements and any open spaces are filled with the debris of last night’s celebrations, but some householders are already out on the street, sweeping it away from the pavement into piles for the binmen to collect. Continue reading
A traveller arrives in a strange town…
I pulled into Nazareth
Was feelin’ about half past dead
I just need some place
where I can lay my head
‘Hey, Mister can you tell me
where a man might find a bed?’
He just grinned and shook my hand
And ‘no’ was all he said…
A song for New Year’s Eve, the next morning, and any day hereafter…
Eating Outdoors: The Sun Also Rises
Hemingway’s narrator has cooled his wine in the river whilst he fishes, in preparation for this lunch, and you get the sense that this is the whole point of the day. Of all the scenes in this book, it is this one that sticks in the memory. I never wanted to see a bullfight, but I would have liked to have been by the mountain stream to share this meal: Continue reading
Looking back on 2011
(Photo: View to Snowdonia from Rhoscolyn / Katrin Schönig)
We have to start somewhere, so how better to begin than with an ending, as we head into 2012? This time last year we were just in our new Berlin apartment, and it is incredible how quickly the months have passed. Certain pictures are still leaning against walls upon which they appear destined never to hang. I don’t feel like I have really taken in the pictures of Snowdonia from the calendar above my desk – so much so that I have decided it will do for next year as well – and a half-hearted resolution made a year back to simply get out more feels like it is still in the planning stage rather than close to being achieved. Perhaps that is the subconscious inspiration for this website. Maybe. Continue reading
Under a Grey Sky 