tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24606972342898441202024-02-21T01:13:31.779-08:00Explorations into the Known WorldExplorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-62668807453584711872011-09-01T08:44:00.000-07:002011-09-01T08:46:06.753-07:00Studland - Isle of Wight - Lymington (27th August 2011)Not long ago I was talking to a Swiss artist friend, when I mentioned the subject of the sea. He said he wasn't particularly drawn to it as he felt the sea was rather like the end of everything. I think I can remember back to a time when the sea was without great interest for me either, before I ever got in a kayak or paddled out on a surfboard, before I came to understand that the sea is where everything begins...
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<br />4 am last Saturday and I was filling a water bottle in the dark at a standpipe by some beach huts in Studland, staring absently at a child's forgotten bucket and spade, when I remembered this conversation and in my dazed, half-woken state had a sudden realisation that the sea, for the English, and the mountains, for the Swiss, must have very much in common. The last truly wild places left and we surround their margins with remarkably similar resorts, restaurants, cafes and shops, allowing people to splash about in the shallows or ski around on some safe groomed pistes, while in the background, unexplored by the mass of people who go there to enjoy and admire from afar, lies an undiscovered region. Sea or mountain, untamed places, indifferent to the continued existence of the individual, both the last chance civilised humanity has to truly feel alive, places which yield to those who care to look for it a chance to experience the sublime, to be of the planet and to exist in it.
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<br />My bottle must have been full by this point, time for reflection over, forced down some breakfast, packed boats, watched the moon rise as a crescent of pure fire edging the grey sphere, visible in its entirety, above the chalk cliffs and stacks of the Dorset coastline, then the beginnings of daylight bluing the horizon and we set out, past Old Harry and along our planned bearing, heading for the needles at the extremity of the Isle of Wight. The wind was light, the water pleasantly bouncy, the sun emerging over the horizon, wind picking up and giving us waves to surf on, our destination slowly emerging on the edge of vision, next to storm clouds which slowly dissipated and moved off out to sea.
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<br />And as the sky slowly brightened and our target became firmer on the horizon, I realized I was completely happy, happy in my sleek little boat and my familiarity with the way it handles, happy with the shifting contours of the sea, constantly forming and reforming, with the freshness of the sea air, the circling sea birds and the pure simplicity of the view.
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<br />We made steady progress, surfing a following sea and going through the Needles to land at Alum bay with its rockslides, coloured sand and incongruous chairlift, waves dumping on the steep shingle, for a brief rest, then the long slog up the Solent back to Lymington, first enjoying fresh green water and sunlight, passing yachts, then battering against the turning tide till we crawled out onto a concrete beach on the other side and flopped in a heap. Then a final push up the Lymington river, landed on a slipway virtually inside the station and began a complex series of train, taxi and chain ferry rides back to recover vehicles and rescue our friends and boats, several hours later, from the ferry terminal car park.
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<br />Final verdict: Worth getting up at 3.45 for. (and not many things are)
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<br />Day two: Kimmeridge up the coast to Durdle Door and back again. Spectacular as ever and some interesting water too.
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<br />Pictures to follow, and maybe even a GPS trace…
<br />Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-73469559433369498982011-08-30T14:22:00.000-07:002011-08-30T14:38:14.850-07:00Isle of Thanet Circumnavigation part I : Minnis Bay to Sandwich (20th August 2011)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnF7Ejw8dae62evuyhAkvZI0NGZGjKyrWsPbNIsthl2wFhDwAzHHFliODHPriMCzz09Z-5qwFzfSPDmXH64A39yGyj4P9rW_zf1ZXNz5pBClxuCmjykTW0Av2v_9zyhDHoZ1hn0UxVwdz8/s1600/thanet+2011+038.jpg">
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<br />The Isle of Thanet, at the eastern extremity of Kent, used once to be a definite island, divided by a broad navigable channel, the Wantsum,.until the 16<sup>th</sup> century when it silted up so as to become un-navigable. Theoretically it could perhaps be passable by kayak under favourable circumstance, but I have yet to work out if this is indeed the case. <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">
<br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">We set out, not too early, not too late, little bit of waves to surf on, past chalk cliffs, Margate with the new art gallery looking like a sardine cannery (not meant to be viewed from the sea?), round the corner, Joss Bay and the surf school, beach huts, into Broadstairs, stop for coffee and cake and ridiculously cheap huss, kids on the beach making the best of a none-too-warm August day, then out again, round to Ramsgate, nice bouncy water by the harbour, lunch stop at the mouth of the Stour, watched a gigantic rally of jetskis, then headed on into the river mouth and – SEALS! In kent! Loads of 'em! And even a “safari boat” watching them. Then on up the Stour, past the now defunct Pfizer factory (probably the only significant employer in the area) and landed in Sandwich at which point the sun came out and it was a proper August day again.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNaGss5HXVgm7vJgB3AtfzmvVzdcPYZWPYEQJBsPI7RTESmN13C2G0-CmcKckmijf6_FFEqcOF-PzmmnCITvljPLEkqT-XXNb6-u2bnFp_dg0tV5qPTrg_4Qa4u6tmEwppA78oT_EP_sng/s1600/thanet+2011+033.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNaGss5HXVgm7vJgB3AtfzmvVzdcPYZWPYEQJBsPI7RTESmN13C2G0-CmcKckmijf6_FFEqcOF-PzmmnCITvljPLEkqT-XXNb6-u2bnFp_dg0tV5qPTrg_4Qa4u6tmEwppA78oT_EP_sng/s320/thanet+2011+033.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646765099695605282" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Part II: the Wantsum ditch, to follow...</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnF7Ejw8dae62evuyhAkvZI0NGZGjKyrWsPbNIsthl2wFhDwAzHHFliODHPriMCzz09Z-5qwFzfSPDmXH64A39yGyj4P9rW_zf1ZXNz5pBClxuCmjykTW0Av2v_9zyhDHoZ1hn0UxVwdz8/s1600/thanet+2011+038.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnF7Ejw8dae62evuyhAkvZI0NGZGjKyrWsPbNIsthl2wFhDwAzHHFliODHPriMCzz09Z-5qwFzfSPDmXH64A39yGyj4P9rW_zf1ZXNz5pBClxuCmjykTW0Av2v_9zyhDHoZ1hn0UxVwdz8/s320/thanet+2011+038.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646766332587288994" border="0" /></a></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieufeEjZlynGEtr5dQ47Oz5diRxm198TUnWOSSJ6k1pU8KXS1fazjVJpyNA8JzYLibBkXSEDTS8Vx4MGWPyS9hwFFd_XMnGXG5xR2nYzWTRvIiZ8FE3suGjYWJA7YQGncXAiGi2nLrKLg_/s1600/thanet+2011+038.jpg">
<br /></a></p> Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-34643893541782239662011-07-13T14:07:00.000-07:002011-07-13T14:16:41.442-07:00Bow Creek, Saturday 2nd July 2011<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWUl52o1yw0FarQ9czZ2PacxD-iXXfbRIY2iVlzb-_sQALJYN8EWn6njNLzQlqx_OZzSbuN9ZGlq9vd55efnwTNehwARYaZPzaWZMsGI3uuEI9ZwOicUYUGhdUxfifBqmr21X2Yxqx9ou4/s1600/P7020490.JPG"><br /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi30HhaEEeerbfJgc8VYf3pEY3MIJrXXe7Nxqm7e5YVJZ0NADxxbrn_78WMyEHVQISLi4FwhR201mouVflFsVHRJa9c1x4pTARth5UHCAEJe-SAmDvYerY6Nn0tIXlldlRLhiHffY6NT8ot/s1600/P7020489.JPG"><br /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnObI05eHwTgGjdCegHcVxVYl1D2ih0HiWB2Mtt4dDcjhd3ZiFxEF519-eT0mKylIqhSZfbUnu2xija0urEq4jLh6JsRdAOOdjSnO1EN6Xu1svIpzsbMjFPnNHRhiuMVPxUdHTDNrEzWYc/s1600/P7020485.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnObI05eHwTgGjdCegHcVxVYl1D2ih0HiWB2Mtt4dDcjhd3ZiFxEF519-eT0mKylIqhSZfbUnu2xija0urEq4jLh6JsRdAOOdjSnO1EN6Xu1svIpzsbMjFPnNHRhiuMVPxUdHTDNrEzWYc/s320/P7020485.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628947933224403330" border="0" /></a><br /><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">warm summer's afternoon, swans and reeds, valerian in cracked walls, old brick buildings, use long-forgotten, hidden behind banks of pink Himalayan balsam, water becomes sluggish, our way barred by the lock at the entrance to the Olympic site.<br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWUl52o1yw0FarQ9czZ2PacxD-iXXfbRIY2iVlzb-_sQALJYN8EWn6njNLzQlqx_OZzSbuN9ZGlq9vd55efnwTNehwARYaZPzaWZMsGI3uuEI9ZwOicUYUGhdUxfifBqmr21X2Yxqx9ou4/s1600/P7020490.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWUl52o1yw0FarQ9czZ2PacxD-iXXfbRIY2iVlzb-_sQALJYN8EWn6njNLzQlqx_OZzSbuN9ZGlq9vd55efnwTNehwARYaZPzaWZMsGI3uuEI9ZwOicUYUGhdUxfifBqmr21X2Yxqx9ou4/s320/P7020490.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628948437592809778" border="0" /></a></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">No traffic, no canal boats, no sign of anyone, we paddle right up to it, peer over and no-one shouts at us to keep off. Watery wasteland. Legacy?</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi30HhaEEeerbfJgc8VYf3pEY3MIJrXXe7Nxqm7e5YVJZ0NADxxbrn_78WMyEHVQISLi4FwhR201mouVflFsVHRJa9c1x4pTARth5UHCAEJe-SAmDvYerY6Nn0tIXlldlRLhiHffY6NT8ot/s1600/P7020489.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi30HhaEEeerbfJgc8VYf3pEY3MIJrXXe7Nxqm7e5YVJZ0NADxxbrn_78WMyEHVQISLi4FwhR201mouVflFsVHRJa9c1x4pTARth5UHCAEJe-SAmDvYerY6Nn0tIXlldlRLhiHffY6NT8ot/s320/P7020489.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628948161998860642" border="0" /></a></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><br /></p>Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-11843973349987844402011-07-13T13:33:00.000-07:002011-07-13T13:44:01.851-07:00Chioggia 17th June 2011<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4e-oAkMoVIDv_yZyCvGuwaKlkPDq-h2N3FLnqasU39MQFgfmKYrAgZF4MWgWb_Jd359WQRGekZeORTNjEtB_TsoaU8rbwG3DFfifkq5SvYtdr7ajvtJAoXhlecqfN0femMawsf5j-2_F2/s1600/chioggia2011+011.jpg"><br /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjinlHCmX-4mz1kG2R5keSo-s7r3rBVuMhFRuXaICxexJI6nLxL9KyXVtS5OMtXdQhLWh_zirJK4hu4OYj3jkgPYlucQ8IL7-zrxtxDcsyghfFmrynWvX3JUvD60ju0g2ofhyILNlE4Td3z/s1600/chioggia2011+032.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjinlHCmX-4mz1kG2R5keSo-s7r3rBVuMhFRuXaICxexJI6nLxL9KyXVtS5OMtXdQhLWh_zirJK4hu4OYj3jkgPYlucQ8IL7-zrxtxDcsyghfFmrynWvX3JUvD60ju0g2ofhyILNlE4Td3z/s320/chioggia2011+032.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628938724876367538" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />Chioggia, “it's like Venice but dirtier”, where the Marina di Chioggia big knobbly green squashes come from – so there must be vegetable gardens, the intended site of a freshly rejected (by referendum) nuclear power plant, “it's like Venice but without the tourists” and “you can't get lost there because there are only three canals and one of them is shut”.<br /><br />Armed with a few preconceptions, directions to a launching spot at Chioggia canoe club and a couple of boats, we arrived in a place that instantly charmed us with its scruffy welcome. Everywhere were cyclists pottering about their daily business, friendly guys with flat water racing boats on their shoulders who explained where to put in, tiny but curious kids hanging on the bars of their school fence like monkeys and older kids racing round a miniature velodrome. Topped off by a municipal cafe and trees, a vision of urban contentment.<br /><br />Even the water was different; despite launching our boats a tidal creek in the enclosed section of the lagoon at the southern end of the town we were astounded to see that it was clear enough to see things on the bottom, quite unlike Venice.<br /><br />Crossing the lagoon quickly to the sounds of some public event or other ending over loudspeakers we entered the first canal and discovered an active working fishing port, big rusty boats, boat yards, everything functional, cars and vans on the canalside making us look round confused for a motorboat that never materialised. Out under a Venetian style brick bridge and across the lagoon, drag of tide to the lagoon inlet, rows of mussel beds with hanging tangles of rope, ramshackle platforms out in the water with fishing nets and benign but curious guard dogs, other platforms abandoned and collapsing gradually into the mud, heavy thunder clouds threatening rain, which fell in dark masses on the land but never came.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV7A-jImbAXX00tjW-58ge0rKqM6FkctLA7KufloymSymAAqXua2fufdZufgWou4fdieqWXj5HLgLQbjuwA_sdObXwGwQunedMfG8p95Mhv5mzO3A-Blyv7MxwmV4yq2gepM3DMY7BVkac/s1600/chioggia2011+021.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV7A-jImbAXX00tjW-58ge0rKqM6FkctLA7KufloymSymAAqXua2fufdZufgWou4fdieqWXj5HLgLQbjuwA_sdObXwGwQunedMfG8p95Mhv5mzO3A-Blyv7MxwmV4yq2gepM3DMY7BVkac/s320/chioggia2011+021.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628939314039579650" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />We stopped for lunch in a quiet local cafe which was suddenly taken over by a couple of holidaying German families, the afternoon heat was intense and outside the cafe, eager to close, no shade to be found. The island only a few metres wide at this point we looked at the Adriatic beach but this was somehow less appealing than lagoon where the local kids were playing and jumping into the water. We jumped in too. Chatted to the kids for while about our boats and headed back pushed by wind and tide, over the lagoon, down the other Chioggia canal, under the causeway bridges, creeping beneath low brick arches, between structures for fishing, stained and weathered wood, back to Chioggia canoe club and a warm welcome, offers to help us wash down our boats, delight at my Nordkapp - - “Ah, I used to have one of those, best boat there is”, tour round an immaculate boat store, invitations to come back one day....<br />End of another trip to Venice, this time putting on a small fringe show at the Biennale, after a couple of weeks spent in the confines of Venice itself, Chioggia came as welcome change, easing back to the normal world outside, drawing me back to northern Italy again. Poor relation of Venice? No, different and not to be compared. A little down-at-heel like everywhere in this late capitalist world of ours but getting along in its own way. And it's the only place I've ever seen a monument to a “propugnatore della qualita della vita per una citta felice” (a certain prof Felice Federico Casson) on a road named after a leader of the Communist party.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4e-oAkMoVIDv_yZyCvGuwaKlkPDq-h2N3FLnqasU39MQFgfmKYrAgZF4MWgWb_Jd359WQRGekZeORTNjEtB_TsoaU8rbwG3DFfifkq5SvYtdr7ajvtJAoXhlecqfN0femMawsf5j-2_F2/s1600/chioggia2011+011.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4e-oAkMoVIDv_yZyCvGuwaKlkPDq-h2N3FLnqasU39MQFgfmKYrAgZF4MWgWb_Jd359WQRGekZeORTNjEtB_TsoaU8rbwG3DFfifkq5SvYtdr7ajvtJAoXhlecqfN0femMawsf5j-2_F2/s320/chioggia2011+011.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628939766463389218" border="0" /></a>Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-17801072113098823842011-03-10T14:17:00.000-08:002011-08-23T15:09:06.142-07:00Mutten (3rd March 2011)From our kitchen window in Zorten, there is a fine view of the Muttnerhorn, a smooth white peak, the face turned to us always thick with snow, rising a modest distance above a tree-covered slope riven by a handful of snowy gulleys. On the right hand side it rolls gently out to a wide pass, on whose snowy flank at some point last winter I had eventually noticed a ski lift, running beside a collection of small wooden buildings above the tree-line. The mountain has always been our barometer: open the curtains first thing in the morning, see whether it is visible at all, what type of clouds drift above it, is the sky blue or veiled with high cloud? And also the focus of a plan to hike up one day and ski down, idle planning of routes, even the purchase of the local ski touring map from Thusis and finding there is actually a formally recognised route down there. We never went up there last year and this season there is hardly enough snow to justify the attempt. So the mountain sits there, a benign presence watching over our little hamlet from a polite distance.
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<br />Today I had no work and decided to start the day with a trip to the local open prison to buy wood for the stove, idled back through Thusis, went shopping, idled back and on a whim turned right instead of left and headed up towards Mutten, on the flank of the hill. The first village, Solis, was charming, Mutten larger and even more so, unafflicted by progress, old wooden houses jostling for space on the folds of the hillside, blackened by winters of snow and hot summers, cow barns still cow barns and the tarmac road the only outward concession to modernity. I headed up towards the ski slope, but after the road swung precipitously right and changed its surface to slippery mud abandoned my vehicle and continued on foot. A logging tractor was following me so I flagged it down and asked about the ski lift. Unexpectedly the occupants told me it was working; I hadn't believed that a lift could be working up the end of a road which seemed impassable to all but four-wheel drives, so there and then I decided to go back down, and come back with my skis. Having first confirmed that the lift really was open with a pleasant woman walking a child and two Sennenhunds which tried to lick my arm off and climb in the car window.
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<br />An hour or so later the car was again parked by the church and I was again walking up the road (which I had been assured would only take half an hour from that point onwards), this time with skis on my shoulder. Not many vehicles travel this way. Within 30 metres, however, I had managed to flag down the only passing car and got a lift, from a charming woman who was going up to spend a couple of days up there with her kids. Given the amount of traffic, this seemed remarkably lucky, perhaps less so when she started telling me her snow tyres were worn out. To my great relief she then stopped to put chains on – which miraculously took less than a couple of minutes and from then on I relaxed and enjoyed the ride, including the wait for the woodcutters to move a large trunk from the road, an suddenly we were there, among the buildings you can see from our window, which turned out to be a beautifully weathered set of cow and goat sheds mixed with old houses and wooden holiday cottages, all nicely spaced, new cottages and old barns indistinguishable the one from the other.
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<br />There too was my mountain, rising out of the trees to present an unfamiliar face and showing a long winding flank which I had only guessed at from the map, all equally smooth, rounded and pristine.
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<br />I was deposited at the top of the lift, skied down, rode back up again and found the kasse to have been at the top all along, so produced my Graubünden pass and ascertained that I was indeed, to the liftie's knowledge, the only English person ever to have set foot in Obermutten. I asked him about the trail up the Muttnerhorn and he told me the first part was a road, after that just mountain but he hadn't been higher than the road part himself, though a lot of people do like to go up there.
<br />
<br />Then I started doing laps round the ski slope. Somehow it should have been boring. Somehow it was not. There were a half dozen other skiers there, including a group of wobbly kids who their teacher was forcing to pop over a small kicker off-piste. All of them leaned reluctantly backwards with their skis in a skittery snowplough. All of them sat down on landing, slid a bit, scrambled to their feet and wobbled onwards. Later they were launching themselves with much greater enthusiasm down a slalom course made out of ski poles.
<br />
<br />The piste itself was rolling with ill defined margins, large rocks and trees across its width (I can see them from here, looking up, in the fading light), and bare sections of earth where the piste basher had removed the remaining inches of snow. But the top of the slope was wide and empty, allowing for carved turns over its whole extent, and to the right a patch of largely untracked snow steep enough to throw a few turns in. I tracked it entirely. Then turned my attentions to the piste again. I still couldn't work out why I wasn't getting bored. Something in the rolling form of the slope? The larch trees where you have to go left to keep off the earth patch, then swing right to get in just a few more turns before choosing between a bouncy narrow track running left or the wider sweep down to the bottom of the lift? The fact that the few people there were friendly individuals rather than an aggressive moving slalom course with an apparent death-wish? That no-one had any attitude?
<br />
<br />Eventually, though the afternoon was heading on so I did one last perfect run down the little piste, came back up the lift and pottered over to the impeccable Gasthaus Post where I was served coffee and Linzertorte by the owner, a friendly gent with a fine set of whiskers. Then put my skis on again, cruised down the run, sat in the sunshine on somebody's bench at the bottom to take my boots off and sort out my skis, before strolling back down the road. This was punctuated by the woodcutters, with perfect timing, felling a huge fir just as I arrived to watch.
<br />
<br />I had many views across the valley through breaks in the forest. The sun was starting to go down, the shadow of the mountain creeping out with visible speed, and greying the warm russet brown of the winter grass on the slopes opposite: Lain, Muldain and Zorten, the latter with its impressively prominent church where the post bus turns and I wait on frosty mornings; along the valley side via Nivagl,only two houses really, where the track to Alvaschein rises from the vehicle road to Thusis; Alvaschein itself where I walk occasionally on the pretext of buying cheese from a rusty old fridge with an honesty box; up the hill slightly to the edge of Lantsch where a German friend lived last year. On my side of the valley I could look down on Solis, the first of the villages on the meadow above the cliff, its off-white church still warmed by the sun just beyond the relentlessly advancing edge of the shadow.
<br />
<br />There is something about the sense of space and three dimensionality of this valley which really makes you feel that you are alive, truly appreciate the fact, feel rooted in external space and feel at one with everything. I've had this feeling before, looking out, in the opposite direction from the post bus on the way to work, and it's hard to describe, but walking down the road back to Mutten allowed me to savour the sensation longer, even stopping for minutes to gaze down over the wide sweep of the valley, far away objects, unusually clear and purposeful, each with its own identity: the patch of dark ground where the snow was gone under a little tree, a distant pile of snowy logs, Solis church on the edge of the ravine, the two houses of Nivagl. There is some kind of spacial perfection about this place which gives you a feeling of being of the world and at one with it, an understanding of scale and of space and of the position of every object within it. Life is of the present moment only when you look out over this valley; past and future have no purchase.
<br />
<br />I was almost disappointed to see the chapel with my car next to it; had someone offered me a lift I would have declined, to look just a little longer. But there I was, back at the car, saying hello to a woman with a friendly labrador, driving off and pausing only briefly on the way back, to have a closer look at the church I had seen from above, 17th or 18th century, I would say, with a large portico painted to look like marble by someone who had not looked at real marble, but which effect somehow gave it a rustic charm anyway. The dome of the bell tower was covered in ancient wooden shingles, as was a lovely old building – some sort of vicarage perhaps, but my knowledge of Swiss churches is greatly deficient – abutting on to it, with a vegetable garden and flower pots waiting for spring and a sign offering honey for sale.
<br />
<br />Not wanting to disturb anyone, I headed back to the car, then back here, sat down at the kitchen table, got out my computer and looked out of the window at the view which will never be the same again because now I have actually been inside it and it is no longer a stranger to me. It is almost dark now but I will leave the curtains open until it fades completely from sight.Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-29557487302892283762010-11-30T14:46:00.000-08:002010-12-03T11:17:35.560-08:00Rye to Hastings 9th October 2010<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfaTjJQQlN5ur4WEB6vvQ01mPLynnkvSqKUTAvW0lGFRQBFwlyi5NtWqrHf9jjIpQCXowgqlhfrTX0oz7lDv7hGMmt-Z23mASeY4ProH3VKmNJ8lGZm_mX18-J0lBLwRYGU2i3gH8rHe8y/s1600/hastings+2010.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfaTjJQQlN5ur4WEB6vvQ01mPLynnkvSqKUTAvW0lGFRQBFwlyi5NtWqrHf9jjIpQCXowgqlhfrTX0oz7lDv7hGMmt-Z23mASeY4ProH3VKmNJ8lGZm_mX18-J0lBLwRYGU2i3gH8rHe8y/s320/hastings+2010.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5545480823018672002" /></a><br /><br />Warm, sunny autumn day, launch into the Rother at Rye at high water avoiding the mud, out through the river mouth and along a coast featureless from the water until the cliffs rose up before Hastings, luxury houses and secluded beaches. We stopped at Fairlight Cove, a cottage teetering on the brink of the soft rock above us and snacked on coffee and sandwiches amongst elegantly patterned boulders, headed back out through minimal swell and came into Hastings just as dusk was falling, only the old town visible from the water, looking no doubt just as it had 100 years ago, just in time for a sprint through the newer part of town to the station, flopping dripping and gasping into the only train for an hour, just in time to get back and retrieve cars at the other end.<br /><br />Hastings pier not quite smouldering any more, deposits of charcoal on the sand.<br /><br />I went back another day to try to find the beach from the land and see the context of the cliff top buildings but was unable to find it.Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-34550460001264273602010-10-11T14:16:00.000-07:002010-11-18T14:39:58.765-08:00The Italian Exchange part I<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsTTfAWz4CM27ZUP8piLLLrH7JuPqcAPBTkQ06eel81IG-9OMwPhtvor9KRsjtvXKepOhO-Dl61cF4ccKo868yyexh-h7nRqpQBgD_6Q0KtMcrUcMmfgSMWZGRkl5ZxUY8LpWxXdw7Z9yL/s1600/sandro+pictures+115.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5541015405318812210" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsTTfAWz4CM27ZUP8piLLLrH7JuPqcAPBTkQ06eel81IG-9OMwPhtvor9KRsjtvXKepOhO-Dl61cF4ccKo868yyexh-h7nRqpQBgD_6Q0KtMcrUcMmfgSMWZGRkl5ZxUY8LpWxXdw7Z9yL/s320/sandro+pictures+115.jpg" /></a><br />not exactly an exploration, but more of a development from one...<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://towerhamletscanoeclub.co.uk/wiki/Italian_Exchange_-_11-13_September_2010">link to the trip report</a>Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-5493494860226421782010-10-11T14:15:00.000-07:002010-11-21T13:23:42.834-08:00North West Brittany August 2 - 7 2010<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEMik92M-OgExBA1m5Pj8du_-r3ucIRzYp8DSIKFp-swsWtE_0xvLh0LeRXNTIbdkdT5IcmVNkztTPkG3Ix1cz8fXhe_vgZL9TaN-rriq2pQKHHpwFDyr5xt3JU40KJsUpZiMTqJ6ZXpLU/s1600/bretagne+2010+028.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEMik92M-OgExBA1m5Pj8du_-r3ucIRzYp8DSIKFp-swsWtE_0xvLh0LeRXNTIbdkdT5IcmVNkztTPkG3Ix1cz8fXhe_vgZL9TaN-rriq2pQKHHpwFDyr5xt3JU40KJsUpZiMTqJ6ZXpLU/s320/bretagne+2010+028.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5541021376187082866" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.omode.co.uk/content/CKLOMRaidBretagne2010.html">the journey </a>- GPS trace<br /><br /><br /><br />We set out from le Conquet on the Monday morning, late, overoptimistic on timings of logistics, leaving before dawn, driving half awake through back lanes, grey light whitening into intricately carved church steeples, car drop-offs by remote beaches where the tide might or might not come all the way back in, snacks snatched at the wheel as the too-early breakfast had long worn off, trailer manoeuvred round cobbled streets where tourists were up already because it was later than it by rights should have been, piles of kit and food on the quayside...all to no avail since as we set out the ebb tide was building, eddy line sharpening at the harbour mouth, forward progress impossible, Isle d'Ouessant impossibly far away.<br /><br />So instead we crept round the coast, past the Pointe de Corsen, swell cut up into sharp-headed triangular waves and made it as far as Isle Melon, found a suitable landing spot and explored the island for places to pitch tents and mark out our kitchen.<br /><br />It was quite an unusual place; on the landward side a jagged steep ravine cut into the rock led to a seaweed-filled quarry of uncertain age, empty now at low tide but accessible by boat at high. On the top of the island a dolmen stood silhouetted against the evening sky and a short line of standing stones suggested an alignment or some half remembered ley line. It had a comfortable feeling and I felt naturally drawn to a soft and sheltered patch of grass to pitch my tent, then wandered over to the standing stones, feeling their rough warmth as the day's sunshine radiated gently back from them. At the southern end huge granite boulders mellowed round by millennia of beating waves, against which a gentle swell sucked and crashed. The island was cut up by sharp little gulleys, which made walking round a little hazardous, and innumerable small burrows of rodents.<br /><br />We settled down in our little paradise, cooked up our dinner, drank some rum punch and watched the sun go down, just like last year. Peace and tranquillity.<br /><br />Then a different realisation began to dawn: the channels which surrounded us could not have been made by water, the island was too small, they must have been dug by someone. Fortifications. Why? The Germans had built up defences along the whole French coastline in the war. Also then, on our island. Exploring further at the back of the dolmen revealed a rough concrete bunker, carelessly brutalising the ancient structure, unsettling, somehow changing the meaning of everything.<br /><br />History surrounds you inescapably; the land stays the same and your own imagination chooses which of the coexistent pasts to dwell in. Profanity of German occupation superimposed on the long forgotten Celtic past? But were the Celts gentle and the Germans vicious? Or the other way round? No way of knowing who the German soldiers were who were stationed on our little island. What was sacrificed on the dolmen's table? Did the Germans shoot any ships from there? Does anyone living remember still? The stones and coarse maritime grasses have seen everything, but they tell nothing. Night falls.<br /><br />The week passed well, Breton weather setting in and moving out again, huge Atlantic swells firing breakers off on the rocky plateau miles off shore forcing us to head straight out to sea. Convivial evenings cooking dinner together, and talking long into the night, huddling one evening way from wind and rain under a big tarp tethered behind a rock, another night in a private campsite, invited by resident caravaners to stop there and leave before the owner came, rewarding them with finest Haitian rum. Paddling sheltered from the wind behind low-lying islands and picking our way cautiously up the coast. A midweek car shuttle which broke the spell for a moment but was soon forgotten.<br /><br />One night we camped in a coastal reserve, reassured by a local lifeguard that we could stay as long as we kept off the grass and left early. I was awakened, though, at some ungodly hour of darkness by the lights of a vehicle shining straight into my tent. Confused with fear of eviction and arrest and I struggled for minutes to drag on a pair of trousers; by the time I crawled out, found a parked, silent, empty scruffy old car and no-one else awake. I climbed up the sand dune, following thin moonlit tracks in the marram grass, to check on the boats on the beach below, saw from a distance the occupant of the car heading out in a small fishing boat and our boats resting in a line well above the high tide mark, so crawled back in the tent again and went back to sleep. The fisherman came back while we were having breakfast. I went over as he was loading his car and told him what a fright he'd given me, asked about his catch and complimented him on it. But he could only say that there wasn't enough and that things were not as they should be, that it was lucky he didn't have to make a living out of catching fish.<br /><br />At the end of the week we reached Roscoff, and headed over the narrow channel to isle de Batz for our last night. By some sort of democratic process we ended up on the worst spot on the island; what looked like a rock bank turned out to be a pile of builders' rubble and the put-in the next morning was to involve a a long walk out to the water. We strolled into town (a village of pedestrians and bicycles, from which the day's ferry loads of tourists had retreated without trace) found a sign about seafood for sale, knocked and were told that the responsible person was having a shower. But she was quickly found and soon took us up the road to the shop, a large ground floor room with the older members of the family sitting round the television at one end and tanks of freshly caught crustacea bubbling at the other. It all seemed a bit invasive, so we bought a couple of spider crabs and headed back to our perch on the builders' rubble to boil and dismember them and scrape out the inaccessible little bits of flesh. (Very tasty, but too much fuss as far as I'm concerned).<br /><br />A short paddle ended the trip the next day, back past the ferry port and into the bay to the west of Roscoff, where we had left the cars, arriving bang on high water and according to plan, only a couple of metres to carry the boats. And nothing left but to have dinner together, indoors, with all the trappings of civilisation, slightly alien after a week out on the sea, living in our parallel reality. A reality demarcated by what you can see from water level, where no hinterland exists above the top of the beach, where all that exists is what you can see, where life is simple, there is no need to engage with the commercial world, where your meetings with other people are somehow more interactive and meaningful than they seem in town, where you land on the beach and leave it again without ever really getting out on to dry land. Visual simplicity, elemental existence. Landscapes outside time, traces of the past interwoven and embedded in the present.<br /><br /><br />There may be comfort, hot showers and toilets and cars, but returning to the other world is always a disappointment. As we go back, one foot still in the ocean, one back in the world of service stations, hypermarkets, social obligations and offices, we are already planning the next trip.Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-16929232698666816292010-06-05T15:53:00.000-07:002010-06-05T16:10:08.871-07:00Malamocco May 2010<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYvzUO1cnJ8uHA8pPYCrPr6RMc6aa0s38v8_-GUUnvR3F2zSlF1RZfzjWCVliVu8VP0vbiRV5GiUDCm0DDQWv0Dbwphi-fF4y3oN9gzLQ14DFbq8efULkV9ceFNtU_ySmW00k_qIm_t8CM/s1600/malamocco+paddle+013.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 240px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5479430526389771698" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYvzUO1cnJ8uHA8pPYCrPr6RMc6aa0s38v8_-GUUnvR3F2zSlF1RZfzjWCVliVu8VP0vbiRV5GiUDCm0DDQWv0Dbwphi-fF4y3oN9gzLQ14DFbq8efULkV9ceFNtU_ySmW00k_qIm_t8CM/s320/malamocco+paddle+013.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJVyHYIzpO1hLLZAYGfUqHOz6ydYF7s3QT4zovKmqj57XPuIM5gVu9Xavb_YQARZHFoJ-M8aausMIjrcs1fXf7BsBey9EqtFbf5SG7pxRbXUfJf3LNGPW4s3Goatkg0pj8I6GY7WQ9kDTd/s1600/malamocco+paddle+007.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5479428702226465490" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJVyHYIzpO1hLLZAYGfUqHOz6ydYF7s3QT4zovKmqj57XPuIM5gVu9Xavb_YQARZHFoJ-M8aausMIjrcs1fXf7BsBey9EqtFbf5SG7pxRbXUfJf3LNGPW4s3Goatkg0pj8I6GY7WQ9kDTd/s320/malamocco+paddle+007.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht6mcdQFyrJIc4_dUucyd0Z3Ig3Wm7ShFcWDWQWzrd2mDt8n85GfpMP8one1ocdi3ieWz1-V13TED2iMbtmbs507vKqmpAK6XA8xn6KtjodapGAyUsmlAt7oIebhOzInyitNdZMn8vH7Vf/s1600/malamocco+paddle+008.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5479428697589353538" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht6mcdQFyrJIc4_dUucyd0Z3Ig3Wm7ShFcWDWQWzrd2mDt8n85GfpMP8one1ocdi3ieWz1-V13TED2iMbtmbs507vKqmpAK6XA8xn6KtjodapGAyUsmlAt7oIebhOzInyitNdZMn8vH7Vf/s320/malamocco+paddle+008.jpg" /></a><br />I went to Malamocco once before, years ago, researching a student dissertation on Giulia Lama, a Venetian woman artist of the early eighteenth century who was commissioned to paint the altarpiece for the parish church. My travel bursary to Venice stretched to a bunk in a convent dorm with flaking frescoes on the ceiling and delivery boats chugging past just outside the window. I remember setting out on a crisp January morning for the epic journey from Venice, ferry then bus to what seemed like the ends of the earth. A few miles from the tourist tat and crowds of Rialto and St Mark's Square lay a sleepy fishing village which could have been in another country, with no clues to the thousands of visitors milling so very near by. I had written in advance to make an appointment to be let into the church, was met by the priest who opened up and turned the light on for me to stare at the picture, try to understand it and get to the bottom of it, scribble frantic notes and – this being in the days before digitally photography - fiddle around with my camera in the gloom, struggling to come up with an exposure which would give me a reproduction I could stick into my thesis. The visit was all too brief, but I left with a sense of achievement and tucked myself in the shelter of the sea wall to eat bread and local cheese, looking out over the wintry calm of the Adriatic. What I was left with was a sense of the remoteness of the place, a functional little village which was barely aware of its imposing neighbour across the water, and where people quietly went about their business undisturbed.<br /><br />So I was interested to see if it had changed.<br /><br />We paddled out there from Mestre, ducking under the Napoleonic bridge and heading south of Venice, passing the back of Giudecca, a huge rubbish processing terminal out of site of the city, with constant movement of municiple barges and wheeling seagulls, stopped briefly at Poveglia before going into Malamocco for lunch.<br /><br />Poveglia was a lush little island, a neatly restored canal heading into its interior, crossed by a smart new wooden bridge , plants growing vigorously like it was the tropics. We pulled up at some steps and went in to explore . The bridge was misleading, because the rest of the island was abandoned and as overgrown as a Mayan temple in the jungle. The bridge seemed to go from nowhere to nowhere. A few houses appeared to have been left unexpectedly, not so many years ago, rotting furniture still in place and the roof only caved in in places. Everywhere were plants, leaves so intensely green that I had a sense that I could almost feel them photosynthesising under the pounding midday sun, almost see the leaves growing. Wild plants and garden plants left behind, moving in to close off the paths of dry leaves which were alive with the pattering and scampering of unseen lizards escaping underfoot. An abandoned and flooded tent and a worker's hard hat. Scaffolding overgrown with vines. Projects begun and abandoned.<br /><br />Giving up on fighting the undergrowth we paddled out past the better restored buildings on the southern tip of the island and across to Malamocco. It is a small village about halfway down the island of lido, one of the low strips of land dividing the lagoon from the open sea. At one end is the main town of Lido but as you head south down the island, it is generally rural, though somewhat built up, with a few places where the houses have coalesced into villages, the occasional campsite or holiday centre and, on the Adriatic side, a few sandy beaches.<br /><br />There were now two restaurants; I don't remember any before. The village shop where I had bought my cheese was exactly as it had been for I would imagine at least the last thirty years, but everything else was subtly transformed. It all looked the same but somehow it didn't. The same houses and stone courtyards, but everything had been cleaned up and neatened, car parks constructed, lawns planted and strimmed. The church was still locked and I asked in one of the restaurants where I might find the key. Ushered into the town hall I was shown round a brand new - and well curated - exhibit of archaeological pottery finds from the area, by the proud ladies from the office next door, who were delighted to have visitor all the way from London.<br /><br />I asked about the church and they said they didn't think there was much to see inside, it was all a bit rustic. Who might be able to give me the key? Well Don Cesare isn't here today. Your best bet would be to look at the times of the services posted on the church door, someone could let you in then. How long are you here for? So I had to content myself with the outside of the building, but I'd already been in there once so it didn't really matter.<br /><br />Lunch in the smaller of the restaurants, avoiding the groups of German cyclists roasting their portly shoulders and drinking luminous orange cocktails in the sunny square by the hall, and going instead into the “local” place with its model ships and its kitchen which had oddly enough closed at half past one, but which was still serving funny-looking shellfish and perfectly good beer, staff sitting round the next table a debating whether they could be bothered to open up again in the evening.<br /><br />Then back into our boats, across the lagoon towards the towers and chimneys of the oil refineries and back the to the ramshackle charms of Mestre canoe club, which feels more and more like home every time I go back there.<br /><br />I'm not sure if I'm pleased I went back to Malamocco or not. A place which looks the same but feels different. Not spoilt, not over-run with Venice spillover tourists, perhaps a little more affluent though, somehow not remote any more. Maybe it's just seeing it at a different time of year. Or maybe I'm seeing it with different eyes because I have changed myself, years of experiences, places visited, awareness of economics, of seeing the whole world changing and progress happening whether it's needed or not. Maybe I just don't want to share my unique little secret spot with anybody else and resent the ingress of my fellow north Europeans. I had a real mission the first time, the second time just another place my boat and my curiosity took me to. To return is always to experience loss: the present eroding the past and chipping away at memories, dissolving the old ones to replace them with fresh new bright ones which are never quite as good as the originals that were there before. And on reflection: had Malamocco changed at all? I can't really remember what it was like the first time, so have nothing to compare any more. It was a great day's paddle though.Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-80940539010377976332010-05-05T04:48:00.000-07:002010-05-05T04:55:38.676-07:00Is it springtime yet?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimIIHyp67MJzDeLYbuZRPFAmzyQ9YaIZoqei0gMPvy7zhsC2ASGi6aT0Zf7uslu1K4YrGTNOBu-JhUJVpVHMTbyHZ3Um39Cn1oLKidq7oM3nhL1iOgKb-Wf5XIky7-8bSv3zhWxDnWpw3J/s1600/Picture.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 240px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467752440254270898" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimIIHyp67MJzDeLYbuZRPFAmzyQ9YaIZoqei0gMPvy7zhsC2ASGi6aT0Zf7uslu1K4YrGTNOBu-JhUJVpVHMTbyHZ3Um39Cn1oLKidq7oM3nhL1iOgKb-Wf5XIky7-8bSv3zhWxDnWpw3J/s320/Picture.jpg" /></a><br /><div>High in its mountain retreat, the boat yawns, stretches, shakes off the dust and cat footprints, peeps out of the old cowshed where it has been spending the winter, and prepares to come out of hibernation.</div>Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-73133105486680998342009-10-26T13:35:00.000-07:002009-10-26T13:42:21.699-07:00Protest Boat<div align="right"><a href="http://www.350.org/"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5397010100192699218" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 220px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglcgrUqFp7xG3t7uwaheEV1CdRkU9J_HcaSDYRRlWdJFFlIIFVSp5fV-kylx6JbulTFOWWqujIXeFyUHn04yF-dUIPX3RdgHiepCOKbyykn8-PthLCUxYDLs_jS1QWJSzH5BMxX_bIXE50/s320/IMG_8107.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;"> Photo: Malcolm Hazleton<br /></span><br /></div>Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-226628456088165082009-10-14T15:54:00.000-07:002010-11-18T14:40:54.224-08:00Isle of Wight Circumnavigation 10-12 october 2009<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtyPL87Zd0L2srpkKuBsrlqg7_XKUVT619H5P27u703MmIA5JXueRywR3DGA_cSQZQ79bUNsx1I11XYGiqB9qywA__HCbvlDjcnMerLDncJC_HrQy7nRqslD_iCR4uFei2N8owGZ0jErHo/s1600-h/PA120975.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396664599367791650" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtyPL87Zd0L2srpkKuBsrlqg7_XKUVT619H5P27u703MmIA5JXueRywR3DGA_cSQZQ79bUNsx1I11XYGiqB9qywA__HCbvlDjcnMerLDncJC_HrQy7nRqslD_iCR4uFei2N8owGZ0jErHo/s320/PA120975.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div>we made it round!<br />more to follow...<br /><br />A pause to consider the purpose of the Explorations; </div><div><br />I set out with the intention of discovering new things about life in Europe in the 21st century. The initial idea was that the kayak would transport me to points along the coast where I could discover things. I have discovered a fair bit so far, not least the existence of many parallel realities occupied by different groups of people, of which the unique world of the sea kayaker is but one.<br />I don't really know if there's that much to discover on the Isle of Wight that I didn't already know about before paddling round it. Most places remind one of somewhere else, but maybe that's part of the Island's special charm; a microcosm of the UK, our continent in miniature.<br />A view across the Solent to Fawley Oil refinery. Could be Sheppey, or Trieste. A broken down wall on the north facing beach slowly eroded by the waves. Remains perhaps of some military installation and it could be the Adriatic. Seaside resorts reflect their counterparts along the South coast; even Ryde steam railway looks like the tube. The cliffs could well be Dorset, the secluded beach Scotland or Brittany, the Needles – the Needles could only be the Needles (or maybe a set of broken teeth). </div><div><br />We set out from Lymington on an unseasonably warm Saturday morning, brisk tail wind and flood tide carrying us up the middle of the Solent, past flotillas of yachts with bright pink sails, bright blue water and up to Cowes in under 2 hours. There we negotiated the ferry and stopped on a little beach just around the corner for a quick breather, next to a crumbling wall and trees growing down almost into the water, having largely avoided any contact with humanity till this point. Followed the coast round to Ryde and tried to find somewhere out of the wind to eat our sandwiches. I did find a chocolate shop / café run unexpectedly by polite and charming American ladies who assured me that the sand off my feet was “nothing a broom can't fix”. Outside, we were also treated to the sight of an animated bowling pin handing out leaflets with little stick-like arms, which made the day of the young waitress (and made me laugh a lot too), before I headed back out to consume – in true “explorations” style - cappuccino and home-made cake on the beach.<br />Onwards, under the pier with the tube trains on it, past the hoverport (why did they never really catch on?) past a solid nineteenth century fort off Bembridge, we were delighted to find that there was now a strong tidal stream flowing round the end of the island. People were strolling and fishing in the afternoon sunshine, giving the feel of the end of a long summer day rather than early on a short autumn one. Culver cliffs were unexpectedly spectacular and we were pleasantly surprised to find a small tide race with waves where we hadn't known there was one.<br />According to plan we camped on the soft rabbit-cropped turf amongst the mole hills just next to the perimeter fence of Yaveland sailing club. Not according to plan we carried the boats and gear up the cliffs because we didn't spot the slipway. It was soon dark and we had soon eaten Tim's curry, so we went off in search of a pub. No mean feat. The main drag of Sandown yielded nothing but huge empty bars and arcades. On the point of giving up we did finally spot a pub in a side street and collapsed around a table clutching pints of ale. We were shortly followed in by a scraggy bloke with a guitar who set up and started singing a random mixture of folk and rock with the odd country track creeping into the repertoire. Looking round we started noticing other things: we seemed to be the youngest people in the pub by quite a few years; the walls were adorned with pictures of second world war planes. And the odd St George's cross. A good proportion of the punters had unusually short haircuts. But the beer was tasty enough and we didn't seem to be bothering anyone, so we stayed. A trip round the back, though revealed a whole new world: there was another room, no singer but a pool table instead and everyone in this one aged under 30, or maybe even 20. By this point we were on the verge of falling asleep in our seats though, so we went back to our tents to fall asleep there instead.<br />It was now that we discovered the uniqueness of our choice of campsite, a few hundred yards from the Isle of Wight zoo. I drifted off to sleep listening to the calls of unknown animals and dreaming I was in a Tanzanian game reserve, with the comfort of knowing, however, that there wasn't too much risk of being eaten by a leopard. And what does this tell us about modern life? I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions.<br />Next morning, woken by the shrieks and whoops of feeding time, and smug at our amazing progress of day one, we got up late, got on the water late and found ourselves immediately slogging into a solid head wind and rapidly strengthening tide, 4 weetabix not being anything like enough to keep body and soul together I enforced a snack break to eat half a pound of marzipan: first good move of the day. As we went round the headland before Ventnor into unprotected water we found ourselves battling waves as well as wind and the tide running fast enough to slow our progress to a crawl. Inching along parallel to, but not too close to, the sea wall, we ground our way towards Ventnor, clearing ever larger mounds of water and becoming progressively more dispirited as the bollards on the wall moved backwards barely perceptibly. Ahead we could see posts at Ventnor harbour, but they seemed not to be getting any closer. Gusts of rain drops started to fall and everything was grey, punctuated only by white foam.<br />After three hours paddling we managed to sneak into the calm if malodorous waters of the harbour, tied our boats to a fence as defence against the rising tide and sat dripping in a café, eating fish and chips and watching waves dumping on the beach outside. Still hoping to make it past St. Catherine's Point before dark we got back into our boats and headed onwards, still against the wind still against the tide still against wind against tide. An hour passed and we had not really made much progress; the tide was due to slacken but not till it would be almost dark and after the point would be mile after mile of dumping waves on a beach I'd never seen before. To our right was a small beach; I convinced my fellow paddlers to stop and reconsider, surfed towards the shore then swam the last bit in the interest of protecting my boat from the shingle. The water was surprisingly warm and the shore break surprisingly rough. The beach however turned out to be a pleasant enough spot and we decided to drag the boats up, stop for the night (it was 4pm by now). The clouds then began to clear and the wet , dark day became a clear, gentle evening with a golden sunset over St. Catherine's Point light house still lying a long way to the west.<br />Finding a place to camp wasn't so easy. There was a field at the top of the cliffs but it was full of cows. Discretion being the better part of valour and in fear of an angry farmer (there was a small gate with a sign on each side: one said “no entry”, the other “no exit”) we decided to sleep on the beach. This turned out to be really rather comfortable and even had some larger stones placed by an earlier camping party where we could sit and cook dinner, and later watch the shooting stars and the milky way and passing satellites unencumbered by light from any city. It almost felt like I was in Brittany again. We shared our camp site with enormous numbers of sand-hoppers, which leapt into our wine, our pasta, our tea and our tents. The evening was warm, which was perhaps why they were so lively; I went to sleep early to the sound of sand-hoppers pattering like rain against my tent. And woke again at 5.30 and stuck my head out of the tent to see small waves lapping softly against the beach a few yards away, Orion directly ahead and a bright, clear crescent moon.<br />We had a lot of distance to make up and packed and left as soon as it was light (only slowed down a fraction by John's malfunctioning Arctic petrol stove) and this time made better progress, with a north wind strong enough to need a skeg, but not to slow us down much. We hit St Catherine's point on a slackening tide and missed any tide race, then made our laborious way up the somewhat featureless coast. For a place so near to industrial Southampton it is surprisingly bleak. The season despite the sunshine seemed to have turned overnight to autumn on this exposed section and the windblown slopes could almost have been Scotland. Not much sign of human activity either beyond a distant radio mast and the occasional building tucked into a chine in the cliffs.<br />After 5 hours steady paddling we made it into Freshwater Bay, full of boats (including Owen of Isle of Wight Sea Kayaking) and settled ourselves against a warm chalk cliff to eat lunch and watch the locals trying to decide what to do with two young swans having a rest on the beach - “should we call the RSPCA?”. Then onward, round the Needles where there was a fair bit of flow and some interesting waves, back up the Solent and in to Lymington marina at 5, moored boats resting on the tide in the calm of a mild early autumn evening.<br />And what did I discover this time? Reading this through again, there seems to be a theme on this trip of places feeling like other places. Too much travel in the age globalisation? Wanting to always be somewhere other than where you are now? An overactive imagination? Or maybe the physical expression of an unconscious wish of the islanders to be able to believe that all life is really there in those few square miles. As perhaps it is. Maybe on one level every coastline is indeed the same, having more in common with other coastlines than with the land that lies behind it, land that from the perspective of a boat moving at sea level can only be guessed at. Perhaps the experience of paddling over the sea binds together all places that it touches. And I am left with a sense of gentle autumn sunlight on soft blue water, of safe familiar southern English landscapes, always just a short paddle away and I have already forgotten what it feels like to force yourself to keep going when you would much rather stop for a rest, when your progress is snail-like and any hesitation will just make things harder and you know you have no choice but to keep slogging on. But I always forget this and so I always keep coming back for more.</div>Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-37361031247913010962009-10-14T15:09:00.000-07:002009-10-26T13:18:38.802-07:00Rural Dystopia Dartford (6 oct 09)Not exactly an exploration in the boat, but I ended up on a Speed Awareness course courtesy of Kent Highways due to passing a speed camera in Tunbridge Wells at 38 mph with the boat on the roof over the summer, so maybe an explorations spin-off<br /><br /><br /><br />The course was held at the plush, lottery funded Dartford judo club but the nearest station, Stone Crossing was in a different world. The day had barely dawned with thick heavy cloud cover which gradually condensed into drizzle then rain. Stone Crossing is too small and insignificant to merit anything like a bridge between the platforms, so alighting passengers have to take their chances on the level crossing instead.<br /><br />on one side of the railway lies a Travelodge, burger king and a dual carriageway; on the other a quiet leafy country lane leading up to the village, past the cottage-sized "Village Lads" pub, built in 1857 they say, a place looking like it might rather be in the north of the country or may be Holyhead, and maybe like it shut down in 1858 but nobody noticed. Next a few 60s houses, all but shuttered up, and then out along a road with larger,comfortable looking houses, plenty of space but the gardens and pergolas are now overgrown with buddleia and bindweed. a kids bike lies tossed on the front step: no risk of theft here because no-one ever comes here. whatever purpose this place once had has been forgotten. the place seems to have been deserted by its inhabitants, a dead village waiting for interment.<br /><br />the lane leads on up the hillside, past open fields, but these too are overgrown; overgrazing by horses has left rank yellowing grass, coarse docks rusty red dripping drizzle and brambles tangled. The place has the appearance of some blasted heath, or perhaps dartmoor, horses standing, grimy flanks streaked with rainwater, grey rain down to a sunless sea of grey warehouse rooftops.<br /><br />and then out from the fog rears majestic the dartford crossing bridge, red lights of retreating vehicles the only colour in the dank landscape. the thames should be down there somewhere, but is concealed by the clutter of 21st century functionality. The road climbs onwards, the hilltop criss crossed by high tension cables, an old metal beacon incongruous and inconsequential beneath the wires.<br /><br />a non-place on the edge of nowhere.<br /><br />with relief I find the judo club with its clean white walls, sport england logos, modernist water feature and reassuring car park.Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-49076286065165323522009-09-03T15:16:00.000-07:002009-09-03T15:19:48.511-07:00Sunrise, Ile d' Her<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1RGEv-N1mpnGhRlntaj9-ejhnDaN4d_CuNF7JnoeJJQ3ybai7OH3eZmZ9q1ghk0FAcctlmybCdfHPL-0W-0cXDifA9OmU69tVZCVFut26dpB9F4FXFoG-75OEkyyaGzMSsYXd5vMr46AC/s1600-h/IMG_0155.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377369408868907474" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1RGEv-N1mpnGhRlntaj9-ejhnDaN4d_CuNF7JnoeJJQ3ybai7OH3eZmZ9q1ghk0FAcctlmybCdfHPL-0W-0cXDifA9OmU69tVZCVFut26dpB9F4FXFoG-75OEkyyaGzMSsYXd5vMr46AC/s320/IMG_0155.JPG" /></a><br /><div>sometimes you have to get up early to catch the tide</div>Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-53987234684316058162009-09-03T15:12:00.000-07:002009-09-05T06:48:36.792-07:00The Oyster Farm 20/08/09<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4iGeyLn66zlu1y0KcJejjBSOhARxKQ1nqxUaHz37CQnPAientUpUZKMajyb7GZHxnVawFVgZg42dSNth5iui0j9EE8KpqiuawtiRZk1z9zlNdDEWvFCAc4oGFgaEjkaOPDQ8AIgUXpPu4/s1600-h/P8200895.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377368341000308882" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4iGeyLn66zlu1y0KcJejjBSOhARxKQ1nqxUaHz37CQnPAientUpUZKMajyb7GZHxnVawFVgZg42dSNth5iui0j9EE8KpqiuawtiRZk1z9zlNdDEWvFCAc4oGFgaEjkaOPDQ8AIgUXpPu4/s320/P8200895.JPG" /></a><br /><div><br />I’ve never really been a fan of oysters before. But the sight of the oyster farm laid out on the exposed sea bed, with the farm workers calmly going about their business pretty much as if they had been tending tomatoes in a greenhouse was surreal enough to make me want to go and have closer look at this terrestrial activity going on in a place which spends half of its time under several metres of water. As luck would have it, the farm belonged to Bertrand (our guide)’s father in law so we were invited in for a closer look and a tasting.<br />With my limited knowledge of oysters, I always thought you weren’t supposed to eat them unless there was an “R” in the month and this was August. I had also thought this must be something to do with viruses and warm water, but it turns out that it is rather because in the summer it is the breeding season and the osyters become fatty and not to most people’s taste rather than posing any kind of health risk.<br />First oyster myth debunked.<br />And also found that some of the oysters, due to pressure from the buyers, were triploid ones (i.e. hybridised to give them an extra set of chromosomes to render them sterile and prevent them wasting 80% of their energy on breeding like they normally do) so they can be harvested all summer. The restaurants coyly refer to these as “ four seasons oysters”. Ask no questions..<br />I did get the impression that our host would rather not have been messing around with his oysters’ chromosomes, even if, as he told us, the Irish do it all the time to sell to the chic brasseries of Paris, and that he was a little concerned for the health of his other oysters.<br />But I tried one and, so fresh it didn’t even know it had been picked and bathed in pure Atlantic water, it was quite unlike any oyster I’d ever had before and I was obliged to follow it up rather quickly with a couple more.<br />And then we bought a load for the evening’s “apéro”, pushed off into the retreating tide and left the oyster farmers tending to their fields on the bottom of the sea.</div>Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-8769736888779327992009-09-03T15:06:00.000-07:002009-09-03T15:08:27.058-07:00Breton paddling<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2OUsyWPrN32qEQra4pDYxWquPN_8x2soZ0SnUs3g2ryk_fdsWJUCe22N7cm936C7AWFtuNrkOujkNxPhk8zib38RzEqhE5N6YXwk4LnY2Y6z2MOM1YTB-n8uOszKl91jU6YWepIQgZhG2/s1600-h/P1000064.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 77px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377366258139935442" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2OUsyWPrN32qEQra4pDYxWquPN_8x2soZ0SnUs3g2ryk_fdsWJUCe22N7cm936C7AWFtuNrkOujkNxPhk8zib38RzEqhE5N6YXwk4LnY2Y6z2MOM1YTB-n8uOszKl91jU6YWepIQgZhG2/s320/P1000064.JPG" /></a><br /><div>Image: Tony Roberts</div>Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-75970895633078927342009-09-03T14:57:00.000-07:002009-09-05T05:56:19.674-07:00Tourist Panic – Bréhat Culture Shock 20 August 2009<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig55CvQBct0wAE2O6WYgEjPmajWTLlXvqXlgCG_PNaKsjKuk0jrsVVc4Sx5D8-a7BTKVkyjfC4iBLQxA1k7e86F9aK3x_Mcym4fbwaUPZL1GObDMPo2hjQjQJg62QotaLYRGOGiGZpcbZ3/s1600-h/P8200886.JPG"></a><br /><div>After a few days paddling and camping on uninhabited islands, landing only briefly to dump used food packaging in port dustbins, we decided to do the tourist thing, pick up some more supplies and visit the picturesque Ile de Bréhat. </div><br /><div><br />Landing was fine and we strolled up the island towards the village, admiring the neat hedges, banks of blue and white agapanthus and palm and eucalyptus trees and looking forward to sitting in a café and seeing some shops. But in the village itself we had an almost universal reaction:<br />The shock of moving from the pure visual simplicity of sea, grassy islands and swell beaten rocks, with which we had become comfortable over the past few days, into a typical tourist spot was too much to take. Shops selling souvenirs were no longer something we could just walk past without seeing; we were overwhelmed by the excess of visual clutter, the uselessness of the goods on display, the aimlessness of the holidaymakers wandering about and just wanted to get back to the boats and our own calmer version of civilisation or reality. It was a feeling that someone else’s agenda was trying to take control of what you were supposed to do, persuade you to come back in and engage in a commercial world from which you had drifted way off course. And the whole commercial world was remarkably unappealing, distasteful even. The whole experience felt strangely unsatisfying. Slightly dazed, we wandered back to the beach and our boats.</div><br /><div><br />So is this all it takes to escape from the mainstream? A couple of days in a sea kayak in a wild and beautiful place with a bunch of good mates and no external pressure to do anything or be anywhere, moving to a rhythm governed simply but uncompromisingly by the tides, the weather and the topography of the spot?</div><br /><div><br />Maybe the human race isn’t lost after all. </div>Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-57884085813789197252009-09-03T14:51:00.000-07:002009-12-24T14:34:37.880-08:00Life on the sea bed (19 August 2009)We stopped for lunch in the Héaux de Bréhat islands off the end of the Sillon de Talber, a low strip of glacial moraine protecting the southern part of the Ile de Bréhat from the bigger Atlantic swells. The tide was low, still dropping and approaching springs and we found ourselves in a rocky, mountainous landscape which would normally serve as the sea bed, a hunting ground for seals in waving forests of seaweed.<br /><br />We busied ourselves lifting large rocks to hunt for crabs, Bertrand showing us how under pretty much every big rock a crab would be hiding – tourteaux (<em>Cancer pagurus</em> the “edible crab” you get in the fishmongers) and a blue crab called etrille (<em>liocarcinus </em>sp) with an elegant patterned shell and back legs like fins for swimming - then set up a complicated system (we were already becoming practised at this) to keep the boats in place as the tide rose. The boats are anchored with a long rope to something on the sea bed such as a rock or sand-filled saucepan. As the tide comes in they float upwards and can be retrieved simply by shaking the “anchor” free. It doesn’t work in rough, exposed conditions but is a godsend when you want to relax over lunch without constanly moving the boats up the beach every few minutes.<br /><br />There is something unsettling about sitting down to eat your lunch on a piece of land that doesn’t really exist, which makes you feel like an interloper, as if you have landed on the surface of the moon, this isn’t your element and you have no right to be there. And the tide came in fast and inexorably, the boats rose on their tether, the lanscape where we had been hunting the crabs drowned, vanished and gave way to become just another patch of ocean. It was with a sense of relief that I got back into the familiarity of my boat just as the tide breached what not long before had been a mountain pass. We paddled off through the newly created gap, as if down some vast Himalayan river, heading towards solid ground and real land with trees and grass and houses.Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-55539174818663593232009-08-24T02:32:00.000-07:002009-10-25T15:01:12.832-07:00Le Raid Bretagne<a href="http://www.omode.co.uk/content/CKLOMRaidBretagne2009.html">the route</a><br />more to follow...<br /><a href="http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/doctorliz1/LizAndTonyBretagne?authkey=Gv1sRgCInKs72grbD0MA&feat=directlink">pictures</a><br /><br /><a href="http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/doctorliz1/LizAndTonyBretagne?authkey=Gv1sRgCInKs72grbD0MA&feat=directlink"></a>Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-62513390106066250532009-08-10T15:31:00.000-07:002009-08-10T15:51:22.095-07:00Ringstead - Kimmeridge (Dorset) 8th August 2009<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh60mXi3x5X3cDnnZpVrFSrAANrtopNVr-NI3rScND9nPY_6jvg8QdaQm0LkSlmVudlhjdQjeJlBSAchBzrZDoM0Y5xLhaPS1vgfUvzLueOw99t8lGzFzWTzYW6NxlIKbOFjoPiL6xfwQR_/s1600-h/P8080700.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368469809008772274" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh60mXi3x5X3cDnnZpVrFSrAANrtopNVr-NI3rScND9nPY_6jvg8QdaQm0LkSlmVudlhjdQjeJlBSAchBzrZDoM0Y5xLhaPS1vgfUvzLueOw99t8lGzFzWTzYW6NxlIKbOFjoPiL6xfwQR_/s320/P8080700.JPG" /></a><br /><br /><div>Perfect conditions all weekend. </div>Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-13039324363933712009-08-10T15:01:00.000-07:002009-08-10T15:29:55.210-07:00Sheppey 29th July 2009<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDUir2l9DZ8mOYViP0yDkUYkYggy07Q7e0bPmoBmVWGl7TC0TVq2i4wVzXaUt_Jpih9y2n-8_XowWHuwSrxFPYj3PKAHN6hlfYzI9yepGDnQWp_UGyl_0fXoWXNSdNARSTkVdE5fbD4n-s/s1600-h/P7290694.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368460122370167730" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDUir2l9DZ8mOYViP0yDkUYkYggy07Q7e0bPmoBmVWGl7TC0TVq2i4wVzXaUt_Jpih9y2n-8_XowWHuwSrxFPYj3PKAHN6hlfYzI9yepGDnQWp_UGyl_0fXoWXNSdNARSTkVdE5fbD4n-s/s320/P7290694.JPG" /></a> Pill box on the eastern end of the Isle of Sheppey. It must have started out on the cliff top but in some storm the cliff has given way and it has slid intact and undamaged on to the beach, resisting the elements against the odds for 50 years.<br /><br />So now it isn't a defensive structure any more but more of an interactive sculpture. It rests at an angle which completely screws up your perceptions when you go inside it: water that slopes, stairs which try to throw you over backwards, a roof like a ski jump to launch out over the mud to the gently flooding tide creeping back across the beach.<br /><br />In a different place this might have become a tourist attraction, a piece of military heritage to be marvelled at; or maybe a den for the local kids to get up to all kinds of nastiness inside, but this is the end of the Isle of Sheppey, a place which almost emerged from estuarine obscurity in the fifties, only to sink back again into the mud when a new generation of Londoners discovered that cheap flights to Spain could whisk them off to sunnier, sandier places.<br /><br />So the pill box just sits there, visited by the tides and the gulls and the occasional rambler, a spot to linger in and drink tea out of a thermos, sheltered from the wind in the prematurely autumnal sunshine, and be thankful that even the kids can't be bothered to go inside and sully this strange little structure on the edge of the world.Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-7427655278578055862009-07-15T08:26:00.000-07:002009-07-29T15:14:35.307-07:00Exploration in Sussex, Sunday July 13th 2009<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7kyfyQxe-2-rxEFHZuHkcRR68vCnzpGqLDJMSUZF7PRHCimP51-wSIDgewWA36OF75z7M-AJuY2F31SIjtyTdsEcWjSVi4uiYKGs_i9HRj16ids2FJXpZBX_EvaXcnTsjFwkb3T8p1JaC/s1600-h/20090712_143-1.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 240px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364008477416930482" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7kyfyQxe-2-rxEFHZuHkcRR68vCnzpGqLDJMSUZF7PRHCimP51-wSIDgewWA36OF75z7M-AJuY2F31SIjtyTdsEcWjSVi4uiYKGs_i9HRj16ids2FJXpZBX_EvaXcnTsjFwkb3T8p1JaC/s320/20090712_143-1.jpg" /></a><br /><div>The aim was to go along the coast from Seaford to Eastbourne, but a force 5/6 onshore wind had turned the sea into a roiling mass of white water so we paddled down the Cuckmere river with a quick (and rather messy) trip into the surf instead.<br />Then back up the tidal stretch of the river to Alfriston and beyond, the river getting smaller and the water and vegetation changing from estuarine mud to a clear stream with reeds and damselflies, narrowing at points to a couple of feet and ending abruptly at a tidal lock.<br />This seemed like an obvious point to turn back and from there on the boat guided us with unerring resolve into the village of Alfriston, where a sign directed us neatly into the garden of the George pub. Which does a good line in Sunday roasts.<br /><br />An area I thought I knew well, but Alfriston was transformed from a cramped, touristy place full of cars into a spacious open vilage, with a little church and a village green I had never noticed before.<br /><br />Back down the creek and as we approched our disembarcation point we spotted a man and a boat, sitting on a small pontoon and looking just as if he had been waiting for us. As we got closer, we found the boat to be an old Anas Acuta, the elegant precursor to my Nordkapp and truly a thing of beauty. And Tom (as he turned out to be called) was delighted to see some fellow sea kayakers, apparently a rare breed in East Sussex. So we all went home happy.<br /><br />Back in the UK, and the spirit of the explorations is alive and well.</div>Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-25094576340106484812009-07-08T13:55:00.000-07:002009-07-08T14:00:54.124-07:00Tracksclick <a href="http://www.omode.co.uk/Content/VeniceTrieste.html">here</a> to view the route we took on the first exploration<br />(Tracking courtesy of Tony Roberts)Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-17693615421677036402009-07-02T15:50:00.000-07:002009-07-02T15:52:12.181-07:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKUpHNDzZL2aDVufqV6MlztApkh9BJRH8XTxMRhb9Uu06vIF3Lr-hINBBhZhgOIMNuSsBTpA5x0jvmV86XguYokg49VSqWiE3iIDSupUbLZrtQOUik9-Sr7fhh3DEjrJTAy3QE_HfdTPDt/s1600-h/P6240559.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353999389129664850" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKUpHNDzZL2aDVufqV6MlztApkh9BJRH8XTxMRhb9Uu06vIF3Lr-hINBBhZhgOIMNuSsBTpA5x0jvmV86XguYokg49VSqWiE3iIDSupUbLZrtQOUik9-Sr7fhh3DEjrJTAy3QE_HfdTPDt/s320/P6240559.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div>Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460697234289844120.post-10961322734861241102009-07-02T15:37:00.000-07:002009-07-02T15:49:28.349-07:00Day 7: into Slovenia and up to Croatia<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbTU7CwJ7ZYAL6AIccEGIAIxZfODSR1kMNRhFVC8S-B4_5j7djKnncnUWQ2QjPgL4fGoJrAFPOKJ7zkeCyshQ5pGzLgGwhVnI0Fj9yL16mtqbC8DRPceRob4VQufUybCgDOzPCl3kxqJgx/s1600-h/P6270651.JPG"><span></span></a><br /><div>The end of the journey and the beginning of the Dalmatian coast, tempting us onward into undiscovered regions.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>looked all along the Adriatic coast of Italy for signs of the once glorious Venetian Empire and found no trace. then, in the quite unexpectedly charming Slovenian town of Piran, at the very end of the trip, find a perfect Venetian house.</div>Explorations into the Known Worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11934918544276072006noreply@blogger.com0