It’s at times like this you question your life choices. It’s a beautiful day, and I’ve got everything to live for. Why would I do this?
Leonardo da Vinci knew. “Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” Astonishingly ahead of his time as always, he wrote that 300 years before man actually “tasted flight”. As for me personally, it was as recently as three months ago in a tandem flight in the alps of Bavaria, and so for my November challenge I have signed up for an Elementary Pilot paragliding course.
There’s eight of us on the course: four firemen from Wales, two ex-army Englishmen, a somewhat elderly Scottish academic and myself under the tutelage of two laid-back but incredibly professional para-bums: Ross and Jack from FlySpain.
We’re ferried from Malaga to a quaint mountain-side village in Andalusia. This is archetypical Spanish countryside: weatherworn men and women in black knitwear in front of whitewashed houses, rolling fields, olive groves and oak trees under which Ferdinand the bull and his friends still graze. Algodonales looks much the same as it probably has since the time of the Moors (the neighbouring village of Zahara still lies beneath the ruins of a Moorish castle), but the main draw here is the hilly landscape, clear blue skies and warm sun, which provides paragliders with ideal flying conditions.
Ross and Jack have us starting off learning to handle our equipment on a dried-out lake, as flat as can be, and then we move on to a little hill (60 metres or so) in the middle of plowed fields, where we progress to mini-flights, practicing take-off and landing under relatively safe conditions.
I say relatively, because before you get the hang of it, the wing is an unruly thing, and almost every one of us fails to take off at some point, with either canopies collapsing on top of their pilots, or people being dragged off across the field by the force of the breeze, or tumbling over when landing. (I’m lucky in that all my take-offs and landings are successful, but on the other hand I tear a muscle in my butt during one launch, which just about incapacitated me…!) We make really good progress though, working as a team, so the basic course is finished after a mere two and a half days*.
Which brings us to this moment.
We’ve driven up the mountain for the better part of an hour, and now I’m stood here, at the edge of a launch site a good 700 metres above Algodonales, looking down at a ravine full of craggy rocks and thorny shrubs. Time to nut up or shut up. Get the take-off wrong here and you’re in a world of pain, or worse.
Ross lays the canopy out behind me, and I try to focus on the various stances: Gay Crucified Jesus (hands out to your sides in a relaxed manner, allowing you to hold the brakes and the A-lines, letting the latter slide out as you move on to) Funky Chicken (long strides forward doubled over with your arms straight back to allow the canopy to rise above you in order to achieve lift-off, when you can happily move to) French Shrug (hands up by your ears, holding the reigns lightly, ready to steer your wing.).
Radio check. “You’ll only hear me say ‘runrunrun’ or ‘stopstopstop'”, Ross says. Hardly reassuring. Legs shaking with adrenaline. Stomach a tight knot of fear and excitement. Last equipment check, glance at the wind sock, and I’m off! I go from starting position to striding forward as best I can with my tenderised rump, only to find my left hand entangled in the lines. Fuck! I pull it out and continue – too far gone now to stop.
I’m up in the air before I know it, sitting back in the harness as the ground falls away underneath me. The village is far, far below, the air and the sun in my face, the landscape never ending. I round the mountain, check my bearings and fly, fly, fly.
It feels like an eternity, but it only lasts ten minutes before the radio crackles and Jack, who has already landed, comes over the airwaves to guide me. I descend, landing neatly next to a dilapidated farm house, but in my mind I’m still up there. The adrenaline wears off, but the endorphins remain. I have tasted flight.
We do a couple of more flights like that, gaining confidence with each one (in spite of zero wind on the very last flight, which sees me botching my perfect track record with a treetop-mowing start and ignominiously toppled landing) and then the week is over. As we return to Algodonales for the last time, a solo paraglider is riding a thermal high in the sky above the village, circling it together with a lone vulture, both of them rising effortlessly through the air. The next level beckons.
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* It’s hard work. We’re on a conveyor belt system, so once you’ve landed and bunched up your shute, you have to trundle back up the hill on foot, slipping in the furrows, making it back on top in time only for a quick drink before it’s time to suit up again. The heat, physical excercise and adrenaline all take their toll, so I’m stumbling to bed before ten most nights, after a quick trip to the local tapas bar.
I came to Sweden this week hoping to continue braving Bergslagsleden, a trail I began hiking earlier this year with my brother. Alas, it wasn’t to be. His back was giving him trouble, and sleeping out in tents when temperatures drop to -4C at night was unlikely to make him better. So we decided to postpone that adventure and go hiking in Sodermanland instead.
We poured over detailed maps, setting a route. There were a couple of restraints. We’d only do day trips, and we wouldn’t go too far from mom’s place, as we were dependent on her to get us to our starting points.
The first day we decide to hike around Långhalsen, a lake in the vicinity that is famous for having manors and stately homes all along its shores. The reason for this is simple: the lake forms part of a chain of interconnected waterways that can take you all the way to Stockholm, and in medieval times that route was much easier to traverse than any roads on land, so naturally noble families – landed gentry – established themselves along such waters. Today, their descendants still live there, like Count Falkenberg of Lagmansö, whose ancestors have held this seat for hundreds of years.
We set out in gloriously crisp autumnal weather – the air so clear it feels as if you could reach out across the lake and pick an apple from the count’s orchards, and the low November sun lending an aura of cold warmth to every leaf it touches. Not a single indigenous tree here has any red foliage (so I can’t fuel my autumnal addiction) but the copper and silver and gold on oak and ash and birch more than make up for it.
The landscape is varied agricultural land, rolling hills and the lake ever on our left, as we walk into the rising sun. It’s eerily still, the water a perfect mirror image of the opposite shore. It’s also utterly devoid of people. If it weren’t for the occasional krrp of a raven or the fleeting movement of a disappearing roe deer it would be like walking inside a water colour.
We pass several great houses, one of them an exact copy of a manor as it would have been constructed in the early 18th century, another one – Ekenäs – the former home of one of our own ancestors, before he went and willed it to the state, the silly bugger.
There is a Viking grave field right at the opposite end of the lake that would have been nice to stay and inspect a little closer, but by this time we have realised that we have misread the map – instead of a 16 kilometre round-trip it will likely be something like double that – so we press on, well aware that sunlight is a rare commodity here.
We make it back 45 minutes after sundown. I had forgotten just how pitch-black it gets in Sweden at this time of the year! The pale moonlight is enough to show us the outline of the road when we’re in the open, but once in the enclosing folds of spruce and fir there is nothing you can do but trust your instincts. It’s a special experience, and the fact that we are 30+ kilometres into this first day does nothing to take away from it all – quite the contrary, especially when met by hot food and a warm shower. Or at least that’s how I feel.
Unfortunately, my brother’s back and feet aren’t improved by this shock treatment. The next day he has to stop after an hour, as he’s limping badly. I continue on my own, but it seems everything that was good yesterday has turned bad today: the weather is a drizzly gray, and the landscape seems drained of colour.
Worse, the area I’m hiking used to be an old mining community, and even though almost every trace of it is gone, the crofts and tenant farms I pass all look like they are inhabited by the kind of white trash you’d imagine would linger on in a ghost town – every farmyard is strewn with rusting pieces of machinery, every torp has a half-finished porch, whirlpool or similarly incongruous feature bolted on to it, old cars and broken toys litter their yards – it’s a sad sight.
Closer to home is prettier, so next day I set out on foot from my parents’ place. As I’m on my own, I ditch the backpack and run instead. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but never really did: just run down whichever path I happen to chose, discovering the land as I go. It’s lovely. I end up following a horse trail – Ridled Sormland – that we’ve touched upon on our walks, and it takes me on beautiful back roads, through forests, past lakes and a reconstructed Stone Age village (and even a small nature reserve that I never knew was right at my parents’ front door!). I go for nearly 20k before finding myself back for a late lunch. Not a bad way to go exploring!
After lunch my brother – despondent over his ordeal – decides to head back home, so all hope of continued hiking together is lost. I go with him to Stockholm and spend a couple of jolly nice days meeting friends, and go on another long run – this time around a very pretty Djurgården, which used to be royal hunting grounds, marvelling at the romantic 19th century wooden houses that dot the island, so rural in the middle of the capital – but it’s not quite the same.
Maybe spring will be the season when we finally do the rest of the hike. Time will tell. Now all I want to do is go home be with the kids, and prepare for my last adventure this year, which won’t entail much hiking at all: learning to paraglide in Andalusia.
But first you have to get selected, right? And with 2,500 or so applications in the first 24 hours, it won’t be easy. The brief is to write 500 words each on “What themes would you like to explore during your travels?” and “What’s the most interesting place you’ve been and why?”. I figured it was an interesting challenge in itself to answer those questions comprehensively and clearly, and since they are both themes in keeping with this blog anyway, here are my attempts – do let me know what you think!
What themes would you like to explore during your travels?
I started writing about my journeys as a way of leaving a legacy for my children – this is my small contribution to making the world a better place. And so the themes I would like to explore during my year of travels are the ones I habitually look for on my own journeys: pristine nature, exotic culture, physical challenges and unlikely encounters.
I am a nature lover by nature. In fact I believe we all are. Nothing mankind has created can compete with the breath-taking grandiosity of the Himalayas, the intricate beauty of a coral reef, or the sheer complexity of an ordinary autumn leaf. I’m not a religious person, but natural wonders bring a sense of awe to me that naught else can.
That’s not to say that humanity’s endeavours do not mesmerise me; expressions of human ingenuity regularly have me humbled and baffled, particularly examples dating back thousands of years. The Stone Age temples on Gozo, the Incan grass bridges, and the hand-hewn Guoliang tunnel are all astonishing feats of fearless engineering carried out in an age we tend to think of as unsophisticated – to encounter such proof of our species coming together for the greater good never fails to inspire me.
Pushing my body to its limits is for me a way of feeling even more alive. I train to be fit, in order to live long and healthily, but in doing so I have found a new way of exploring my world: whether it be by running the length of Hadrian’s Wall in a day or travelling by dog sled across the frozen wastes of Lapland, whether kayaking in the mangrove swamps of the Dominican Republic, climbing the Alps or hiking the Appalachian Trail, I have found that overcoming your own perceived limitations not only brings a sense of achievement and a heightened awareness of our surroundings, it is also a fantastic way of meeting people.
That last piece in the puzzle is the most elusive one: you obviously cannot plan chance encounters, but you can put yourself in situations where they are more likely to occur. And so I favour travelling alone and to places outside of the more well-trodden paths, as I find people to be more willing to interact with strangers that way. Outside of our comfort zones we are sometimes, paradoxically, more open to others than we would otherwise be. Would I have met a telenovela actress in her native Argentina, or a Latvian porn star in Tallinn? Unlikely. But on a tropical island off the coast of Africa, and in a beer hall in Bavaria those meetings happened effortlessly. I learnt that the former wanted to be a psychiatrist and the latter an author of children’s books. That, too, is the wonder of discovery.
They say travelling broadens the mind. Not all people can have that experience first hand, unfortunately, but I want to take my readers on a trip every time I put pen to paper. What’s the most interesting place you’ve been and why?
My latest trip was to Amsterdam last weekend to run the marathon. It didn’t require a passport. Pemba did. To me it was the perfect trip, embodying everything I want when travelling: pristine nature, exotic culture, physical challenges and unlikely encounters.
Unlike its famous neighbour Zanzibar, Pemba is devoid of tourism; its obscurity one of the reasons why it’s home to the best diving in the world.
As you descend into the blue, you arrive in a different universe. There are fire corals, like glowing lava, cream-coloured porcelain corals, orange staghorn corals, corals shaped like trees and pink fans and black chimneys and yellow bubble baths and sponges and a hundred other different shapes and sizes and hues, nearly every one of them favoured by different species of fish. Never have I dived in such perfect waters, in such a rich flora and fauna. I surface with an enormous grin on my face.
In the mornings we go diving, after lunch we go exploring. We traverse the jungle and see silk monkeys and crested hornbills (think Rowan Atkinson in The Lion King) and flying foxes, we paddle along the coast and in mangrove forests – the trees look like giant spiders, and the volcanic rock walls are alive with hundreds of crabs, clambering along the razor-edged volcanic overhangs.
When I go running I have a continuous chorus of children calling me. They shout “bye bye” by way of greeting, and laugh and stare, obviously thinking me a very strange sight. Once we pass a group of serious-looking young girls in beautiful scarves and dresses, and I blew them a kiss. The fact that child marriage and polygamy are allowed is difficult to comprehend for a westerner, and for a moment I was worried that I might have committed a serious faux-pas, but it resulted in an explosion of giggles. Even the adults seemed pleased, much like I expect they would have if a monkey had performed a particularly good trick. It’s a strange feeling to find yourself part of a tiny minority, and quite the eye-opener.
We spend one last day on Zanzibar, in Stonetown, a place that will forever live in infamy as the biggest slave market in the world.
Having been taken across the sound to Zanzibar the traders would cull their stock, throwing the weak ones off the ships to drown rather than having to pay duties for them. The cargo would then be incarcerated in tiny, overcrowded cellars underground for a couple of days to weed out all but the strongest, who would finally be taken to the market to be inspected, bought and sold like so much cattle that their new masters could then take to all the corners of the world, for – lest we forget – this was a global commercial endeavour. It beggars belief.
And with that sobering reentry into civilisation, plus a parting gift of torrential rain and ditto diarrhoea, Zanzibar speeds us on our long way home.
I never thought I would find my dream job, and then this morning it found me. In a newsletter from the New York Times.
They are looking for a “Writer At Large”, and boy, would this job live up to the title! The newspaper has a feature called “52 places to go“, and the job would mean exactly that: for an entire year, the person picked would pack up and go to a new place every week, and report back on the experience in writing and on social media. Sound like someone you know?
The ideal candidate should have a well-worn passport (✔️), having traveled to several destinations (✔️), have documented travels in writing, social media or elsewhere (✔️), have prior experience at a media organisation (✔️), and be able to commit to a whole year (…might be a stumbling block, but what the hell!).
So now the task is this: write 500 words on the most interesting place I’ve been and why that is, and 500 words on the themes I’d like to explore during my travels. Send it off together with samples of my social media writing (that would be this blog) and other credentials, adding crossed digits and allow to simmer at low heat. Easy as pie, right?!
Eh… maybe not, but it would be a genuine once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I’m gonna do it anyway. I’ll keep you posted.
So far this year, I’ve been smashing personal bests (PBs) running. I am training hard, and it shows. One kilometre, five, ten, half marathon, all those distances have been crushed. But the Big One remained. The marathon. And so I signed up for Amsterdam marathon, knowing that it was flat and that I’d have a good chance of improving my PB of 3:46 from Barcelona.
42k is a long distance tho. Anything can happen that will throw a spanner in the works. And it seemed everything that could, would.
The railway decided this weekend would be a good time to do maintenance, meaning I wasn’t even sure I’d get to Amsterdam. In the end I managed to puzzle together a route that is best called scenic, as it took in most of the Low Lands, criss-crossing this corner of Europe the way Moses “led” his people through the desert – it shouldn’t be possible to take so long to cover such a short distance, but six hours later I finally stepped off a train in A’dam.
As for lodgings, the Airbnb host I had picked out cancelled with less than a week to go, leaving me homeless. I had a couple of panicky days – even considering online dating to find a place to stay – but in the end a colleague came through for me; he had a friend who lives in A’dam who was likely going to run the marathon as well, and if I were willing to sleep on a mattress I’d probably be more than welcome. Yay!
I wrote the guy, Tobias, and he offered to take me on. It turns out we have another friend in common, namely my sister’s running coach, the reigning 100k world champion runner. This made me pause, and after a little digging it turns out my host-to-be was fresh back from having run his third spartathlon (that’s 268k under the Greek sun), so he “wasn’t expecting to win the Amsterdam marathon this year either”. Yeah, you and me both, brother…!
So when we finally met up for dinner the night before, it was a great dollop of humble pie for me with a side dish of sushi, but he was just as pleasant as can be, and we got on fine, with me trying to (politely) pick his brain on how on earth he manages to do those races. Another mate of Tobias was visiting from Spain, and it turned out Johan and I had a more similar level of ambition; I figured anything between 3:30 and 3:45 is possible, and he wanted to beat his wife, who had done 3:37, so we decided to go together.
The race day starts out well enough: we bike through the deserted streets to the Olympic stadium, where the start and finish will be. A nice surprise is that Tobias works for TCS, the company sponsoring the marathon, so we get into the VIP tent in the middle of the stadium rather than having to stand in line for toilets and clothes storage with the hoi polloi. The weather is beautiful, too. Crisp autumnal air, not a cloud in sight, perfect temperature. 3:30 here I come! Or so I thought.
And so at 0930 we set off, with me leading through the outskirts of the city centre, sticking to between 04:50 and 05:05 per k – easy as anything. Right? Wrong. It worked well enough for the first 26 kilometres, running along the canals and then out along the Amstel river and back for a tour of the affluent countryside, with barges being used as floating DJ booths, and hoverboarders cheering us on from on high above the water. I even knocked a minute off my PB on the half marathon distance. But by then it’s getting warm, and the decision not to bring any water doesn’t seem so great any more.
Best made plans of mice, men and marathoners… Before long, calves and quads are protesting, and threatening to cramp up. By thirty k I can no longer keep my 5min/k speed up. Johan has long since disappeared. Around me, more and more people stop and grimace as muscles seize up. The only thing preventing me from suffering the same fate is the little baggie of salt my ultra marathon-running sister has taught me to bring along on longer runs. Dipping a finger tip in the bag and licking it off is all that’s required, and it works fine, but it’s not a miracle cure – it can’t do anything to prevent armpits and nipples and even more private parts from being rubbed raw against sodden, sweat-drenched clothes.
And so I trudge on. I try to do maths in my head, to see what it will take to get me to the finish in this or that time, but it’s no good. The kilometres take longer and longer, and it’s only bloody mindedness and sullen determination that enable me to continue. The crowds are good, quite supportive and enthusiastic, or at least I think they are; I hardly notice them beyond one point where the smell of ganja is particularly heavy in the air.
It’s funny, though. When the stadium finally comes into view. I straighten up and find untapped resources, enough to overtake quite a few runners and finish strong. That’s how long it lasts though. I hobble into the VIP tent and get a massage – the only thing standing between me and a full body cramp – or so it feels.
Tobias ran the marathon in 2:58 – two weeks after Spartathlon! – Johan fell prey to the heat (in spite of living in southern Spain!) and couldn’t beat his wife, and I, well, I didn’t get anywhere near 3:30, but I still improved upon my old PB with five minutes. It certainly felt good after the DNF at the X-trail! And of course, once reunited, we immediately said we’d do it all again next year. I’ll be Amsterdamned!
I seem to have reached an age where my friends are turning fifty. This is why I found myself in Paris this weekend, to celebrate this momentous occasion in the life of my very good friend L.
There’s no denying it is a milepost. A person is no longer young at fifty, the potential of the younger self has been squandered or put to good use, and the resulting life has evolved accordingly. One must face mortality, and consider how best to spend the remainder of this all-too-brief existence before all is irrevocably lost to death and decay.
Perhaps fittingly then, we spend the first day in Paris visiting the dead. First the untold millions of mortal remains of millennia of Parisians bundled together in the catacombs:
The medevial municipal graveyards were literally overflowing at the end of the 18th century. At the same time the limestone quarries that had once been well outside of city boundaries were being subjected to urbanisation, which resulted in several spectacular collapses; houses and entire streets were swallowed up by sinkholes as the poorly shored-up, long-forgotten mine shafts caved in under the weight of the expanding city. Such an exciting time to be a Parisian – your house might spontaneously drop thirty metres into the ground, or your basement might get flooded with partly decomposed bodies!
Ingeniously, the authorities decided to solve both problems in one go: the mines were mapped and their walls reinforced, part of the many miles of underground corridors were consecrated, the churchyards dug up and their dead deposited in the mine shafts-turned-catacombs, instead. Anything between two and six million skeletons were transferred to the catacombs, and today they make for a gruesome reminder of our brief toil on this mortal coil: the narrow corridors are filled floor to ceiling with row upon row of skulls – nothing for the faint of heart.
The Pantheon is a different proposition altogether: a Greek-Roman temple constructed “to house the great men of the Fatherland” (feminists might have a thing or two to say about that), it is the final resting place for the bodies of Voltaire, Rousseau, Hugo, Marie Curie – maybe she was granted a dispensation? – and others worthy of veneration.
The building is famous for housing Foucault’s pendulum, which proves that the Earth moves – and I think we can agree THAT’s a relief to know! – but more importantly it moves the human spirit, because it is one of the most impressive buildings you will ever see, and the views from the roof of its dome is nothing short of spectacular.
Sticking with the theme of mortality, there is an adage that says that a person should plant a tree, sire an heir and write a book. All that speaks of a desire to leave behind something more lasting, and so the second day was devoted to visiting monuments:
The Louvre, the world’s greatest museum, filled to the brim with painting and sculptures, all wishing to immortalise their subjects and/or the artists behind them. It’s interesting to see, but also sobering to realise how little we know of even the most famous ones: Mona Lisa’s identity is uncertain, there is no proof Venus from Milo depicts Venus (or more accurately Aphrodite), and no one knows what Victory from Samotrace looked like.
Another good example of the phallacy of immortality is the Arc du Triomph: ordered by Napoleon as a lasting monument over his soldiers’ bravery (and, one suspects, his own greatness), it wasn’t completed until long after the Emperor had been forced to abdicate and end his days on a forsaken island far, far away. It still makes for a good outlook point, however.
A better, living monument, still thriving in the age of e-publishing, situated right across from Notre Dame, is the wonderful bookshop Shakespeare & C:o. Today’s proprietor is the daughter of the founder, who ran it for fifty years, and it’s a wonderful shop, just the way bookstores should be but rarely are: books spill out of every nook and cranny (of which there are legion), and cover every available surface from floor to ceiling, so that you think you have alighted upon an Escher painting made up of books. If books have the ability to transport you through time and space, this bookstore is a wormhole of black star proportions, and I hope it will outlast all other monuments in Paris.
So, death being inevitable and immortality (even by monumental works) being near impossible, what remains? Eating, drinking and making merry. And so we stroll the streets of Paris, taking in its many wonders – the galettes and cider from Normandy, the macaroons at Ladurée on Champs Elysée (where a Saudi prince and his wife are subjected to the worst service of their lives), the opulent pleasures of brasserie Chez Julien (where Edit Piaf would still feel at home), cheese platters straight from the fromagerie, gateaux from thriving patisseries and incredible breakfasts courtesy of Jozseph and Frédéric, who run the best bed and breakfast in the world. The champagne and absinthe flow, there is laughter and silliness, but a moment of poignant silence marks the end of the weekend, as we happen upon a mass in the monastery church of St Pierre, literally in the shadow of Sacrecoeur on Montmartre.
There, before a congregation of believers, and in a moment of divine light, the Lord’s Prayer is read, and for the first time it strikes me: underneath the religion and ceremony lies a very simple message. Accept that you can’t control anything much, accept the finite nature of things, be accepting of others’ struggles and treat them kindly regardless, and be grateful for the little things. It’s not a bad credo.
Home from the hills. Après les alps, le deluge. Or so it feels. Coming-home blues is a real thing, as hard a come-down as anything ever sung of in the Mississippi river delta.
To alleviate my ills, I turn to friend Florian, a man so well-travelled he makes Magellan look like a kid playing with his toy boat in a tub. His journeys are so many and far-reaching it’s as if Marco Polo popped out for a quart of milk at the corner shop by comparison. He suggests the Haute Fagne, or High Moor, as a best place in Belgium for a day trip, and who am to disagree?
Located in the easternmost part of Belgium, straddling the border to Germany, it’s a peculiar highland, more akin to the Scottish peat bogs than anything else. A big bog to take my mind off things? Well, I’ll give it a try. Maybe seeking out the antithesis to what you miss is the way to go? And so off I, well, go. I don’t pack hiking gear, figuring I can run the 30k trail F suggests. Famous last words…
When I get there, looking out across the moor, the landscape looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic dystopia: nothing but a few stunted shrubs and dead trees. The nuclear heat of the day does nothing to detract from this illusion. Once out there, running along the duckboards, it’s a different matter. The marshland is home to hundreds of plants, mainly grasses and flowers, and it’s quite pretty in a low key way.
There isn’t much time to look out across the landscape, however. The duckboards prove to be quite difficult to run on, in spite of being perfectly dry. The bog swallows everything eventually, but since it isn’t happening equally fast everywhere, this means one part may be perfectly stable, and the next one might tip to the side as you step on it, bounce, or simply break. It makes for a rollercoaster run.
This feature of the bog landscape is of course the main reason it has been a borderland for as long as can be remembered. The oldest border markers found here date back to the 7th century, and several imposing stone markers still show where the borderline between Prussia and Belgium once ran. Much like marshlands elsewhere, they were simply too difficult to traverse, and of too little economic interest for countries to fight for.
Unfortunately, Belgian budgetary authorities share this view. Many paths through the moors are being abandoned, and only a few kept open – the others are allowed to sink into the boggy ground and disappear. I run along the main route towards Germany, and after only four kilometres I am suddenly off the beaten path. No longer able to run, I walk along a brook. It’s hard going, but very pretty, reminiscent of Swedish forests, with ferns and firs growing high, and not a living soul around. Pieces of abandoned duckboards appear intermittently, but it’s clear that not many people come here any more.
Like a Zorn painting. Only one thing missing…
I have long since left Florian’s suggested route behind, and decide to turn around before I walk back into Germany, and there, suddenly, I’m no longer alone. A photographer and his two nude models are hard at work under a tree!
It’s difficult to know what to do in certain situations. Do you say “hi”? Stop and admire an artist’s work? I briefly consider asking if they need another model, but I figure this blog has seen enough of me in a state of undress recently, and besides, the couple are twenty years and twenty kilos each past attractive. I get back to running instead.
I run back through ferns and grasses and dead trees, the ground muddy and slippery and mostly hidden by the undergrowth. It’s a hard slog, the ground either sucking at my shoes or sliding away and a couple of times I come close to wiping out. After a painful misstep and a near face plant, I slow down to a walk again, but once back on the duckboards I force myself to run once more – mainly to get out of the sun.
After two hours I’m back where I started, at the one inn on the one road leading across the moors. The Baraque Michel (or the Obama Inn, as I like to think of it) has been a beacon to weary wanderers for well over two hundred years, and it’s easy to see why the family-run establishment is doing brisk business: my feet are wet and hurt, my shins and calves will require at least two showers to just be dirty again, my clothes are soaked through with sweat – I can’t bring myself to leave.
I’ve done about half the suggested route, but I’m quite done. Properly bogged down by Belgium.
The Bavarian Alps. The most German setting imaginable. Marvellous mountains, nestling green valleys with villages taken straight out of Grimm fairy tales. Birthplace of the grimmest of ideologies.
I’ve come here for a week of peaceful hiking with my friends Florian and Iris. It doesn’t quite turn out that way.
We come by train from Munich (where a local beer hall made our layover as enjoyable as can be), through pleasant rolling hills, and arrive in Oberstdorf (lit. “The highest village”) in sunny, warm weather. That’s a nice surprise in itself, since the forecast is promising thunderstorms and rain for most of the week.
Florian suggests a “light” hike for the first day, climbing the nearest alp, Rubihorn. Coming in at 1,950m high, it’s no more than a 500-metre climb from the first lift station, but the sun is out in force, and by the time I reach the summit I’m wobbly-legged and woozy from the effort. That’s nothing compared to F and I, however. They arrive wheezing and gasping for air. But once heart rates have come down to something resembling normal we have a splendid 360 degree view for our efforts. We are at the edge of the alps, so to one side are the lowlands, and on the other there are hundreds of peaks as far as the eye can see.
What draws the eye more than anything, however, is the incredibly blue waters of the lake hidden right underneath us, shimmering in the heat like a Fata Morgana. Declining the kind offer of summit schnapps from a friendly local, we begin to make our way down a slippery slope towards it. When we finally reach its shores I’m so hot that the lure of the cristalline water takes over, and I join the friendly local and his buddies going in for the coldest dip of my life.
Afterwards I will read up on it and learn that the lake is source-fed from below and therefore maintains a steady – low – temperature all year around (never glazing over in winter), but getting out of the water Iris sums up the experience rather succinctly: “I see it was this cold”, she says, grinning, showing a most unflattering distance between thumb and index finger. Suffice to say when the offer was made anew, I gratefully accepted the (plummet) schnapps this time around.
Playa del Rubihorn
The next day we make for Fellhorngrad and a ridge walk that would have been ideal as a first day introduction to the area. Straddling the border between Germany and Austria, it’s a pleasant enough hike, but too crowded and pedestrianised for my taste. The best that can be said for it is that it offers splendid views into the Austrian valley where we will be exploring next day.
The vale is effectively an Austrian enclave in Germany, because there is only one real road into the valley and it arrives there from Bavaria, which must have made everyday life for the inhabitants rather cumbersome back in the day of border controls. More importantly (to us) it’s also home to one of the more impressive gorges in Europe, the Breitachklamm. And so our third day sees us going to Austria.
Getting off the bus well above the Klamm (“pinch”) itself, we follow the Breitach downriver in glorious sunshine along a very pretty road that would have been a joy to run. I say as much to my hiking friends, forgetting the adage that you should be careful what you wish for. You see, after an hour or so of hiking Florian discovers that he has left his outrageously expensive camera hanging on a bench where we took a break. It’s a good kilometre back up the road, so I offer to run and get it before someone else does.
Unfortunately someone else already has, and so I continue running back to the last lodge we passed, yet another kilometre upriver. When I finally arrive I’m drenched in sweat, but the camera is there, handed in by the finder (hikers are nice people!), and so all that remains is for me to race back to my friends. By the time I get back after this unexpected detour I’m once more so over-heated that I just tear my clothes off and let the river cool me down, with unexpectedly homoerotic / rubberducky results, as captured by my gleeful friends.
When I post a pic of me on FB/when I’m tagged in one.
The Klamm itself is gorge-eous. The valley narrows, steep walls looming above us, waterfalls forcing their way ever deeper into the rock beneath us, as we clamber along walkways hewn into the cliff-face or precariously hanging on to the outside of the bare rock. Like a cut into the flesh of Mother Earth, the gorge is so deep that some of it hasn’t seen the sun for two million years. The debris left behind by winter floods bear witness to the brute force of the water: entire trees are lodged between the walls in places, and markers show the water levels sometimes reached, metres above our heads. It’s awe-inspiring.
Since Florian is leaving in the afternoon to visit a friend, Iris and I decide to try something both of us have been itching to do for a long time: tandem paragliding. We’ve signed up to do their longest flight, using the thermals to stay up in the air for up to forty minutes. Unfortunately, the flight school is incredibly badly organised, with numerous reschedulings and one pilot not showing up until an hour and a half too late, by which time it’s so late in the afternoon that the thermals are gone. This in turn means our flight is less than half the length promised, but for all that it’s an incredible experience!
We run off the top of the Nebelhorn and take flight as easy as anything, then go down the valley close to the forest-clad sides, gliding effortlessly and smoothly through the air. It’s such a high I’m just grinning and laughing the whole time. Iris, meanwhile, is screaming at the top of her lungs – something she has forewarned both me and her pilot is a sign of joy. She soon has cause to scream for other reasons, though, because then they start showing off their skills, making us swing around our axes, spinning around in half loops in the best roller-coaster tradition. It’s fantastically good fun, if quite disorienting.
Iris earning her new nickname, with me in the background.
Before we land I’m given the reigns and told to steer towards the village church, which I do as best I can, before finally we come down soft as can be on a field, grinning from ear to ear from the adrenaline high, and me at least more convinced than ever that this is something so want to learn for myself! The rest of the evening is spent in a Biergarten, mulling over the minutest of details, riding the air waves over and over again.
Next day Florian is back, but the worse for wear from last night’s birthday do, so Iris and I ride the Bergbahn to the top of the Nebelhorn on our own. We set out along the ridge together before parting ways, with me attempting the Entchenkopf alone.
It’s sits across from the Rubihorn, but is 300 metres higher, and significantly more difficult going, with several passages being senkrecht climbing. I had been wanting to try the via ferrata, the climbing paths that you traverse with guides and equipment, but nae more. This is worse by far. With no back-up or climbing gear, the ground slippery from last night’s rain, and drops of anything between ten and fifty metres onto sheer rock, any mistake would be my last. It’s no coincidence Todesangst is a German word, I think.
What do we say to Death? Not today.
When I finally reach the summit, my legs are shaking from fear-induced adrenaline, and I don’t dare stand up for quite some time. But fear is good. Fear – if harnessed – makes you more alive, more focused. As I sit there, taking in the never-ending views, the air as clean as can be, I feel like a million bucks.
And then the moment is over, and I slide down the other side of the mountain towards the Hütte where Iris awaits my return, and the best Kaiserschmarren pancakes known to man.
That was Iris’s last day, so next day Florian and I set out on our own to do the Sonnenköpfe, three lower peaks that form the continuation of the Entchenkopf. They looked more like rolling hills from the summit the day before, but as we hike them they turn out to be quite formidable, too, and it’s only the knowledge that there will be even more of the same Kaiserschmarren that spurs us on til the end.
Next we want to try the stony Gottesacker plateau (lit. “God’s plowing field”), but when we get there the lift is under repair, and faced with the prospect of an additional 1,000 vertical metres in full sun – the weather forecast having turned out to be quite wrong yet again – we opt for an alternative route through a Naturschutzgebiet up to another lodge, seated on the Austrian-German border, and down the other side. It turns out to be Florian’s favourite walk of the entire week, but I can’t help feeling a bit wistful about having missed the plateau, especially since it looks just like a sleeping dragon from below…
Climb every mountain!
The very last day the weather forecast is finally correct, and the rain is pouring down. F can’t be bothered to leave the Gasthaus, but I go for a quick run and then a solo hike in the southernmost valley in all of Germany. It’s wet and misty and moist and slippery, but I don’t mind. The low-hanging mist lends the nature here a mystical aura of veiled beauty, and besides it’s reminiscent of the hikes of my youth, when – as I remember it – the alps were always clad in clouds.
And so my travels with Sonnenkopf and Nebelhorn (lit. “Sunny head” and “Fog horn”) are at an end. The lovely Martin and Andrea, who run the Gasthaus Birkenhof where we have been staying, hug and kiss us goodbye and drive us to the railway station, and then all that remains is one more visit to a beer hall in Munich (with succulent Schweinshaxe and Augustiner beer), before finally flying home.
I cameto Geneva early one morning with the sole intention of leaving it as soon as possible, but a fatal error when booking my rental car (not changing 7 PM to 7 AM) combined with a healthy dose of inflexibility on the side of the car rental company left me unexpectedly with an entire day here.
Truth be told, I didn’t mind (much). I had only ever been once before when I was here to work for the UN (as you do), and hadn’t had the time to see any other part of this most quintessentially Swiss town.
The first thing that struck me is how hushed it all was. Granted, as I had flown in on a red eye, the city was probably even quieter than normal as I made my way on foot towards the old town, but still… the famous water sprout on the lake seemed to be the only thing moving, sending cascades of water 140 metres in the air. It was already hot however, and being dressed top to toe in black didn’t help – it might make you look cool, but I was anything but.
And so I slunk through the alleys of the old town, lurching from shade to shade like Frankenstein’s monster, who was “born” here when Mary Shelley outdid her friends in a literary contest, Decameron-style.
Geneva is famously the birthplace of another monstrosity, too (in the eyes of the Catholic church, at least!). 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, and having been at the centre of that revolution the city celebrates with numerous plaques and statues, none more impressive than the stalinesque monument at the foot of the old town, where the four founders stand in vigil, looking like a cross between dour dwarves from Tolkien and Usama Bin Ladin. Given that their ideas directly contributed to wars, civil wars, famine and the deaths of millions one has to wonder what great thinkers will be venerated five hundred years from now…
John Locke, Gimli, Grumpy, Usama
Back in the here and now, modern Geneva proves to be exactly as stereotypically Swiss as can be hoped for: banks line the streets (presumably with impressive vaults hidden underneath them), and luxury items are on sale everywhere – foremost amongst them watches, ranging in price from small car to McMansion – and the army’s favourite deterrent makes regular apparances.
So far, so Swiss. Less famous is perhaps the fact that Swiss society is incredibly liberal – it’s here people can go to take their own lives in special death clinics, after all – and so it shouldn’t perhaps come as a surprise that there are stores selling cannabis and prostitutes plying their services quite openly, as if it were nothing more special than, say, cheese fondue (I’m not saying cheese fondue can’t play a part, too, but you would probably have to pay extra…).
I have my sights on a different Swiss speciality, however, of a most particular kind: CERN.
The European Centre for Nuclear Research is arguably the most successful example of humankind coming together for the greater good and advancement of the race. It’s here, or rather one hundred metres below the ground, that the Large Hadron Collider is – well, at this point I admit defeat; there is no way I can explain how the particle accelerator is used. They crash particles into each other at near the speed of light and sift through the debris to infer the existence of various infinitesimally small building blocks of the universe. That’s the best I can do.
But it’s here, all 27 kilometres of it, running circles around everything else in terms of coolness (quite literally, as the magnets used to speed the particles on their way are cooled to just a couple of degrees above absolute zero in order to create superconductivity), and I spend a couple of very happy hours taking in the exhibitions and enhancing my ignorance.
And so it was that I left Switzerland with an even better impression than I had before. It’s easy to see how the combination of the lake and the surrounding mountains lures people here – unfortunately that is also why the market has seen fit to ensure that it that it’s out of reach of most mortals. As I left I tested this using the Big Mac index: roughly twice the price of all other European nations. Wanna live in Geneva? Win the lottery, or – at least – bring a packed lunch.
So today I participated in Courchevel X-trail, a particularly cunning name for an extreme trail run in the Courchevel region (of the French alps). An orgie of gruelling ascents and descents – 54km, to be exact, and nary a flat surface in sight.
It started at four in the morning, so in fairness there was no way to see the wall-like mountain towering immediately in front us either, but as soon as we were off you could tell just how murderously steep and long it was from the headlamps of runners ahead and behind you, like a string of pearls in the night.
It took me two hours to reach the first aid station, 10k into the race. Normally I would have covered more than twice that distance in that time, so it wasn’t running so much as climbing. By this time the sun had climbed into the sky as well, and revealed that this first mountain wasn’t anywhere near done with us yet: we were only halfway up it, in fact.
And so on we climbed. The sun stayed resolutely hidden behind clouds and mist, but even so I was pouring with sweat, in spite of it being only six or so in the morning. When I finally crested the first mountain, realisation dawned: descending is almost as bad as ascending! The first descent of the day was relatively doable, but as the day wore on, gravel and treacherous stones in combination with deadened legs meant it was just a different kind if torture.
If I had seen a contour map of the route I dont think I would’ve ever signed up: the second mountain was even higher than the first, 600 metres straight up in the air (over something like four kilometres) to the second aid station, along its ridge for another handful of kilometres (where the fog thankfully hid the abysses we were tightroping along!) and then down impossibly steep roads into a rather wonderful valley. Here a number of fast flowing rivers with water the colour of blue clay, conspired with stone chalets and grazing cows straight out of a Milka commercial to make a rather enchanted place, the enclosing mountain ridges adding to the feeling of a lost paradise.
Unfortunately that paradise was quickly lost again, as a third ascent began at the valley’s end, this one leading up across alp meadows with incredible numbers of flowers and then into a seemingly never-ending field of boulders, where one false move would have meant instant reenactment of the pivotal scene from “128 hours”.
By this time I had given up running apart from a slow jog on the downhill sections, but the boulders provided the straw that broke the camel’s back. There was no way I could walk fast enough to make the next rope time, and running across them (either up- or downhill) wasn’t an option, so after seven hours and 30k I had to resign myself to the fact that today would earn me my first ever DNF (Did Not Finish).
It’s obviously not an accolade I was hoping for, but at the same time I can’t be unhappy. A number of factors combined to make today a bad day: I slept atrociously bad the night before the race – two days of stressful travelling to get here plus sleeping in a tent after a day of 34 degrees heat and no shower saw to that – and I’m obviously not good enough at running in this kind of terrain (hardly surprising as I’ve never done it!).
So my spirit wasn’t in it, and I stepped off while still feeling ok physically, rather than push myself to the absolute limit, knowing that this way I’d be able to come back to enjoy the alps in a week’s time – this time for less strenuous hiking, hopefully – and that’s a choice I’m happy with.
—–
A final note on race organisation: while overall it was a very smooth operation, there are some points that might be of interest to potential runners. First of all, Courchevel isn’t one place. There are at least three villages called Courchevel, and having had more information about the actual location of the point of departure would have saved me an hour or so of admittedly scenic but very stressful driving as the closing time for registration drew ever neigher.
The goodie bag deserves a special mention: apart from the usual array of vouchers and marketing material for other races it contained a plastic gobelet (useful?), a local beer (very drinkable, I’m happy to report), and a condom! That’s a first. Whether it was there to serve as a sort of talisman, to keep and preserve you in the mountains (condom in French is “preservatif”, after all), or whether its presence had anything to do with the imminent proximity of Pussy (a French hamlet nearby) I don’t know.
There were no medals and t-shirts on offer for finishers. Instead you got a mug and a pin – full marks for novelty here as well, but I’m not sure I would have been very happy with that offering upon completion.
Finally a word on safety. The race organisers had done what they could: the trail was well blazoned throughout, and there were even a handful of volounteers scattered about the mountains in the iffier spots, but there’s no denying that rescue operations would have been very difficult. In the darkness and the fog there was no way a helicopter could have got to the site of an accident, even if there was someone to report where it happened (and the potential for accidents was unlimited). In the same vein, I was incredulous to discover that the only way of getting down from the aid station where my race came to an end was to hike twelve kilometres unsupported “mostly downhill”. It was only luck that saw me being able to hitch a ride with a ranger, otherwise I’d still be out there now…
…and it’s time to summarise what’s happened this far 2017. As has been the case these last couple of years, I set myself certain tasks in January, to be completed over the next twelve months, and at the halfway mark it makes sense to take stock, to see what has gone according to plan, and what hasn’t.
Looking back, it’s quite a lot crammed into six months, so I’m pleased with that.
I’ve managed to work out quite a lot (unsurprisingly, what with the races) but not as much as I had set out to do in total – weeks of hiking and skiing and diving have prevented me from reaching the goal of a marathon run and biked every week, and I haven’t done much yoga either. But then there’s still six months left to remedy that.
Have I developed my French, my piano and chess playing, and done more non-fiction reading? I certainly got off to a good start, doing thirty minutes per day of each, but a good friend giving me a Netflix password threw a big spanner in that particular structure. I haven’t completely derailed, but there have been leafs on the tracks, shall we say.
As for taking on new tasks at work, I have, happily. And not least because of this very blog, in fact. Turns out people at work read it and thought I might do good in Internal Communications, so from now on I will spend one day per week as a roving reporter, highlighting goings-on in my work place. Very happy about that.
So what’s next? I will try to make up for lost time in those areas where I haven’t quite managed to reach my targets, obviously.
I’ve still got the mountain ultra X-trail coming up in the beginning of August, and ten days of hiking the Bavarian alps hot on the heels of that. After those ten days I don’t really have any plans for the rest of the year. An acquaintance has invited me to Bilbao, and another to Nepal, so those things might happen. Or not. Readers should feel free to make suggestions.
I still want to try and beat my marathon record before the end of the year – I’ve improved significantly on my personal best for shorter distances, but whether that will translate into a new marathon PB remains to be seen. Time to start looking for a fast race, in any event.
At work I have made a promise to attempt to add Danish to my official language combination, so that should keep me busy for quite some time (maybe there are Danish movies on Netflix?!), and the new job will hopefully continue to present new challenges, as well.
All in all I feel quietly confident that the second half of this journey will be as filled to the brim as the first half was. Come fly with me!
A triathlon seemed the logical step – and a half length Ironman seemed about right. Combining swimming and biking and running in a course covering 113 kilometres, an Ironman 70.3 is something that could challenge anyone, but to me it was a daunting proposition for a couple of specific reasons: I’ve never learnt how to crawl properly, and I didn’t have any experience with road bikes – both fairly essential skill sets to triathletes…!
But then it wouldn’t be a challenge if it weren’t slightly intimidating, would it? And so I signed up for the Luxembourg Ironman 70.3 Remich-Moselle triathlon, happy in the knowledge that I had five months in which to prepare. Well, fast forward five months and I still haven’t learnt how to crawl, and I’ve used my new bike a grand total of three times… and yesterday was the day.
Here’s what happened:
First impression when I arrive at Remich? These are some seriously athletic people. They look like they eat marathoners for breakfast. It’s hard not to descend into homoerotica when describing these men (and even the women look like men!) – suffice to say even oldtimers look like gray-haired terminators. Or possibly these grizzled fellows are still young, and this is what too much triathloning does to you?
Second impression? These are people who take their kit seriously. Most bikes look like something Batman would be happy to cycle around Gotham on, if Bats was into eco-friendly neighbourhood policing. They might have heat-seeking missiles on them, for all I know, and a bat fax hidden underneath the saddle.
Overall, the level of logistics involved is slightly bewildering to a simple runner like myself. There are bikes to be checked in, red bags for running kit, blue ones for biking (I’m not sure if it’s purposely done to be (R)ed for running and (B)lue for biking, but it would explain the (W)hite bag for afterwards, when all that’s left to do is whimpering…).
Queuing up for the start, I look out across the Mosel river and a sea of neoprene-clad racers, nearly all of them in black, and already sweltering, because it’s proving to be a very warm day. Thankfully, in spite of the heatwave that makes this quiet village in Luxembourg feel like an outpost of the Serengeti, the organisers have dispensed with the traditional wildebeest-start for this event (where everyone stampedes into the water at the same time, turning it into a churning cauldron of thrashing limbs). This means I’m able to get in line at the very end – in the 50-60 minute bracket – where my breaststroke won’t upset anyone.
Even so, once we get in the water there are other athletes who are clearly not too good at crawling, but who don’t let that fact stop them from zig-zagging back and forth along the river. I’m quite happy to actually see where I’m going, as in the end that proves rather useful, allowing me to take the shortest route from buoy to buoy, and avoiding detours into Germany.
I think I did quite well considering this was my first attempt at competitive open water swimming, but I have no way of knowing, because when I stumble out of the water and jog into the transition area I realise my Garmin hasn’t recorded anything. Drat.
Pulling off my wetsuit and grabbing all my biking kit I laugh a little at a piece of advice I got off the Internet. I piously took a picture of my bike when I had parked it and memorised the surroundings to be able to find it today, but since I’m one of the last to enter the T zone I can easily spot it from a hundred metres away.
And so I hop on my bike and set off. The biking part is the great unknown for me. I haven’t done more than 18k in one go on this bike; I’ve only owned it for two weeks – and ten days out of those it was in repair back at the factory, since it fell apart on my third outing and nearly killed me, due to an assembly mistake – so there is no way of knowing how this will go.
As it turns out, I’m in for a pleasant surprise. The first 35-40k are along the Mosel river, first upriver all the way to the French border, then down again – and I average 30kph, which is considerably faster than I had thought possible. Then it’s inland and hilly, ridiculously pretty countryside, but even the longest, steepest uphill stretches feel eminently doable, and I pass quite a few athletes, in spite of my being unable to get at the energy bars and gels I have brought along. (Note to self: flip belts do not work well when biking!)
Before long, I’ve done more than half, and then suddenly it’s the last 20k, which are either downhill or flat, and I’m flying back into Remich for the last transit.
As I get off the bike, my legs object loudly to doing anything but pedal, but that was expected, and once I get out of the T zone, they know what’s expected of them. Running, at least, I know how to do. Ironically, that almost proves my downfall.
Muscle memory dictates what speed I’m going, and that means I am going fast. Way too fast. The first kilometre flies by at 5:05, the second at 5:15. I have to make a conscious decision to reign myself in before I bonk. Quite beside the fact that I’ve been exercising for four hours plus already, its gruellingly hot, 28C in the shade, and precious little shade on offer.
But once I’ve made my peace with this, and don’t treat the running as if it were a normal half marathon, it becomes surprisingly easy. The run is made up of four laps, each one taking you tantalisingly close to the finish before throwing you out of Remich and down along the river once more to collect another bracelet (one per lap), downhill on the way out, uphill on the way back.
Around me, people are suffering, throwing up, groaning as they attain to keep running. I take a different approach: I walk when it feels hard, stop to help a couple of people with cramps (salted raisins – work like a charm), and run with an easy gait for as long as it feels good. It won’t be my fastest half marathon, and I won’t meet my goal of making the run in under two hours, but I feel great. I even have enough energy left to show off a little on the finish line (which sadly, since it was only a live feed, you will never see!) before collecting my first triathlon medal.
My main ambition was to finish the race at all, and my hope of coming in under seven hours I managed with quite some margin, at 6:22:59. Can I improve upon that? Sure. Give me a year of actually training with a bike and some lessons in crawling and I will knock another 23 minutes off that time. More importantly, am I happy about having become (half an) Ironman? Affirmative, Jarvis.
…there’s no denying that – with less than three weeks to go before Luxembourg, my first Ironman 70.3 – this whole triathlon idea is starting to feel quite intimidating!
I mean, I can swim my “granny crawl” (you know that stately progression through the water ladies of a certain age who’ve just come from the hairdresser specialise in) well enough, and I can run – if not fast, then at least for a long time – but I have yet to go more than 30k on the bike in one session (In my defense, I only got my race bike less than a week ago, but still…) And then of course there’s the small matter of putting it all together, all three disciplines one after the other. Who in their right mind does that??
Like all participants I got the email containing race rules and regulations this week. You get penalties for everything, it seems. Some of them things I didn’t even know existed! Like drafting. Apparently you can’t stay close behind someone when biking, because that way you benefit from them pushing the air out of your way. I would have thought that was a bit superfluous as a rule. No one objects to that when swimming or running (in the first case because you’d get your teeth kicked out if you tried, and stumble in the latter), so is it really necessary to have a rule like that?
There’s also the “no indecent exposure” rule… in my experience, people participating in a race don’t give a damn (mass peeing before a marathon, anyone?), and if someone were to actually expose themselves “with intent” I reckon he would have to answer to every other participant present, rule or no rule, but better safe than sorry, I suppose.
You even get a penalty if you hang a balloon or similar from your bike so as to find it easily after the swim. That’s a bit stingy, isn’t it? It was one of the best tips I picked up reading about triathlons, and I was looking forward to seeing a sea of bright balloons, scarves, and what have you in the transit area, but that’s not to be, it seems.
Anyway, those are just minor details. For now, the main challenge – beyond the ever-present question of whether you’ve trained enough – lies in the logistics of the thing; How do you transport your bike safely? How do I organise all the kit so as not to forget something vital? What do I bring to eat/drink? Will I be able to drive back after the race or will I be stranded from sheer exhaustion?
I guess freaking out a little is normal at this stage. I try to tell myself, One step at a time. Before long, that principle will apply to the race day itself.
The second half of my month of eating paleo looked like it might be considerably harder than the first. Eating nothing but what our most distant ancestors might have eaten works fine when not exerting oneself utterly, but as my triathlon draws closer that’s not an option. Plus I would be going hiking for five days with my brother, and goodness knows how my body would react to that, paleo or no. This is what happened:
Day 16: 10k bike / 2k swim brick-session (i.e. one follows immediately upon the other). No problem.
Day 17: 18k bike, 8k run, 6k run, all with hour-long pauses in between, and 28C temperatures. By the end of the day I’m exhausted, but somehow I don’t think the diet is to blame. I cheat a little afterwards, drinking half a litre of pure apple juice – it tastes like the nectar of gods!
Day 19: I discover that smoked trout and boiled eggs make a good breakfast, but leaves your mouth smelling like fart. Learn something new every day.
Day 20: New PB on 5k. Wonky reading on the Garmin tho, so won’t count it, but still: clearly paleo isn’t hurting more explosive efforts either.
Day 21: Prepared massive batch of protein cakes to bring on next week’s hike. Tweaked the recipe to include maple syrup and chocolate. All caveman kosher. Biggest problem will be not eating them before actually on the trail…!
Day 23: Hiking all day. 18k in hard terrain in Tiveden. Protein cakes yummy. Freeze-dried food better than expected. Energy levels stable and high.
Day 24: Hiked 20k. Ate big plate of macaroni and cheese in the evening and literally passed out for half an hour afterwards. Just laid down on the ground and fell asleep. Felt hung over on carbs the rest of the evening. Disgusted.
Day 25: Hiked 23k. In the evening an old friend met up with us, and served us cold beers and Brie sandwiches. Couldn’t say no out of politeness. Didn’t want to, either. Paleo regime officially toppled, then. Will mount a counterattack. Tomorrow.
Day 26: Got up at 0400. Hiked 32k over ten hours. Gratefully accepted a beer in the evening from kind strangers, but otherwise toed the line.
Day 27: Last day of hiking. Family reunion. Lots and lots of food. Decided to forgo paleo for the evening.
Day 28: Back in Belgium. Rest day.
Day 29: Rest day.
Day 30: Went running for the first time in over a week; shaved another sec off my PB on 5k. Celebrated daughter’s birthday with huge, distinctly non-paleo cake.
Day 31: 10k bike (PB), 8k run, 7k run. Weighed in: 77.2kg.
So, strictly speaking I stuck with the diet 100% for three weeks. After that circumstances conspired to make things more difficult, as I had predicted. That’s never an excuse tho; I chose to give it up for the sake of convenience.
But that doesn’t change the fact that I was able to work out as hard as I ever have in my life during those three weeks, and it felt great. I lost five kilos during May, without losing any muscle, so it seems the theory holds water – your body will switch to burning body fat if carb intake is significantly reduced, and do so without lowering your performance levels, over either short or long distances.
It will be interesting to see what happens at the Ironman triathlon in three weeks – that will be the real litmus test. I will be writing about that experience too, of course. One thing’s for sure: I’ll be continuing on this prehistoric path.
For the last two years I have gone on an annual hiking holiday with my brother, but this year we hadn’t really made any plans, so when an old friend suggested Bergslagsleden I was all ears.
Bergslagsleden is a trail that goes straight through the heart of Sweden. It also happens to pass through one of the last areas of true wilderness in the southern half of the country, Tiveden forest, making it a worthy candidate to follow in the footsteps of the wonders of Slovenia and Mallorca.
On those occasions we rented places to stay and made day tours, but this would be something else: we would start at the southern-most end of the trail and hike northward, bringing all the kit and food we needed along on our backs. Quite another challenge, and one – it would soon become apparent – we had very different ideas about what it would take to tackle.
I arrived in Sweden on Monday, and met up with my brother at my parents’ place. I felt well prepared, having collected gear for this kind of expedition for almost a year, finding the right equipment one item at a time. My brother on the other hand had seen a cobbler that morning, seeking advice on how best to glue the soles back on his walking boots(!).
In the car to the trailhead he was in the back, performing the equivalent of an appendicitis operation on his shoes. To say that I was stressed out about this would be an understatement; if he couldn’t get them in working order, the trip would be over before it had begun.
He also hadn’t brought a tent, so the first night we shared Big Agnes between us. It was cold, considerably more so than the forecast had said, and I was lying there fully clothed in my sleeping bag, unable to sleep – you see, my brother snores. A lot. If snoring had been an appreciated art form, like, say, opera, my brother would have drawn crowds like Pavarotti. As it was, I was the only one to hear what sounded like a buffalo mating with a seal.
At one in the morning it started to rain. The weather forecast had specifically said there would be no rain! My brother roused himself long enough to ask me to bring his freshly glued shoes inside the tent. And so, with the rain competing with the snoring over who can assault my ears the most, the fumes from the glue finally had me drifting off to sleep.
The next morning brought glorious sun and clear blue skies, however, and Anders’s shoes looked well enough, so we broke camp and set off, eager to start our journey into Tiveden.
Tiveden, literally the Wood of Tyr*, god of war, or the wood of “Tiva”, the gods, in Old Norse, is a forbidding place. The inland ice that covered Scandinavia 10,000 years ago deposited so many erratic boulders here as to create a landscape that was difficult to traverse and impossible to tame, and thus it has remained a wilderness, a forest untouched by modern forestry, and a refuge for wildlife.
Now it’s a national park and a national treasure, but it used to be place people feared to go; wild animals were a real threat, and stigmän (literally “path men”) robbers would ambush any merchants and pilgrims foolhardy enough to travel without sufficient guard, only to melt back into the dark woods again on hidden trails. On top of that, local lore has always populated the area with a plethora of trolls, giants and other scary critters, so it’s small wonder the area was shunned as far as possible.
We made it through the park unscathed, however, touched only by its natural beauty. We stopped to have lunch on top of Trollkyrka, a fortress-like accumulation of boulders deep in the heart of Tiveden, where Norse gods were allegedly worshipped for centuries after Sweden was officially christened. It’s easy to imagine blood sacrifices taking place here at night, the ancient trees standing sentinel in the dark around the bare rocks under a starry sky, flickering torches lighting the scene as the old gods are given their due. There were a few American tourists around, and it’s tempting, but we restrained ourselves…
At the end of the day we make our camp at a tärn, a forest lake, that is as picture perfect as is imaginable. The camp sites along the trail are all equally well placed, and kept in beautiful repair: timber bivouacs with ample firewood for the campfire, a clean outdoor loo and almost always overlooking a lake.
Feeling hot and sweaty we brave the cold, black water, and here things could have taken a turn for the worse. The plankway leading across the moss that encroaches the waters is slippery, and Anders loses his balance and sinks waist deep into the bog quagmire. Luckily he can pull himself up, but he’s hurt his knee, which means our expedition is threatened yet again.
The author doing his best John Bauer-troll impression.
He spends the night groaning and swearing (and snoring), but once we get going the next day the stiffness subsides and he can continue walking.
North of Tiveden national park Tiveden forest still continues unabated, if slightly less wild. We pass Tivedstorp and Ykullen, picturesque old villages deep in the forests, still intact, still remote. Legend has it that the area was first populated when famine threatened the local kingdom and the king ordered every tenth family to be executed to save the others. His queen – who was apparently a little less brutal, or just more cunning – convinced him to send the unfortunate families to settle on the outskirts of Tiveden instead. Apparently doing so was seen as tantamount to a commuted death sentence; gives you an idea how hard life must have been here back in the day…
The third day we enter the borderlands between the ancient kingdoms of the Svea and Göta tribes. Here, the inland ice sheet has left a shingle ridge that rises sharply above marshlands, forming at once a natural bulwark and a road across the boggy surroundings. This natural feature meant that any attempt to invade your neighbours this way was almost certainly doomed, but that didn’t stop either tribe from trying, again and again. In more peaceful times the ridge was part of a well established path for monks and pilgrims and other travellers, particularly appreciated since it offered a natural vantage point from which to spy dangers from afar. I read this on an information signpost before climbing the ridge, and I hadn’t gone ten metres on it before I almost stepped on a snake. So much for that theory!
After the bog lands we enter an area of commercial forestry, which is considerably less pretty, but we have a lot of fun anyway, sharing woodsman tips. I’ve been reading the excellent Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs, so we test various tricks to tell directions using trees (it seems the trees haven’t read the book though, because they are rubbish at it!), and my brother – who knows a lot about plants – points out various edible things along the way; so many that I begin to feel there is nothing in the forest that can’t be brewed as a tea.
Thankfully we don’t have to put that theory to the test, because when we reach the end of the day, my old classmate Jessica – whom I haven’t seen in 25 years but who tipped me off about the trail (hooray for social media!) is there with her husband Per, waiting to take us in their car past this uninteresting stretch and into more pristine forests 20 kilometres to the north.
We stop at another campsite that looks as if it belongs in a fairytale, and – glory be! – they bring out a cooler full of marvellous brioche, Brie and beer! It was a feast and an evening not soon to be forgotten; the years fall away, and it’s as if a month has past since last we saw each other, not a quarter of a century.
If it’s all the food we ate or the fact that the bivouac faces due east I don’t know, but the next morning I wake at four and watch the sun rise. It’s a lovely experience, but my timing is crap, because this is the day when we need to hike the longest by far – 32 kilometres.
We set out by eight and it takes us ten hours, but then we do stop to explore the caves in Fasaskogen (literally the forest of horror) where local lore has it the giant Diger lives, and have lunch in an abandoned mine, where centuries old graffiti tell of miners – real-life troglodytes – long gone.
By the end of the day I’m very, very tired and the soles of my feet are hurting to the point where all I want is to cool them down in a lake. Two kilometres before we reach our campsite we pass a moss, and the plank-ways we balance on sink into the ice cold waters, utterly submerging my feet. I try to tell myself that if I want to see the glass (and my shoes!) as half full rather than half empty I had been wishing for a way to cool my feet – I just didn’t imagine them to be in my shoes as I did so! Another woodsman’s trick – this one from Ronja the Robber’s daughter – sees me picking dry white moss that I stuff into my shoes. They dry up very quickly.
And so we near the end of our hike. One last glorious sunset, one last meal cooked on the Primus – Anders goes all out with linseed patties, minced meat and grilled vegetables, and a family of four earns its place in the hikers’ pantheon of unsung heroes by offering us a beer each – and one last night spent playing hide and seek with the midges, before we make our way to the end of the trail. For now. You see, we did 105km but Bergslagsleden in its entirety is 280km, and finishes near the part of Sweden where we grew up. We’ll be back, braving Bergslagsleden again.
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*Of Tyr’s Day fame – or Tuesday, as it is more commonly known.
I said at the beginning of the year that I hoped 2017 would be a year of wanders. Well, I’ve already done one walking holiday, in Madeira, but next week my brother and I are thru-hiking part of Bergslagsleden in Sweden, and fending for yourself 24/7 is a different proposition altogether. To put it differently: for extended hiking you really only need one thing. Gear. Lots of it.
So I figured I would put together a list of all the gear that I’m bringing with me on Bergslagsleden next week. It’s my first attempt at this, meaning chances are there will be things that are superfluous, or that I should have thought to bring but didn’t. We’ll see.
(Oh, and all the links are to Amazon.com in case you want to find out more about a given product. If you were to buy anything using those links I get a percentage (without it costing you more) but I’d recommend snooping around for better prices. ?) Here goes:
Backpack. Osprey Atmos 65. A wonder of comfortableness, even when filled to the brim. And it will be.
Tent. Big Agnes. Interesting name. She is surprisingly light considering her volume, and easy to get up, down, into and out of. ‘Nuf said.
Sleeping bag. Marmot Trestles 30. A bit of a conundrum, this. I can’t sleep in tight sleeping bags, but this one is huge. Will bring it if I can figure out how to get it to fit into the backpack, otherwise I will have to make do with one of the kidlets’.
Sleeping mat. Therm-A-Rest. Comfortable and light, but squeaky and takes a bit of time to inflate orally. Had I known I might have sprung for another model.
Clothes. Arcteryx shell jacket. Two pairs of running socks, two t-shirts (one with long sleeves), one pair of shorts, one pair of Arcteryx trousers – yes, I love Arcteryx, and no, I’m not bringing any underwear. I’m going commando. Seems fitting, no?
Shoes. My trusty Saucony Xodus. If they could carry me 90 kilometres in a day for Ultravasan, they will do here, too.
Water kit. Camelbak 1.5l bladder (for filtered water) and LifeStraw, which proved its salt in Sardinia (to filter water).
Food. Mountain House ready-made freeze-dried bags of assorted meals, 12 portions. Brother is bringing home-made versions of the same. Figured we’d get by on this if we bring a sausage or two, plus stop at a couple of hostels on the way to have real food. Home-made energy bars. Oh, and instant coffee – gotta have a start engine!
Electronics. IPhone 6 with downloaded maps and information about the trail. Garmin Fenix 2.0 for recording our passage. Doubles as compass. Spare battery. Cables.
Small essentials. Matches, two boxes. Toilet paper, one roll. Ecological soap, 100ml. Sunglasses (cheap ones bought in Mallorca – if they sufficed there, they will do in Sweden). Contact lenses, five pairs. Ibuprofen. Anti-chafing bandaids. Small super-absorbant towel. Anti-bear pellets.
And that’s about it. I worry that I might have forgotten something trivial yet fantastically necessary. We will soon see, I guess. Until then, happy trails!
So for the month of May I challenged myself to go on a paleo diet, in order to see how this might affect my well-being and physical performance. Here are some of the highlights of what happened:
Day -1: Panic. I’m supposed to not have any sugar for a month!?
The healthy thing to do would have been to research recipes and prepare. What do I do? I run out to the local night shop and get an overpriced bucket of Haagen-Daez ice cream and down it all in one sitting, then – predictably – feel horrible about it. At least I didn’t have a beer as well.
Day 1: Breakfast is made up of bullet-proof coffee (black coffee with a dollop of coconut oil in it) and left-over oven-baked chicken with mozzarella; how’s that for high fat, low carb? It feels a little weird, eating chicken first thing in the morning, but hey, embrace change, right? Only I have the same thing for lunch AND dinner, and now I do feel a real need for change.
In terms of training I don’t do anything more strenuous than a short run, which a post-workout banana covers just fine. It remains to be seen how longer bouts of exercise affect me…
Day 2: Reading up more on paleo, I discover all legumes are banned. No beans. I literally had cans and cans lined up on the kitchen counter to make a big batch of chili con carne! No sweat, old bean.
Also, no dairy is allowed, so my buffala mozzarella yesterday wasn’t caveman kosher either, in spite of the fact that trying to milk a buffalo is a pretty Neanderthal thing to do. Crud. Two days in and I’m failing. There’s a learning curve to this, clearly.
I buy a spiralizer to make zucchini “pasta” for dinner and find it surprisingly edible. The kids threaten to go on hunger strike, then devour almost an entire cheesecake with raspberry coulis for dessert while I watch.
Day 3: Weight-lifting after an English breakfast goes well. A banana, a date and some walnuts plus lemon water with a shot of flax seed oil replaces my usual (milk-based) protein shake. So far so good.
In the afternoon the kids have an hour each of breakdance (L) and hiphop (R) with an hour in between, so the plan is to run while they dance. First hour is no problem, the second one I struggle, but more because I’m tired from this morning than anything else. And three workouts in a day is a fair amount, caveman or no.
Day 4: Brought carrots, strawberries, dates and walnuts to work to tidy me over until lunch. Worked well.
Dinner I’m invited to an Italian friend whom I’ve completely forgotten to inform about my new habits. Shit! In my mind’s eye I see a mountain of Parmesan-powdered pasta looming, followed by troughs of tiramisu, but my gracious host is very understanding, and beyond the guilty pleasure of a smallish plate of spaghetti vongole I don’t stray from the path.
Day 7: I want to test myself (and the diet), to see if no carbs for a week will mean bonking when keeping up a sustained effort. So I do an hour of swimming (2k) followed by a three hour walk (13k), stop for lunch, then go biking one hour and a bit (25k). Admittedly this isn’t anywhere near as much as a marathon or triathlon, but I do it all without getting particularly tired or feeling any need for carbs. Yay!
Day 9: 16k run. No problem.
Day 10: Becoming accustomed to eating “nuts and roots”, as my sister put it. Breakfast is dates and cashew nuts, carrots and hummus, plus a couple of eggs. Apart from the coffee, it feels like something the first guy to climb down from the trees might have eaten. He probably didn’t read his New York Times daily briefing while doing so, but so what?
Day 12 I run equal parts nuts (pecan, walnuts and cashew) and medjoul dates in a blender to create the simplest and best “cake” ever (1 cup of each; calories: approximately 1 gazillion). Who said troglodytes didn’t know how to party?
Ate it all in one sitting, and a good thing too, because Day 13 I swim 3,000m for the first time since I was 18. And then do an hour of weights.
Day 14: Brunch with a friend. Half of what they serve is bread, or sugar, or both. I try a teaspoon of tiramisu (which I normally adore) and it’s so sweet I can hardly bring myself to swollow. Luckily the other half is made up of yummy veggie dishes, so emerge quite sated.
In the afternoon I run a half marathon on nothing but water. 1:52:50. Good time, given previous day’s workouts. Still don’t feel the need to refuel during the run. Scales show I’ve lost three kilos in two weeks. Not a bad first half!
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(A friend objected that people get paleo wrong, in that they eat meat a lot more often than our palaeolithic forefathers and -mothers did; this is an objection I would say is probably correct. Even so, I’m buying a lot more veg than usual, and I feel good: slimmer, lighter, never quite as ravenous nor as zonked out before or after meals as I normally get.)
I’m so sorry. You came here hoping for mammaries, didn’t you?
No can do, I’m afraid. But despair not. Today was a day of wonders greater than surgically enhanced bosoms. Today was the day when the hatchlings from the nest of great tits in my hedge took the great leap into the void, and I was there to watch it.
Think about it for a second. Your whole life you’ve been confined to a cosy bed, your parents bringing you yummy, wormy treats all day long, and then suddenly this urge strikes you: I must throw myself into the air and soar. It’s a crazy notion, but it might just work, right?
Wrong. There’s a steep learning curve to flying even if you’re born to do it, it seems. The three chicks are emphatically not good at it. They crash into things, miscalculate distances and generally make, well, tits of themselves in the process. It’s painful to watch, really.
They call to one another and their parents, but there’s nothing the elder generation can do but watch as their offspring fail Aviation 101. One particularly unlucky fellow smacks into the trunk of the crab apple tree where the rest have managed to congregate, and gets irrevocably trapped in the undergrowth.
I watch it struggle for a long time, reluctant to intervene, but in the end there’s nothing I can do but pick it up. It’s the tiniest little thing, short wings and scruffy head, but it’s plucky and perky, and stays on my hand without a worry in the world, seemingly sunning itself and calling to the rest of the family as if to say “Check ME out!” (Tits do that).
I have to nudge it to finally convince it to hop onto a branch of the tree, but once reunited – and having received a restorative maggot from mom or dad – it seems content to continue its aviary adventures.
Me, I spend the rest of the morning at a respectful distance, listening to their calls from afar, a big, big smile on my face, thankful that my garden gives me such moments of unadulterated pleasure. If you can’t fly yourself, then surely the next best thing is to watch the next generation do it?
Three great tits. Not a caption you’d normally want to see.
Urgh. Gruff. What is this M&M’s of which you speak?
Remember the bit in Pulp Fiction where Marcellus Wallace promised to get medieval on someone’s ass? Always sounded like a good threat to me. (I imagine it would involve building cathedrals and trading in relics…)
However, the whole world seems to be hellbent on going much further back in time, with Trump wanting to bomb everyone into primordial soup (presumably to level with his intellectual discours). So in keeping with that spirit, I figured the month of May might be a good time to challenge myself in a new way: by getting Stone Age on my own ass.
It’s not as mad as it seems. I’m not proposing to go live naked in a cave and hunt mastodons for breakfast (although that would be fun, too), no, what I will do is go on a Paleo diet for a month, to see what happens. Paleo is essentially about eating the way our earliest ancestors did, in an attempt to get away from starch, sugar and carbs – something which those early hunter-gatherers didn’t find much of on their menu.*
It will require quite the change to my eating habits: no more oatmeal and milk for breakfast, no pasta, beer or pizza post long runs, no sushi on Fridays, and certainly no sneaky Haegen-Daaz ice cream orgies late at night.
I’m getting hungry just writing about these guilty pleasures, and chances are you are, too, which is due to the fact that our bodies are hard-wired to like this kind of food. The problem is it used to be a very rare treat back in the palaeolithic, whereas now there’s sugar everywhere, and our bodies cannot deal with such quantities of the stuff – hence diabetes, obesity, cardio-vascular diseases; the list goes on and on.
The physical effects of switching to paleo are interesting for another reason too, because after a while – anything from a few days to a few weeks – the body goes into a state where it stops craving carbs and starts using fat as its prime source of fuel. This will supposedly make you much more efficient in long distance races, as the body’s supply of fat is vastly bigger than its stores of sugar (the difference between your muffin top and the muffin you just ate, if you will).
Now, I experimented with this prior to running Ultravasan, but chickened out during the race. But my triathlon is coming up, and if I can do that without craving sugar then this diet must be the real McCoy.
As always, there will be an update afterwards to account for how I did during the challenge – the practical aspects of it as well as any changes to my physique/performance. Now, what’s the best way to cook mastodon for breakfast?
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*This sounds like an excellent idea to me, particularly since some studies show dementia to be caused by an accumulated inability to break down sugar, similar to diabetes, and I really don’t want to go down that path.
After Pemba and Mallorca, my island-hopping circumnavigation of Africa has taken me to Madeira, off the northwestern coast of the continent. Unlike no man, Madeira is an island, but also the name of the entire archipelago, somewhat confusingly.
Known as the Isles of the Blessed to the Ancient Romans (although no one knows who the blessed in question were), Madeira has been part of Portugal for most of the last 500 years, but geographically speaking it is a part of Africa – and geographically this is probably the most dramatic landscape I’ve ever seen; the volcanic mountains rise up steeply everywhere, and verdantly lush jungle covers every square metre not claimed by man. This is Sardinia on steroids, a place where Kong might feel at home.
Funchal, the main city, is my base. It rises up the mountainsides in a natural amphitheatre facing out towards the sea. This means the whole town is terraced, with houses literally being built on top of one another – a car parked on the roof of a house, or a house where the entrance is on the topmost floor because it’s perched on an outcrop far below; these are common sights – and traversing it is calf-killing business.
On my first day I want to see the Monte palace gardens, which lie at the top of the town. There’s a funicular that takes people up there, but the asking price is staggeringly high (much like the gardens) so I make my way on foot from downtown. Three kilometres of hiking and over half a vertical kilometre later, I arrive at the gates, legs shaking and dripping with perspiration, questioning my sanity.
The gardens – first created by a British consul – were beautiful and well worth it, however, with bulbous clouds of bougainvilleas spilling out over the paths, palm trees and jacarandas and tulip trees and African lilies and Austin roses and bottlebrush flowers and endless arrays of other plants. Azaleas the size of trees, ferns taller than I am, and water features everywhere. It was a sight to behold, once my breathing and heartbeat were back to normal.
There is a lovely little church next to the gardens, where the last Austro-Hungarian emperor rests (having lived the last few months of his life in exile here after he lost his empire), and his grave was filled with ribbons bearing greetings like “our last emperor” in German and Czech. Some people never learn.
The only other claim to fame for the church (beyond having the best views and the sweatiest congregation of all time) ought to be its altarpiece, which consisted of a printed picture of a painting of Jesus with the words “Jesus, eu confio em Vós” printed in Times New Roman (italics) on it. Why anyone thought this a good idea, I don’t know. It looked like the religious equivalent of the first Christmas card you ever DIY’d online. A far cry from the faux perspective cupola in Gozo, it was.
Pro-empire statements to the left, pro-EU statements to the right…
Below the church are the famous wicker toboggans that tourists are ferried down the mountain in by surprisingly beer-bellied Portugeezers wearing white outfits and jaunty straw hats, nattering away while the tourists shriek with delight. The asphalt is worn silky smooth by their passage. It looks fun, but the prices are as steep as the roads, so having recovered somewhat, I walked back down again.
This was a fitting overture to the main reason for my coming to Madeira. I want to hike the levadas. Levadas are ingenious works of engineering that the Portuguese set about creating immediately upon discovering the island (It was known to the Romans but subsequently lost to history, before Portuguese seafarers “rediscovered” it in 1419, and never mind that it was inhabited by runaway slaves and others when they did.). For five hundred years they have expanded this network of aqueducts hewn out of the cliff-face to channel fresh water from natural sources in the centre of the island out towards more habitable areas.
Today, they make for perfect hiking trails, taking wanderers straight into the laurissilva forests that cover much of the centre of the island – it is literally a walk in prehistoric environs, as this type of laurel trees (many of them a thousand years old) covered large swathes of Europe tens of thousands of years ago, but only continue to exist here nowadays due to the island’s unique climate.
And so I find a company that takes small groups of people into the mountains to hike the most scenic routes. I had initially planned on bringing my tent and thru-hiking the island from one end to the other, but that didn’t seem possible, so here I am, doing the light version, coming home to a bed and breakfast every night instead of camping out.
First off is Levada do Rei, the king’s levada, or the king of levadas, I’m not sure which – my Portuguese being somewhat nonexistent. The hiking is easy as can be, but it’s not for the faint of heart. More often than not there is a ledge no more than fifty centimetres wide between the levadas and a drop-off of dizzying height. Fifty or even a hundred metres below, the roar of the river can be heard, and one false move will send you tumbling. It’s a puckering thought, and the last to go through the mind of many a slave (before the rest of them did) – as they were often forced to work on these projects (a fact that guidebooks find convenient to gloss over).
Trail with built-in shower.
The levada goes six kilometres inland, through the most dramatically inhospitable terrain imaginable – once even inside a waterfall – to finally end in a gully where every leaf and frond is dripping water into the stream. Having left the group far, far behind, I explore the area, have my lunch in a spot that looks like it’s straight out of the Jurassic, and a bit of a rest before setting out again. I finally reencounter them ten minutes away from the gully. Possibly this group hiking thing isn’t for me…
On the way back, the guide drops me five hundred metres from my hotel. Whether it’s punishment for having strayed from the group, or just bad service, I don’t know.
The next day, the pickup is fifty minutes late due to no-shows, and the guide (another one) is in an understandably foul mood. I try to not let it affect me, but he is frankly rude, repeating “I’m sorry but it’s not my fault”, when no one has claimed as much. The drive across the island is breathtaking, climbing up these alp-like jungle-clad mountains that dwarf everything humans can ever hope to create.
We reach today’s levada, and I go on ahead again, leaving the group behind, enjoying the solitude and the different fauna of these higher altitudes. Here, it’s tree heathers and laurels forming a roof over the path, ferns are back to normal size, but blueberry bushes tower above me, and the odd wild geranium brightens the shade, while little trout swim in the levada by my side. It’s lovely.
I reach the halfway point of the “four hour” trail in under an hour, and spend a pleasant while by a beautiful waterfall and rock pool reminiscent of the ones I plunged into in Switzerland when canyoning, sharing my lunch with a chaffinch that happily takes pieces of cheese from my fingers.
Who do you finch took the picture…?
By the time I’m done, the others have arrived, but trundling back the same way doesn’t appeal to me, and after some talking to the guide he grudgingly gives me leave to take a circular path. This is proper hiking – all roots and rocks, not strolling along a concrete sidewalk – and I nearly slip a couple of times, but in the end I’m back by the minibus well before the rest of the group.
By this time the guide’s temperament and the false marketing combined have most of the hikers grumbling, so he takes us on an extra loop of a kilometre through an area destroyed by forest fire last year. It’s difficult to know how to react: on the one hand he is trying to make good on the company’s overblown promise, on the other hand it’s not like we’re just looking to walk any old where just for the sake of it. And he’s clearly pissed off, so that even if he is genuinely looking to do something for us, no one feels inclined to take him up on his offer.
In the end we call it a day, and I say nothing, but a couple of exchanged e-mails later I’m looking at a third day at a third of the original asking price. Seems fair.
Next day couldn’t have been more different: the pickup is on the dot, the guide Duarte is a real Mensch who has me pegged in seconds. “You go on your own, you fast”. And so I do. We go into the mountains proper, to hike between the two highest peaks on the island, Pico do Areeiro and Pico Ruivo, both over 1,800 metres. The path used to take in a third peak, but it’s been closed to hikers since a rockslide obliterated a stretch of it – a stark reminder that geological time is now.
It’s an old path that locals on the north side of the island used to ferry their wares to the south side market place, however unlikely that sounds. Nowadays at least it’s paved, and a good thing too, as the ever-present tufa pebbles make for easy slipping.
It’s hard going but incredibly beautiful: the path snakes its way up and down the sides of mountains, balancing on razor edge crests and burrowing through sheer rock. The fauna here consists of heather trees and broom, and the ground is covered by alpines such as indigenous orchids, buttercups, saxifrage and sedums, with oversized bumblebees brumming about. It’s overwhelming in its splendour.
What’s more, it is all to be a part of the Madeira Island Ultra Trail tomorrow, so every so often there are waymarkers attached to the scant protective wires. I doff my sweaty cap in the direction of the runners: the race is 115 kilometres across the island, and I would not want to try to run many of the metres I cover here today…! (I did 15k today, with 1k elevation loss and 1k ditto gain. The X-trail is four times as much. Lord knows what the MIUT equivalent is!)
I predictably arrive long before the rest of our party, so when they do show, Duarte simply tells me to go on for another hour and then meet them back at the Pico. I happily do, taking in the utter isolation that is the Village of the Nuns way below in the next valley. It’s hard to imagine a more secluded place, and it looks quite magical, nested in between the mountains, but alas, the clouds come in and cover the nuns (and everything else) from my prying eyes, which I take as a signal to turn around and go find my posse, incredibly pleased with my day.
I spoke more to Duarte on the way back, as he was understandably interested in the previous day’s debacle, but he also tipped me off about a longer trek that he recommended I do, even going so far as to find me the right bus to take, so my last day will be spent hiking properly on my own, just as I had originally envisaged.
And so my last morning sees me boarding a local bus that will take me up the Ribeira Brava valley (the same one that blew me away two days ago). It takes its time getting there, but I enjoy every minute of the two hour drive, moving at a stately place down the coast, the driver navigating hairpin bends while I gaze in amazement at the landscape and all the gardens.
The bus stops twice for ten-minute breaks – once to give passengers a chance to take a look at Cabo Girão, a glass-bottomed walkway over a cliff that drops 580m straight down into the ocean, and once, at eleven o’clock sharp, for coffee. My father would have approved – of the latter.
When the driver drops me off, it’s in a place that almost defies description. At 1,500m, its high above the valley floor, offering breathtaking views, but unlike previous hikes, I move along this path in glorious solitude. For the first hour I encounter no one at all. Lizards rustling in the undergrowth, birdsong and the burbling brooks are the only sounds I hear as I walk through the dappled shade of a eucalyptus forest, the warm aroma of the trees’ esoteric oils filling my every breath. Truly, this is forest bathing at its finest.
Jump in at the deep end!
By noon, just as the trail starts ascending, I come upon my first runner. He seems in good shape, considering he’s been running for twelve hours by now, but he’s only done some 50 kilometres, and yesterday’s trail is still ahead of him. We talk a little, and I encourage him in his efforts, offering a few choice tips – I am the author of Seven Tips for a Painful Marathon and a successful ultra marathon runner myself, after all! ?
After that, I overtake more and more runners as I make my way up to Pico Grande, and then steeply down the next valley to the village of Curral das Freiras.
See the people on the trail?
I make it to the village and down two cold beers in quick succession at the local bar (at the very fair price of 1€ per bottle), thankful that I haven’t traversed 65km, nor have 45 left to go. There’s only one problem: the only bus back to Funchal isn’t leaving for another two hours.
I arrived just before the halfway break-off point of the race – any runner who hasn’t made it there by 15:30 isn’t allowed to continue – and this proves to be a stroke of luck for me, as the volunteers begin to pack up and get ready to leave. I start talking to a group of five women all in MIUT sweaters, and they offer me a lift back to Funchal.
I would have been super happy with any ride, but the women turn out to be sweet, chatty and very interesting (children of emigrants to South Africa and Venezuela who have returned to their “homeland”). I simply couldn’t have asked for a better end to my holiday here.
I’m in a cloister on the east coast of Mallorca, having taken vows and joined an order. At least that’s what it feels like.
Joining the Celestial Order of the Brethren and Sistren of the All Inclusive Resort is a strange experience. Much like its religious counterparts, life for the inhabitants of this enclave is strictly regulated, and therein lies its attractiveness to the many seekers of enlightenment who come knocking on its doors. Pilgrims looking to lay down their worldly worries and lead a life of contemplation find their way here, much like real monks and nuns joining monasteries and nunneries, albeit for rather different reasons.
The grounds of this cloister are littered with cold water pools, where the penitent are encouraged to immerse themselves as much as possible, to purge their carnal sins from their earthly vessels. To ease our way, there is a plethora of contraptions aimed at luring us to stay in longer than is strictly good for you – the favourites being a bouncy hill and a slide of quite breathtaking steepness and height. The kids love it, and only give up their watery self-flagellation when their lips are blue and their bodies shaking. Then we retreat to loungers and allow the sun’s rays to beat us into submission until the cycle is repeated anew.
Penetenziagite…!
Of course there are certain differences from a normal cloister. Our cells are more adorned than I’m led to understand is usually the case, and the refectory where we take our two daily meals isn’t exactly an oasis of silence, nor does it feature divine choirs whose hymns allow the spirit to soar – it’s more like a high school cafeteria into which has been let loose a battery of beastly bairns of all sizes. It’s the main attraction for families with bawling baboo– small children, after all, the fact that in this microcosm no normal chores have to be carried out. No cooking, no cleaning, no leaving the premises for any reason at all unless you really want to. Add to that the anestesia provided in liquid form at all meals, and you begin to understand the appeal.
Watching this antropological experiment unfold is certainly an eye opener. The tired look on the faces of so many parents, the way they barely grunt at each other beyond what is necessary to ensure their offspring is fed and dressed and slathered in sun lotion, makes me feel alot better about my own parenting (and previous marital) efforts. The singles I encounter here are universally in agreement that ours is the happier solution.
Overall it makes for a radically different holiday from my last experience of Mallorca, when it was just my brother and I, and we stayed in a hermit’s quarters, walked in the mountains all day, often not encountering another soul for hours – but to my surprise I find this existence does offer me a kind of solace. In spite of the abundance of obese, tattooed and over-cooked humanity surrounding us, and the constant sound of squealing kids, it’s summertime (at a time when my family in Sweden is dealing with seven inches of snow) and the living here is easy. It’s not the kind of holiday I would choose, but it is the holiday the children wanted – bathing, sun and ice cream being their top criteria for what constitutes a good trip – and so I’m happy to enjoy this for what it is, a brief break from my mortal toil, knowing as I do – much like a real monk – that the end is neigh.
Who knows, I might even resort to resorts again in the future.
Just off the coast of East Africa, a thirty minute flight north of Zanzibar, lies the tropical volcano island of Pemba. And if that sounds like the first sentence of an adventure story, it is precisely because it is.
It takes an effort to get here; from Brussels to Istanbul, from Istanbul to Zanzibar (via Kilimanjaro), and then one last tiny plane to Pemba domestic airport, an airstrip with a shed made of corrugated metal for a terminal. And even then the journey isn’t over. We’re picked up by a driver and taken on a bumpy ride to the northernmost tip of the island, where we finally arrive at one of the two resorts in existence here, the Gecko Nature Lodge.
You see, unlike its more famous neighbour to the south, Pemba is largely devoid of tourism, and all the better for it. This is also the reason why we have come here; its relative obscurity is one of the factors explaining why the surrounding waters are home to some of the best dive sites in the world. Corals are dying everywhere because of global warming and over-exposure, but here they are still perfectly healthy, and there is an abundance of them, too.
After last year’s less than impressive diving adventures in the Andaman Sea and on Gozo, my friend Lesli (of Sardinian and Appalachian fame) and I have high hopes for this place, and it doesn’t disappoint. The place is right on the coast, next to a local village, and surrounded on all sides by encroaching jungle of the kind you’d expect Tarzan to feel at ease in.
Our hosts, Russian Ekaterina and French Lucas, have only been here for two months, but make us feel at home right away. The fact that there is only one more diver here at first makes it feel almost as if we are their personal guests rather than paying customers, which is lovely.
We’re exhausted from our travels, and hide out from the midday heat in the guest huts that lie hidden in amongst the mango trees and banana palms and other vegetation. It’s a shock to the system, suddenly being subjected to heat and humidity on a tropical scale, but as the afternoon wears on, we acclimatise ourselves, and when the sun sets over the African continent we are seated on the water’s edge, sundowners at hand, ready for the spectacle to begin in every sense of the word.
Light, camera, action!
The next day we start with an early breakfast of eggs and freshly baked bread out in the open (but under a roof made of bamboo and fronds to hide us from the elements), then we gather our gear and head out in the rim boat to the dive sites.
I feel the usual excitement rise within as we follow the coast and take in the sapphire waters and emerald forests. Dara, our fellow diver from Ireland, has been here several days already, and Lesli is three times more experienced than I, but I’m always a little apprehensive when diving; it can be dangerous.
We kit up, buddy up, and prepare to go in. Lucas warns us that the visibility is so good that it can actually be a problem; divers used to less impressive conditions might mistakenly think they are in shallower waters than is actually the case, simply because they’re not used to seeing so well. That doesn’t sound so terrible, but can be a real issue, as going too deep causes the body to accumulate more nitrogen than it can take, effectively poisoning your blood in a way that can kill you.
One last security check, and we roll backwards into the water. On the divemaster’s command, we decend into the blue, and like that, we arrive in a different world.
There’s a lagoon formed by the main island and two smaller ones, Njau and Fundu, and the best diving is found right on the edge of the islands and in the two gaps that lead into the lagoon, where the tide has furrowed underwater channels that are lined with an astonishing plethora of corals.
There are fire corals, so red they look like glowing lava, cream-coloured porcelain corals, orange staghorn corals, sky-blue corals shaped like trees and pink fans and black chimneys and yellow bubble baths and sponges and a hundred other different shapes and sizes and hues, and nearly every one of them is favoured by one or more different species of fish: Tiny multicoloured nudiebranks and fiercely territorial clown fish hide in amongst anemones, parrot fish munch on their favourite calcified snacks, shoals of golden glass fish crowd swim-throughs, giant moray eels and lobsters and mantis shrimp are backed into crevices, poised to attack if you get too close, camouflaged scorpion fish lie motionless amongst the corals, deadly to touch and all but invisible. The list goes on and on. Add to this that you are floating as if suspended in the air, and it’s an experience so different as to be almost impossible to explain to someone who has not had it.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so…
Dara (who dives every week) and Lesli (with her daily yoga exercises) stay down like a couple of mermaids. Me, I’m using up air like I’m trying to corner the market. The excitement and adrenaline doesn’t help, but it’s all good. Never have I dived in such pristine waters, in such a rich flora and fauna. I surface with an enormous grin on my face.
The build-up of nitrogen from our first dive necessitates a surface interval of an hour or so, so the captain – a local fisherman who finds all the dive spots with eerie accuracy – lands us on a secluded beach where we bask in the sun, have water melon and pancakes and tea before heading out for a second dive. After that, it gets too hot, so we make for home and a well deserved lunch.
In the meantime a family trio from Argentina (a father and his adult son – Juan Carlos II and III – and daughter Jennie) have arrived, and over the next four days we will be the only guests at the lodge. Father and son joins us diving, and Jennie, who turns out to be a TV star back home in Argentina, takes lessons in the afternoons to get her certificate.
It’s a simple routine, but a very pleasant one. In the mornings we go diving, after lunch (and a siesta to hide from the worst heat) we go exploring. We rent bikes and kayaks to see more of the island. We traverse the jungle with a guide and see silk monkeys and crested hornbills (think Rowan Atkinson in The Lion King) and flying foxes (a type of giant fruit bat), we paddle along the coast and into the lagoon and its mangrove forests – the trees look like giant spiders with their hundreds of air roots holding them in place on the edge of the tides, and the volcanic rock walls are alive with hundreds of crabs, clambering along the razor-edged overhangs as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
Almost as exotic is the experience of interacting with the locals here. When I went running through the village I had a chorus of children calling me. For some strange reason they shout “bye bye” by way of greeting, and they laugh and smile and stare at me, obviously thinking it a very strange sight. If I stopped and tried to talk to them they grew very shy, and were likely to run away, but sometimes they ran after me instead. Once, when biking, we passed a group of serious-looking young girls in beautiful scarves and dresses all lined up and waving at us, and I blew them a kiss. The fact that children often marry very young and that polygamy is allowed is difficult to comprehend for a westerner, so for a moment I was wary of having committed a serious faux-pas, but much to my relief it resulted in an explosion of giggles. Even the adults seemed genuinely pleased, much like I expect they would have if a monkey had performed a particularly good trick. It’s a strange feeling to be find yourself part of a tiny minority, and quite the eye-opener.
Me and my seven new wives. Not.
And so the days go by. The place lives up to its name, as I discover when I find a gecko inside the toilet bowl one morning. At least it wasn’t a poisonous centipede, or a cloud of winged termites, or a bushbaby – all of which have found their way inside huts in the past.
A couple of the dives are scary, because the currents are unpredictable, and toss and turn us every which way, making you feel as if inside a washing machine during the spin cycle. When that happens there is little to be done apart from hiding from it as best you can, but sometimes even that isn’t possible, and you get taken for a ride.
The very last day on Pemba is a case in point. By now the Argentinians and Dara are gone, replaced by a Danish father and son. One of them has difficulty decending, and before he manages the current has taken us to another spot than the one we meant to dive. Before we realise this we are down to 28 metres instead of the fifteen we thought we would bottom out at. And the second dive that day, the very last dive of the week, is a wall dive that sees us drift so fast that the group becomes separated. It’s not unlike a rollercoaster, in fact, with the current pushing us up and down as we rush by the corals.
Eventually I get low on air and find a rock to hold on to for dear life while I do my safety stop, and when I finally come up I find that the two Danes are already back in the boat, having abandoned the dive earlier, while L&L are a hundred metres away, dragged there by the current. It’s a humbling experience, and one I will always remember as The Floomride. Even so, it was The. Best. Diving. Ever.
A Great White Swede.
We spend one last day on Zanzibar, in Stonetown, a place that will forever live in infamy as the biggest slave market in the world.
The slavery museum is a moving memorial to the untold millions of victims of this heinous crime against humanity. Raiding parties would find their way far inland, so that by the time they came here, slaves would have been marched for many months already, shackled together like animals day and night, and subjected to all manner of atrocities along the way.
Having been taken across the sound to Zanzibar the traders would cull their stock, throwing the ones that didn’t seem worth it off the ships to drown rather than having to pay duties for them. The cargo would then be incarcerated in tiny, overcrowded cellars underground for a couple of days to weed out all but the strongest, who would finally be taken to the market to be inspected, bought and sold like so much cattle (or worse, since I gather cattle rarely get used for sexual purposes by their owners), before being taken by their new masters to all the corners of the world, for – lest we forget – this was a global commercial endeavour. It beggars belief. Hitler, Stalin and King Leopold are all amateurs by comparison.
And with that sobering reentry into civilisation, plus a parting gift of torrential rain and ditto diarrhoea, Zanzibar speeds us on our long, separate ways home.
??????
One of my goals for this year is to run the equivalent of a marathon per week, so why not get an actual marathon in early on, I thought, as I sat on my cozy couch, slightly woozy from the heat of the fireplace and the inner fire lit by a fine single malt. Why not indeed?
One month later and I’m in a pine forest on the outskirts of Genk, in the Belgian rump region of Limburg. It’s cold and has just stopped raining. Looks like it could start again any moment, too.
There are three hundred of us (the maximum number of participants allowed in the Louis Persoon Memorial Marathon), lined up like lambs for the slaughter, or a band of brothers (and a few sisters), and maybe that’s why, or maybe it’s just the mood I’m in these days, the first of the dystopian nightmare that is the Trump regime, but my thoughts go to Thermopylae.
The tradition of running marathons comes from the first Persian invasion of Greece, when Pheidippides was sent to tell the citizens of Athens about the victory at Marathon. This wasn’t the Persians’ only attempt, however. They came back for more, and when they did, they came via the Hot Gates (i.e. Thermopylae), a narrow pass through the mountains.
There, three hundred Spartans under King Leonidas made a stand, and held off an infinitely superior Persian force long enough that democracy could live and flourish. They knew they would perish in the process, but they did it anyway.
It’s a little like that today. The three hundred of us fight through a seemingly endless onslaught of kilometres, battling it out up and down long inclines, pushing against the waves of oncoming Persian pines, lap after lap.
The seven laps of the race are essentially made up of three kilometres uphill, then another three back down, both taking their toll. A month isn’t enough to prepare for a new record, and after the (still fairly good) first half, I realise that it won’t happen. I can’t help but feel a little defeated. What’s the point?
My feet hurt so much from the repeated impact of poor soles against the asphalt that I’m forced to walk even if I could have run otherwise. Dehydration proves another obstacle. I simply hadn’t taken into account how much more you sweat wearing multiple layers, so my muscles start cramping, and when I pee it’s the colour of Earl Grey. Nutrition becomes a problem, too, as I get heartburn, which turns every breath into Greek fire, but thankfully a Pepsid allows me to keep that more or less under control.
The rain holds off, but the overcast skies stay with us all day. When told the Persian archers were so numerous that their volleys of arrows would darken the sky and block out the sun, the Spartans’ only comment was “then at least we will be fighting in the shade”. I try to channel that super-cool attitude in the face of hardship, but my heart isn’t in it.
But then THAT’s not the way to take on a challenge like this. As the Spartan queen told Leonidas, “Come home with your shield, or on it”; quitting simply is not an option. With that in mind I make it a point to go into these races with three goals, where the first one is – always – to finish, the second one is a reasonably good time, and the third a personal best.
I’m nowhere near a PB, but that’s ok. I came fairly close to the second, which was sub-four hours, and I reached the most important one. I persevered. Maybe sometimes that’s all one can hope for. We need to fight seemingly insurmountable odds, knowing that something is impossible and doing it anyway, sacrificing for the greater good.
And whatever doesn’t kill you…
Before and after. No way of telling how bad it was in between…
P.S. At Thermopylae there is an inscription in a rock that’s been there ever since the battle. It says, simply, “Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.”
Words to live and die by. I recovered from the race by eating a whole box of chocolates. Leonidas, of course.
Travel one lap around the sun. It doesn’t matter what you do, it will take you a year. But what you do with that time matters. Some people will be content with just completing the trip, but I want to make it a real trip – making sure that I have the time of my life during my life time, if you will.
And so I will set out goals, much like last year, to ensure that my time is well spent. My credo hasn’t changed: I want to travel, have new experiences, go on adventures, challenge myself and develop as a person.
One new experience/trip/adventure per month worked well 2016, so I will endeavour to do the same this year.
In terms of travels I’ve already got trips to Malaga and Zanzibar and the French alps planned, and I’ve got my eyes on Prague, Basel and possibly Belize or Honduras as well. More will no doubt materialise.
As for new experiences, I really want to go hiking/kayaking and combine it with camping out in a tent – something which I haven’t done since I was a kid, and certainly never on my own. Kayaking on interconnected lakes in Sweden. Or hiking the Pyrenees, the Czech Republic, Romania… if this turns into a year of wanders I wouldn’t be sorry.
Diving with whale sharks and other megafauna is another experience high on my list: we’ll see what Zanzibar can deliver. Cave diving the cenotes in Mexico is another ambition.
And then there’s delta wings. I really want to learn how to fly one of those. And kite surfing – on water or snow, it really looks stupefyingly awesome. Parachuting is in there, too. So I’ve got quite a few potential new experiences lined up.
What about challenges? First of all, I want to run a marathon every week. That’s not as mad as it sounds, as it means an average of six kilometres per day, and I did manage to average four daily in 2016. Still, sounds impressive when you put it like that, eh?
I improved my marathon record by 40 minutes last year. I don’t see myself repeating that particular feat, but maybe I can chip away another 5-10 minutes off my PB; we’ll make that a goal as well. First attempt: Genk marathon in January. Then Stockholm in June, perhaps. And I’ve signed up for the Courchevel X-trail ultra marathon in August, too. Maybe I can combine that with hiking in the alps?
In order to have a fitness goal that encourages more than just running, however, I have signed up for an Ironman 70.3 in July – I figure this will encourage me to bike and swim more than would otherwise happen. A bike marathon per week sounds about right. How much swimming? I don’t know. An hour per week might be a minimum. Scary? You bet.
I still want to do more yoga – finding the right teacher is the main challenge here, but yoga at least I know enough to do a bit on my own. A daily routine would be ideal.
So much for developing and challenging myself physically. Intellectually, I hope to continue to take on new tasks at work, but that’s not something I am in control of. Apart from that, my goals have essentially remained unchanged from last year: I want to read more non fiction, become a better piano player and improve my French.
Since I didn’t achieve as much as I would have wanted in any of those fields last year, I figure a different approach is called for. Excellence is a habit. Ergo, I need habits that will allow me to reach my goals. Saying I want to learn a piece of music or read so many books or incorporate so many words in my vocabulary isn’t enough – I must set out how much time will be devoted to these activities daily, and what time, and then log it so as to ensure it gets done.
For instance, travelling to and from work by train could be time that is always devoted to reading non fiction – that would be three hours every work week. Days when I’m not working could be scheduled like classes: 30 minutes of reading, studying French and piano playing each day, for example.
So a typical day off work with the kids at school would have me doing three classes of 30 minutes each, plus on average 1.5 hours working out, and say another 30 minutes of stretching/yoga. That’s 3.5 hours every day taken up by challenges/daily improvement, which is a lot.
Work days would commence with a daily yoga routine and then I would read when travelling to town and back every day of the week but one, when I would bike. I still have to run 6k per day on average, so would have to squeeze in runs before or after work, plus use the odd lunch hour. I doubt I will be able to muster the energy to do “classes” after work, not all three of them in any event, but maybe one daily at least?
When travelling, some flexibility would be necessary, but I figure I should be able to do at least as much as on work days.
If it does work, it would mean 52 marathons on foot, as many again on bike, 50 hours of swimming, 150 hours of stretching/yoga, 180 hours or so of reading, say half as many hours practicing piano and French. I’m getting tired just listing it…!
I will try out this approach, and report back. It will be a wonder if I succeed at it all, but then again: Wonders don’t just happen; they generelly take a LOT of hard work.
We will see how it goes. Here’s to making 2017 a Year of Wonders!
2016 is coming to an end. It seems not long ago that I sat down to set out the goals I had for the year, and now the time has come to summarise what I have accomplished, and what targets I failed to reach.
I wanted to challenge myself, have new experiences, travel, go on adventures and develop as a person. Overall, I think it’s fair to say I have.
I overcame my fear of diving, and went not only to Nemo33, but also on two marvellous diving trips, to Thailand and Malta. On top of that I travelled to Mallorca, Luxembourg, Barcelona, London, Leeds, Edinburgh, Sweden, Rome, Switzerland, and Sardinia, so I certainly fulfilled my ambition to go on adventures.
I challenged myself in other ways than diving: bungee jumping and canyoning demanded overcoming myself mentally; and taking on not one, but two new roles at work has certainly brought new intellectual challenges and opportunities into my life, for which I’m very grateful.
The main challenge of 2016 however was gearing up for the immense task of running an ultra marathon. It took two marathons to prepare for that adventure, along with untold hours of physical exercise, but I did it, and couldn’t be happier with the result.
Not everything went according to plan, however: my grand design to develop as a piano player looked set to succeed until too much travel meant having to give up on regular lessons, which in turn left me disinclined to practice.
The same is true for my ambitions to improve my French – I started out well, but a lack of structure meant I let it slip by the wayside, almost without noticing, and I didn’t read as many books as I planned, either.
I didn’t bike as much as I had planned – the lofty goal of 2000 kilometres turned out to be more than twice the distance I actually covered, and I didn’t participate in any kind of Ironman. I did run the 1500 kilometres I had set out to do, however.
Oh, and I did write about it all here – no mean feat in itself, either.
So, what to learn from all this? First of all the importance of setting goals. I set out to do something every month, and on average I did, even though some months by necessity were more intensive than others.
Secondly, the need to have clear-cut, measurable targets if you want to achieve something; having UltraVasan as a goal allowed me to plan what I needed to do to reach that level of fitness, week for week.
Third, to push beyond your comfort zone. If I don’t, I tend to not get anything useful done, but by forcing myself to face up to my fears I have had a much more rewarding year than would otherwise been the case.
What I take with me most of all going into 2017, then, is that excellence is a habit. No goal is achieved in one great leap, or overnight, but by chipping away at it, you can do wonders.
It’s December already. Who’d have thought way back in January? I’m still working on my to do list, though, which I guess is a result in itself.
I did say I would try something new and challenge myself every month, and since I cannot go travelling (no more holidays, plus December is a busy month as it is), I have decided to challenge myself at home: I will try to improve my eating habits.
Now, I already eat fairly ok. No eating disorders or anything like that, but altogether too many carbs, too much sugar – and the holiday season hasn’t even begun yet. So… I have begun writing down every last thing that I eat and drink. Nothing fancy, just a list that I keep in my phone.
To my delight I find that the act of writing it down is in itself really useful, because I can no longer hide from myself what I’m eating. It’s culinary mindfulness, if you will. Knowing I will have to write down whatever I eat, I hesitate to allow myself treats that I would normally turn a blind eye to, or justify as “deserved”.
That last statement is particularly absurd, if you think about it. You don’t “deserve” something unhealthy for having done good. First of all, you’re not a dog, you shouldn’t reward yourself with treats, and secondly, surely a good deed should be rewarded with something good, not something you know is bad for you?
This one simple act has other knock-on effects as well. Suddenly I’m more keen on vegetables and clean protein (vegan ultra runner Scott Jurek’s book Eat and Run helped with the former, if not the latter!) and preparing meals in large batches makes more sense, since having ready-made food at hand reduces the likelihood of my straying from the path, be it at home or at work.
So Sunday saw me making oven-roasted sweet potatoes and other veggies and frying up lots of lean chicken, and yesterday I made a double batch of lasagna (admittedly a carb fest, but working out hard you need some carbs, too), and I’m looking forward to trying other stuff as well.
I figure the worst is yet to come – Christmas and new year’s aren’t exactly known for being bastions of healthiness, after all – but I reckon this way I will at least think twice before going Cookie Monster on any of the upcoming feasts.
I’m not going to publish the list itself, but I will let you know if it has any effect. I started this month of traditional gluttony at 83,6kg, which is well above what I feel comfortable with. Changing nothing else in terms of training, it will be interesting to see if this one act of documenting my food intake will have any discernible effect on the scales. Can I get down to my match weight of 80kg whilst eating well and orderly? Well, we’ll see.
It was 9/11 yesterday. The real 9/11. Trump was elected president. Yet another example of a populist playing on people’s fears and base instincts, but this one now with the power to change the course of history at a pivotal time, crucial for our species’ survival. A denier of climate change. An ingoramous, flaunting human rights and lacking in fundamental decency. The prospect is a grim one.
The only thing I can see that would have made a difference is education. Learning more about the world around you gives you new perspectives, new insights. It’s the responsibility of each and every human to learn as much as they possibly can, and in doing so, exercise critical thinking, the better to withstand the base appeal of trumped-up alpha baboons offering simplistic solutions (or even just sound bites) to complex problems.
I can’t shape education policies anywhere much – beyond the local school – but I can at least try to lead by example. As a birthday present to myself I bought ten books that were recommended by TED lecturers; I figured it was as good a way as any to discover titles that I would otherwise never read. Add to that five books that were gifted to me, and you have fifteen (mostly) non-fictional works that I will attempt to read before the end of the year. 50 days, 15 books, equals one book every 3,33 days.
Tall order? Yes, but I’m going to try even so. Imagine a world in which every single adult read a new work of non-fiction every three days – how much of a chance do you think the Donalds, Le Pens and Borises of the world would have then? Imagine the quantum leap in human understanding, the as-yet untapped potential that might be unleashed for the greater good of humanity.
I arrive at Malta airport late at night. I’m here to dive off the northern island of Gozo. Having learnt my lesson from Sardinia, I agreed with the dive centre to have someone pick me up and deliver me to my B&B. This turns out to have been a good idea, as I would have had to navigate badly signposted back roads* across both Malta and Gozo to get there. Also, people’s driving here is atrocious**. My taxi driver – a professional chauffeur – is a case in point; he has grasped all the fundamentals of driving apart from steering. He oscillates hither and thither, with no apparent notion of where he belongs on the road. Not even oncoming traffic alters his erratic approach, and I thank the stars it’s close to midnight and not many people about.
I make it to the B&B at one in the morning, only to be greeted as enthusiastically as I’ve ever been – by a white cat, who purrs her heart out as I pet her – and rather less enthusiastically by the owner, who doesn’t purr (and whom I don’t attempt to pet).
The next day the dive instructor picks me up and drives me to the north coast. The landscape of Gozo is like the Holy land, arid, stony, terraced, poor. People look remarkably similar, whether beggars or burghers. Someone told me there are twelve family names that are predominant on the islands since the time of the Knights of the Order of St John, and it’s easy to believe when you see how alike people look. It’s also quite eerie, being watched by an unsmiling man on one street corner only to have him (or a close copy) appear at the table next to you, then in a field as you drive past, then in a shop…
And so we go diving. The dives here are all walk-ins, meaning you start from the coast rather than from a boat. The coast is steep rock, however, often dropping five to ten metres straight down into the water, so after traversing salt pans and razor-sharp rock formations you have to clamber down metal ladders to get into the Mediterranean. The first dive goes well, but at the second site local fishermen – who don’t like divers – have sawn off the ladder, making decent difficult and ascent absolutely impossible.
So we change plans and drive on to another place where we dive into an underwater cave. A million years of stormy weather has carved out a dome inside the rock above the waterline, so you can ascend inside it and breathe the salt-laden air of this secret chamber. It’s even light inside, because the entrance is situated near the surface, which means light is reflected on the sand of the ocean floor of the cave and up into the dome. It’s rather good – just a shame no pirate has had the good sense to hide their treasure in there for us to discover.
Le grand bleu.
The third and last dive of the day is a wreck dive on the south coast. Poor visibility after the storm last weekend means we swim out and descend into a featureless blue space, only to have the wreck materialise underneath us, like a ghost, which I guess it is.
It’s all nice, and the people at the dive centre perfectly lovely, but it is rather underwhelming after the Andaman sea. I might have to change my plans for tomorrow, but that’s for later, now all I want is a scoldingly hot shower and All. The. Food.
Old villages are situated on hilltops here, the better to defend against invaders. Xaghra, where I’m staying, is no exception. Houses are huddled together, limestone and sandstone, all of them coloured in nuances ranging from dirty cream to creamy dirt, nearly all of them with sturdy stone balconies, often enclosed so as to create little extensions to the room, enabling its inhabitants to sit and watch village life from the comfort of their living rooms.
Having had my shower and a change of clothes, night has fallen, and I imagine unseen eyes (belonging to yet more Maltese clones) following my progress through winding alleys as I make my way to the city square for dinner. It’s easily visible from afar, because that is where the church is, literally mitten im Dorf, as the Germans would have it.
Mitten im Dorf.
The church is enormous, towering over the village. The vaulted dome is lit, and it reflects off the roofs of the surrounding houses, mere shades in its divine light, further enhancing the impression of dominance. The boom of the bells rings out over the landscape, as insistent, sharp and domineering as the call of mujaheddin in Marrakesh.
Once inside, the church’s interiors could match the finest in Rome in its gilded gaudiness, its opulence in stark contrast to the surroundings. And it’s well attended this Tuesday evening, too. None of this should come as a surprise in a country where 80% of inhabitants are practicing Catholics, but I am a little taken aback, even so. Small wonder divorce and abortion are (mostly unwelcome) novelties in this insular world.
My hunger is more of the body than of the spirit, however, so I set off in search of a pastizi shop. Pastizi are local savoury delicacies, and it’s been impressed upon me by several Maltese colleagues that I must try them. Seeing them is a bit of a shock. Oval pastries tapering to a point at each end, filled with cheese or peas to overflowing, they look like to me like mummified mounds, withered vaginas, brown and brittle to the touch, but the cheesy inside is surprisingly warm, moist and creamy, and I devour them with gusto.
Erm…….
I break my self-imposed drought of alcohol on the town square, enjoying a draft pint of local lager together with a sampling of other dishes of Maltese cuisine, topped off with home made fig ice cream. It’s sweet, but not too sweet, crumbly but richer than you might have thought, with a note of something that I can’t quite identify juxtaposed against the sugar and cream. Rather like Gozo, I think, the beer having clearly gone to my head. Then I have another one.
I stagger home, full and content, give the pussy cat a good cuddle, and pass out on my bed well before ten.
I wake at 0430, and can’t get back to sleep, so instead I go running. One of the two reasons I wanted to stay in Xaghra is that Calypso, the nymph that seduced Ulysses, is said to have lived in a cave right next to Ramla l-Hamra, the red beach below the village***. This is where I’m headed. Before six in the morning there is only me, birdsong and the report of rifles, as the happy hunters of Gozo do their damnedest to reduce the birdsong to zero.
Alas, once I reach the site of the cave, there is a sign informing me that it’s “temporarily closed due to geological movement”. In my experience, when a sign is rusted and the inevitable cafés have turned to ruins, there is nothing temporary about things, and this proves to be the case. Try as I might, I cannot reach the cave. Possibly disheartened by previous experiences, Calypso is not seeing visitors.
There’s nothing for it. I turn and trot back up the hill, just in time for breakfast before the second day of diving begins. I do two dives, and they couldn’t have been more different. The first one marred by incidents, and abandoned before it really begins due to one of the participants having a blackout at fifteen metres, it’s as bad as the second one is good. The sun shines high in the sky, and visibility and colours are therefore very good, and since it’s just me and another diver we explore a long stretch of the coastline, teeming with fishy things.
I decide to end my diving on a high note, so head back to the village for a quick change of clothes, lunch in the town square and the other reason I picked Xaghra: the Ggantija temples, or Temples of the Giants. There are two of them, and they are right here in this village. Older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids, some of the megaliths erected here exceed five metres in length and weigh over fifty tons.
How people did this 5,500 years ago no one knows, but it is somehow reassuring that people were as ingenious then as they are now. People being people even back then, one can safely assume that Neolithic Monolith Works Ltd. came in over budget and a couple of months late, but that’s another story.
Neolithic Lego!
The temples are a sight to behold. As so often is the case, all that is known about them is guesswork, but even five and a half millennia after the fact, it’s clear they were built to impress. Standing pairs of stone slabs mark the doorways between chambers, and the way they use perspective and height differences between apses serve to increase the monumentality of the innermost sanctums in quite a sophisticated manner.
My last excursion for the day takes me to Rabat, the island’s capital that the British impetuously renamed Victoria in honour of the queen during her jubilee, something which the inhabitants never bothered to pay any attention to. Perched high above it is the Citadella, a seemingly impenetrable fortress. And yet it was taken by Turkish corsairs in 1551, and the entire population of the island – all the 5,000 who had fled inside its walls – were hauled off to slavery.
Here I also find an example of ingenious indigenous architecture. The centrepiece of the citadel is a church, and the centrepiece of the church is a vaulted dome. Or would have been, had the construction not cost so much money that they couldn’t afford it. What to do? Every self-respecting church here has one, after all. The church fathers came upon a brilliant solution: they had a painter do a canvas depicting a faux perspective of the interior of an opulent dome, and placed it in the ceiling! If you didn’t know, you would never guess it wasn’t real. A bit like religion, then.
Fake it ’til you make it.
I decide to walk home, having just missed the bus. Hiking along the road at dusk I couldn’t help but feel like an even bigger target than I had that morning. But I made it home alright, and since that evening was customer night at Bubbles, the dive centre, and I was placed next to Danish Eva, instructor-to-be, incandescently beautiful and a latter-day Calypso, I feel it’s safe to say the day ended very well.
—-
And so my brief sojourn here is at an end. I’m sorry to report that it ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. Two chilli pizzas and far too much red wine meant little sleep, in spite of the lack of company, and so it’s with weak legs, rumbling tummy and bleary eyes that this Ulysses waves goodbye to the Isle of Calypso from the ferry deck.
As it recedes behind me, it’s easy to see why people have sought to possess this speck in the middle of the sea for millennia – unprepossessing, low key and rural, it is nonetheless a little emerald and gold gem set in azure waters, a treasure.
*****
*Or poorly signposted in Maltese, which amounts to much the same thing. The language is a bastard mixture of Arabic, Italian and English, with letters and letter combinations unheard of in any other part of Europe. Here they don’t dot the i’s and bar the t’s but rather dot the g’s and bar the h’s.
**I have this confirmed the day after by one of the instructors: “Driving is mayhem. All rules are regarded as the slightest of suggestions, right of way an unknown entity, giving way is a sign of weakness, and might makes right.” So that’s nice.
*** I have a special place in my heart for this story, as I once fell in love with a Maltese girl, but elected not to pursue it any further since I was married with children. More the fool me.
So I decided to quit coffee and alcohol for October. From a habit of five to ten espressos per day and the equivalent of a bottle of wine per week, I would go cold turkey on both. The results? Well…
First of all, actually doing it was surprisingly easy. I taped my Nespresso maker shut just in case I would need an extra second to reconsider in moments of weakness, but those moments never really materialised. People around me were generally supportive, even though they often couldn’t – wouldn’t? – understand why I was doing it. I was worried about becoming a social pariah, but I spent pleasant evenings out in wine bars and cocktail bars without feeling awqward or any need to sample their wares (the Latvian creationist/lesbian porn star/children’s book author I encountered may have been a figment of delirium-induced imagination, I guess, but I doubt it.). I will admit visiting Rome and not having neither cappuccino nor limoncello was difficult, but apart from that I was fine.
And how did it feel? I had light headaches for a week, and wasn’t able to concentrate too well during those first days – something which my chess partner took good advantage of. But apart from that I was unaffected, really. And I experienced less heart burn, muscle soreness and pain in the liver (although I might have imagined that last one in the first place), plus felt better rested and energetic overall, so that was a big bonus.
Add to that the pecuniary aspect of easily saving 10€ per week on coffee and twice that on alcohol, and you’re looking at savings to the tune of 1500€ per year, or three roundtrips to the US annually. Not bad as exchange rates go.
So what now? Should I continue my abstemious lifestyle? I honestly don’t know. I still yearn for that first shot of espresso in the morning, and a glass of Rioja with my entrecôte, and a cold lager after a good, long run in the sun… My problem is I don’t do things half-heartedly, so there’s a risk that one coffee doesn’t remain one coffee very long, and the same goes for drink. So for now, like a good goalie, I think I will just keep the zero for as long as possible.
“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.” G. Marx
This is probably my favourite quote of all time. It contains three undeniable truths, all of them vitally important, yet oft overlooked: 1) your time on this Earth is brief, 2) some things just are, and you can’t do anything about them, and 3) while 1) and 2) irrefutably suck, you might as well try to have a laugh.
So, on this day, the 45th anniversary of my having been born into this world, I would wish for all my loved ones, friends and family alike, to take a moment to consider this.
Done? No. Take another. It’s quite heavy to digest.
Now. Embrace it. Within the framework just given to you, time’s a-wastin’. So. You are going to die, you can’t change some stuff but you can use as much of your time as possible to do things that make you happy. Do something today that makes you happy. Then do it again tomorrow. And again after that.
Take a long, hard look at your life and decide what’s worth doing, cause you ain’t immortal, and you’re a long time dead.
Dare to say fuggit*. Nothing would make you (or me) happier.
Giving Death the Kiss of Life. (photo L. Woodruff)
*Tempus fugit means time flies. Fuggit is a feeble pun. Works best if pronounced like an Italian-American gangster would do it. Fahgeddabahtit. Fuggit.
I might have mentioned that I run a bit from time to time. And like most, when I go out for longer runs or bike rides, I need a dependable source of energy. I’ve got a Camelbak that is just the right size to see me through just about any outing, and there are various energy drink powders you can mix in your water, so fluids isn’t a problem, but I have never really found a solid source of energy that I like.
There are gels and tablets and goo and bars available to buy, but they all have their drawbacks – they’re too sticky/icky/wasteful or difficult to digest, so I’ve decided to forgo them. Enter Miss Adventure, who apart from being a keen diver/yogini/hiker/biker also is a dab hand in the kitchen. She has been making her own power bars for ages, and kindly let me have her recipe, which I promptly adapted for my own purposes.
So, without further ado, let me present what I humbly claim is the world’s greatest power bars, easily reproduced in the comfort of your kitchen:
350 ml almond butter
350ml rice syrup
Heat in a large pot on the stow, bringing it to a low boil. To this, add a mixture of:
300g oats
100g each of crystallised ginger, cashew nuts, walnuts, pecan nuts, chia seeds, goji berries, cranberries, coconut flakes, chopped dates, and 1-2 tsk of raw cocoa powder. (For protein powder bars, add vanilla protein powder to the mixture)
Stir it all together until a good consistency, then press into a pan greased with coconut fat, and leave it in the fridge to cool for a few hours, before cutting it into 5×5 cm squares, each containing a whopping 330 kcal, 15g fat, 10g protein each (more of the latter if powder was added, obvs.). Wrap individual squares in clingfilm or wax paper, stuff them in your flipbelt (don’t repeat my ultra marathon mistake!) and you’re good to go for as many miles as you like.
Oh, and you never tasted anything near as good. It’s got to the point where I now have to work out to compensate for all the power bars I’m eating…! ?
Way back in January I set out my goals for this year, one of which was leading a healthier lifestyle.
Now, I eat reasonably well, and I think it’s fair to say I work out more than most. One weak area that has remained unchecked, however, is my intake of stimulants, specifically coffee and booze. Both are of course intrinsically linked to socialising and special occasions, and so I have found that increased networking, the occasional date and incessant travels have meant that my consumption is now well above what I consider healthy. So…
The challenge for October will be to go cold turkey on caffeine and alcohol. No point in doing things half-heartedly, eh? Not one drop of either beverage shall cross these lips as of tomorrow, in spite of heavy workload, some planned encounters with friends and an upcoming birthday. My Nespresso will grow covered in cobwebs, the restaurants’ wine lists will be off limits, the occasional après workout beer consigned to the past. It will be fun, I’m sure! ?
As always, I shall log my results here. Just don’t expect me to writ prticclarrly wrll onfe the jittters kikk in…
We’re on a mountain top made out of lava rock so perforated and serrated its like a giant cheese grater, and we the cheese.
The path is nowhere to be seen. Everywhere I look there are steep ravines blocking our way down, and there are storm clouds drawing ever closer. If this isn’t being between a rock and a hard place I don’t know what is.
I blame the effing elephant.
—–
To explain how this happened, we must go back a couple of days, to when we first arrived to Sardinia. The third largest island in the Mediterranean, yet so often overlooked, Sardinia, unlike Corsica to the north, has neither famous sons nor Astérix albums to its name. Like Corsica, it has been invaded over and over again over the millennia, and now it’s our turn.
My good friend Lesli is celebrating her birthday this week, which is as good an excuse as any to go on an adventure, and we decided Sardinia had what it took. We meet up in Cagliari, the regional capital in the south, and drive up the east coast, which is largely still wild and unexploited.
Our destiny is the village of Lotzarai, and the Lemon House, a bed and breakfast that has made its name among hikers, bikers and climbers as an excellent base camp for all kind of excursions. It doesn’t disappoint. We arrive late at night, but Riky, the gentle giant that runs the place, has been waiting up, and has us installed in no time, and even insists on having a midnight drink with us to celebrate our arrival.
Next morning he’s up cooking breakfast for a long table full of adventurers; there’s the British triathletes, the Swiss thruhikers, the Italian climbers, and us. Someone remarks upon the respective amulets we carry around our necks – me a Thorshammer, Lesli a Ganesha, the Indian elephant god – and I make fun of hers, saying how a pachyderm that’s in charge of removing obstacles but sometimes also places them in your path isn’t really worth its mettle. Little did I know…
Soon we’re setting out northwards along the coast on our first hike. The morning hours are exquisite, as the path hugs the coastline on its way to Pedra Longa, a natural rock outcrop, shaped like a pyramid one hundred and fifty metres high. It looms in the distance, marking the mouth of the ravine we’re planning to hike up. The sun shines down upon macchia made up of cistus shrubs and myrtle trees, tufts of thyme and euphorbia, with occasional eucalyptus and olive trees – all making for an impossibly green landscape that offsets the turquoise and sapphire waters of the Mediterranean. Lizards dart across the ocre ground like metallic blue arrows, and here and there are goats and even wild pigs*. It’s a stroll in Arcadia.
Et In Arcadia Ego.
Once past Pedra Longa we continue upwards towards the mouth of the gorge. It’s awe inspiring, like something out of Yellowstone plonked down next to the ocean, and suddenly the path is much more difficult to discern. We clamber up and down the ravine mouth, following every likely-looking goat trail and rockfall in an attempt to find the path again, knowing that it must be there yet infuriatingly failing to recover it. Brambles and spinablanca shred our legs and arms, tear at our clothes, and sliding gravel threatens to turn the slightest misstep into a lethal slide to the bottom of the gully.
In the end, after nearly two hours of searching, Lesli – who knows her Hindu gods – suggest that we give up and go back to Pedra Longa to cool off in the Mediterranean. So Ganesha has his way, and we give up on the hiking for the day to go skinny-dipping instead.
Submerging our scraped and shredded bodies into the sea stings a little, but it sure beats spending the night in a goat-infested grotto lost in the macchia. Maybe the elephant god knows something we don’t?
The second day we take the rental car over winding mountain roads up the coast to Cala Gonone. It’s over an hour’s drive, but well worth it, as from here we rent kayaks and go down the coast along a particularly scenic stretch of the natural reserve, past caves that conjure up the adventures of Tom Sawyer or the Count de Montechristo.
No elephant here. Or is there?
It’s exciting and peaceful in equal measure, if very hot as the sun shines bright. Fortunately the breeze is constantly in our faces – but after four hours that’s too much of a good thing, as well; my eyes are screwed shut from too much light, salt and wind, and smarting as if they too had been lashed by thorns yesterday.
Alas, Lesli doesn’t drive stick shift, so I have to get us home more or less blindly, traversing the winding roads at a snail’s pace, stopping every kilometre or so to bathe my eyes in what little water we have left to cajole them into staying open just a little bit longer.
It’s a desperately dangerous thing to do, but we have no choice. We stop in one lay-by to see if Lesli might manage to drive – she really, really can’t – and in another to see if we might convince the people in the car parked there to help us out. Turns out they weren’t admiring the view, as we thought, and it’s a testament to my desperation that I briefly consider asking the female passenger to give us a hand once she’s done giving the driver head. I don’t. Instead I dab my eyes with a soaked rag for what feels like the hundredth time, and drive on, cross eyed and crying copiously. Goodness knows what the couple must have thought we were up to.
We make it back in just under three hours.
Day three dawns, and after twelve hours in total darkness and plenty of saline solution my eyes have recovered enough that we can venture out again. Riky tells us that the path we searched for in vain on day one is in fact located on a ledge that looks impossibly thin from down at Piedra Longa. We decide to try to hike up the gorge again, and drive there to shorten the hike. Good thing, too, because the trail is so steep in places that we’re climbing rather than hiking it. The term “drop dead gorge-ous” applies here, as it is quite possibly the most beautiful nature I’ve ever seen, but also very unforgiving. The ledge is no more than a metre or two wide in places, and there’s nothing twixt us and a terminal drop.
The ledge. Note Pedra Longa (centre or the picture) for perspective.
We do get all the way to the top of the ravine without misadventures, and it seems as if Ganesha is finally cutting us some slack, but then we set out to the summit of Punta Giradili, the higher one of the two promontories enclosing the gorge, and that’s where it almost goes badly wrong. It’s a difficult hike, as the rock is pure lava, all sharp edges and treacherous holes, and the only way to navigate is by following cairns marking the path in amongst the undergrowth. That’s all well and fine as long as we’re headed upwards, as the little piles of rocks can be seen against the evergreens behind and above them, but coming back down is a different matter. Suddenly the cairns look no different from the million other stones, and before long we are lost.
By now we’ve been out for five hours and fatigue is setting in. One false move and one or both of us could be badly hurt and/or stuck in the cheese grater stones. What’s worse, everywhere looks the same, and we have no way of navigating. Going in a straight line is out of the question, as the dense macchia turns the whole flat summit into a giant labyrinth, and everywhere we look there are steep ravines barring our way, even if we did know where we were going. On top of that, dark, pregnant clouds begin to fill the sky, and there will be no cover to be had if the autumn rains decide to start.
The summit of all fears.
It’s a desperate moment, and I genuinely don’t know what to do. Lesli suggests going further inland in the hopes of circumventing the ravines, and I’m just about to give in to this when I recall that my trusty GPS-watch has a mapping function, which when switched on allows you to retrace your steps. In a manner of minutes we are back on the trail, happy to turn our backs on the wretched mountain. Garmin 1 – Ganesha 0.
The next day we decide we won’t hike at all. Instead we rent mountain bikes and load into the rental car. We drive up even smaller roads than before, deep into the mountains, and I’m having a blast, as these roads remind me of the forest roads my father taught me to drive on. It’s all gravel and hairpin bends of a kind I’ve only ever driven on in computer games, and I only wish I had a car better suited to the terrain.
Then we hop on the bikes and start the decent down towards the sea. Alas, Ganesha doesn’t give up. Three, four kilometres into the ride, my chain snaps clean off, and there’s no tool in the tool kit to repair it. Nothing to do but hike the whole damned uphill slog, pushing the bike, then get in the car and drive all the way back down again to have it fixed.
Once that’s done we decide not to push our luck, but to go for another Cala (sandy cove). Alas, poor map reading leads us astray, and we get on our bikes only to alight upon a gorge that is off limits to bikers. Instead we walk the rest of the way – Lesli wearing slippery bike cleats on a path made up mainly by shale – and finally arrive at the sea after another gruelling hike. The Truncated One might have had a point in getting us here, because it’s another spot of natural perfection, but on a no hiking, biking day, we managed to do a grand total of twenty minutes of biking and several hours’ worth of hiking, so we weren’t exactly over the moon.
There seemed to be nothing for it. We kept the bikes for another day, and set off yet again into the wilderness, and this time – on our last day – we seemed to be getting it right, or maybe I had just atoned for my hubris vis-a-vis Ganesha?
We rode our bikes down a remote gulch of stunning natural beauty down to Cala Sisine, a gorgeous pebble beach in the middle of nowhere. We had it all to ourselves, and I would wish everyone could experience that feeling at least once in their lives – surrounded by sparkling clear turquoise water, deep blue skies, steep cliffs clad in green, and nothing but the wind and the sun on your skin. Heaven.
Eden, a.k.a. Cala Sisine
It lasted all of an hour. Then a taxi boat came and dislodged a horde of tourists, bringing dogs and cigarettes and loudspeakers. It was time to go home.
In the end we didn’t get to go rock climbing, as Sardinia doesn’t have any licensed guides (they have to have ice climbing experience – not something easily gained in Sardinia), and we didn’t have time to go diving, but all in all it was a fantastic holiday, all the better for the mishaps and hiccups that occurred along the way (especially true once we decided (mis)adventure points could be converted into gelato points!). Ganesha came through in spades – even Thor came out and sent us off with the mightiest thunderstorm I have ever experienced on the night before we left – so gods willing I will be back to Sardinia for more of the same before long.
______
* I’d tell you about the wild pigs, but I don’t want to boar you. Things take on such a littoral meaning along the coast.
I figured if I managed to pull off running Ultravasan I would be deserving of some creative rest and recreation. And where could be more restful and restorative than Switzerland? A stay in a Kurhaus hotel in a country that has known peace for 700 years must be the most calm and peaceful experience imaginable, right?
Wrong.
For sure, if you wanted to, hanging out in the World’s Most Scenic Bank Vault ™ could be as coma-inducingly quiet and laid-back a time as you ever had, but since I’m here with my good friend Lauren, chances of that happening are slim to nonexistent.
Canyoning
We start off with canyoning early Saturday morning. For me, this comes as close to outdoor perfection as anything I’ve ever done. The concept is deceptively simple: using whatever means necessary, you make your way down a canyon. Seems straight-forward, but tells you nothing of the exhilarating rappels, jumps, slides and climbs you experience en route. Nor does it give any inkling of the gorgeous gorges, placid pools and wonderful waterfalls we see on our way down.
It’s like entering a lost world, a jungle ravine where plesiosaurs could still lurk in the grottoes and deep pools, and in a sense it is, since you would never be able to do this and live to tell the tale if you didn’t have experienced guides along to tell you where to step, how to jump, when to release the rope and slide down natural water slides that put to shame any amusement park ride you care to mention.
They tell us it’s a canyon for newbies, but that’s only because it progresses perfectly to more and more technical stuff, so – after having started off with easy passages (that seem quite intimidating to a beginner) – by the end of our four hours we are happily jumping off cliff edges as much as eight meters above the water, and rappelling down waterfalls so high you have to let go as you reach the end of the rope and slide the rest of the way, landing in a cascade of water. By the end of the canyon we feel like fully-fledged canyoneers, ready to take on any challenge.
Bungee jumping
It’s a perfect way to spend the morning, and it also builds up quite nicely to the activity of the afternoon, where that theory will be put to a severe test, because we are to bungee jump off the Verzasca Dam in Lucarno. Famous as the dam James Bond jumps off at the beginning of GoldenEye, it’s a tremendously intimidating prospect, and I mean that quite literally; The moment I see the dam my hands tremble, even walking onto it seems a foolhardy notion, let alone jumping off it voluntarily!
I’ve never done anything like this before, and this is the highest bungee jump in Europe – two hundred and twenty meters worth of falling. Suddenly James Bond’s propensity for Dirty Martinis seems quite understandable. We exchange weak smiles and even weaker puns as we wait, try to listen to the instructions as best we can. Contraptions are attached to our ankles – all that we will hang our hopes on- and then it’s time to step up on the launch platform.
I get called first, and walk up, over the edge of the dam, and try desperately not to look down. Bungee cord gets attached without me even noticing, the guys in charge joking, efficient, and good. Doesn’t help. I step onto the edge, manage to get my feet right (toes outside but not too far) without looking down, anything but looking down, spread my arms out in the manner of someone about to be crucified, and they ask me if I’m ready. Could you ever be? “Let’s do it,” I whisper, and then it’s three, two, one, and I dive into the chasm.
Nothing, but nothing prepares you for what comes next. I had vaguely planned to shout “Geronimo” as I jumped, but every cell in my body is crying out in primal fear, and I with them. Tumbling through the air, falling, falling, impossibly still falling, it doesn’t matter the least bit that intellectually your brain knows you’re going to survive this; the rest of the organism is in “FuckFUCKwe’reabouttodie” mode, and the sheer adrenaline rush is so overwhelming screaming at the top of my lungs is all I can do.*
Well, I don’t suppose I’m spoiling the story by telling you I survived. I managed to follow the instructions I had received in a fog, got back up again, shaking and grinning like a fool, wanting to kiss the ground and everyone around me. Then I watched Lauren go trough the same ordeal, and then we went home and went to bed, and – alas, so un-Bond-like – slept like babies even though it was only seven o’clock, our bodies and minds exhausted from sensory overload.
Ridge running
It’s hard to top what we both agreed was one of the best days of our lives, but we both tried hard, each in our own way. So while Lauren spent the Sunday enjoying every conceivable spa treatment the Kurhaus staff has been able to dream up, I set out for the funicolario in the next valley.
The Alps are more imposing here than in Slovenia, where I last encountered them, but I have my eyes on a ridge path that looks like it could be a good run. Monte Lema (1624m) to Monte Magno (1636m) is seven kilometres, making the total a good round trip, I reckon. What I haven’t reckoned with is the first kilometre (all downhill, highly technical), nor the second (all uphill, highly technical). That, plus the fact that I’m three toenails short of a full set, put paid to my ambition.
I still manage to walk just about the full distance, and it’s very pleasant. There are hardly any people about – I spy two runners, but take solace in the thought that they probably weren’t in Sälen last week – but I do encounter a flock of goats, thankfully less evil-looking than their demonic brethren in Mallorca.
It’s a tough slog though, reminiscent of the hikes I did last year in New Hampshire. And because I’m wobbly-kneed as it is after Saturday, and as when ridging the divide (to coin a phrase) between two valleys you really cannot afford to be less than sure-footed, hiking it instead of running feels like a wise decision. And this way I can really take in the views and marvel at the grandeur of the landscape.
Joyriding
When Europe rear-bumpered Africa, it did some severe damage to itself; to whit, the Alps**. The Alps are the most grandiose mountains I know, and walking along the ridge I can really appreciate our insignificance, seeing little villages spilled out among the mountains, tiny playthings left behind by a capricious deity. It’s a wonder anyone made the effort to settle high up on the mountainsides, but I’m thankful that they did, because the impossibly serpentine roads they needed to reach these settlements mean the whole landscape is one big rollercoaster.
I’ve been holding back before out of respect for my co-pilot, but now – on the way to and from the hike – I really let rip, and it’s the most exhilarating drive I’ve had since my dad taught me to drive on the logging roads in the forests of Dalarna. 180-degree turns, hairpin bends, twists and turns, up and down it goes, and the goofy grin never leaves my face. I’m beginning to see why every other car here is a Porsche, Maserati or similar. This is pure petrolhead paradise. Zipping around roads such as these is what driving should be all about.
And so the weekend is over, only too soon. Lauren is going back to D.C. where she will continue to live smack-bang in the world of politics (arguably an adrenaline sport as well), but I’m already eying the map for more. Those downhill mountain bike paths look cool, the guys who had pitched tents along the ridge were probably thru-hiking the Alps, that would be awesome, and there’s base jumping, and those canyons you have to be heli-dropped into, and, and, and… You can keep your Bolivian cocaine – I’m hooked on Swiss adrenaline.
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*I believe my exact choice of words was “WAaaAArrggHHooouuuaaAArrraaarggHH.”
**Geologically speaking, Africa has just begun driving off after the collision, and an onlooker (it would admittedly have to be someone watching in Deep Time) could be viewing in horror the way the continental body had crumbled up in the crash, with Italy and Greece barely hanging on, like a mangled hood ornament and a smashed headlight, respectively. It’s a wonder no one has tried suing for damages. But I digress.
It’s four o’clock in the morning, and I’m in a tent in a dark forest, hiding from the rain together with close to eight hundred other people, all of us preparing to go out and run Ultravasan, Sweden’s most prestigious ultra marathon and – more to the point – a trail ninety kilometres long. It’s more than double what I’ve ever done before.
The atmosphere is akin to what I expect it must be in an army right before battle commences – there are a lot of grim faces and thousand-mile stares, as people make last minute adjustments to their kit. Some try to sleep, others make surreptitious dashes into the wet darkness to empty their bowels, like birds of pray before taking flight.
There’s four in our group; myself, my sister Sofia, my brother-in-law Anders, plus Magnus, a friend whom I talked into signing up in early January, and who I suspect has regretted the decision several times over since. As we get closer to the starting time there are embraces and selfies and jokes, as the gravity of the situation is sinking in – we’re going into the unknown, and anything can happen. We line up in the start pen with ten minutes to go, the announcer’s incongruous natter finally replaced by stirring music, and the feeling of going forth is further reinforced when the soundtrack from the Hunger Games comes on, drones hanging in the air above us, filming for television. “We who are about to die”, I mutter, giving a half-hearted wave to one of them. Then suddenly it’s a matter of seconds, the Vasaloppet theme song comes on, and we’re off.
Up, up and away!
The first thing that happens as the crowd starts moving is you pass a signpost saying Mora 90, Smågan 9,2. The former is too huge a number to compute, so I focus on the latter, marking the length of the first section. Vasaloppet famously starts with almost eight kilometres of uphill logging roads, but people are too fired up to care, and shoot off like Superman. I force myself not to get drawn in, and have scores of people overtake me. Sofia and Anders quickly leave me behind, and Magnus disappears behind me. The rain hangs in the air like a particularly invasive mist, but it feels good.
There are plenty of places along the way offering drinks and refreshments, so I’ve elected to leave my Camelbak at home, which means all I’m carrying is a flip belt (essentially a double cummerbund with openings into which you can jam things) with some toilet paper (in case I have to Pope), paracetamol pills and three energy gels, plus my iPhone – not essential, but since I want to document the adventure I take it along both as a camera and a safety precaution. My secret weapon is inside the little bag that my sis bought at the expo yesterday, which is hanging on the outside of the flip belt in the small of my back – it’s supposed to be used for carrying litter, but I’ve stuffed it with chocolate protein balls.
Eight in all, these magical pills full of goodness will have me flying along – or that’s the idea, until five k into the race I realise that disaster has struck! Like the U.S. paratroopers invading Europe on D-day, I’ve been betrayed by untested equipment; they were issued canvas bags to store their weapons in only the day before their deployment, and the overstuffed bags mostly ripped clean off the soldiers and disappeared into the void, taking the weapons with them. In my case the bag was still there, but without me noticing, the balls had been bouncing out of the bag, leaving only one at the very bottom. Like Hansel and Gretel, I had been leaving a trail of sweets behind. Unlike them, however, I had no intention of turning around, so gritted my teeth and pressed on into the forest proper. I would have to make my own magic.
Run, Forest, run!
After Smågan we’ve reached the end of the road. The trail becomes exactly that, a single track trail leading deeper and deeper into the forest. Pine tree roots have you Fred Astairing your way forward, as they try to trip you up, and rocks are everywhere, meaning a fall would be most unforgiving. It’s beautiful though, the mist hanging low, and the rain lending every surface a fresh polish, making for a landscape where trolls seem less part of mythology, and more like a distinct possibility.
Then it’s on to the bogs, wetlands where only stunted trees grow in the acid waters, and you have to balance on boardwalks, slippery with rain and algae, laid out on top of the grassy knolls, as stepping off them would mean sinking to untold depths immediately – there’s no telling how solid the water-sick ground is; you might only sink foot-deep, but if you’re unlucky you’re instantly submerged – this is the kind of landscape our forefathers used to depose dead bodies and ritual sacrifices in, after all.
Another sign of clear and present danger is literally carved into the boardwalks themselves. They are made of sturdy two-by-fours, but every so often I come across places where furrows have been raked into the wood as if it’s nothing but warm butter. They’re territorial markings by the brown bears that roam these lands, and they leave precious little to the imagination. It’s a disquieting sight – the fact that bears apparently make use of the boardwalks to cross the bogs as well doesn’t inspire confidence in the construction so much as conjure up visions of what the consequences of a close encounter with a 700 lb version of Mr Cuddles would be.
Feed me, Seymour!
Thankfully no incidents occur, and the inhospitable terrain requires full focus, so the kilometres slip by almost unnoticed. I pass Mångsbodarna, the first of the depots serving food, and realise I’m ravenous. Breakfast was at 0200, and now, five hours and 23k later, my body is craving nourishment. Pancakes with jam, blueberry soup and chicken broth, anyone? I eat it all with gusto, and wash it down with coffee and water. In the cold and rain, the warmth of hot beverages is a godsend to be savoured.
I had worried that eating too much would affect my ability to run, but since my strategy is to keep a pace where I don’t get out of breath or my heart rate too high, it seems not to be a problem. The theory is that by keeping that kind of slow pace, your body never switches into aerobic mode, which means you can go on more or less indefinitely, as your organism doesn’t burn fuel the same way. I don’t know. I read it in a book. I thought seven minutes per kilometre would do it, but my feet seem to be saying 6,40/k, and who am I to argue? I’m only along for the ride, after all.
Fairy trails
And so on it goes. The trail stays lethal, an obstacle course made up of jagged rocks, but I am too distracted by the man in front of me wearing a sports bra to pay much attention. Turns out it’s a good way to prevent bleeding nipples, apparently. That still doesn’t explain the bright pink colour, of course…
The final destination is still much too far away to contemplate, but getting to the next station in Risberg is intimidating in itself, as the section prior to it is infamous. By this stage I’ve done 28k, and know the next five will be nothing but uphill. I walk parts of it, and try not to think about the fact that I still have two thirds of the way to go.
Risberg to Evertsberg, the approximate halfway mark, feels long, but thankfully the surroundings are mesmerisingly beautiful, even though the rain keeps falling. I pass little lakes in the woods, where moose would be grazing on less crowded days, old mills and cottages that look like they belong in Middle Earth, streams and burbling brooks. By the time there’s a signpost saying we’ve now gone past the finish line of a regular marathon I still don’t feel the least bit tired, and note with satisfaction that I’ve done it in about the same time it took me to do my first ever marathon, Berlin, which is famously flat and easy running – not something that can be levelled at this race.
The Halfway Inn
The kilometres keep rolling by, and before I know it I roll up at Evertsberg, which has loomed ahead as a Fata Morgana for quite some time. More pancakes, gherkins and blueberry soup, but more importantly, this is where the drop bags await, with whatever provisions you have seen fit to send in advance. Bench upon bench full of people taking stock of their situation. I strip off my wet t-shirt and socks and apply liberal amounts of Vaseline all over, in places I wouldn’t even point at in public under normal circumstances. No one gives a damn – they’re all busy doing much the same. New, dry clothes on. Two of my toes have gigantic blisters, but since they don’t hurt I decide against changing shoes. This is probably a wise decision, as doing so will prove Magnus’s downfall. He will go on to develop so many blisters that he essentially has to hobble the last twenty k’s.
After Evertsberg it’s gently downhill for six kilometres, and that, combined with dry(er) clothes, a stomach full of food, and asphalt, glorious asphalt to run on make these some of the easiest kilometres of all, whizzing by at breakneck speed – sub-six minutes, even. Joking aside, my strategy to not go out too hard is starting to pay off, as I now start overtaking other runners instead of vice versa. It’s not my prime objective – that was always just to finish the race – but it feels good, even so.
Wood sprites
Another thing that helps is the support you get from onlookers. By now I’ve been out for close to seven hours, the rain has finally stopped, the sun is out, and normal people are starting to wake up. Given that the race is run in the wilderness there aren’t many supporters, but what they lack in quantity, they more than make up for in quality.
Some groups and individuals clearly follow a particular runner’s progress and if you keep up with that person they show up several times along the way. A trio of bikers – a giant of a man who looks like a cross between a bear and a troll, plus his wife and mother, of similar stock – start recognising me after I urge them to do the wave as I pass, and soon they are looking out for me and doing their wave as soon as I show up. Others join in, making me feel like a superhero.
There’s a mother-and-son duo from Norway that show up more often than anyone else, always enthusiastic and shouting encouragement (at least I think they do – it’s in Norwegian), but my personal favourites are the two beautiful young women who suddenly appear around the 70k mark, offering candy to all runners.
At this point I’ve had my only low of the entire journey – I had been running together with a woman from the UK for awhile, and although Lucia was as pleasant as can be, her tales of having run a 30-hour race in the Lake District just two weeks previously, her plans to do another ultra in Switzerland in two weeks’ time, plus the fact that I couldn’t keep up with her, conspired to bring me down a little, and when I twisted my foot on top of that, I started to wonder if I was going to have to walk the rest of the way.
So I dropped behind, and walked for a bit, but when my foot didn’t get any worse I started running again, and then there was the silly Volvo video thing you can see at the end, which raised my spirits quite a bit, and then there they were, like two dryads with a huge bag of candy, and in spite of my parents having told me never to accept sweets from strangers, I happily deviated from that rule, and made sure to tell them just how glad they had made me with this selfless gesture. They, too, would pop out of the woodwork (as it were) several times more, to my unbridled delight.
The long game
The last twenty kilometres? Well, it’s weird. Twenty k is a long run by any standard, and yet it seemed easy. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was still able to run, even trundling up inclines that I would previously have used as a welcome excuse to walk a few steps.
Sure it helped that it was mostly slightly downhill on relatively easy logging roads, and sure I wasn’t running fast by this stage, but I was running when most runners weren’t running at all. I passed most everyone I saw, with one notable exception – occasionally along the trail there would be the odd runner I would overtake, only to find them ahead of me again, over and over, and at the end there was Zebra Girl (you name people when you see them again and again, and she had striped tights. I’m not at my wittiest after ten hours’ running, what can I say?), whom I overtook around the 80k mark but who then kept pace with me, occasionally ahead, but mainly right behind.
Coming in to Mora, I passed a man on the outskirts of town who said we would probably make it in under eleven hours. He seemed a little doubtful though, and since my GPS-watch had long since given up the ghost, I had no choice: I found resources left in me to sprint the last six hundred metres, running hard, rejoicing in the feeling of seemingly endless strength.
The audience cheered and clapped, but I was particularly pleased to find my two Candy Angels waiting just across the finish line. If you look at the video you can actually see how I swerve as soon as I crossed it to give them both a huge hug and to tell them again how much they had meant to me. It was a delight to be able to share that moment with them, as they symbolised all the good people who had helped me along the way; volunteers, onlookers and well-wishers, all giving freely of their time to spur me on.
Karma goes both ways tho, because a minute later Zebra Girl taps on my shoulder to thank me for having been there for her – for the longest time, she said, she had only managed to keep running by literally following in my footsteps. We hugged as well, united by our struggle and our accomplishment, sharing goofy grins and the joyful realisation that we had done it!
This more than anything symbolises ultra running to me: regardless of how and when you finish, you are a victor. Sofia and Anders beat me by more than three quarters of an hour, but I ran what felt like a perfect race – I was never overexerted, never had a negative thought, and finished strong. I might have been able to do it half an hour faster, but at the prize of my enjoyment of the experience. As it was I loved every step of the way, I took in the beauty of the nature, the goodness of my fellow runners and all the other people involved, and even managed to spread a bit of happiness in the process. You can’t ask for a better result.
Remember New Year’s Eve? And the resolutions you made way back then? It’s hard to believe, but the year is more than halfway over already, so it’s high time to have a look at how you’re fairing in regard to these promises – most likely they have fallen by the wayside already, long forgotten – but since I made a commitment to myself (and you) to report back occasionally on how I’m fairing, I will do so, even though – or perhaps precisely because – the results are less than fantastic.
I set out to improve intellectually and physically, and to go on adventures and challenge myself. To ensure that I did so I set myself clear, measurable targets, so how am I doing in relation to those?
In a word: poorly. At least on the intellectual side of things. I haven’t read more than very few books, my attempts at taking piano lessons were foiled by too much travelling, my efforts learning French came to a halt after two months (during which I did learn rather more words and phrases than I had thought possible, but still).
Improving my general fitness level is an area where I have been a lot more successful. Even though I have cycled nothing like as much as I thought I would do, and swum less, I have managed to work out a lot (as evidenced by a nice lady doctor asking spontaneously if I was an athlete of some sort only yesterday(!)). I’ve logged 160 workouts in the first six months of the year, or slightly below one workout per day nine days out of ten. I’ve run two marathons, both well below four hours, and I’m hopeful I will manage Ultravasan and its 90 kilometres come August. Who knows? I might even be reduced to swimming and biking afterwards instead of running, as a result…
On the other hand, my diet hasn’t been anywhere near as strict as I had planned – perhaps precisely because I had no concrete target in mind there. If anything I have been too indulgent, especially in allowing myself too much alcohol, so that’s something to improve upon in the second half of the year, as well.
So far, so-so impressive. Travels, adventures and challenges, then? Well, I did go for a refresher dive at Nemo33 in January, then went skiing in Sweden in February, and to Thailand to dive in March. April I got a new job part time, which wasn’t planned but must count as a new adventure, and May saw me hike Mallorca with my brother, which was quite the challenge – not because of him, I hasten to add! Then in June I explored Luxembourg, and this month I’ve taken the kids kayaking in the Ardennes, and gone to Edinburgh for a quick visit, so overall my track record isn’t too bad, even though I feel it lacks in challenges.
So what to make of all this? Reinforced efforts in terms of reading, playing the piano and learning French; more diverse workout schedule; better food and drink habits; more adventurous adventures and challenging challenges (and trippy trips? No.).
Lined up next: London with the kids, then two weeks without them (good time to improve diet and spend time playing piano/reading/studying, putting good habits in place) before going to Sweden and making final preparations for Ultravasan. After that I’ve got nothing planned apart from a few days in Lugano, as a post-race (re)treat, and then school starts and the rat race recommences. If experience shows anything, it’s that it’s time to start planning autumn now. Maybe that Ironman? Or a climbing course? Or something else entirely…?
So there is this country that I’ve been to dozens of times for work, and never really saw, even though it’s tiny, and right next door. Or rather, I never bothered, because it was tiny and right next door. And I associate it with work. How interesting could it be?
Luxembourg was one of the founding countries of the E.C., and as a thank you for that – and for being small and inoffensive and neither Germany nor France – it was rewarded the seat of several institutions, amongst them the Council of Ministers, so I’ve been here more times than I care to remember, but this weekend I finally decided to make a visit memorable, so after two days of the usual minstrel show, I drove away from the wind-swept Kirschberg plateau, to Esch-sur-Sûre.
It’s a tiny town in the Luxembourgian part of the Ardennes, situated on a bend of the river Sûre, snugly nestled against a mighty outcrop of sheer rock on which the oldest castle in the country still stands, eleven hundred years after it was built. The town is surrounded by lush forests on all sides, and it’s easy to see why people would have chosen to settle here – the river teeming with fish, the forest full of game, plus it’s a natural fortress to begin with, and with the streets spiralling upwards and houses built with massive walls of local rock, the whole village becomes part of the ramparts, easily defensible from Viking marauders and rival knights and robber barons down the ages. The inhabitants must have felt very Sûre of themselves. In this regard as in many others, Eche is a microcosm of the microcosm that is Luxembourg (a nanocosm then, perhaps?).
The landscape around the town, up and down the meandering river, is exceedingly pretty, wealthy and clean. This is what southern Belgium would look like if it were run by the Swiss. My one gripe is with the (more modern) houses, which look like a Belgian imitation of Swiss architecture. But there’s not too many of them – mostly it’s small-scale farms and forests, and perfect, undulating roads that attract swarms of bikers.
Unlike Mallorca, however, it’s motorbikes only, which means that when I rent a mountain bike I have the wooden paths and back roads entirely to myself. I spend several happy hours pedalling upriver, through a nature reserve that also holds the main water reservoir of the country, and then run downriver for another hour, past fly fishers and through a valley so steep and narrow that there is only room for one row of cottages in the village therein. It’s like stepping onto the stage of a Grimm fairytale.
After that, it’s back to the hotel for the long awaited spa visit, and – after goodness knows how many visits to different saunas, plus a hearty dinner (Luxembourgers pride themselves on having a French kitchen with German-sized portions) – to bed, jolly well pleased with my discovery.
Sunday is spent driving around the countryside. It’s not unlike Mosel, in that there are fertile plateaus above the river valleys, and just like Mosel there are castles by every strategic bend in the rivers. I visit two. The first one is something of a disappointment, as it has been turned into a renaissance chateau, and is closed to visitors – the only redeeming factor being the Sorceresses’ Tower, a remnant of the older burg, and last residence of medieval women suspected of whichcraft.
Apparently they were allowed only one window, which showed them the place of their execution-to-be. Today, modern wrought-iron art depicting dancing flames marks the spot where the women met their fate. It’s creepy.
Oppressive? Me? Never…
The second castle is the real deal. Vianden, located just on the border with Germany, has been a stronghold since the days of the Romans, and the counts of Vianden didn’t mince about – the castle is an impenetrable fortress that was never taken, but fell into disrepair after the last Count moved elsewhere – the family sprouted several branches, two of which form today’s Grand Dutchy and the also grand Dutch royal family, so it’s not as if they didn’t have other places to hang out. It’s been lovingly restored, but I can’t help but think it would have been even more grandiose as a ruin.
I spend a couple of hours pottering about the castle and the walled town, and then finish off the weekend by having an enormous Angus entrecôte in nearby Diekirsch – cooked on a sizzling stone at the table – before finally turning the car back to Belgium once more. This is the way to experience Luxembourg properly, I think.
I’ve long thought I should try to write a travel entry on the topic of Sweden; I’ve lived abroad long enough that it’s a different country from the one I grew up in, after all, and for most readers it will be just as exotic as any other place I experience on my journeys.
This week offered the perfect opportunity: I went to a town I’ve never visited before, in a part of the country that is oft overlooked – Norrköping, Östergötland. The name means Northern chipping (or market town) in the Eastern part of the Land of the Gotae – one of the three original tribes that populated what is now Sweden- and in some respects I suspect it has remained essentially the same since this was Viking heartland.
This feeling is enhanced upon arrival. Even flying into Stockholm, the capital, the impression is one of forests and smallholdings right up to the edge of the city, and going by train to Norrköping showcases more of the same – an infinite number of lakes (the result of the perma ice having retreated from these lands relatively recently, thus not allowing the land to rise up just yet), all of them dotted with little red wooden cottages along the shores, and often with woods growing right up to the water’s edge.
Norrköping itself has been a city proper almost since the time of the Vikings, but the town has been razed and burnt several times over, so today the oldest buildings are no more than two hundred years old. This, together with the grid layout of the city blocks, it’s eclectic mixture of new and old, scruffy and chi, and the well-to-do hipster look sported by just about everyone makes it reminiscent of Brooklyn.
I am instantly smitten. Of course it helps that the Swedish summer is in full swing, meaning blue skies and glorious sun during the day, and white nights on top of that. I wake at four thirty every morning, simply because it’s light outside already. There’s also the fact that nearly everyone looks good and healthy – the Lamp hotel breakfast is a wonder to behold, easily beating the finest hotels I’ve ever been to, and no one smokes, or is obese – and when I go to the gym in the evening this is borne out by the fact that people from all walks of life have found their way there – old and young, men and women, immigrants and Viking descendants, they are all here.
I’m dead serious about the latter, by the way. At the board of Transportation, the authority hosting us for the week, there is a immensely large man called Thorbjörn Kämpe (Thor bear fighter) – it doesn’t get more authentically Norse than that. In fact, replace the cardigans and stupid trousers, give them an ax and shield and most every one of these muscular, bearded, tattoo-sporting hip folk look much like their infamous forefathers.
You can accuse me of sugar coating it of course, my head soggy with nostalgia, but for the life of me, this kind of town – a Nordic Brooklyn in the wilderness, with bars and coffee shops littered generously throughout, with a sex shop facing the town church, with the minister of the latter going to work on his mountain bike, with Valkyrie-look-alikes and spry octogenarians out and about with equal grace, and immigrants being seen as normal rather than a matter of controversy – is my idea of the ideal place to live.
You don’t even have to chop stuff into pieces. Unless you want to.
You may have heard of Bushidō – the Way of the Warrior in feudal Japan. It was literally the code of moral principles that the Samurai should live their lives by.
I have a great fascination for that epoch, but today I won’t talk about the Samurai – instead I want to introduce you to an equally venerable tradition from Nippon, namely Bokashi. It, too, encompasses a moral code, namely the most basic principle of ethics we have to live by: give back as much as you can of what you take from the Earth. In a word – recycle. The Way of the Eco Warrior, if you will. Or the Eco Worrier, perhaps.
Bokashi is a composting system that enables users to completely avoid wasting food. I had been looking to find an indoor-compatible compost for several years when I came across it. Having discarded the idea of having a worm compost as being too fiddly (and also likely to leave me abandoned by my family), this seemed to good to be true when I read about it – no smell, no creepy crawlies, and an end product that could go directly into the flower beds without attracting rodents and the like, even if I put fish or meat in it? Where do I sign up?
The volumes of food and leftovers that are thrown away annually in the western world are stunning, and I’m no better at this than anyone else – quite the contrary! – but this type of compost – an improvement upon a centuries old technique consisting of burying scraps deep underground makes me feel almost virtuous about chucking out stuff that’s past its sell-by date, and has made me less prone to harass the kids in an effort to get them to eat up their Brussels sprouts – both decidedly good things.
So how does it work? When you buy a bokashi kit you get two plastic containers (thoughtfully designed to fit under your average kitchen sink) and a bag of Bokashi brans – essentially saw dust enriched with particularly beneficial microorganisms that kickstart the composting – that you scatter a handful of on top your scraps every time you add something to the container. Why two containers? Because once one is full it should ideally be placed somewhere cool and dark to ferment before the process has run its course and the end product can be placed in your garden compost/borders/potted plant. There’s even a handy tap that grants you easy access to the juices that collect at the bottom of the vessel, which can be used to revive any dying plants. Sure, it seems expensive, but given what potting soil costs per sack, you will soon break even.
Ya should’ve seen the other guy!
Now I have never in my life gone on record endorsing a product. Normally I don’t even endorse product endorsement, but this thing is too good not to tell people about. So what are you waiting for? Buy yourself a kit, buy one for your dear old mum, or give your loved one a present they will never expect – and if they complain, tell them it will all come up roses in the end.
It all began with a dying duck. A mallard, to be precise, that the children had discovered in their mother’s hedge. It had clearly been hurt, and they were very upset about it all, especially Childe One, who has a soft spot for all animals, down to and including insects. This happened on a Sunday, and as their mom was going to be away all week, it was up to me to don the shining armour and rescue the poor critter first thing after school Monday. Shining armour – or rather a big blanket and the cat’s travel cage – stowed in the car we set off, and found the sad-looking thing hiding not a metre away from where the kids had found it in the first place.
It was almost too easy to grab the mallard, its one leg and one wing hanging at odd angles from its body. I realised with a sinking heart that we were going to have to deal with a death in the family, but off we went to an animal sanctuary, where the bird was duly handed over to the volunteers amid furrowed brows and shaken heads. To distract the kids I asked if there other animals in residence, and was told that there were, in fact, four hedgehog babies that the kids were welcome to have a look at if they cared to. You can see where this is going, right?
Three weeks later I’m back at the sanctuary. The news of the duck’s demise has been drowned out by tidings of joy (suitably, as we’re entering the month of December soon): one of the hedgehogs is to be given a new lease of life chez nous. I install a special hedgehog house in the kitchen, and bar the entrance with a couple of planks. The transition is easy, as the prickly little thing is hidden in a bunched-up ball of straw, so I simply lift the whole thing from the cat cage onto the floor and put the house on top.
And there it stays. Not a sound, not a movement for the first couple of hours. Misty the cat comes and inspects the house – essentially a man-made cave, complete with tunnel entrance, and nothing. I wait up until midnight, and nothing. The second evening is different. Spike (as it has been named) emerges, and explores its new environment, stopping along the way to nibble at the pellets I’ve placed around the room. In spite of my presence Spike is totally unfazed, even hiding behind my seated frame – a hedgehog can famously never be buggered at all, after all. That’s only as long as I remain still, however. If I move the spiky one growls at me and rolls into a ball in time-honoured fashion.
We keep Spike in the kitchen for a couple of days, and apart from becoming less and less careful about where to go potty, our less-than-sonic friend seems to settle in well. But of course it was never the idea that we would keep it as a pet, so one day I again lift the entire house and its contents unto the terrace. I figure it will be warmer there, and so hopefully a nice place for Spikey to spend the winter.
Alas, only a few days later when I carefully sneak a glance inside, my fears are confirmed. Spike is gone. Famously prickly(!) about where they hibernate, hedgehogs will not easily accept homes that are thrust upon them – and in fairness, a home that occasionally levitates would not feel safe to most of us. There is still hope, however. The garden does have a shed in the furthest corner, which could easily accommodate a hedgehog underneath it, and since the garden is surrounded by fences and hedges, the risks are limited, as long as it doesn’t venture onto the road.
And so there is little to do but hope for the best. A hedgehog’s greatest enemy is the car, against which it has no defence – indeed, the hedgehog has become endangered in many areas precisely because it’s meandering nocturnal searches for food leaves it particularly vulnerable to traffic. Many people have never seen a hedgehog in any other state than flattened, sad to say. But we have fond memories of Spike, at least, and imagine that one day it might reappear. Until this week, when I’m lunching on the terrace for the first time. Suddenly there’s a stirring in amongst the tulips and aquilegias, and I grind my teeth, thinking that our kitchen compost has attracted rats, in spite of us using a bokashi. But my fears prove groundless, because there, not a metre away from where I last saw it, is Spike, or if not Spike, then at least a very healthy-looking hedgehog, rooting about and occasionally peeping out to check on me.
It’s about twice the size Spike was when we released it, so clearly adult, and doesn’t seem to mind my intrusion, particularly not as I present it with a bowl of lovely mealworms. If it is Spike, it must have hibernated nearby, at least. The kids are super excited, and me, too. I’ve always wanted a garden that is wildlife friendly, and this is certainly an example of success in that regard. Who knows, we might even have a whole new set of hedgehog babies before long…
If you want to adopt a hedgehog there are plenty of sanctuaries out there that will happily provide you with one, as long as you have a suitable habitat for them – that means a fairly large garden, preferably quite overgrown and protected, and with no dogs. If at all possible, there should be no way for the animals to reach roads, but that’s almost impossible to ensure. Do get in touch with your local sanctuary. We used Birdsbay, and they are typical in that they rely on volunteers to care for rescued animals.
I’ve come to Mallorca on holiday with my brother. It’s with some reluctance I admit this: The place has always been a byword for package holidays of the kind up with which I will not put. Back in the days of socialist Sweden this was where people escaped the state monopoly on booze and sunshine to pig out on an abundance of both – but there is more to the island than its bad reputation would have you believe.
For me, this marks my second visit to Spain in as many months. It’s a country I hadn’t hitherto considered as very interesting, but I’m very pleased to admit I was wrong.
I know of course that I should tread carefully here, in every sense of the word; only non-Spanish people talk of Spain as a unified country – to a Catalan their homeland is Catalonia, and a Basque or a Mallorquin are equally fiercely proud of their respective regions. Without commenting on the respective merits of various other separatist movements, I think it’s fair to say that the Mallorquins’ case has more merit than most; like all islanders, their history is the result of all manner of foreign influences. Long before the British invasion of binge-drinkers or the colonies of German nudists, indeed long before Spain was an entity, the Balears were part of the Califate. The name of the isle itself is a bastardisation of Al Malorq, which in turn is an approximation of the Latin Isola Major (the big island), and before the Romans there were the Phoenicians, and so on. But I digress.
We’ve come to hike the Tremontana region that spans the entire northwest coast of the island. We did a hiking holiday together a year and a half ago in Slovenia, and we’ve been looking to find something that could match that experience. This certainly fits the bill: the Tremontana is home to the GR221, Ruta de Pedra en sec, or drystone route, all 161km of it, and it traverses some of the most impressive landscapes I’ve seen in Europe.
It’s still a work in progress tho, with some landowners contesting the right of the hoi polloi to cross their lands, so I’ve reluctantly decided against using the refugios, for fear of having the itinerary thrown into disarray by some trigger-happy estancia-owner with a hatred of hikers*. Instead we found an agretourisme, Finca d’Olivar, near Estellencs, which became our base. Formerly the home of a hermit, it’s a cluster of little stone houses built into the cliff side, nestled above orange groves, hidden away from sight but still offering wide-reaching views; small wonder stray cats like it!
Our finca is nothing out of the ordinary, however. The whole coast is littered with beautiful honey-coloured villages, houses huddled together on cliffs and outcrops like swallows’ nests, built one on top of another in a jumble with not a right angle in sight**. The dramatic road serpentines its way between them like a never ending snake, never straight, never horizontal, imbued with a steady stream of bikers swooping down the slopes or sweating their way up the mountain side.
The GR221 is a different proposition altogether: just as vertiginous, but almost completely devoid of people, we stroll for hours without meeting a single hiker. The first day sees us scale the heights of the nearest mountain, which we have all to ourselves with the exception of some wild goats, and from whence we can see the entire island. The second day we set out along the coast, and hike for seven hours straight through fishing villages and almond groves, past vineyards and poppy fields and watchtower ruins, before taking the bus back from Bayalbufar, a very bijoux bayou. The third day, we drive high into the mountains north of Sóller for a final excursion in the remotest part of the Tremontana. Everywhere we go the landscape is stunning, the sky and sea deepest azure blue, the air so crisp that individual leaves on trees hundreds of metres away are clearly visible, and the stillness such that the slightest sound carries for kilometres. Flowers are in bloom everywhere, birdsong and fluttering butterflies fill the air. It really is paradisiacal.
In fact, the term paradise is particularly apt here, since pairi daiza in Persian originally meant “walled garden”, and the most distinguishing feature of the island is the abundance of terraced walls. They are literally everywhere, even in the remotest areas, and I am reminded of a comment by a forester friend (who said apropos the Blue forest): “If you think the woods are beautiful, thank the foresters.” This is brought home to us again and again: all this is cultivated land, used for millennia. Olives were a source of wealth to the islanders even before Carthage lost it to the Romans, and the trees are still there today, their centuries-old trunks contorted like souls tormented in a Dante-esque inferno, impossibly alive in spite of looking like they should have died a dozen deaths. Intricate systems for water collection – aljab cisterns – help funnel the winter rains down to the fertile soil down in the valleys, often using canals built into roads and walls to get to the staircase gardens below. Even higher up, where nothing but pine and holly grow, there’s still evidence of charcoal burning sites, and as you reach the crest of a mountain, more often than not you will find a drystone wall, erected to avoid flocks of goats escaping.
It really is a walk through a pastoral idyll, and it’s easy to imagine fauns and nymphs cavorting in the valleys, where rosemary and sage grow wild in the dappled shade. In reality, any attempt at cavorting would result in sprained ankles or worse, as the ground is extremely unforgiving – think rock, rock, rock around the clock – but we manage to make it unscathed, which is more than can probably be said for the passengers of the helicopter wreck we come upon the last hour of our last day. There’s no telling how long it’s been there, but discovering it changes our mood. Even the skies begin to darken, and it seems right to end our adventures here.
I spend one more day in Mallorca, getting lost in the labyrinth of Palma’s old town, dodging raindrops and dodgy tourist traps, meeting interesting people and finding hidden gems. The island still has more to offer though. There’s canyoning, rock climbing, diving, even biking – if I can overcome my dislike for spandex. I leave thinking I should come back for more – and what better way is there?
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*At one refugio we find ourselves seated next to a Swedish woman and her ten-year-old daughter, who have elected to do a through-hike of the kind I originally envisaged, – as a birthday gift for the girl. Food for thought, that.
**The result of hundreds of generations of husbands succumbing to their wives’ pleas for “just one more room”, perhaps?
After a hectic week at work, is there anything better than getting out in nature?
It was a typical April weekend, with clouds, rain, sun, blue skies, hail and snow, all mixed up good, but I managed to spend hours and hours in the garden, weeding my way through the borders until my fingertips ached at the merest touch. It’s a tough job, but satisfying, especially since the difference is immediately noticeable, and besides, this is my favourite time of the year to be in the garden: everything is in bloom, and birds are chirping everywhere.
From a distance the weeds are invisible. Up close, invincible.
Speaking of blooms, this is also the season for bluebells, and nowhere are they more impressive than in the Blue Forest Hallerbos, near Waterloo, where Mother Nature has seen fit to put on a real extravaganza for about two weeks every spring, when gazillions of the dainty hyacinths turn the forest floor into a carpet of the deepest purple blue imaginable.
We braved the dark skies and went late in the afternoon on Saturday, eyeing the clouds as we drove, but by the time we got there the clouds (and the crowds) had dispersed, and we had the whole glorious display almost to ourselves (Relatively speaking. It’s so popular, and the time of flowering so brief, that there are always people around, but at least we didn’t outnumber the bluebells, which apparently sometimes happens…).
Why it’s called the Blue Forest is anyone’s guess.
Sunday brought more of the same weather – a perfect setting for my first duathlon, a local race in the English park of Chateau La Hulpe in the neighbouring village, and the stately forest behind it that is my playground par preference. A duathlon combines running and biking, and in this case the set-up was two loops of 2k running, followed by two loops of 11k biking and ending with one final 2k loop on foot.
Vertigo is normal at dizzying heights, right?
It was a fun way to switch up my long workout of the week, and my experience left me with a newfound respect for mountain bikers – I don’t recall ever having scared when running, but whilst rocketing down steep, narrow slopes on my bike, with other bikers trying to overtake me, I did consider my mortality, and how the impact of an unseen root or a false move could affect me in that regard. Thankfully neither occurred, and I made it through without incident, although getting off the bike to run the last lap was hard, stiff legs and numb bum and all.
This was my first official foray into combined sports, and although it was hard it certainly wasn’t impossible, so it did whet my appetite for more. A quarter ironman triathlon is 1k swimming, 40k biking (not mountain biking tho!) and 10k running – something to ponder, that.
All in all, not a bad weekend of outdoor adventures – both peaceful and less so – right on my doorstep!
Last week I went to Thailand to go diving, somthing I have long wanted to do. So I signed up to go on a live aboard boat – an old Chinese junk, and a movie star, no less!* – and off we went into the choppy, tepid waters of the Andaman Sea. We were a motley crew of sixteen divers from all over the world – the U.S., the UK, the Philippines, Argentina, India, Finland, France and Sweden – but we got on splendidly, and this would have been just another travelogue – you know, blah blah Richelieu Rock blah blah leopard shark – had it not been for one last news feed via radio before we entered waters where no communications were possible.
There was talk of explosions in Brussels. No details, just a headline. It was agonising, not knowing, not having any way of finding out what had happened. As it turned out, of course, the explosions were the worst terrorist attacks Belgium have ever experienced. Over thirty dead and three hundred injured, and – even more devastating – the perpetrators men born and bred in Belgium who hate their fellow humans so much, have so little regard for the sanctity of life – their own as well as that of others – as to feel that this atrocity was the right thing to do with their existence.
Fishy pearl of wisdom #1: Know thine anemones, as well as thine enemies. Don’t destroy the former to conquer the latter.
Society must have failed these men on numerous occasions for that kind of rage and hatred to grow in their minds. Where do these values come from, and who instilled them in the suicide bombers? Where have we gone wrong as a collective when members of our society lash out to destroy it? When people born and raised in western civilisations pledge their lives to a death cult with medical ideas of justice? These are questions I hope are being asked in ernest, but I doubt it.
In fact, I think mankind is doomed. We lack the collective will to protect what is dear to us and do the right thing. Global warming and pollution is killing off species at a rate last seen when the dinosaurs went extinct. We know this, yet doing anything much to stop it seems beyond us. We continue to use more resources than the world produces, year after year, as if we had an Earth 2.0 in reserve somewhere, which – I’m sorry to tell you – we don’t.
Fishy pearl of wisdom #2: Judge actions, not looks. Most – however scary-looking – just want to be left alone to lead their lives as best they can.
Diving in Thailand is a case in point: the corals are dying due to bleaching, something which occurs when the water gets too warm (as global warming continues, this becomes inevitable), but also due to overexposure to humans. However, instead of protecting the reefs, Thai authorities let anyone who pays in, leaving the sites lousy with divers – and lousy divers! – bumping into corals that have formed for decades and breaking them, and what’s worse: the national marine parks aren’t even protected from commercial fishermen, as guards are bribed to look the other way. Short-sighted greed scores another victory.
Another example: if the entire world became vegetarian, it would help reduce greenhouse emissions by 60-70%, and would save millions of lives annually, not to mention giving fish stocks a chance to recover from constant over-fishing. But will that happen? No. We can’t even instill in our own citizens a sense of it being wrong to kill your fellow men and women – what hope can there be for a species that cannot even master that?
We evolved to be scavengers, hunter-gatherers with a built-in evolutionary advantage for natural horders, since resources were – by definition – scant. But then humans stopped being hunter-gatherers and started dividing up the land into yours and mine, and that same advantage became greed – the urge to own more, ever more – and since agriculture meant resources were plentiful in this new word order we grew to dominate the entire planet.
Well, we’ve come full circle, with resources being scant again due to overpopulation, and we have to go against our instincts to resolve that problem. To add insult to injury, with modern society now having removed us completely from our link to nature, there’s not even a sense of it being wrong to deplete resources. But: appreciating nature’s beauty, however fleeting, can instill in us a sense of urgency, a sense of what we’ve lost and stand yet to lose, on this paradisiacal planet we call home. It’s as close to a religious experience as I have ever had, and with good reason.
Fishy pearl of wisdom #3: Be cool, little dude. And if faced with suicide bombers, BYOB – bring your own blast protection
We felt it, all of us aboard that ship, irregardless of nationality, religion, gender, age. And that gives me a little hope. That reverence for nature is perhaps the only thing standing between us as a race and extinction. So I leave the Andaman Sea behind, hoping that humans will do the right thing – it’s no longer a case of preserving nature for future generations, but preserving it so there will be future generations. I know I will try my best, whenever I can. I may have been cast out of Eden, but I won’t be hiding behind a fig leaf.
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*James Bond’s nemesis operated off of this ship in The Man With The Golden Gun.
Photo credits (apart from Little Dude): L. Woodruff
Most people’s resolutions for the New Year flounder by February. Actually, most resolutions probably find themselves stillborn on January 1st, but even for those people who do honestly try to effectuate change in their lives, habits die hard, and so I figure it is high time I conducted a health check on my ambitions for 2016 and see what happened to them.
If you recall (and even if you don’t, never fear – all is revealed just one click from here), I set out to improve myself in terms of physique and skills and experiences and whatnot. My idea was to have specific targets for each of these areas, the better to be able to track my progress. So how have I fared thus far?
In terms of improving mentally and intellectually, I have been playing more piano than before, and I have been taking lessons, even though these were temporarily disrupted by my teacher moving to Vienna. I’m not sure I can claim to have played 30 minutes per day, though. I listened to the theme from The Piano and didn’t take to it, so am looking for alternative pieces to learn – Claire de Lune is the current front runner, but suggestions are welcome.
On the other hand I have been diligently studying French, and have accumulated a total of 506 words and phrases thus far, which is a lot more than I would have thought. Have I learnt them all? Not yet, but using CardsOnGo on my iPhone has proven to be a really good method, as I can pick it up whenever I have a moment of downtime and go through my lists. To be recommended.
I’ve only read two non-fiction books thus far this year. I experimented with audiobooks, but found the medium not much to my liking – possibly due to having to wear headsets all day at work – so have gone back to analogue books now, and am ploughing through Bill Bryson’s latest even now (I’m writing this in between chapters).
Staying healthy and getting fitter made up the second chapter in my to do-list. I can’t say I have been wholly successful in staying away from alcohol, as it seems intrinsically linked with going out – something I’ve been doing more of this year, too – but I have stayed away from carbs and sugar for the most part, at least.
Working out is an area that’s been, well, working out well for me so far this year. Even with a week of no physical activity whatsoever due to a persistent cold, I have managed to notch up 69 workouts over 70 days, which is a LOT. It’s been mainly running and strength training, as I had the marathon in Barcelona looming last weekend, but I’m hopeful that biking and swimming will enter more prominently into the equation as the weather improves.
Finally, my ambition was to go on adventures and/or experience something new every month. January saw me go diving down to 30 metres in Nemo33, but in February I didn’t find anything new to do. I did take the children skiing in Sweden, which turned out to be more adventurous than we would have wanted, as one of their cousins fell and broke her leg, but it wasn’t a new experience as such*. All the more reason to look forward to Thailand next weekend!
In conclusion then, I don’t think I’ve been doing too bad so far. Some things haven’t materialised quite as I imagined them, but I’m on track, at least. After all, a map can never fully predict a path, merely point out its direction and features more or less accurately. I will be back with more updates later on.
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*Having said that, I doubt even Scott (of ill-fated polar expedition fame) had to coax and cajole his companions into pushing on as much as I and my brother-in-law did when stuck on a wind-whipped slope far from the cottage as the sun started to set on day one. Then again, if his fellow explorers had been ages seven to ten and he had promised them unlimited access to iThings once home, I dare say they would have overcome any obstacle.
Yesterday I ran the Barcelona Marathon. The goal was to improve my personal best by over half an hour, from 4h33 to anything sub-four hours. A tall order at best, as preparations didn’t exactly go according to plan.
It occurred to me that with three marathons and one ultra marathon under my belt – all of them marred by difficulties, injuries and insufficient planning and experience – I could probably write something on the topic of how NOT to go about training for them and running them in the best manner possible. After all, every runners’ magazine, web page and blog is already filled with that stuff. Instead, I figured I could provide you with
Seven Tips For A Painful Marathon
1. Overtrain
The importance of this cannot be overstated. There’s nothing quite like showing up at the starting line with a wonky knee, a smarting hip or a stiff back to ensure a painful experience. Acquired through Zealous Adherence to a Plan no matter what (you can follow in my footsteps and go running in primordial goop for two hours on a given day because the Plan decreed it should be so – causing an inflammation to the hip three weeks before D-day) or simply by training too much – nothing like preparing for a marathon by running one, right? – they all but guarantee a torturous outing.
2. Don’t sleep/eat enough before the race
During my last marathon I burnt 3,600 calories, or the equivalent of almost one and a half days worth of calories, so carb loading is essential. Overdoing this might have adverse effects on your sleep, however: having duly inhaled a couple of pounds of pasta and some jolly good Spanish cervezas the night before, I found myself tossing and turning between two and five in the morning, as the sheer quantities of food left me feeling like a beached whale; again something that begets a less than enjoyable run.
Another essential part of preparations if you want things to run smoothly – quite literally in this case – is the application of
3. Vaseline and/or Glide
Imagine you were to suggest to someone that they take a piece of cloth, soak it in briny water and rub it back and forth over their nipple, oh, say, 50,000 times without stopping. All but the most ardent masochists would surely balk at the suggestion, as no other method is more fool-proof in terms of dropping you into the seventh circle of runners’ Hell. To avoid this, apply Vaseline or Glide to all your intimate areas – nipples, crothes and ass (every crack, fold and crevasse), you name it, a liberal dollop of the gooey stuff is the only thing – again, quite literally – between you and utter, agonising, blistery chafing pain.
I’ve been told that those of a female persuasion would do well to look after the seems of their sports bras the same way, but regardless of gender, a top tip is coating your eyebrows with it (preferably before you go to work on other, more delicate areas), as this prevents sweat from reaching your eyes and stinging them like acid rain. Or not, you know, depending on your preferences.
4. Footwear and headgear
In a good story, the beginning and the end are the most important bits. Get these right and the stuff in between will fall into place. And so it is with the body during a race; make sure your feet and head are doing ok, and the rest will follow (it has no choice, really, does it?).
Feet need proper, well-fitting shoes, but since feet swell during a race, and shoes generally do not, you must either run with shoes that are initially too big or wear compression socks that help fight the swelling. Having ignored this in the past (with consequences that are outlawed in the Geneva convention if inflicted upon others), I opted for the latter solution yesterday, and it seemed to work. Having said that, as I’m writing this one of my toes has a pustule that is to normal blisters what Krakatoa is to a pimple, so it’s clearly not a perfect method.
As for the head, wear a baseball cap. It’s going to protect you come rain or sun. Pour water on it if you get too hot, but keep it on. If you do not, you will get sunburn/rivulets of sweat/rain in your eyes/headaches from squinting in the sun, all of which is dispiriting and painful.
5. Don’t study the map beforehand
Almost all serious organisers provide runners with a good map of the race course, and – even more importantly – a topographic outline of it. Ignore this at your peril. In Berlin and Barcelona you can get away with it as the courses are quite flat, but nothing brings your spirits down quite like suddenly facing a seemingly never-ending ascent that you didn’t even know was coming. Also, studying the map will help you avoid social embarrassment, like when I managed to run right past La Sagrada Familia yesterday without noticing, an involuntary faut-pas my proud and architecturally-minded hosts were understandably quite upset about.
6. Run with your heart, not your head
And so you’re finally ready to step up to the starting line. You’ve done your homework and are well prepared, physically and mentally, and know what pace you want to be going at, but once the speakers start blasting music (“Barcelona” with Freddy Mercury and Montserrat Caballé yesterday) and the crowd cries out, you charge ahead, blood boiling, adrenaline flowing, and you find yourself running fast, too fast. Much too fast.
I did exactly that yesterday. I had set my Garmin to alert me if I ran too fast or too slow, the better to ensure that I kept the speed I had decided on beforehand, which would take me to the goal in just under four hours. Due to my inadequate programming skills, however, it only beeped when I ran too slowly. Before I had noticed this I was five kilometres into the race and going almost a minute faster per k than foreseen – a recipe for disaster. I tried to slow down but couldn’t. By ten kilometres I was panicking, by the halfway mark I was becoming fatalistic – it was do or die.
Another thing to avoid is straying from the path; the bigger marathons nearly always draw a line on the ground that demarcates the official length of the race, so professional athletes actually run the distance. Stay on this, and you will, too. The problem is that you are crowded by people, some of whom you will overtake, so walking the line (or more accurately running it) becomes impossible, and inevitably you run longer as you zig-zag through the throng. By the end of the race I had done a kilometre and a half more than 42,195 metres, which is quite frustrating but seemingly inevitable. You can counter this at least in part by running in as straight a line as possible and under no circumstances interact with the audience, but where would be the fun in that?
In fact, I counsel you to do the latter as much as possible, and if you pay for it in sweat and additional steps then what you get in return is certainly worth the price; having whole swathes of the crowd clasp your hand and shout your name as you go past merely because you were the only one of all the runners who gave back something by smiling and thanking them for their support is priceless, and I promise that the pain you felt a moment ago will melt away under the adulation of las zorras.
7. Don’t take pride in your results
What’s a marathon, after all? Anyone could do it, right? Well, maybe they could, but they sure as heck don’t. Less than 1% of all people do. It’s going to hurt, it’s never going to be not painful, and you will walk like a stop-motion John Wayne puppet afterwards, whatever all those articles tell you, but if you embrace it (and maybe heed a piece of advice or two along the way) and enjoy it, there is every reason in the world to be proud and rejoice; after all, you just ran an effing marathon!
P.S. Did I make it in the end? Did I beat my personal best? Did I do a sub-four hour marathon? You betcha. I improved my PB by over three quarters of an hour and it wasn’t even (that) painful. Which only goes to show, I guess, but what, I’m not sure about.
I dived a lot as a young man. Went to the Red Sea and had some fantastic experiences, and then… Nothing.
For years I didn’t dare go diving for the sake of my ears. I have tinnitus, and it’s difficult to cope with as it is from time to time, I don’t need more of it, and so that fear – and the fact that my wife wasn’t overly keen – made me try to forget diving, but I couldn’t. And so last year in the Dominican Republic I decided to give it a try, and almost ended up swimming with a humpback whale.
With this in mind, I knew diving would be one of the things I did this year. But it’s not advisable to just suit up and jump in the ocean like I did in the DR, so I figured I needed to try my gills in a more controlled environment. Luckily, Brussels is host to Nemo33, the deepest indoor pool in the world.
And so I found myself entering a crowded foyer this Saturday morn, jostling fifty or so Belgians who had had the same idea as me. It was a quarter to twelve and I was on a tight schedule, as my son needed a ride to a friend in two hours. Since they only let people in on the hour, and the one woman manning the reception desk moved with continental speed, I figured it wasn’t going to work, but two decades in this country has taught me a thing or two.
I left the queue and went to the bar, where a man who was obviously a diving instructor was seated (Just the thing! Drunk diving!). I asked him if he knew how I should go about things if I wanted to dive, and he immediately got the woman out from the reception desk (while the fifty other divers-in-spe stood and looked on, grim-faced), got her to sign me in (“No PADI card? I don’t have time to look you up. What level are you? Advanced? Ok, in you go.”) and five minutes later I was kitting up on the edge of the pool with Yves, my new dive buddy.
Turns out diving is a lot like riding a bicycle (apart from the fact that you don’t have to assemble your bike every time you want to go biking), so once I was in the water it was as if it were only yesterday. The free divers have the deep part of the pool to themselves for the first ten minutes of every hour, but Yves had us on the edge of the abyss before anyone else, and so we were the first to slowly descend into the part of the pool that gives Nemo33 its name – a man-made blue hole, the depth of a ten-story building. It’s an awesome feeling, looking up at the surface from such a distance, and it wasn’t made any less impressive by the sight of groups of divers slowly drifting down towards us in clouds of bubbles.
Once they were down, though, it was a different story. Think blubbery seals boldly bouncing into each other whilst taking selfies and you have a fairly accurate picture. So we made our way up again and spent the rest of the dive exploring the tunnels and caves (“zey zerve ze champagne here”, Yves informed me, as we briefly stopped in the largest one), made faces at the people in the restaurant on the other side of the windows, and generally amused ourselves as best we could – Yves had me take off my fins and “run” on the pool floor and then onto the wall and perform a backflip, Kung fu-movie style.
It was a good experience, though, and it served its purpose, showing me that I can dive. As I got out of the pool and gravity reasserted its grip on me, I felt elated, and more than ready to take this old/new adventure to the next level: a live-aboard diving safari in the Andaman Sea off of Thailand! Watch this space…
‘Tis the season… for people to start thinking about what they want out of next year.
Unfortunately this is often done in a rather tipsy state on New Year’s Eve, which doesn’t help making the resolutions any more achievable, but more importantly, the intentions – however good – aren’t accompanied by a plan for how to accomplish whatever healthy habit-pickuppery/unhealthy habit-kickery the resolution takes aim at, and so by the end of January things have largely returned to normal.
I’m no different. In fact, the few times I recall having carried out my resolutions to the letter have all been when I was able to have a plan for how to do it, and measure the rate of implementation.
When I was twelve my father and I agreed we would do 10,000 push-ups each in a year. I got a little notebook and wrote down however many I did each day, and by the end of the year I reached the goal. (Dad dropped out long before that, making me suspect that his motifs were somewhat different than mine…).
This year I’ve done something similar, in that I set out to run 1,000 kilometres, and used my Garmin account to track my progress. The counter currently stands at 995, so unless something really untoward happens tomorrow it should be in the bag.
These goals are a tad simplistic, admittedly. It is after all merely a matter of dividing a random (but hopefully impressive) number by 365 and then averaging that much every day, but the principle is sound; if you want to achieve something, have a clear goal in mind, do it incrementally and make sure progress is easily measured.
So can I apply this to my ambitions? Well, first I have to figure out what I want. Luckily, what I noted when I wrote the initial text about me still holds true. I want to improve intellectually and physically, and I want to go on adventures and have new experiences.
So how to make this quantifiable?
Improve intellectually
Overarching goals: Get better at piano playing and French, read more non-fiction.
Specific goals: learn a challenging piece by heart, e.g. the theme from The Piano; incorporate 1,000 new words and 300 new expressions in active vocabulary, read 25 books.
Incremental steps: play piano 30 minutes per day when at home, take lessons; read French texts, look up and memorise terms and phrases, and incorporate in conversations; make a list of non-fiction, read 30 minutes per day, utilising modern technology to bring books when travelling, write reviews on GoodReads.
Improve physically
Overarching goals: Get in better shape.
Specific goals: Run a marathon in under 4 hours; run the 90k ultra marathon UltraVasan; (possibly) do a half Iron Man.
Incremental steps: work out continuously six days per week (depending on if I have the kidlets or not), three days running, one day biking, one day swimming and/or two days weight lifting; eat healthily (no refined sugar, alcohol, and little carbs) with the exception of a Cheat Day every two weeks, and sleep enough (ideally eight hours per night); measure improvements.
Adventures and new experiences
Overarching goals: travel to new countries, try new things, test my limits
Specific goals: do at least one thing every month that falls into this category:
Most of these are not yet set in stone as I need to check when I can go travelling and when the various destinations are at their best, but it’s a starting point.
Finally, in order to stay on the straight and narrow, I will report on my progress here throughout the year. It will be an experiment, and I’m not sure how it will turn out – if nothing else it will certainly make for a Happy New Year!
I’m about to throw myself off a mountain. 
Remember New Year’s Eve? And the 
So there is this country that I’ve been to dozens of times for work, and never really saw, even though it’s tiny, and right next door. Or rather, I never bothered, because it was tiny and right next door. And I associate it with work. How interesting could it be?
I’ve long thought I should try to write a travel entry on the topic of Sweden; I’ve lived abroad long enough that it’s a different country from the one I grew up in, after all, and for most readers it will be just as exotic as any other place I experience on my journeys.
I’ve come to Mallorca on holiday with my brother. It’s with some reluctance I admit this: The place has always been a byword for package holidays of the kind up with which I will not put. Back in the days of socialist Sweden this was where people escaped the state monopoly on booze and sunshine to pig out on an abundance of both – but there is more to the island than its bad reputation would have you believe.
Yesterday I ran