One of the advantages of being effectively housebound for eight, nine, ten months (I’m losing count, but it’s been a long time) is that it’s given me a chance to gather together thousands of photographs from twenty years and more of travel and start making senses of them. I was genuinely startled to see just how many great adventures I’ve had on the borderline between exciting and terrifying (see above).
While we wait for something like normal travel activity to resume, I’ll be revisiting some of my favourite journeys, sharing a few images, and reflecting on the different ways we can enjoy our natural surroundings.
I’m working on a shortlist of places to revisit. First up will be a trek across northern Norway, inside the Arctic Circle, for which we had to prepare eight days’ food – and get used to some novel ways of fetching the night’s water.
Having just completed a novel set in the Sandhills of Nebraska, I have the Niobrara on my mind. We canoed a stretch of this delightful, spring-fed river in 2015.
As well as looking at the various places I’ve visited, I want to think about how we choose to travel. We prefer to wild camp, so I’ll look at the practicalities of that – with or without a tent. It takes a bit of nerve if you’ve never done it, but I highly recommend sleeping under the stars – as we did in this wonderful spot in the English Lake District.
Of course, the weather isn’t always suitable – so I’ll talk about alternative accommodation, like this tumbledown mountain hut on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees:
I look forward to sharing with you.
