Everything was in alignment. The Gods had spoken. I had no choice in the matter: it was Fate.
On Tuesday, I looked at my calendar and saw that there was to be be a full moon on Thursday. I checked the weather and it was predicted to be completely clearing up on Wednesday evening. I checked [...]
When I rest my skull on my pillow tonight I’m fairly certain that the organ inside it will have been significantly rewired. Whether physically or only metaphorically I’m not sure, but let’s just say that today was one of those days that really alter your brain. As I write, jammed neural trunk roads are being [...]
“Nuclear power? To most people, it’s witchcraft” (Chris Patten)
To describe nuclear power as clean might seem perverse, given that some of the waste produced is so dangerous that there is no containment material that won’t be destroyed by it, and that it remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.
But last week the government finally [...]
I drew this yesterday, from a photograph I took a couple of Sundays ago when we were walking Oscar, our new canine honorary nephew – but more of him later. The picture shows Ossian’s Hall, viewed from one side of the Rumbling Bridge, which spans the River Braan in a woodland estate called the Hermitage, [...]
It’s an unsettled time of year. That’s partly to do with the seasons and partly with the gear-up for Christmas. September and October were glorious and fleeting, and I didn’t make much of them: I didn’t go hillwalking in what would have been the best conditions of the year. Anyway, I’ve missed the autumn, properly [...]
It has been many weeks since I returned from Canada, and whilst it was full of some of the most stimulating experiences of my life, I am painfully conscious that I still haven’t blogged about it, and my several hundred photographs languish unseen. It’s perverse.Of course, it’s the very richness of the trip that makes [...]
A serious disagreement threatens to bring to an end the very successful hillwalking duo of the Robinson brothers (Stu and me). We’re both passionate, committed people, so it’s no surprise that it happened; and it’s more of a challenge to resolve it than it is to struggle up a steep slope of scree or navigate [...]
Not for us the richness of the lowland countryside in the throes of the climactic consummation of spring. Upwards!
On a warm and beautiful day such as yesterday, only at the top of a mountain would we get the chance to experience miserable weather, cold winds and physical hardship. Only in the alpine zone would [...]
I was a bit worried about how I’d manage on the mountain yesterday, considering that:
I’d hardly exercised at all since September (our last mountain walk);
I now had not one but two dodgy knees;
I had a cold;
I was feeling pretty run-down from all the commuting and staying up late;
It was February and I had no ice [...]
“For the first time since I had been in Barcelona I went to look at the cathedral – a modern cathedral, and one of the most hideous buildings in the world. It has four crenellated spires exactly the shape of hock bottles. Unlike most of the churches in Barcelona, it was not damaged during the [...]
