Renovations
Published on 9th February 2026 
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutesAbout this time of year, I often introduce some changes to the appearances or the fundamentals of this website. While this does not happen every year, it has taken place in the last few weeks, informed but not performed by AI in some instances. The last time that this happened was in the age before AI came into our lives, when more dramatic visual changes were made on moving to a more recent version of Bootstrap.
On the back end, the Travel and Surroundings sections have been moved from Textpattern to Grav in the interests of modernisation, going from infrequently updated software to something that has a more active open-source community behind it. This also offered some scope for visual changes too, especially for the landing page of the Travel section. It also allowed for some restructuring of the content.
The same thinking was applied to the site home page to give visitors less cognitive load as they figured out what to explore on this portal. Other places on here got some of the same visual freshening as well. Things are settling into place now, yet there will be more scope for tinkering as time brings sensible and compatible ideas and opportunities for doing so.
Naturally, my mind turns to content, too. Given how sluggish I am with writing trip reports, there are plenty of those to come from previous times. It does not matter so much yet that 2025 was a slack year for hill wandering, and 2026 has fallen into a wet and windy rut so far, limiting possibilities as much as a busy work life.
Nevertheless, some plots are afoot. For instance, Irish hiking ideas were collected during the festive period, with some pondering of transport practicalities that made it in the previous post on here. Scotland's Lochaber and Norway's Oslo offer prospects, while Canada could be a stretch target if I fancy crossing the Atlantic this year. It is too early to say exactly how things will go, leaving scope for some surprises as the year goes on its way. Nice surprises are always welcome gifts.
