Archive for June, 2009
June 30th, 2009
… is that they never, ever go according to. Dammit.
I am sitting here, back at home, with a massive lump on my elbow from an insect bite, a stream of blisters on my wrist (I have no idea how they got there) and my left knee in an ice pack. Back four days into my trip. The shame.
Lessons learnt though (documented here lest I forget):
- Starting slow is always good if you want to last. This rings true for both shenanigans with a pack and shenanigans in the sack. Just drawing a parallel there.
- Getting up at 3am to cross an estuary at 4am is very cool in theory and practice but also sucks when you hit 3pm.
- A full english breakfast before a 10 mile walk is ever such a bad idea (second time of learning).
- Sod versatility; take a smaller, lighter camera. Get someone else to carry it for you if possible.
- Dehydrated foodstuffs rule in the backpack, but taste ruddy awful.
- Do not ask about the Bacon and Fried Potatoes debacle, I will show you a picture. When I stop having the flashbacks.
- Old dudes with artificial hips walking the coastal path totally rock – utmost respect, kimosabe.
- Pembrokeshire rules.
- Pubs, cafes and bars are always closed for the day/afternoon/period you are outside wanting to go in. Just because.
- Putting Compeed on bigass blisters is a poor judgment call, especially when the Compeed catches on just about anything around.
- Only women look good in a baseball cap type thingy type cap. Men look like complete burks. This especially includes me.
- Women wearing their hair in a ponytail totally rings my ding. This isn’t really a lesson learnt, more of a general-whilst-I-think-of-it observation. Just saying.
- I have seen puffins, shearwaters, choughs, various types of gulls, swallows and porpoises. This alone has made my trip.
- Oh and I fell down a rabbit hole and didn’t break anything.
- Women wearing their hair in a ponytail whilst wearing a baseba… okay, okay.
- Always, always be ready to change your plans. The trick is to look like this was what was going to happen all along. #seepostbelowcompletefail
- Melted-because-it-been-in-your-black-rucksack-all-day chocolate is not the easiest thing in the world to eat. You will look like you have fallen headfirst into a cowpat.
- The chap with camp-bed thatjust about squeezed into the tent? I am sorry I dissed you at the time, you at least appeared to get some sleep.
- I seen ponies too.
- And hefelumps. But they kept hiding under the pixies.
- Too much sun can be bad for you.
Tomorrow’s blog-post: Coffee-houses and surviving the yummy-mummy incursion.
June 27th, 2009
In a few hours time I will be off on my walking holiday, photos from last year here :
Day 1 – Train to Milford Haven (4 hours). Milford Haven to Sandy Haven. Camping. Distance 4 miles.
Day 2 – Sandy Haven to Dale to Marloes Sands to Skomer Island to West Hook Farm. Up at 3.30am to catch low tide stepping stones at SH and at Dale, otherwise an extra 5 miles detour. Camping and relax. Distance 13 miles.
Day 3 – West Hook Farm to Little Haven to Broad Haven. Camping and explore. 10 miles.
Day 4 – Broad Haven to Nolton Haven to Newgale. Camping and relax/explore/beach. 7 miles.
Day 5 – Newgale to Solva to Caerfai Bay. Camping and relax/restock. 9 miles.
Day 6 – Caerfai Bay to Porthclai to Porthsleau to Whitesands Bay. Camping and relax/explore. 8.5 miles.
Day 7 – Whitesands Bay to Abereiddy to Porthgain to Trefin. Camping and explore. 11.5 miles
Day 8 – Trefin to Pwll Deri/Strumble Head to Goodwick/Fishguard. Home or B&B. 20 miles. Train back to Bristol.
Total distance 83.5 miles out of the 193 for the whole of the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path.
The idea, unlike last year, is to take it easy, enjoy the scenery,explore and to take lots of photographs. I love walking and I love camping, the two together combine to become a perfect haven from everyday life. I can walk through rain and sunshine, my mind doing its thing whilst my body does its, sometimes achieving a state of almost Zen-like absence, at other times tracking off down tangental/mundane/surreal pathways.
There is pain, and challenge, but there is also achievement, even over such minor distances. There is the joy of setting up the tent, organising the insides, of gazing out onto the world whilst a cup of tea boils. There is the shower after the sweaty trek, the head down and foot forward as the rain pours and the wind thrashes. There is the heat of dinner, the warmth of a sleeping bag, the descent of night, the quiet, the peace, the encompassing darkness. There is the early morning, water on the face, the repacking, setting oneself straight, the thinking, the missing, the first step of a new day.
There is home, after days away, familiar faces, familiar foods, the bliss of a bed, stretched out, dozing, dreaming, glad its all over, wondering what next year will bring. Then there is sleeping…
June 23rd, 2009
I have outlived
my youthfulness
so a quiet life for me
where once
I used to
scintillate
now I sin
till ten
past three
roger mcgough
you at the back (collected poems 1967-1987)
June 22nd, 2009
Related to the previous post, images of what was once my home, courtesy of kahunapulej.
June 22nd, 2009
Sometimes smells get me. It has happened to all of us at one time or another, the waft and flavour of something triggers a reaction, a memory or another sense.
There is a smell. It is a hot pavement smell. But not just hot. Very hot. And there is the dust. Dust beaten by the relentless ferocity of the sun, stirred gently by a threadbare wind.
There is a moment. A moment where I am standing on a street that is unaccustomed to heat, in a land usually drenched in rain and gloom. And then I am not.
It is hot. I am walking down a street? A path. The path is not of concrete, but of earth and stone and dust. The heat is relentless, the discomfort punctuated by the brief respite of tree-spun shade. Ahead of me lies the town, behind me the voices of my brother, our friends and their mother. I am walking on a dirt path high in the mountains, in a land of mountains and jungle and heat.
We are walking to Kainantu. It has been over a year since we moved here, and in a few months time we will be gone, prudence for our safety more than overcoming my father’s formidable courage. In less than a year he will be kidnapped at knifepoint, and only the cliche of a dive from a moving car saves him from death. We will move because of it.
I am not yet eight.
The day is hot and we are going into town to visit my mother and do some shopping. I am too young to recognise the ramshackle nature of the place, or to fully understand that the men hanging around, waiting to spend their kina on alcohol and betelnut, are casualties of an economy and world not of their making.
It is hot, but the thought of frozen juice is in my mind, anticipated with a child’s singular delight.
That morning we had raced down the valley side on which our house perched, the cardboard sleds protecting us from laser sharpness of the tall grasses as we hurtled to the valley floor. We did it time and time again, breathless with exertion and excitement. Across the valley is the crude golf course the expats had constructed years before. On Sunday my father will sit on our porch, whisky in hand, and play Scotland the Brave to golfers at full volume, just as he does every Sunday. Theirs will be a ribald and affectionate salute.
We go to school in a dumper truck, a mass of laughter and shouts and excitement piled haphazardly in the back. The missionaries who teach us treat us all with a care and attention and a fairness that I do not recognise as unordinary. We are many; native, white, black, asian and mixed. We are children.
I am not yet eight and I have been into the bush and into the villages and seen women birth into the dirt. I have seen sing-sings and sat in the midst of battles of spears and guns and teargas. I have climbed trees and paddled in rivers. I have walked and explored and adventured, with only my dog Whisky at my side.
I am walking down the path, to see my mother, and later, when the sun starts to set, my father will be home, and I am looking forward to seeing them both together.
And then I am standing on a pavement, in a land removed by time and distance and memory, with tears in my eyes.
June 18th, 2009
The pictures below (and linked here) are from a little place called Knowle in Hampshire, which used to have a mental institution. The place in question is a very small preserve, which has a very basic trail that wends its way through the trees and undergrowth in a pretty purposeless manner.
What is fascinating, in a somewhat gruesome way, is the sheer number of souls buried on this diminutive graveyard of only two acres. The Knowle Hospital graveyard, over the period 1852 to 1971, became the resting place for the bodies of 5,578 staff, patients and local residents.
This is a strange place, lacking in the usual ostentation and regalia of a regular graveyard. It is sparse, overgrown; a quiet, peaceful place that mourns gently in the rain and remembers wistfully in the sun.
Standing here, the memorials are small and mostly anonymous, rare detail punctuating the placidity of the atmosphere. Stoneware rises out of the tangle of grasses, plants and vines, brief reminders of lives previously lived.
The path meanders uncertainly, as if unsure of its right to be here. Stepping off the path is an exercise in disquiet and reflection, beneath your feet lie the remains of so many, denied even the fleeting immortality of a iron numbered cross or a simple broken stone.
5,578 lives reduced to so little, captured only on paper records and half-hints in dormant documents, encapsulated in a finality that rests almost beyond memory and thought, bounded by wire and wood and the sanctity of obligation and respect.
June 18th, 2009
pen
paper
window
think
penandpaper
window
inspira tion
think
anythink
coffee
bed
try again
tomorrow
June 15th, 2009
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
A fantastically strange and beautifully written tale, I read this on an epic 52 hour train journey from Delhi to Trivandrum in India. Warning: it is huge. But brilliant.
June 15th, 2009
the moon hides from you
lest it cast your eyes in light
and sprinkle your hair
with fragile dreams or your lips
with silk touched hope and laughter
***
melancholy stirs
memories of you standing
enchanted by light
falling through leaves touching you
much more gently than my kiss
***
the sigh beneath me
as i touch and trace and kiss
and paint oil and love
across the canvas of your
skin that cloaks your sleeping form
June 15th, 2009
soli
tary
cherry
