A kind of madness ...

It's a sort of madness, I suppose. This need to be out of doors, preferably away from streets and cars and - if I'm honest - other people. This compulsion to walk fast enough, far enough, or maybe high enough to be tired, to warm up, to feel hungry.

Yesterday was not one in which I could accomplish this - a trip over the water to an appointment in Greenock and a subsequently late lunch meant that daylight had almost gone, and the rain was battering down once more. But today?

Not as promising as you might think. We drove out of Dunoon into a blizzard; the hill where we planned to walk couldn't be seen. But there was a glimmer further west, the merest hint of blue in the sky. I felt all would be well. And it was. Actually, we had one or two fierce snow showers in our faces as we walked, and an arboretum wasn't exactly a sensible place to start in the aftermath of a gale. There were branches and twigs all over the track; four conifers had fallen in a straight line, each one miraculously not hitting any of the trees among which they toppled; one huge eucalyptus was down while another swayed at a crazy angle. We could hear the wind roaring through the tree-tops, and there were alarming creaks all around. There were two daunting moments when we had to duck under half-fallen trees on the track. (One, two, three ... Why? What will that do? ... Make sure we have no survivor guilt.) But then we reached the lookout point, and the sun was out. It was quite sheltered, and the tall deciduous conifers to the left of the picture were swaying in unison as if conducted. My shadow, and that of the lone tree beside me, were clear on the far side of a small gorge - you can tell how far by the tiny figure beside the tree, which is yours truly.

By the time we got home it was 2.30pm. We'd eaten nothing since 9am. I felt legless with hunger. But I felt so much better than I have for days. It's a sort of madness, but it's my madness.

On the march again

On the march again
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Having caught up on most of my life, thanks to a dreich day with no huvtaes, I find I have time to reflect on my holiday with HF last week. We were walking in the Dordogne, in the neighbourhood of Sarlat, with what turned out to be a wonderfully interesting group of people from New York State, England and New Zealand. I've blogged about HF before, but I came home once more convinced of the merits of this kind of holiday - to say nothing about my enthusiasm for this part of France, new to me despite my frequent visits to more northern areas.

The photo shows pale grey skies on the first full day, replaced for most of the week by flawless blue, but the line of walkers shows for the sceptical how not every moment of a walk is filled with conversation - and reflects the fact that I had sprained my ankle, infuriatingly, within 10 minutes of starting off. (I subsequently completed the 10 mile hike, and resumed the programme after a day by the pool, but I'm not telling the quack)

So what do I remember? Birdsong, poppies, warmth, mellow golden stone, undulating landscape, the river deep in its gorge, the amazing troglodyte dwellings at Roque St Christophe ... singing "Veni Creator" in a stolen moment in a wonderful church in a tiny village when everyone else had moved off and hearing it soar in the awesome acoustic ... fascinating conversations with interesting people ... talking about all the so-called forbidden subjects as Mina took my mind off my ankle by discussing politics and religion ... food so good that we all looked forward to the leisurely dinners cooked by the chefs who came nightly to our hotel to cook for us.

Ok, so this is becoming a list, and therefore boring. Enough to say that the week was far from boring, and that my French felt much more useful than in the past. I enjoyed conversations in French on my day off, and I shared the poolside with a lizard in the hot sun. I'd love to be there now, and start to look forward to my next trip.

Itchy feet? Moi?

Anti-social

August. Warm days, the warmth of summer properly established, so that even grey days have no chill in them. Days for walking, picnics even. And memories of past Augusts, the Augusts of childhood, when picnics were ruined by ... flying ants.

When I was young, my family spent two months - the school summer holidays used to last the full eight weeks - in Arran. And I well remember the horror of picnics in sheltered glens, favoured spots which we'd already visited in July, suddenly made horrid by ants in our tea, ants on our sandwiches, ants swarming on a white t-shirt. I recall that I made a fuss, and was unpopular.

Today I was reminded of these picnics as we parked the car at the Arboretum. The moment we stopped, almost before we'd switched off the engine, the windscreen was crawling with winged ants. The air was thick with them, and we left. We found an airier spot where only a few creatures landed on us as we walked, and when we reached the gate into the wood at the end of it, we found it crawling with ants and turned back. And for the first time, I looked them up to find out why this annual horror occurred, and found this:

In late summer, male ants and large fertile female ants are produced. These ants have wings, and can fly. They will leave the nest, sometimes in large enough numbers to make a noticeable swarm, and will mate while flying. All the male ants and many of the female queens will die fairly quickly, but the queens which survive will set up new nests.

This explains a great deal while at the same time adding to the horror of it. But I take courage from that bit about them dying fairly quickly. I just wish they'd get on with it. Maybe I should take an August holiday in the middle of Glasgow?

Simple pleasures?

This morning over breakfast I was catching up on an essay in the Sunday Herald on the subject of consumerism. The writer, whose name eludes me at this late hour, was calling for a return to a less demanding lifestyle, where we rediscover the pleasures of the open air, the countryside and so on. He made the point that the pursuit of possessions rules the lives of far too many people today, and repeated the idea that if everyone on earth made the same demands as us in the West, we'd need three planets to sustain us.

I've just had an idyllic day. The weather helped, of course, and we used a car to transport us to the wonderful seaside meadow in the photo - though we could fine have gone on the bus. But the pleasure came from walking in the sunshine among wild flowers, between clumps of sea buckthorn, to the white sand of Ardentinny, and drifting back again after a paddle and a blether (of course). We ignored the nuclear submarine facility on the far shore and concentrated on the heron walking like an aged dominie through the shallows of the outgoing tide, while a blackbird in the tree behind us urged us to go and leave him alone. And it was all free. There wasn't a shop in sight and we didn't have a penny with us - just a bottle of (tap) water.

So the next time I spend money on new walking boots or a new cagoule, I'll remind myself that by so doing I'm saving myself from the further excesses of consumerism. And it would be even cheaper if the sun shone more often as it did today - wouldn't it?

A high point

Setting off
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

This pic comes from a wonderful day spent high above the clouds which enveloped the coast near Puerto de la Cruz. The crater of Las Cañadas, below El Teide, is absolutely vast, and at 6,500' was quite snowy at the time of our visit. (We just missed a week of horrid weather, at the end of which El Teide was entirely white). The crater was formed around 300,000 years ago, but the last volcanic activity was only 200 years ago, when Pico Viejo erupted. We walked from the foot of the peak, past the volcanic cone of Montana de los Tomillos to Cañada de los Guancheros, a wide gravel plain. We then climbed to the summit of La Fortaleza on the crater rim of Las Cañadas, where we sat on the red rocks and fed little grey lizards which came flocking (slight hyperbole) like ducks in a pond for our crumbs. I also quoted a little Eliot - the literary among you might guess what. (Think red rocks rather than lizards) By this time my walking companions had become used to my eccentricities - I think.

By the end of the day I had bright red patches on the back of my calves (the only place not protected with sunscreen) - the sun was extremely fierce and the cool air meant that you didn't always remember that fact. Interestingly, the moment we moved into shade at the end of the walk, we felt chilled - goosebumps chilled.

This was the harder walk of the day; I was pleasantly surprised at the slightly less relentless pace than I had expected and at my own growing fitness. Pity I've spent the whole of this afternoon at the computer...

Black desert

Black desert
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

One of our most remarkable walks on Tenerife was through the area known as Las Arenas Negras, to the west of Puerto de la Cruz. The last major volcanic eruption here was in 1706, and the black ash over which we walked for much of the day sparkled in the sun and crunched under our feet like a million crushed Crunchie Bars. There are trees growing in places - you can see some wonderfully green little ones to the right of the photo, beyond the line of the Canal Vergara, a covered canal about the same width as a Madeiran levada. But around the central ash desert are forests which have been recently burned, and it was amazing to see how the new growth shoots out from the charred trunks, so that the trees resemble these hilariously disguised telegraph poles and communications masts that you see on the way to Perth.

If you're interested, there are more photos of this day on Flickr - just click through on the photo here.

Follow my leader

The leaders
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Time to reflect, then, on the experience that is an HF holiday – a Classic Walking Holiday, as the organisation dubs it – in a foreign country. On the second evening, I was asked if I’d be doing this again, and I have to confess that at the time I wasn’t sure. However, by the end of the week I was amazed at what a successful recipe it is. I don’t know how much of that was because of the specific group that had assembled in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, how much because of the leadership, how much because of the timetable and set arrangements, but I’d like to look further at these components.

The leadership is very important. Not only have they to ensure that they don’t lose anyone on a hike – whether by their wandering off or by someone falling off the path – but they also have to provide the atmosphere at the evening meetings and ensure that the hotel provides for meals to be taken together. This last was apparently a novel idea for the hotel we were in – they couldn’t understand how, having walked together all day, we could bear to sit together for dinner. But we did, and it is surely this that makes this kind of holiday such a good one for someone on their own: eating alone at the end of the day can be an isolating experience.

Our group was terrific. One of our new friends remarked early on how most HF groups seem to have a good number of Guardian readers in them, and whether or not that was the case we were certainly an interesting bunch, from different walks of life (pun, when spotted, left as felicitous), with plenty to say. The Scots came in for the customary lumping together, though it has to be said that our shared sense of humour made for pretty instant rapport and some of us felt that our accents stuck out like sore thumbs. And it also has to be said that anyone looking at the group would notice the general level of fitness and lack of surplus weight on this bunch of people (the oldest of whom was 79) tucking into the large and varied buffet.

The timetable felt breathless at first – we had to go for breakfast while it was still dark and the dawn chorus was giving it laldy – but we got used to it, managing to fit in visits to the pub down the road to have a sandwich made up before leaving on our bus at 9.15am to drive to our starting point. And we were occasionally breathless because of the need to meet up with the bus at the end of 8 miles or so; the ethos of the “A” walks seemed occasionally to concentrate on distance covered rather than on allowing for photography and reflection – a point worth considering when choosing which walk to go on. But one of the chief benefits was the removal of responsibility: we never had to make decisions about where to go, when to go, when to eat, how to find transport. In a way, it was like being a kid again, with all the hilarity of a fifteen-year-old on an outing – and that’s fun, when the rest of your life is decision-based.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather. I think we had three drops of rain on our last walk, and that was all. The sun was brilliant, especially at altitude, and the temperatures like a good Scottish summer. I loved it. And yes – I shall do it again.

Volcano day

Felt like making an appearance on my own blog for once. I'm perched on top of the crag on the rim of the caldera just before the break where the collapsing super volcano which preceded el Tiede poured a massive torrent of material into the sea. We were at 7,000 feet here, walking over patches of snow in brilliant sunshine, but far below us the coast had vanished under a sea of cloud. And as we drove down through that cloud, I thought of the sunloungers towel-bagged at breakfast-time by our German friends, and smiled. Just a little.

Ultreya!

Those in the know will recognise in the title of this post an exhortation to tired pilgrims who appeared to be flagging. In Spain. So it seems appropriate after an epic hike, at the high point of which I retained sufficient vigour to take this pic of el Teide with my phone as well as my Leica. I shall return to the exhortatory aspects of the day when I have a computer to work on; it's enough for now to say it was a great walk in brilliant sun and I have a pink nose. Cheers!

Levada walking

Walking a levada
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Before you go to Madeira, everyone who knows anything about the island asks you the same thing: Are you going to walk the levadas? And then they give a wee smirk. And you wonder what on earth they mean by smirking. No-one, however, gave me any real notion of what this iconic activity would entail. Here, for anyone who ever wanted to know, is how I experienced it.

Levadas are irrigation ditches, ensuring that the rain which lands on selected spots on Madeira is used sensibly. Right now, they need to do more in this line, as they are already onto next summer's water supply and still allow 80% of their water to run into the sea unused. But these levadas are remarkable nonetheless, built at considerable risk to the labourers who made them. Each is about a foot wide, and beside it runs a maintenance path, sometimes in the soil beside the levada, sometimes on the retaining concrete wall. In either case, the path tends to be about a foot wide also for much of its length. This is what you walk along.

If you try walking along, say, a strip of newspaper about a foot wide, you should have no problems (unless you're drunk. Then it might be harder). But if that strip is above a sheer drop, so that you have water on one side and a view of the valley below on the other, it can be harder not to see the drop as well as the path. Remember, you have been told several times not to try to take photos or look at the view without first stopping, and to keep your eyes on the path. Sometimes your eyes feel as if they're on stalks with the effort of focussing. Happily, the steepest and most vertiginous bits are now protected by a fairly substantial fence consisting of two lines of plastic-coated wire rope suspended between iron poles concreted into the ground. Unhappily, on the Picos walk I described earlier, we saw one place where a rockfall had knocked a pole and its retaining concrete blob out of the ground, so that it dangled unnervingly above the abyss, still attached to the fence which, until then, we had all been clutching gratefully. A walking pole can be helpful in maintaining balance - particularly if the ground is wet - but it can also be a complete pest when the path is too narrow to accommodate it. Be warned.

Levadas are, by their very nature, completely horizontal, so you are contouring every bit of the way, covering miles of hillside, deep into valleys which you can reach no other way. When the hillside becomes too lumpy, they are in tunnels, some of which are so long you need a torch to cope with them. If you want to answer the call of nature - a delicate expression, I always think - you have to allow your compadres to get ahead of you and hope that no-one if following fast. Forget hiding behind a bush; just concentrate on not falling down the hill. If you want to stop for lunch, wait till you come to a place where the path is lower than and wider than the levada - otherwise you'll have to eat standing up.

Doing a walk like this lets you see some of the amazing plants of Madeira. Many of them are huge variants of familiar things - a dandelion with foot-long leaves, buttercups whose leaves are the size of water-lily pads, the heather trees already mentioned. It is incredibly lush, and the smells are amazing. We were completely unbothered by insects, and the birds were inquisitive and bold. Oh - and I learned how to make a fantastically annoying bird-whistle using the inner part of a montbretia leaf. I can't wait for summer to do it again...

Picos!

On top of the world today, far above the clouds, as we walked a fantastic path from Pico do Areeiro (1818m) to Pico Ruivo (1862m). We ate, exhausted after climbing steep rock steps at altitude, on Pico des Torres(1851m). I shall have more to say about today when I have a computer again, but this post is for our great guide, Adriano, and for Paddy - what was your real name? - who took this pic on top of Pico Ruivo. Cheers, chaps!

Levada, Levada

You can't get away from them. All life in Madeira seems to be connected to the levadas and today we walked one, starting at 1100m and ending up in a scarily dark tunnel with X-file torches. You don't get your phone out in these places - too busy watching your feet - so the pic shows the reward at journey's end. Weather remains, well, perfect.