A stroll in the park

Regents Park & Primrose Hill, London
Just been mooching about snapping in the moody sunshine and showers we've been having lately. I think the below should give you a flavour of autumn in London.




...and if it doesn't, entertain yourself with Whoopee's little gem of a Burns-esque poem,aptly named Winter Days With Pants. If it doesn't crack you up, check you've still got a pulse or haven't become Austrian.

Red eyes & brown pants

Savvanakhet, Laos
I had another red-eye start today and have sped down to Savvanakhet, sort of half way down the taily bit of Laos. Decided to get a wriggle on as time seems to be ebbing away a little.

To say the bus journey here was terrifying would be like saying there were a few teething problems with the new Wembley Stadium. My Laos bowels almost returned and my old friend Strangely Brown almost reappeared on the seat next to me. The road (or surface of the moon with patches of tarmac) was awash with confused, dim and rather reckless water buffalo, cattle and goats. However, the bus driver was seemingly more confused dim and definitely reckless. He seemed to think that heavy handed use of the horn was a safer tactic than more light footed & judicious use of the accelerator pedal. At one point he had to swerve to avoid a calf that had got confused by his honking horn, or just had balls the size of water melons and was playing chicken, and the bus was almost tipped onto two wheels. Now wait a minute pal, choosing to drive at breakneck speed on livestock littered 'highways' isn't clever, but if you do, then DO NOT kill me trying to swerve out of the way of a beastie. Just hit the frikking thing and live with the consequences of your own stupidity! Better still slow down, and do everyone a favour. Maybe he lived in Savvanakhet and had just been told that his house was on fire. Maybe he was just a stupid nutter with a death wish!

No pics from me (trouble with the computer) but here's a pic of what could have ended up sitting in seat 13B of the bus:


Oh, and I know my viewing public that return loyally day on day for morsels of wordy nourishment and visual titillation are desperate to know this...I think I've got to the bottom of the rice issue previously mentioned. I shan't go into it here for fear of looking like a complete rice geek, but suffice to say I envisage nights of uninterrupted sleep and perhaps gaining some colour in my hair that has gone grey with worrying about the conundrum. If you really want to know, TAG me you saddo!

[By the way, managed to add a title at LAST! Away the puns!]

I like figs

Roberts Ridge, Nelson Lakes, NZ South Island - Dec 2006
After the lung busting climb up to the Bushline Hut and a night of giving Steve a merciless lesson in how to play Gin Rummy (as usual), we awoke to our second glorious day of sunshine. What's going on? Is this really NZ? Apparently the sun does shine...occasionally. We headed off up the Roberts Ridge at a suitably lazy hour (as usual). Our goal for the day - the Angelus Hut.

Start of the hike through Hansel & Gretel country. I had to prevent Steve from leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. Silly boy.

Atop the ridge with St Arnaud and Lake Roititi in the background. I think I was suggesting the camera operator step back so he could get our feet in the shot. He didn't listen. Then again, when do stone cairns ever listen?

The barren and lunar landscape of the Roberts Ridge. Pretty desolate but starkly beautiful.

Wondering why my pack was so heavy I stopped to investigate and to my surprise out popped a semi naked man carrying a billy can. How odd.

The route that lay before us. Somewhere in the cluster of snow dusted peaks in the distance is Mount Angelus. This was shortly before we were caught up and overtaken by a group of 12 year old cub scouts. I think their mini stature suited the terrain.

Some corrie lakes. Strangely Blue had been through again. Not much sign of his British cousin, Strangely Brown although plenty of evidence of his brother, Baron von Landscape.

Steve had been in charge of provisions and learning from our experience of the Routeburn Track where we were kitted out like some nineteenth century nobleman's expedition, we had veered to the other extreme. I mean I like figs, dried fruit and nuts but five days of bird food can be a bit tiresome on the constitution. Where's the potted ham, Madeira wine and plum duff?

My attempt at an arty B&W shot. Steve's attempt to release some trapped wind.

More evidence of Baron von Landscape.

To fit in with the alien landscape even the plants looked like Mars lifeforms on a team-building exercise in this desolate spot.


As we ascended pockets of snow started to scatter the path. Terrific.



A little vid clip of us bagging a subsidiary peak, Mt Julius, along the way.

The end of the day and we sight the Angelus Hut nestling on a promontory (if a hut can nestle).

We abandoned the bird food and got stuck into our 'Just Add Water' meal. Actually, not half bad. We didn't have any sausages to go with the tomato & onion sauce alas. Not even a fine chorizo sausage from Galicia...nor indeed a bottle of 1996 Rioja to wash it down. Ah well.

Glacier - kinda minty

Franz Josef, west coast NZ south island - 18 Nov, 2006
Being a physical geographer at heart I've always had a fascination with glaciers and woooah, looky looky here, there's a fine, accessible example of a glacier on NZ's west coast at Franz Josef. What a stroke of luck.

I used my newly adopted 'precision tourism' approach - get in, see the glacier, get out. This was lucky as Franz Josef is a tiny spot with nothing to do other than see the glacier...and it was absolutely tipping it down with rain. I really can't describe how hard it was raining. It was coming down so hard that you thought it couldn't possibly rain any harder...and then it did. And after that brief increase in intensity, it upped the ante and started raining harder still. It was like an open air power shower (the power being 10 to the nine).

A bleak west coast beach and my attempted 'arty shot'. Maybe I should stick to macrame.

The Franz Josef glacier from about 3kms away. It's a big ol' beasty.
Up onto the glacier. Interestingly (for me anyway) the Franz Josef glacier is quite unusual in that it comes down to almost sea level and into the forest line. Our guide, in a bid to educate us, asked us why we thought the glacier was so unusual. I had all the answers (naturally) and had to bite my tongue so I didn't appear like the class spod and so he could look knowledgeable. In case you were wondering it's due to a combination of massive precipitation (7m of rainfall p.a. at sea level equating to 50m of snow at the accumulation zone), massive collection bowl (corrie) and very steep descent meaning it travels fast (for a glacier that is...I could still take it in a sprint) and to lower altitudes than its less well fed cousins. So ends the geography lesson.

A crevasse in the glacier. All strangely blue, which is better than being Strangely Brown.

Gordon & Phyllis whom I met at the FJ hostel. A fine and sprightly couple with a taste for adventure. And they come from Norfolk - Up The Canaries! If I have half as much energy as them in my 60s I'll be doing very well.