For the final day of my trip I planned a visit to Montserrat, the ‘serrated mountain’, which is about 25 miles from Barcelona and had the dual attractions of hiking opportunities and a monastery complete with boys’ choir who sing daily. A day on a mountain followed by Vespers seemed the perfect way to bring…
Category: walking
After a poor night’s sleep due to the heat, the first order of the day was to venture into the local Lidl, conveniently across the road from my AirBnb to try and find some plasters for the blisters on my left foot and a new iPhone cable to replace the almost useless one I’d brought…
To get the New Year off to a good start, Jen and I decided to revisit some unfinished business in Munro form. Last year we visited Ben Vorlich on Loch Earn in decidedly winter conditions. We made it to 677m through knee deep snow before calling it a day and returning home. Conditions this year…
Late on New Year’s Eve as Jen and I were pondering the day and year to come, we checked the weather forecast for New Year’s Day and decided to plan ourselves another hike. As I was determined to go to parkrun at 9.30, we knew we’d be a little short of time but we figured…
There was just time to get one more hike out of 2017 and as luck would have it, one day of good weather forecast during Jen’s stay with me between Christmas and New Year. Now we just needed to decide where to go, a decision complicated by the recent snow and our lack of both…
On checking the mountain weather forecast for the weekend, there was a pretty similar pattern across Scotland – gale force winds on Saturday, calm and sunny on Sunday. That made my decision about which day to go hiking pretty straightforward, and given that I had to be in Glasgow on Sunday evening, meant that instead…
Sometimes things just align up perfectly. In this case, getting home from the hospital at lunchtime, the sun shining and Jen visiting. We both had the same idea – to get up into the hills. Loch Brandy, at Glen Clova, is a perfect destination for a short afternoon walk being just an hour’s drive from…
Today’s walk was the longest yet until the Vierdaagse itself – 39.1km. The route took me through the Vlietlanden to Schipluiden, Vlaardingen and Maassluis, mostly walking along the waterside. A good route, and the early part to Vlaardingen and back would make a nice Sunday walk, with a bit of bird spotting thrown in. I…
This weekend’s walk was in the opposite direction from last week’s, south along the coast from Zandvoort aan Zee to Katwijk, with a small detour through the Nordwijkerhout along the way. Unfortunately, having taken the Garmin along with me and recorded the route, I managed to wipe it out in my relief at reaching Katwijk…
After a few weeks hiatus, I resumed my training for the Nijmegen Vierdaagse today with a walk through the dunes from Scheveningen to Noordwijk, about 20.5km. The weather wasn’t ideal – muggy and overcast, and about halfway into the walk, very rainy. For the sake of experimentation (and because I hadn’t charged up my GPS…