paragliding

Istanbul – A Wild Turkey Chase

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I went to Ölüdenitz on the south coast of Turkey in order to paraglide. It’s known as a mecka for gliders, with five different take-off sites, perpetually perfect weather, and a long beach on which to land; what could go wrong? Well, everything…

I arrived at midnight with my backpack and nowhere to stay, after two flights and two bus rides, thoroughly worn out. The place looked as I had feared – nothing but bars and night clubs and faux English pubs, plus loads of lodgings. I didn’t look around, but went for the second hotel I saw – nothing fancy, but there was a pile of paragliding equipment as high as I was, which I thought boded well.

The next morning the place was full of what looked like frequent flyers, but no-one seemed to be going anywhere. Turns out there was a big bike race on, so flying was forbidden. Not obvious why? They had multiple helicopters covering the race, and Mr Chopper is not a paraglider’s friend. I was kind of ok with that, because that would give me the day to find an instructor that could take me on. Or so I thought. Not a single one was interested. All they do is tandem flights – taking tourists for a quick top to bottom and then selling them photos and videos of the ride is a lot more profitable than actually teaching someone how to fly. So in spite of there being paragliders everywhere I was grounded (I don’t have a licence to fly on my own – hence the need for an instructor…).

🎵 Up there is where I belong…! 🎵

My backup plan was to hike the Lycean Way – a relatively new path that follows the coast of the peninsula – but it was simply too hot; 27 degrees in the shade and muggy as anything was more than I could take. So there I was, stuck in a tourist hellhole, with no prospect of doing any of the things I wanted. I went for a swim in the Mediterranean at sunset and pondered my options: stay here for the week and hope something materialized, or change my plans entirely.

The next morning, as paragliders started to appear in the sky, I went for another swim, and then got a flight to Istanbul for that evening. No sense in prolonging the misery.

Arriving in Istanbul late in the evening I got a taxi to the hotel I had found, got fooled by the driver into paying 20% extra (“bank fees”), and arrived only to be informed the room was double-booked, and would I mind staying somewhere else? Not an auspicious start. Turns out “somewhere else” was a huge apartment right next to Galata Tower (which, in competition with the bridge across the Bosphorus, is THE symbol of Istanbul), so that was ok. The prayer tower four meters from my bedroom window that called believers to prayer at dawn the next morning? A little unexpected, but a very efficient wakeup call. 😅

And so I set out exploring Istanbul. I have been once before on a work trip, some 25 years ago, so had seen Hagia Sofia and the Top Kapi, which I was happy about, because the lines to those attractions were such that I could have spent the rest of the week standing in them. Instead I went for long, meandering walks through the Old Town, taking in the sights and sounds and smells of the city. Impressions: dirty, chaotic, crumbling, hilly – oh, so hilly! – and cat-infested. There are cats everywhere, but they are looked after – people feed and water them, construct special houses for them, and there is even a system that lets you collect trash and get cat food in exchange – because one saved Baby Mohammed from a snake once; not a bad deal for the three million (!) felines that currently inhabit the city.

How to keep rats away from the garbage?

The smell of roasted chestnuts and cobs of corn fills the air of the bazaars and the maze of streets, where – in Arabic style – the vendors and their wares spill out into the streets. The olden way of business prevails here: all shops specialize in one thing, and they all congregate with their brethren (very few sistren to be seen), so that one street sells nothing but tools, another plastic toys, a third music instruments, and so on. How they make it work I don’t know: Imagine being an umbrella salesman in a street of umbrella salesmen – in a city where it doesn’t rain for at least six months per year… They don’t seem bothered tho. Mostly the men sit around and drink tea out of tulip-shaped glasses, and smoke acrid cigarettes. Quite possibly this has the effect of curing them (not of illnesses, but in the mummifying sense), because they all look to be about seventy, regardless of actual age. Wiry porters carry immense loads on their backs or on little carts, blocking the roads even more than the rest of the throng.

What’s surprising to me is how many of the old houses are actually gorgeous – a wonderful Turkish take on Art Noveau. It’s sad to see how many of them are in disrepair and/or hidden by shabby constructions of later date, but a hundred years ago this must have been an amazingly beautiful city.

Art Noveau Turque. Maybe.

There’s plenty of architecture of greater age that is even more impressive, of course. I had an amazing experience last time I was here, descending into a subterranean roman cistern, where I was suddenly alone in what looked like a half submerged cathedral, with nothing but ambient light and Pavarotti for company, making it more of a religious experience than I have ever had in an actual church. And so I foolishly set out trying to repeat that. It wasn’t to be. I saw three cisterns, one without water, one tiny, like a flooded basement, and one that was something like my original, only this one was filled to the brim – with tourists. Nothing like queueing behind selfie-takers to get you to commune with the divine, eh? After this photographic wankery I decided to steer well clear of any other major tourist attraction.

Roman reservoir. Still quite impressive.

Instead I saw several of the less touted mosques, and found them all beautiful. Who knew ostrich eggs were used to fight cob webs on the immense candelabra, or that the acoustics of the domed ceilings were improved by incorporating water vessels into the construction at angles that offset the bouncing sounds? An added bonus: the relative calm of the mosques’ grounds means that cats favour them – in one I’m suddenly ambushed by six kittens, who quickly turn me into a fairground for their play. Allah akbar, indeed.

Vase tree. And some building.

I see the Swedish General Consulate behind barbed wire and armed guards – a reminder that my country isn’t popular in this part of the world right now; a far cry from when Swedish varjag warriors were seen as an elite, and were made into a special bodyguard unit for the Caliph. Luckily my hotel is owned by Kurds, so we bond over the shared experience of being outcasts.

Swedes behind bars.

I drink amazingly good coffee in swanky cafes, and marvel at the patience of the poor (?) fishermen on Galata bridge, who stand in the heat all day for a bucketful of sardines. There are other marvels: the sight of women’s clothes, ranging from full body burquas to, frankly, astonishingly vulgar, as seen in the nightlife outside my hotel, which happens to be next door to both night clubs and what on medieval maps would have been called Gropeacunt Alley. There is also the many patients of cosmetic surgary to gawk at: nose reduction and lip expansion jobs for ladies, hair redistribution for gentlemen. Istanbul can really be a transformative experience…

The food is predictably good: Anatolian breakfast is a sumptious affair with twenty-odd accoutrements, accompanied by endless cups of tea, and fresh pomegranate juice. Sumptuous! Cheap and cheerful canteen-like restaurants serve healthy Turkish cuisine, like filled peppers, grilled aubergine and lamb shanks, and if one is thus inclined there is baklava on offer on every corner.

Turkish delight. And Anatolian breakfast.

And so I spend my days roaming the city, haggling over tulip bulbs and pashmina shawls in the bazaars for the fun of it, taking a boat ride around the Bosphorus, trying to imagine all the people and ships that have crossed through here since time immemorial (the cataclysmic earthquake that opened the strait between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean is what supposedly gave rise to the Noah mythos, after all, and the Illiad played out at the opposite end of the channel). I even cross over into Asia, just to be able to say my holidays spanned two continents.

Asia to the left, Europe to the right, just to confuse you.

It is not what I had hoped, but it’s a good trip nonetheless. My initial plan – to experience the Turkish wilderness in the air, on land and in the sea – came to nothing, and Istanbul/Constantinople/Miklagård might be an acquired taste, but it’s many incarnations and contrasts and history make it endlessly fascinating, and a wild experience. Mashallah!

5 top ways to get hurt traveling

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People like reading lists, they say. The problem is they (the lists) tend to get a bit same-y after a while (people do, too, arguably), so the trick as a writer is to come up with something new and exciting. Here is one you likely never saw before: 5 top ways to get hurt traveling!

Traveling gives me a great deal of joy, it is true, but it’s fair to say that ain’t always the case. So in ascending order of pain and hurt and general discomfort, here are the five worst experiences connected with my travels over the years:

5. Went kayaking off the wild east coast of Sardinia, wearing lots of sunblock but no good sunglasses. Fierce sun, wind and reflections on the water combined with intense heat to create a witches’ brew of salt and chemicals that got into my eyes, rendering me effectively blind, as I was utterly unable to keep my baby blues open – something of a problem when one has to navigate dangerously bad mountain roads to get back to base. In the end I drove at a snail’s pace, stopping over and over to pry my peepers open enough to rinse them with water. It took a night in absolute darkness before I could see normally again.

4. Went diving in the Andaman Sea on a live-aboard boat. That’s a small ship that is out in tropical heat for a week, with everyone living in close quarters. Long story short, I caught something that developed into high fever right as we were disembarking; flying home from Thailand via London with 39+ degrees’ temperature in cattle class was literally a nightmare – I was hallucinating, and so weak they had to get me a wheelchair to go from one plane to the next. Once home I slept more or less straight for 48 hours before finally recovering.

3. First time paragliding in Spain. One of the first attempts to get airborne properly, running down a gentle hill, I managed to rip a muscle in my groin just as I was lifted into the air. The pain was excruciating, but the forward movement and physics kicked in and I continued upwards, which meant I had to fly and land for the very first time while trying not to black out from the agony. To this day I don’t know how I managed. It took months of grueling exercise to regain something like normal function in my leg.

2. Another diving excursion, this time to the Seychelles. Made the rookie mistake of having local food that was probably washed in local water. Within a few hours our stomachs were rumbling, and before long we were two people writhing in gut-wrenching pain, before embarking on a night of horrors, as our bodies went into overdrive trying to purge themselves of the foreign germs; trust me, there is no feeling quite like switching back and forth between projectile vomiting and having your intestines go full fecal Jackson Pollock on the one shared toilet, whilst your friend is knocking on the door to be let in to have their turn, NOW.

1. A romantic trip to Granada and Alhambra might not seem like an obvious winner of this list, but my companion on this sojourn was someone I was very much in love with, and she had agreed to go only as a way to end our relationship on a high note, as she felt we weren’t right for each other. So while it was a lovely experience, and the sights of Alhambra a wonder to behold, it was still with very mixed feelings I went on it. And at the end she did what she had said she would, and ended things between us. She broke my heart, and it took years to mend.

So there you are. A Top 5 List like no other. Honorable mentions go to Barcelona and Amsterdam, where I broke my PBs for marathons – painful experiences in and of themselves, but disqualified because they also gave me a lot of masochistic joy. Hope you enjoyed. If you think you have my travel horror stories beaten, let me know in the comments!

The pain of rain in Spain…

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For the second time in a row, my efforts to go paragliding in Spain have been twarted by unexpected rain storms.

Having returned to Algodonales where I first learnt about flying, I was hoping to be airborn every day for a week, and instead I found myself in a cold apartment staring out at a mountain ridge shrouded in unrelenting rain clouds. I don’t know if I should take heart from locals saying this is such a rare occurance as to be unheard of, or whether I should try to appease some local weather gods that I have somehow upset?

Luckily I had packed a bunch of books, so even if I was forced to stay grounded for the most part I still didn’t waste my time. And after a few days cooped up inside, my fellow would-be pilots and I did do some nice excursions in the area, enjoying the lushness of spring (at least the downpour helped with that!). First we ventured to the nearby mountaintop village of Zahara (It takes its name from the Arabic word for either crag or orange blossom – both highly applicable – but it has nothing to do with the desert), which looks like something out of Ferdinand the bull, and whose cobbled, winding streets have been hugging the hillside since times immemorial.

There is also a local nature reserve centered around a steep ravine that is favoured by large scavenger birds, so instead of following vultures in the air I sought them out in their lair. We saw at least three nesting pairs up close, their large dragon-like silhouettes sailing out of the mist in complete silence, sometimes as little as five meters away. I’m not easily impressed by birds, but these are as graceful as they are intimidating, forever sailing on thermals whilst watching every move in the world below. Thankfully they didn’t take after the Belgian blitz-buzzards, so we didn’t get attacked, but we all kept a mutually weary eye on one another.

The bottom of the gorge was sadly (and predictably) swollen with water, so we couldn’t traverse its entire length – possibly just as well, as my heart was racing like a hummingbird’s by the time I made it down. Instead we opted for an excursion in the opposite direction the next day, hiking up through an abandoned quarry to the summit of an isolated hillock, on top of which was an ancient Arabic watch tower. Even with a low cloudbase the surrounding landscape was visible for miles and miles, so it was not difficult to see why the Moors chose this site – any advancing army would have been spotted days away. Unfortunately, we could perceive equally clearly that the rain in Spain was not mainly on the plain, but everywhere, again and again, as far as the eye could see.

So with all hope of flying having been dashed I repaired to Seville for the last couple of days. It is a splendid town, epitomizing quintessential Spanishness, wearing its Moorish inheritance on its sleeve whilst showing off the incredible wealth that flowed into the kingdom with the discovery and exploitation of the New World. Everywhere you go the architecture displays both those influences, and nowhere more so than in Real Alcazar, the royal palace, and its splendid gardens. It is easy to see why Game of Thrones filmed many of the scenes from Sunspear here – the sensuous beauty of formal gardens filled with ubiquitous Seville orange trees and interlocking fountains, against the backdrop of a palace of Arabic ideals tempered by Iberian terracotta colours, with peacocks strutting like catwalk models through the landscape – it is quite difficult to surpass in elegance and sophistication.

Not that later generations haven’t tried. Right across the palace sits the vast creamy sandstone opulence that is Seville’s cathedral – large as a football field, cavernous on the inside and decorated like a wedding cake on the outside, its bell tower (once a muezzin’s prayer tower) unabashedly adorned in arabesque forms, even as its bells toll (loudly and repeatedly) to reawaken the Catholic faith.

The old town that surrounds the castle grounds is minute, but so maze-like that it is quite easy to get lost in its jumble of entangled alleyways, that occasionally spit you out onto unsuspected, intimate little plazas. Most of the old houses are built in the Medina style on the inside, with an open courtyard centered around a spring, whilst the outside is resoundingly Spanish – heavy gates, wrought-iron balconies and whimsical turrets with only the occasional tulip-bulb window hinting at the interior – and all of them have been painted in warm colours, so the overall impression is like a Spanish version of Chania, in Crete.

Also in the middle of town there is the Plaza de España, an enormous open space encircled on one side by an opulent bow-shaped castle structure – more theatrical backdrop than real building – and surrounded by a moat, whose arched bridges bring to mind Venice; it sits at one end of the immense Maria Luisa park, filled with temples and water features, formal fountains and informal paths, all hidden away in the lushness of palms, jaquarandas and the ever-present orange trees.

The last day of my week, wouldn’t you know it? The skies are blue, the sun is back, and Seville is awash with tourists even this early in the year, hinting at how busy it will get in high season; even now the horse-drawn carriages and tapas bars are doing brisk business. I take in the old bullfighting ring (now thankfully a museum), the weird mushroom structure (akin to Les Halles in Paris in its modernist madness), and the Golden Tower on the Guadalquivir river, below which is moored a full scale replica of the Nao Victoria, the first ship to circumnavigate the world. It looks ever so small and unimpressive, and yet on such flimsy foundations were built the first truly global empire, which in turn made all these riches possible.

All in all Seville is an interesting spectacle, quite splendid, and would have made for the perfect romantic weekend. But although I’m glad I’ve seen it all, much like was the case in Barcelona, I’d rather have been flying. The only flight for me this week will be the Ryanair one home. Third time will be the charm!

Barcelona revisited

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I was supposed to be flying. Paragliding in the foothills of the Pyrenees. But the weather isn’t cooperating, and so it is that I find myself in Barcelona, capital of Catalonia, with four days on my hands and no plans whatsoever. I’ve been here once before, but only to run the marathon, and I didn’t see much of the city – I must be one of the few people to have passed the Sagrada Família on foot without even noticing it was there! So now I will make up for my previous lack of attention. And there are worse places to be grounded…!

Like Rome, Barcelona is a city spanning millennia, but with the exception of the bullfighting ring (which is a direct descendant of the gladiatorial games of yore) Barna (not Barca – that’s the football club) doesn’t wear this fact on its sleeve. Instead there are hints everywhere; a colonnade incorporated in a building, supporting arches laid bare in basements, a stretch of aqueduct suddenly appearing like a ribcage of a long dead animal revealed by the ebb and flow of the desert sands. Some can be seen in archeological digs, others are felt rather than perceived by the naked eye – the rambling roads of the old town still snaking their way to the sea along buried waterways, place-names lingering where the features themselves are long gone.

And these are just the things you can perceive above ground level – there is a whole sub urban cityscape, too. I’m reading Underland at the moment, and I’m dying to find someone that can give me a more comprehensive tour of the hidden layers of the city’s past, but alas, I don’t find any such cicerone. Instead I wander the streets aimlessly, getting creatively lost and finding a seemingly endless array of interesting stores and quaint bars and restaurants. There’s the café that serves nothing but cereals, the street vendor that specializes in what must be diplomatically circumscribed as anatomically-looking plants, the store filled with nothing but huge sacks filled with all kinds of flour, nuts and seeds, one establishment that sells only glass jellyfish, another that’s full of leather masks (for carnival, or other special occasions), the list goes on and on.

It is a city ripe with contradictions: the second largest in the country, and a centre for the independence movement; a city thriving on tourism, with a strong opposition to that very phenomenon; a city that is clearly very well to do, yet possesses a large population of dispossessed people. These aren’t your ordinary homeless people, either; much like the independence movement, these poor people are organized; they live in tribe-like groups that squat in empty buildings and form an entire shadow economy, siphoning electricity from the grid illegally, much like their ancestors would have done to get water from the aqueducts without paying.

Due to all this and more, Barcelona has a unique quality to it. An American I meet that has previously lived in New York City and San Fransisco says it combines the best qualities of the two – and I see no reason to contradict her. The famous grid-shaped city planning of the newer parts of town combined with the labyrinth of the old town, the proximity of both sea and mountain, and of course the marvelous architecture (so much more than the Gaudi showcases – but yes, this time I do get to see his little church project!) all make for a wonderful cityscape. Add to that the many authentic restaurants and food markets, the international blend of people from all over and the likable nature of every inhabitant I encounter, and you have a pretty ideal mixture. If I had to live in a city, this would be high on my list.

2018 and the art of being S.M.A.R.T.

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I was thinking about what I want to try to achieve in 2018 when I came across some good advice that really resonated with me. If I have failed to reach my goals in the past, it’s nearly always been because I haven’t made sure they were S.M.A.R.T. – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. So that shall be my credo for 2018: be smart about what tasks I set myself.

The fundamentals haven’t changed: I want to develop as a person, intellectually and physically, by testing my limits, working diligently and hard towards certain goals, and I want to travel to see the world and broaden my horizons, ensuring that by the end of the year I can look back and see progress and time well spent.

So: smart intellectual challenges – the ones I’ve worked on for a couple of years now still remain the same: I want to read more non-fiction, get better at piano, French, and chess. That’s not very specific, tho, so measuring progress will be key; I need targets I can quantify. One book per month. One new piece of music learnt every two months. One hundred French words per month. And as for chess… well, getting a rating of 1400 before the end of the year would be an easily measurable goal, if not necessarily that easily attainable. (I’m hovering around the 1300-mark as I’m writing this…). Plus I will note down every half hour spent on each activity, thus keeping a tally for accountability purposes.

So I’ve got all of those down to an A.R.T. Physical challenges are a little different, mainly because of the uncertainty I’m living with at the moment, so for 2018, I have decided to change tack a little. For my first challenge in January I will do a runstreak. Running every day will hopefully allow me to rebuild what was damaged in the accident in November. If that goes to plan, Paris marathon in April will be another milestone on the road to recovery, and if that goes well I’ll sign up for either another ultra marathon, or a full length Ironman. Or both.

Alas, there are too many unknowns at this stage for me to know if I will be able to run such distances again, but if I can, then a total of 1500k each of running and biking seem attainable goals overall. At least I know I can bike, so if running is out then I’m doubling that number for biking (and only watching Netflix while on the stationary bike will kill two birds with one stone – limiting my Netflix binging AND encouraging more time in the saddle!).

Weights have never been anything but a complement to my other workouts – now more so than ever as I try to strengthen my weak leg – but again, if I find I don’t recover my running capacity, I will focus more on getting strong/building muscle. Having always been skinny it would be interesting to see if I could actually muscle up.

As for swimming, I want to learn how to crawl properly! At present I can hardly do one length in the pool, and even though I managed the Ironman 70.3 anyway it would be nice to shave off five or ten minutes from that time, so learning how to crawl at least a kilometre is another challenge.

I will be working more in 2018 than I have for a decade, which will hopefully have the dual effect of giving me the opportunity to take on more interesting work on the job, and allowing me a bigger travel budget, as, happily, my children have said they want to travel more with me, so that will affect what trips I take this year.

2018 promises an Arab spring once more, as I’m going back to Morocco in January and have another trip to Egypt in February (with the kids). I have a week of holidays in March that I don’t know what to do with yet – downhill skiing would be nice, but again it’s dependent on me making a complete recovery. I want to go back to Spain and get a fully-fledged paragliding pilot’s licence. Hiking in Iceland would be lovely, the last part of Bergslagsleden still beckons, and I want to do at least one journey further afield – maybe watching the great sardine run in South Africa? Or taking the kids to the US? There’s no shortage of possibilities.

Other challenges: I wouldn’t mind doing more for the environment. This could involve installing geothermal heating in the house, keeping hens for eggs, joining a wind power collective or other changes. One thing I do know I want to try is becoming a vegetarian. At least for a month.

Not eating any sugar in any shape or form may be another challenge, and limiting my social media intake to half an hour per day wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

And of course I want to continue building my blog, writing about my experiences for the joy of writing, but also as a living testament to what I do with my life when I don’t have my kids. Hopefully my readership will continue to grow, but that is less important. If I can inspire only two people, that is more than enough for me.

Here’s to a S.M.A.R.T.er future!

P.S. All this goes out the window if I were to get my dream job, of course… 😄

Spanish Fly

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I’m about to throw myself off a mountain. 

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. 

——

* 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. 

Alpine Adrenaline II

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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. 

The alps, however, are already calling me back.