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From Knockinaam Lodge
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From New York
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From French Misadventures 2023
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From Easter with Laurence & Megan
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From Barnard Castle Cycling
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From Black Forest New Year
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From Border Hiking in Periyar Tiger Reserve
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From More farmland and even more tea plantations and on to spice plantations
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From Chamonix Renovations
Category: Walking
Walking (mostly in the mountains).
As a very special pre-xmas treat Laetitia took us to the most amazing hotel for a complete five-star experience. Knockinaam Lodge is famed not just for its luxury accommodation and food, but also for its links to John Buchan and his book The 39 Steps; and to Churchill, who stayed here to plan parts of …
Part of my interest in visiting the Gunks for climbing was also the possibility of seeing perhaps the most famous city in the world, New York…
Our summer jollies to the Alps this year had mixed results…
Thankfully the long Easter weekend was blessed with a brilliant sunny forecast, perfect for our visiting nephew, Laurence, and his girlfriend, Megan, to see some of the best the Lake District has to offer…
We needed to get our eyes tested so we headed off to Barnard Castle with Andy & Astrid Saxby and Nigel & Kath Hooker. It turned out that we could all see fine! Surprising really, considering how utterly bloody freezing it was on the bikes, how knackered our un-used to hiking legs were from a …
We’d hoped to be able to do some skiing in the Black Forest with our friends Rebecca and Mathias. But the weather was more like spring or autumn than winter … glorious blue skies, dry leaves on the ground instead of fluffy snow, and T-shirt wearing temperatures!
On Sunday we woke to rain, which didn’t bode well for our ‘rest day’, a 15km trek in the Periyar Tiger Reserve. Fortunately the rain was warm, but it soon stopped so we didn’t really need to carry our waterproof coats and trousers all day!
The next day, Thursday, we cycled from Pollachi for 50km through very fertile farmlands. At one point we stopped and chatted to a couple of ladies weaving screens from palm leaves. They aim to weave about 100 in a day and they will get paid 500 rupees. They looked very happy in their task.
Open fireplaces are not allowed in Chamonix rental apartments any longer so a massive renovation project was planned…
