the journal of a fellwalking odyssey
When Theresa May called the snap election for June the 8th, she obviously didn’t realise that I had a trip to the Lakes booked on that day. Bookings for Youth Hostels need to be made well in advance in order to guarantee the best rooms and I’d made this June booking way back in December.…
This post could easily have been titled, “Picking up where I left off”, because on the morning of 10th April, I parked the car in exactly the same spot I’d parked on my last visit to the Lake District, back in October. St. Peter’s Church at Howtown is at the start of numerous walks in…
Stephen Hough, the concert pianist, was this week’s castaway on Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4. During the programme he said something that really resonated with me. I’m paraphrasing but he said something to the effect of “life is about negotiating that space between the extremes where everything matters and where nothing matters and…
For the second year running, I made an August trip to the Lake District with my daughter, Tilly. She’s a very good walking companion with plenty of experience from her Duke of Edinburgh Award and scouting expeditions and it makes for a welcome change to the solo walking, which I usually do. The object of…
The 214 challenge is well under way and what could potentially have been a dalliance is now heading towards 25% completion. There’s no way I can back out now, provided I can maintain motivation even when facing the most frustrating of walks. One of the important lessons I’ve learned about fell walking is that, just like every…
It’s now exactly one year since I began my fell walking challenge. I’ve completed 30 of the 214 Wainwrights; not bad for year 1 but I will need to step up the pace just a little if I’m to complete the challenge before my 60th birthday. I had wondered if I could sustain my interest…
When does an interest become an obsession? Are all obsessions necessarily bad? I guess these are questions that most people have to answer for themselves. Most aspects of life are relative; one person’s obsession may just be another person’s passing interest. My own personal obsessions mainly serve the purpose of temporary distractions from work and…
During this summer (2015), I traveled to 2 similar but very different landscapes. At the end of July and into early August, my wife, Hannah and I spent 2 weeks exploring the French and Spanish Pyrenees on a broadly circular road trip of 1100km. This was the first proper holiday Hannah and I had had…
Almost exactly 20 years ago, Simon Schama’s book Landscape & Memory was published. It’s not an easy read but it became a significant influence on the way I taught Landscape Architecture. Essentially, the book describes “landscape” as being a construct within the mind of the individual rather than an objective entity whose constituent parts are…
Things are changing. For the last 18 years, I’ve been driving. Up the M3, around the M25 to the University of Greenwich, a round-trip of 200 miles and I did this two or three times a week. I like driving, so this never felt like a real chore and with Radio 4 to keep me…