Category: Places Explored
Journeys of others
15th November 2018 Before my career break, I found it difficult time to read a book and often lapsed into watch television documentaries on the BBC iPlayer. The situation got reversed after a book called Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi encouraged the practice. Whenever I feel an emotion that I do not want to remain, a TV watching binge never helped but reading a book causes movement and the feeling can be left in the past. It is as if someone else's journey brings you along too.
Currently, that is taking on the shores of the Aran Islands in the company of Yorkshireman Tim Robinson. Reading his two part work on the islands has lain on my reading list for far too long and I started Stones of Aran: Pilgrimmage back in the noughties only never to get very far with it. My paper copy may be gone but I made a new start on its digital counterpart and it is reading well so far.
Handily, I visited Inishmore (Árainn, as Gaeilge) so the localities are not all that lost to me. If another visit were to happen, then Iaráirne could see an encounter as could the opposite end of the island if I feel sufficiently adventurous. Sightings of Inishmann (inis Meáin, as Gaeilge) or the Brannock Islands could be additional rewards for such endeavours. Before such things, more of Robinson's works like Stones of Aran: Labyrinth and his Connemara Trilogy await and who knows what they might inspire?
The world described by Tim Robinson is not dissimilar in ambience to that described in Chris Townsend's The Munros and Tops, another of this year's reads. After that came John McPhee's Coming into the Country and it proved to be a book in three very different sections. The first section features the Brooks Range with a narrative split in two with the second part preceding the first. It still hangs together well with the second and third sections featuring more of the folk that are attracted to the idea of a wild place away from the strictures of everyday living.
That unleashes tensions when trying to find a new state capital or dealing with the encroaching bureaucracy keen on keep a wild landscape as it is when you fancy exploiting its resources on a small scale. The act of taking a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer into wilderness oddly aroused my concern for the machine and not the landscape as might be expected. Maybe it reminded me of of abandonment in a big hostile world and there could be a wider theme there. In the end, McPhee finds himself siding with industrious Alaskans earning a living rather than others solely following their perhaps unrealisable dreams. They might fancy abandonment much like Christopher McCandless only to find that they still need humanity or that it continues to intrude on their world.
Stepping away from humanity awhile is a recurring theme in my own wanderings and it is why such places as the Scottish highlands and islands are as amenable to my ends as the wilder parts of other places. That also explains a certain interest in North America that was accompanied by perusal of writings about Lewis and Clark crossing the continent though that was a very dry read that I was happy to finish.
There is another recurring theme in all of this: you often find Robert Macfarlane appearing in these with either a recommendation or a foreword. That applies to the McPhee and Robinson works as much as that by Nan Shepherd on the Cairngorms. It might be that he is using his fame to restore older books to our notice but I reckon that I might be reading them anyway given how I have been collecting them onto a reading list in recent months.
Speaking of those older books, it is unlikely but if I ever were to wnat more but I might be tempted by the Gutenberg project if I wanted eReader files of works from a very different era by Heny David Thoreau or Raplh Waldo Emerson. They are out of copyright but a visit to either AbeBooks, The Literature Network or Scribd could serve a use if I fancied a wider selection of those still covered by such restrictions. With more new tomes that appeal to me, that is unlikely to happen just yet. Usefully, the time taken to complete any single volume should put a brake on any overspending. After all, it is better to acquire for reading than to decorate a bookshelf and horde more than you need.
Overcoming an obstruction
12th November 2018 Currently, an ongoing train conductor's strike at Arriva Rail North, otherwise known as Northern Rail, has meant that local train services in the north of England are much reduced on Saturdays and that is set to continue until the end of the year. In fact, I would be surprised if it did not continue through 2019 given the ongoing stand-off.
Saturday usually was when I went out on walking trips so the reduction in train services has given me pause for thought since I do not have a car. Some feel trapped by what is happening but I have begun to think about alternative options offer by bus travel. The bus network may be beleaguered after years of spending cuts but I reckon that it still offers some travel possibilities.
One of these is the Witch Way service between Manchester and Skipton. Perhaps surprisingly, journey times are not so much longer than going by train because of layover times between different services. The fact that you are rather doubling back on yourself when travelling from Manchester to Skipton is another factor.
Last Saturday saw me try out that bus route to gain a few hours around Skipton after an absence of too many years. The town was busy because it was market day and there was a display at the visitor centre pertaining to World War I, a relevant subject given Armistice Day was near. The crowds were left too as I wandered into Skipton Castle Wood, pottered along the Leeds to Liverpool Canal and passed through Aireville Park. Occasional sunshine was overtaken by spells of rain but it did not matter for this was a break from a Saturday spent at home. That was enough for me.
There is another bus route that I like to sample and it is part of the Mainline bus network. The service goes between Burnley and Keighley and passes through countryside that I perhaps have not visited since a bunch of Pennine Way wanderings in 2007 and I fancy pottering along a missed section of the trail between Ickornshaw and Cowling, an oversight that has lain unaddressed for longer than is desirable.
Maybe there might be a chance to fill in that gap as part of a repeat visit to countryside where I found waymarking was not what it should have been. Recent years of reduced public spending cannot have helped so a GPS receiver or the OS mobile phone map could have its uses in keeping me from going astray and annoying the locals in the process. There was some of that on a walk along the Pennine Way between Gargrave and Cowling when the tapping of a finger on a window deterred me from erroneously going further into someone's back yard. Embarrassment kept me from checking the mood of whoever was at that window and it might have been a better course to take.
There was a time a time when I was a regular visitor to Yorkshire with many a day trip featuring parts of Wharfedale with some overnight stays too. Basing myself in either Keighley or Skipton could allow some repeat visits after many years and both Malham Cove and Malham Tarn could be among them. Though very different in aspect, Brontë country is another possibility since there is many a right of way to found around there and bus services are decent too.
As I think of them, numerous possibilities come to mind to follow what I have done already. Thoughts take me around by Settle and Nidderdale in a continuing mix of millstone grit and limestone scars. Capturing some of the sights using digital photography is a bonus since I mainly used film on those earlier incursions. Also, it feels as if I need to take some notes and act upon them. After all, the reduced mobility by train could make North and West Yorkshire all the more useful and a bit of quiet strolling never did any harm.
Experiences with Spanish hiking maps
3rd November 2018 Currently, I am writing up my walking trip to Mallorca from December 2016 but it is proving to be slow going. Enthusiasm for completing the job is waning so splitting up the endeavour might be in order, especially since the narrative is heading in different directions. Towards this end, I will share my ruminations on using Spanish hiking maps since they have intruded in the trip report and could deflect it from proceeding in a single direction. As things stand, it needs some additions even if it already has grown quite long already.
Before I left, I ensured that I was supplied with maps. The best of these were ones by Editorial Alpina and they covered the Serra de Tramuntana as a two map set. The scale was 1:25000 with hiking trails well marked but I ended up stepping outside their coverage around Port d'Andratx and needed one from the 1:40000 four map set by Reise Know-How to make up the shortfall. The latter covers the whole island, shows hiking trails and is made from waterproof paper, not that I needed the last feature on my trip.
Though it provided useful trail tracking, my Garmin GPS receiver proved less useful because of the poor quality of its Spanish maps. Around Port de Pollença, it may have been stymied by the presence of a military facility but the shortcomings were more than apparent around Port d'Andrtatx when I failed to locate the path that would have led me to a track towards Sant Elm. It did not help that I was in a fragile state that day but I would consider an alternative on another Spanish trip.
Though maps from Spain's national mapping agency CNIG do not show trails, they do come in 1:50000 and 1:250000 scales that are available in digital form through SityTrail and ViewRanger. The former of these offers annual subscriptions while only an expensive all country lifetime licence is available from the latter. Both offer mobile phone apps so they would be usable much like that from Britain's Ordnance Survey, useful as a pinpointing backup to a paper map for those moments when uncertainty descends though complementing with a compass is best.
If I was ever to venture onto Spanish territory again, I would be tempted to give SityTrail a whirl while out walking. For writing the Mallorca trip report, I have an active subscription and have been able to load GPX tracks on there after exporting them from my Garmin device. That should help with route descriptions even with CNIG data behind them and added photos can act as confirmation.
Forthside wanderings
30th October 2018 This year's trips to Edinburgh have seen a developing trend: a tendency to go walking along the southern shore of the Firth of Forth. February saw me pottering along Edinburgh's northern shores on a stroll that took me from Edinburgh's city to and along the water of Leith before I headed west as far as Silverknowes where I caught a bus to Waverley train station where I caught my train home.
That necessarily cut off an approach to Cramond, but the omission got addressed on a July visit when I walked along the coast west of Silverknowes before going inland along the banks of the River Almond and that was followed by a brief visit to the Cammo Estate before I found a bus stop from where I began my journey home. There was no crossing to Cramond Island because it was a time of high tide, so examining tide times ahead of a coastal hike and that lesson was reinforced more recently.
As it happened, this past Saturday saw the longest stroll of the lot, with my going west from North Berwick to Seton Sands. Mainly, it involved travel over sandy beaches and dunes, as well as rocky shorelines. Many coastal rocky prominences like Bass Rock or Fidra caught my eye and led to photographic activity. Part of the John Muir Way was followed too, especially after a crossing of Aberlady Bay was stymied by the depth of Peffer Burn. That crossing left me wetter than was ideal, but thoughts of getting cut off by an advancing tide spurred me along. Next time, a sighting of a beach watercourse on a map will cause me to be more cautious about my intentions than I was on this occasion.
Still, much sunshine was enjoyed, and it did wonders for the coastal scenery, much like on previous visits to the Edinburgh coastline in February and July. Unlike those days, more cloud came in the afternoon and brought a little rain, but that did nothing to take from what preceding better weather brought to me earlier in the day. My route had been inspired by one included in The Great Outdoors and offered something very different to other possibilities like the Pentland Hills or the Glen Sax round near Peebles. Both of those await future explorations now that the bracing sea air of the Forth has been savoured and there are other parts that need exploring, so return visits to Edinburgh remain likely.
Sharing or sparing?
18th September 2018 Having what is called a bucket list, a list of places that you would like to visit while you can, is common these days but I wonder if such a thing is all that desirable. By the its nature, the problems start when compiling a list of such ideas because chances are that you will select places that already are popular. That applies as much when perusing travel magazines or holiday brochures as it does when using social media.
One consequence of this is that certain locations become too popular for the sake of sustainability and that leads to restrictions that affect the independent traveller. South American destinations like Machu Pichu and Torres del Paine National Park come to mind here but the problem is spread around the world. Scotland's Isle of Skye has experienced problems that never made the news before and you only have to see how many visit well promoted attractions like the Cliffs of Moher to see how many people visit a small number of locations in Ireland at a time during the high season.
This then poses something of a dilemma: do you cater for the visitor numbers or do you restrict them? With wilderness and conservation areas, there is a tendency to do the latter though it does have the consequence of pushing up visitor costs and that may have its benefits for local tourism businesses as you may find on a trip to places in either the Canadian Rockies or Alaska. When you add in short summer tourism seasons, the effect by necessity is more pronounced.
In other destinations, they add in facilities for the extra visitors with some decrying the effect that this has had on Spain's Mediterranean coastline because of hotel and holiday apartment construction. Parts of the Alps are afflicted like this but in a different way: it is the infrastructure of skiing resorts that hardly help appearances in mountain country during the summer season. Both examples make you wonder at the appropriateness of such developments and they must tug at the heartstrings of anyone who adores mountain and coastal scenery.
Another aspect of any overdevelopment is that you can install something that encourages the otherwise unprepared into wild places without realise the possible dangers that are there. For instance, I seem to have inherited my father's unease at cliff edges and my knowledge of how slippery limestone can be almost made me shout at people to keep back from the edge on a damp day hike around the Cliffs of Moher and Doolin. It is little wonder that staff are equipped with whistles to direct the unaware away from peril.
There is overcaution too and one example is the boardwalk on Cuilcagh Mountain and how incongruous it looks in the landscape through which it conveys people to the top of the hill shared between Cavan and Fermanagh, between Éire and Northern Ireland. It also does not help that it stops short of the top too but the boggy morass deters most. Another location where path development attracted adverse comment was at Sliabh Liag in County Donegal but it might be that some sense prevailed there in the end.
Hillwalking is a growing pastime in Ireland so there remains a lot to learn in a country where there is neither experience nor tradition of path and track building in such places. Thankfully, organisations like Mountain Meitheal and Mountaineering Ireland together with initiatives like Helping the Hills are starting to address this so lessons are learned from places like Scotland and applied to get sensible solutions to the growing problem of erosion on popular hills. It is something that needs attention as much as securing access for hill wandering in the first place.
The mention of countryside access brings me to another factor that causes some places to feel overloaded: a lack of alternatives. It is not everywhere that has the liberal access rights that are enjoyed in Scotland and across Scandinavia so there can be a very really reduction in the number of places where you can explore. The options may not stop you going to those better known places like Norway's Preikestolen before finding other quieter hikes nearby as knowledge grows and maps feel more confiding.
It is this last point that inspires the title and the theme runs through Fiona Reynolds' The Fight for Beauty, a book that I read last autumn. It is not for nothing park rangers in Denali National Park tell you not to walk one after another in a group so a path never develops and that everyone's backcountry journey is their own. When there is plenty of land for all, we can spread out and find our own space to recharge weary spirits. That is easier when we are not retracing the steps of others all the while and it can have a lighter impact on the countryside too with less erosion caused by many feet and much path widening. While it can be true that we get confined by or own lack of knowledge, physical restrictions caused by not having enough other places to go hardly help either. Overcoming both might be the ultimate answer to the visitor management conundrum.
