Posts Tagged ‘travel’
The West Highland Way 8 – Kinlochleven to Fort William
Fortunately, the final 25KM walk from Kinlochleven to Fort William was afforded decent weather and I was able to avoid taking the bus as I had threatened the day before. The final leg of the WHW is quite enjoyable and with the exception of a rather steep ascent immediately outside of Kinlochleven, quite a relaxing […]
The West Highland Way 7 – Altnafeadh to Kinlochleven
Rain, rain rain. Day seven was another perpetually drenched walk through the Highlands. This day in particular I recall being especially soggy. So soggy in fact that I cut the day short when I reached Kinlochleven at around 2pm. The day began well in Altnafeadh, with a foggy yet surprisingly mild and dry morning. Altnafeadh […]
The West Highland Way 4/5/6 – Strathfillian to Altnafeadh (Kings House)
This is another double post; days four and five on the WHW. A grand total of three photographs from day four given the absolutely atrocious weather. Cold, wet and muddy combined with uncountable numbers of midges. I’m fairly comfortable with flying insects given my years spent silviculture surveying out in the hinterlands of Northern BC…however […]
The West Highland Way 3/4 – Critreoch Forest to Strathfillian Wigwams
I have combined my third and fourth days on the WHW into one entry largely because my third day was utterly horrible from both a aesthetic and physical perspective. Leading the morning trek from Critreoch Forest was another scorching day of +30 degree weather. What was suppose to be a 20KM trek to Inverarnan and […]
Kingston 2014
This is my favourite photo of Kingston. Yeah, I know, it’s been doctored with some silly Photoshop antics, but it manages to captures the uniqueness of the city in a manner that only someone who has lived there would appreciate. The old S&R department store, a mainstay of downtown Kingston closed in 2009, but has […]
The West Highland Way 2– Drymen to Critreoch Forest
If one follows a strict 7-day approach to the West Highland Way, Day two from Drymen to Rowardennan rolls in at a cool 15 miles (24KM). By the first day, I knew I wasn’t going to be following the classic 7 day itinerary and was opting for an 8 day approach. Drymen to Rowardennan became […]
The West Highland Way 1 – Milngavie to Drymen
Milngavie is actually pronounced in a manner that is not remotely close to how it is spelt. Welcome to Scotland. English is spoken, but not really. People who live in Milngavie and the surrounding area are intimately familiar with the American pronunciation of their town, that one can actually get across their geographic question without […]
Cambridge – Tour de France 2014
I vaguely remember being lectured about Cambridge at planning school. I either wasn’t interested, or four years of often low-ball government work has seriously dulled my academic memory. What I do remember was that it was apparently awesome and probably the best example of a walkable, cyclist friend, car hostile town in the world. That’s […]
Back to Argentina
From Puerto Natales it is a quick hop to the Argentinian border where one is immediately reminded that the Falkland Islands (if you didn’t know) do indeed belong to Argentina (best to ignore that they were decisively defeated by the UK in 1982). The 30th anniversary of that conflict was being ‘celebrated’ while I was […]
Torres del Paine – The “W” – Day Three & Four
For some reason I never bothered to finish of my final Torres del Paine entry until now. I had the photos and a few lines of text good to go back in May, however I failed to finish off the post. Probably because I was in the middle of a move back to Fort St. […]
Torres del Paine – The “W” – Day Two
Despite having lived four and a half years in one of China’s four ‘ovens’ (Nanjing), I have never jived well with heat. I’m a fan of temperatures that sit below +20 and if I had to choose, I’d take below freezing well before a +30 day. Sweating is incredibly uncomfortable, and high temperatures will drain […]
Torres del Paine – The “W” – Day One
Three hours off the ferry to Puerto Natales will land one within striking distance of the famous Torres del Paine National Park. While I like to say I was traveling around Patagonia, this was really my first view of this region, having spent the previous two weeks in Tierra del Fuego. Torres del Paine National […]
Through the Beagle–Like the West Coast of British Columbia…but not really
One of three navigable channels linking the South Pacific to the South Atlantic, the Beagle Channel earned it’s name from the passing of the HMS Beagle in 1833, carrying a relatively unknown naturalist named Charles Darwin. Given it’s relatively narrow attributes, most of the large ship traffic chooses the more southerly Drake Passage or northerly […]
Alaska Highway/Liard Hot Springs – Winter 2012
The Alaska Highway is arguably the most interesting built piece of the Northern Rockies. I’ve had the opportunity to make a few runs as far as Liard Hot Springs (about 250km north of Fort Nelson) but didn’t have the time (or rationale) to run up to the Yukon border, which would involve another 250km. Similar […]
Baba Canyon–Northern Rockies
Approximately 10km west of Summit Lake at Mile 337 (610KM) is the short Baba Canyon day trek.
Climbs with dog
Raven is not really my dog, but we are getting to know each other quite well and she can hold her own on the mountains. Snow patch. One of the useful aspects of summer snow is that it creates a rather convenient bridge over alpine scrub allowing access to regions that might otherwise be painfully […]
Jasper – May 2010
Jasper, Alberta is the exchange point between The Canadian and The Skeena, with the latter running between Jasper and Prince Rupert. I remember when I was about 10 years old I decided that I wanted to live in Jasper. That hasn’t changed. Young population with everyone zipping around on mountain bikes. My kind of scene. […]
The Canadian 001.02
In China there is a saying that one is not really a Chinese unless they have walked the Great Wall. There isn’t really a Great Wall equivalent in Canada, but we do have an interesting national train journey. Moving up through northwestern Ontario I received the impression that this section of the province isn’t doing […]
The Canadian 001.01
May 22-23 2010 – I have no idea where this train is, other than somewhere in northern Ontario and about 12 hours from Toronto. That could mean an number of locations considering this train has stopped, slowed down and even ran in reverse over those 12 hours. I don’t think it has run over 100 […]
Margo Carter – Queen’s of Tiger Leaping Gorge II
A few weeks ago I wrote a post regarding the passing of Margo Carter, a long time Australian resident of Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan Province, China. I received some email feedback and have been asked to post the following. I read with great interest the comments on running into Margo Carter, the Australian woman […]
Margo – Queen of Tiger Leaping Gorge
Sometimes my RSS feed tosses a news morsel my way. Today is was a piece regarding the passing of an apparent fixture on the Yunnan backpacking circuit. Via In the Footsteps of Joseph Rock His group were surprised – to say the least – to be passed by a lone western woman traveling at speed […]
The Most Dangerous Coffee in Kingston
I’m in a transit planning class and our first assignment has us evaluating an intermodal journey. This basically means we have to walk, skip and jump our way to another city via the street, public transit and some sort of other non-car mode…then write about what we liked and didn’t. Grad School is tough (honestly […]
Tremblant ‘10
I spent the last two days bombing around Quebec’s Mont Tremblant ski resort. I wanted to get the Eastern Canadian ski experience while I’m still out east and get a coffee mug to prove it. Tremblant is an IntraWest instant resort-in-a-can, with the standard pedestrian village, hot spring spa, tubing, skating and over-priced food stuffs. […]
Google Street View
Yeah, it has been out for awhile, but in my ignorance I had no idea its saturation level into some countries, notably the USA, Japan, Australia and Europe. I’m quite impressed. I’m going to use Cape Vincent as an example of some of the places Street View has documented. Cape Vincent is in the US, […]
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