Walker, Packrafter, Ponderer
January days are short and cold. I got out a couple of times, both much needed, the second time was the better trip, starting with an amble up Glen Auchreoch, a sheltered spot under a tree beside the burn, which froze over in the night under the watchful gaze of a night sky brim full…
Continue ReadingA weekend scrambling in Snowdonia National Park The beginning of October saw an impromptu gathering at a small campsite at the edge of Snowdonia NP, complete with a roaring log bucket BBQ fire, falling darkness and freshly caught beer from the stream heralded the start of another weekend full of good craic, bad jokes and…
Continue ReadingTo Packraft or not to Packraft – It’s been really bugging me since I came back from the Brooks Range last year. I’ve been saving for the next trip, but also ostensibly for a packraft, but it’s been a bit of a convoluted thought process, broken intermittently by the on/off switch of the price of…
Continue ReadingI’m back in the hills again – almost two full weekends in two months, I really had forgotten how good it feels to be up high, constantly moving, surrounded by wind, clouds and rain. Come to think of it, my last proper time in the hills was the beginning of January, the odd packraft trip…
Continue ReadingMorar – May 2018 The logistics of this trip took a little planning, three sets of people, coming from different directions in two different modes of transport, requiring a three-hour round trip to drop off one car. The plan was to leave one of the cars at Kingie Pools, at the far end of the…
Continue ReadingI usually try and get away for a weekend every month, it lets me escape from work emails, clear my head and provides some much-needed solitude. Every six months or so, my wife and I sit down at the kitchen table and agree the dates, which then get added to our big family wall planner….
Continue ReadingIn June 2017, I made a trip that I had been hoping to do for quite some time, to the Arctic Wilderness Wildlife Refuge in the Brooks Range in Northern Alaska. The scale of the Brooks Range is quite staggering, it is a range of mountains 1000 km long, and 240km wide, stretching from the…
Continue ReadingInverpolly – December 2016 I still am not convinced on the merits of packrafting when applied to Scotland, there are relatively few multi day river routes, mainly the Dee, the Spey etc. and the selling point for them so far, as appeals to me is the ability to cross lochs, saving the long trudge round,…
Continue Reading