Tag: alps

Alps 2020, Day 7: Return via Switzerland

Leave a comment

We packed up our stuff and left our cosy Italian apartment, sad to be homeward bound. The first part of the drive took us along a road flanked by magnificent, snowy peaks,  out of Italy via the Great St Bernard tunnel. We climbed up to it in our little VW Polo hire car, paid the toll and emerged in Switzerland 6km later.

We wound down the equally mountainous road on the other side, marvelling at the Swiss Alps. The roads were wide and smooth and large chalets made up towns and villages, boasting hotels, amenities and ski-related things. We stopped at the Relais-du-St-Bernard, a service station on the edge of a town called Martigny. It was nice to stretch my legs after an hour or so of having to concentrate on the road, rather than the stunning surroundings, but we were amazed (not in a good way) at the price of food at the service station.

The next bit of the drive took us north along flatter ground to Montreaux, a large town on the eastern side of Lake Geneva. We parked on a roadside close to the edge of the lake and got out for a wander. It felt like a well-kept place, with benches, trees, clean pavements and an attractive marina. We walked down to the lake and just stood there for a while, taking in the breathtaking view of the rippling water backed by high, jagged, snow-scattered mountains under a moody sky.

We got back in the car reluctantly and headed to Geneva along the long north side of the lake, bypassing Lausanne and hoping to get there with enough time to drop the hire car off and have a little explore. I’m writing with hindsight and I don’t remember anything notable about the drive, until we got to Geneva.

Our Air BnB and the car drop-off point was near the airport, north west of the city centre. We had quite a long, stressful time finding a petrol station and returning the car. We got to the busy part at what must have been rush hour and Google maps wasn’t being particularly helpful at finding us a petrol station. Angry Swiss drivers exacerbated the situation, so Ryan became a stressed and (sorry) fairly unhelpful passenger while I navigated the difficult-to-understand roads, conscious that there were probably Swiss driving etiquettes to which I was oblivious. Eventually we managed to fill up and return the car to the multi-storey car park drop-off point on time.

Loaded with all our stuff, we set off on foot to find our Air BnB, a very basic, student halls type apartment in a not-particularly-nice area that we’d chosen because it was within walking distance from the airport and relatively cheap (about €60, which was ridiculously expensive compared to our lovely French and Italian accommodation). We dumped our bags and, starving, didn’t bother to change before setting out to find some food.

We’d hoped to see the city centre but were exhausted and hungry from the stressful drive, so we found a bar along a main road within walking distance of the apartment. From memory this part of Geneva wasn’t anything special – I remember wide roads, slightly run-down takeaways, peeling posters and a lot of overhead wires. The bar was lovely though, a proper “local” where nobody spoke a word of English, and the wine went down a treat – as did the complementary cheese savouries and cured meats.

After a couple of drinks we found a restaurant called Da Vinci’s, just down the road. It was too posh for our salopettes and base layers but we didn’t care. For starters Ryan had porto soup, a thin broth made with port and beef stock, which was absolutely nothing to write home about – unless to warn against ever ordering porto soup. I had snails in garlic butter which were chewy but tasted nice. For mains Ryan had pasta carbonara, which was lovely, and I couldn’t resist my favourite treat – prawn cocktail. Afterwards we sat at the bar for some drinks and were pleasantly surprised when the bartender cut into a huge wheel of cheese and handed us complementary snacks, including lots of olives (another favourite).

Eventually we left the bar and went back to the apartment, exhausted and sad that the holiday was nearly over. Our flight was early the next morning and we were up at an unearthly hour, lugging bags to the airport. The bag weighed in a few kilos too heavy (always anxiety-inducing) but luckily we had a friendly baggage attendant, so Ryan put on his heavy mountain boots and we layered up even more, somehow reducing the weight to under the 20kg limit. Everything else was unremarkable; we hung around at the airport for a bit, mournfully watched Switzerland disappear through the plane window, and got picked up early from Bournemouth Airport by Ryan’s brother.

We were lucky to get abroad in 2020, given the pandemic that shocked the world just a month after we set foot in Switzerland. I’m writing 14 months late due to various diversions, so may have missed a few things out, but I’m relieved to finally have finished my Alps blog. Definitely a place to return to, as often as possible. In hindsight, even losing control of the hire car along a steep, icy back road makes a good story. 10/10 an excellent adventure.

Alps 2020, Day 5: Chamonix, Italy

Leave a comment

I’m not much of a stay-in-bed person, but given the previous day’s fiasco I granted Ryan a lie in. It was our last day in France, so we had a morning of admin n chill. After our things were packed into Pierre the Polo we stocked up on food at a supermarket in Les Houches and headed to Chamonix.

Considered the mountaineering capital of the Alps, Chamonix is a lively town full of outdoor shops and bars. High, snowy mountains interspersed with dark pine forest provide an impressive backdrop for the colourful streets, and a statue pointing towards Mont Blanc commemorates Jacques Balmat, the first person to climb the mountain in 1786, and his funder Horace Bénédict de Saussure. I particularly liked a mural depicting balconies and shuttered windows busy with old-fashioned mountaineers, skiiers and locals which was painted on the side of one of the five-storey buildings that line the streets.

We poked around a Decathlon and a North Face shop before doing the standard tat shop run for tourist bits – we picked up sew-on badges, car stickers and a small keyring knife. We went for a wander, backtracked after getting a little lost, fell out with an uncooperative parking machine and left for Italy, reflecting that Chamonix would be a great place to stay on a group holiday.

The Mont Blanc tunnel runs straight through the mountain for 12km and cost us €45. In 1999 there was a terrible fire which killed 35 people, so we were instructed by the tunnel’s own radio station to drive between 50 and 70kph and stay 150m (two road marks) behind the vehicle in front. The thought of driving literally through a mountain was cool, but it was quite a boring 12km and the long strips of lights lining the tunnel made it very samey.

We emerged in the midst of the Italian Alps, whose mysterious summits and low valleys were concealed by thick, snowy fog. The imposing slopes stood in contrast to the comparatively visible, majestic French mountains we’d been surrounded by twenty minutes before. The road wound through and under the mountains (driving in this region involves a lot of tunnels) and we got to our new village, Ayez, in an hour.

We parked in the village car park overlooking the lovely, mountainous Aosta valley and settled into our AirBnB place. We had the ground floor of a rustic house, which was basically one big room containing a kitchen, dining table, double bed, a few bits of furniture and a room-dividing shelving unit full of unidentifiable but functional-looking items. There was a bathroom with a bidet just off the main room, and by the kitchen area there was a door into a really cool stone cave (probably meant for storing wine) with a big map of the Aosta valley on the wall. It had a real timeless, rural feel, with its carved furniture, tiled floor and miscellaneous ornaments.

Our AirBnB host, Sergio, knocked on the door after a while. Sergio spoke about as much English as we spoke Italian, which was none. Once we figured out that he spoke French I managed a conversation about the occupancy form we were required to fill out under Italian law, reassured him that the temperature in the room was fine (he was very concerned) and he went on his merry Italian way.

That evening Ryan cooked his signature dish, the whatever-we-have stir fry, and we spent the evening updating our vlog, poking around the various bits of Italian literature (which ranged from local tourism to a huge volume on 18th century French furniture), drinking thrown-together cocktails and planning the next day. The highlight of the evening was  a strangely mesmerising wooden game that I’ve since found is called Tyrolean roulette, which involves rolling little balls at a spinning top  in the middle of a round board and keeping a score based on the numbered divots that the ball pings into. It’s the simple things.

Alps 2020, Day 4: Snowshoe Hiking and Black Ice

1 Comment

We left the cabin much later than planned due to the reluctance of our slow, hungover bodies and plodded to the hire shop to pick up some snowshoes. We planned to hike up Mount Joly (2,525m) via the ski runs and hiking trails, which was fairly straightforward – navigable using the map in the ski leaflet, or so we thought.

I always thought of showshoes in the typical cartoon tennis racquet sense, which isn’t too far off. Ours were big, flat, foot-shaped bits of plastic with small metal studs on the bottom for grip, with two “settings” – hinged under the toe, which allowed the outside portion of the device to “flap” down and stay close to the ground when lifting the foot, and fixed, which locked the whole shoe stiff. Hinged was better for going uphill and fixed better downhill. It was strange at first and I kept treading on the edges of my own shoes, but got used to it after a little while. It was amazing how much grip we had, and the shoes enabled us to walk on deep, soft snow and up steep, icy slopes that we never would have been able to climb in just boots.

The Ascent

We hiked up blue runs, red runs and through tall, dark green pine forest, all the time backed by jagged, snow-capped mountains. As we climbed higher the mountains seemed to grow around us in size and number, until we reached l’Epaule du Joly (2,135m) – the shoulder of Mount Joly – and the high, white brow we’d been fixated on for over an hour suddenly gave way to a horizon full of rough, majestic peaks.

The hardest part was towards the top of that section. We had to hike up two red runs, which were unforgivingly steep and seemed never-ending. I focused on reaching that post, then that post, then that sign, breaking it down into more manageable bits, and I wouldn’t stop until I reached a more significant milestone, like the bottom of a new run. I watched some Alpine choughs diving off the roof of a cabin and listened to their high-pitched trill. Ryan and I didn’t speak for a long time.

Peril #1

L’Epaule was the highest ski lift, and to get to Mount Joly we had to move up steep, snow-covered rock. We swapped snowshoes for crampons, looked up at the looming white mass, and started upwards, using the leki poles to check that the snow and ice in front of us concealed hard rock, not open space. It was thigh-deep in places and we regretted leaving the ice axe back in the cabin.

We moved sideways up the steep face, front-pointing the toes of our crampons firmly into the ice, until one of mine came loose. I’d borrowed my crampons from Ryan’s dad and my boots were a bit too narrow for them, so my heel kept slipping out the back. While I adjusted, we really had to lean into the slope and find a solid footing as a slip would see us tumbling down the steep, rocky ridge with no means of arrest.

The crampon was wedged tight on the back of my boot, so much so that I couldn’t move it in our precarious position. Neither of us wanted to make the call and for a moment we just took in the near panoramic view, until Ryan expressed his concern in a strained tone that I’d never heard before. Recalling fatal stories of summit fever and remembering his dad’s words of caution, we reluctantly turned round and headed back down.

With hindsight I’m more disappointed now than I was at the time, but it was the right decision. While testing the ground for firmness on the way down, I punched a leki pole straight through a cornice (an overhanging snow edge that looks solid; we looked up at it afterwards and were almost certain that it was a cornice) into thin air, and with one pokey, semi-loose crampon, I couldn’t have pressed on much further. We’d expected a hike, not a graded ice ascent, so didn’t take axes. The sky had been growing thicker and darker all afternoon and we were concerned about visibility worsening; we didn’t fancy an overnighter. There was no other sensible option.

IMG_4793

Descent

The plod back followed the same route and was scenic but very, very long. We’d both been a little hungover but Ryan felt really rough coming back down, which I maintain had something to do with him refusing to eat. I returned the snowshoes in dwindling light while sickie dragged his poor body straight back to the cabin, then I tried to revive him with a hot drink and some food. We didn’t have much and had planned to find somewhere to eat out for our last night in France, so we got in the Polo and set off on what would soon become a treacherous journey.

In our normal blasé fashion, we did zero research and intended to stumble across a place to eat. We found that the pizzeria in our tiny village was closed, so we sent Google maps to the nearest restaurant. We followed the innocent-looking little blue arrow off the main road and down a suspiciously steep drive, which narrowed, steepened, became twisty, and – most worryingly – increasingly icy.

Peril #2

We couldn’t turn back, so we crawled along. There’s no way to describe the heart-in-your-mouth feeling of suddenly being taken by black ice. We slid diagonally down the road, picking up speed, as I tried to feather the brakes. Our concern (verging on terror) grew, but luckily the gentle braking worked and we slowed to a precarious halt. It was so tense that we felt that breathing too hard could set the car off again. On our left – the side closest to me and the way the camber pushed the car – was a deep ditch and a bunch of not-very-soft-looking rocks and trees. We ran through our options. We had snow chains in the boot, but no way of putting them on without moving the wheels. Attempting to control the car was likely to result in another sliding session, but we didn’t seem to have much choice. For the second time that day, Ryan spoke in a tone that I’d never heard before.

Stifling the rising feeling of dread, I told myself that although I didn’t fancy losing the €800 deposit on the car or negotiating our recovery in French (then paying the fee), we weren’t going to die. Ryan got out (gingerly) and moved around to the driver’s side, then put all his weight into pushing the car towards the uphill camber, while I tentatively eased off the clutch and crept forward. We slid a little, then I was in control. We slid again, and I was in control again. Ryan left his post and walked/slid in front of the car, directing me to the least icy bits of road, and we moved down the hill this way – just tickling the accelerator and the brake – for what seemed like an age.

Finally we reached a flatter bit and Ryan got back in the car. We crept along, flanked on either side by dark, ominous trees and incredibly on-edge, crossed a bridge over a river, and started ascending the winding road on the opposite side of the monstrous valley. The relief was immense but fragile, as we were painstakingly aware that we could come across more ice.

Relief

We emerged literally out of the woods and onto a more major road. Very few times in my life have I felt comparable elation, mixed with the sudden realisation that I was famished and totally exhausted. Not only had we climbed more vertical metres in a day than either of us had before (about 1,000m), in snow, but we’d barely eaten a thing. It was about 9pm on a Monday and we weren’t near any major resorts, so our hopes of finding anywhere open were low.

By chance, we came to a Chinese restaurant on a road in Saint-Gervais-Les-Bains, the nearest large town to our village. We nearly didn’t get out the car as although the lights were on, it looked dead. We pushed at the door and it opened, sounding a bell, but there were no waiting staff or customers anywhere. We looked tentatively around the warm, colourful room decorated with Chinese art and didn’t dare to hope too hard. A minute or so later a waitress came along, looked a little confused by my desperate-sounding plea (in French) for a table and gave us the second-best news of the evening: that they were still serving food.

I have never tasted such delicious Chinese food anywhere, and I don’t think it was just because of the day we’d had. It was everything I could have wanted – prawns in a lovely spicy sauce and fragranced rice with veg, and Ryan had some noodley thing. He perked up afterwards, but we were both so exhausted that after the thankfully uneventful drive back to the cabin (safe to say we eschewed Google Maps and stuck to the main road) we collapsed into bed like two sacks of potatoes.

The best meal of my life
And his

Alps 2020, Day 3: Skiing

1 Comment

Having spent Day 2 of our Alps holiday snowboarding for the first time, I realised that snowsports could become yet another of my thrilling and unaffordable interests. I could happily have boarded for another day (as Ryan did, having done both before) but I wanted to try skiing too. We’d swapped my board for skis the previous evening, so we were wrapped up and back on the slopes bright and early.

Mounting and dismounting the lift for the first time on skis was much easier than on a board. I was still a cumbersome creature but at least I effectively just had two extremely long feet, rather than a clunky slab of wood being dragged around by one foot. We started on the blue run we’d whizzed round the previous afternoon, beginning at the top of the Chattrix ski lift and finishing at the end. It had a good mix of steep, twisty, open and forested sections, and although not ideal for an absolute beginner, I’d probably have got bored with more suitable slopes.

Skiing was much easier to pick up than snowboarding. Skis give you two independent points of contact with the ground, whereas having both feet strapped stiff to a snowboard mean that if you start going over, there’s no intuitive way of counterbalancing. Having thought about it, I won’t write about this too much as I’ll do a separate post comparing the two.

Once I’d got the hang of snowploughing my way down the Chattrix run, we went down the first blue run of the previous day (much more successfully), up the Croix du Christ lift and down the long blue run with the gentle but sheer-sided section. It was along here that I realised how much quicker skis are than boards as I lost Ryan very quickly, which was a shame as he was trying to film me.

I found the poles helped a lot with keeping speed on the gradual slopes and balancing generally, but I still managed a few fairly dramatic, snowcloud-inducing crashes on the steep sections. I preferred crashing on a snowboard as the long skis made me feel giraffe-like; at least on a board you land directly on bum or knees, whereas skis jabbing into snow threaten to bend knee and hip joints in ways they shouldn’t be bent.

Back at the bottom, I tentatively mounted the button lift that had given me so much grief the previous day, back to the top of the Chattrix run. Annoyingly (but to my relief) it was perfectly straightforward on skis. We nipped down the blue route, noting the thickening sky, and back to the cabin for a warming lunch of soup and baguette. It was only then that I realised that I’d been learning to ski with two straps undone on each boot.

The afternoon was spent doing laps of the Chattrix blue run and we both loved it. Occasionally I hated it, but that was only when I was reminded that I wasn’t very good at skiing by all the skiiers flying past making parallel skiing (if that’s what it’s even called) look as effortless as sipping an apres-ski mulled cider. The weather had deteriorated throughout the day and by mid-afternoon powdery snow was laying delicately on the slopes, making it increasingly difficult for this cumbersome infant giraffe to ski at a sensible speed and in a controlled manner, so we gave each other the mutually understood “time for a drink” look and abandoned slope.

We returned the gear to the shop and continued along the road away from the cabin to the nearby village of Saint-Nicolas-de-Véroce to pick up some supplies, namely a bottle of gin. The village was very quaint, situated halfway up the valley side with an elaborate chapel, big wooden chalets and a beautifully presented but small shop, which was crammed with all sorts of fascinating (to two uncultured English louts, anyway) tins, jars, packets, meats, cheeses and bottles.

Unfortunately we couldn’t justify spending €42 on gin, so we settled for c.€20 vodka and some snacky snacks. We walked the half hour or so back to our cabin, cooked improvised pea and ham soup with leftovers and spent the evening drinking far more than intended. The phrase “we’re on holiday” was getting a great workout. 10/10 would ski again, although on balance (and despite being more difficult) I’d pick up a snowboard first.

Alps 2020, Day 2: Snowboarding

Leave a comment

I’d never snowboarded nor watched anyone snowboard before, so I went in as blind and stupid as I was keen. The hire shop and Chattrix ski lift were a 10-minute walk from the cabin, so before I knew it Ryan was teaching me to mount a ski lift while I simultaneously attempted to mount the ski lift. This sounds okay, but given that I’d never touched a snowboard or a ski lift – which doesn’t stop and wait for you to get on – was bemusing to the seasoned skiiers watching the childishly excited and unmistakeably English novice.

Once mounted, the ski lift was amazing. As we rose higher, more and more mountains emerged, their jagged outlines crisp against the clear blue horizon. Mont Blanc dominated the skyline behind us and the ski runs below seemed very small, snaking around swathes of dark pine forest. It was smooth, still and deafeningly silent – the calm before the storm.

92125479_651257469026247_4019824290789588992_n

The storm refers to my mood when I realised that snowboarding is a skill that must be learnt, rather than picked up instantly once on a slope. Ryan was very patient with me, despite my attempts to whiz down nose-first like the snowboarders flying past us, and I spent the first half hour alternately on my back and my knees and constantly in a foul mood. It didn’t help that the whole learning process was done on an intermediate (blue) run and an intermediate board, with a heavy-ish rucksack on, but excuses aside it was more difficult that I’d anticipated.

Eventually I listened to instructions and concentrated on moving down the slope at a shallow angle, moving from one side to the other in a slow, controlled banana curve and always keeping the upper edge of the board in contact with the snow. I learnt that I could do this facing both uphill and downhill, but came to prefer facing downhill. Once I started to get the knack I loved the rush of gaining speed and controlling the board round the corners and away from the edges, but I never stopped getting overzealous and falling over.

Once we’d completed the first run we jumped onto the Croix du Christ lift, which took us up to another blue run. At the top I was absorbed by the panoramic view and I felt the pull of every mountain, vast, mysterious and incomprehensibly enticing. This run had a long, gently sloping section which – despite the steep, unprotected drop on one side – allowed me to cruise along nose-first and appreciate that regardless of ability, I was so happy to just exist in such a breath-taking place.

The run got steeper, I fell off a bit more, and we ended up back at the start. We were peckish and the only way back to the village was up an innocuous-sounding button lift, which turned out to be categorically un-innocuous. Having barely been on a snowboard a couple of hours, once I got the silly little seat between my legs I just couldn’t stay in a straight line up the steep slope. It moves quickly, doesn’t stop to wait for you to get into position, barely takes any of your weight and has nothing to help you balance; I must have fallen off ten times before deciding that I didn’t want to hold the other skiiers (there were very few snowboarders using it, as it’s notoriously un-snowboard friendly) up, so we faced a hike back up the first blue run. I was furious gnome.

This was long, tough and blister-inducing in stiff snowboarding boots, but quite satisfying once we were back at the top of the Chattrix lift. We went down the blue run that took us back to the village, which had some really nice, flowing sections and long, steep (for a beginner) runs.

We got to the bottom and demolished a huge panini and a bottle of cider, which tasted delicious after that rollercoaster morning. Sitting still, the cold quickly reminded us that it was January in the Alps, so we didn’t hang around before hopping (lolloping, in my case) back on the Chattrix ski lift.

We spent the rest of the afternoon going round the blue Chattrix run. My relationship with snowboarding fluctuated from love to hate and back again several times, with no middle ground, as I alternately got and lost the hang of it. I didn’t realise that so much falling was involved. Ryan was irritatingly good. Even his patience with me became annoying, as I felt like I held him back a bit. Overall I loved the speed and the thrill of taking the board right to the edge of the run, then smoothly (on occasion) pulling away from the steep drops just in time. I was sold.

92130497_210618880266307_8439667486042882048_n

When we finally decided the day was done, we walked (hobbled), grinning, back to the chalet and spent the evening cooking, drinking cheap wine mixed with syrup and chatting excitedly about snowboarding and the Alps and mountains and who knows what else. We were on a high, giddy from the adrenaline of snowboarding and the anticipation of getting back on the slopes the next day. That night the stars filled the clear black sky like I’ve never seen before, and nothing else mattered.

Alps 2020, Day 1: England – Switzerland – France

1 Comment

We flew from Bournemouth and landed in Geneva an hour and a half late, around midday. A combined baggage allowance of 23kg, which included climbing gear (ie. a bunch of metal) and winter clothes, meant that I was uncomfortably warm and resembled a shallot in both shape and number of layers. It was touch and go whether we’d make it to the car hire place before we lost our booking as we had less than an hour and our collection instructions weren’t clear, but we got there and happily accepted the keys to a Polo, which was better than the VW Up that we’d booked.

7am airport beers
The Shallot

Unfortunately all we saw of Geneva was tarmac, concrete and industrial / “functional” residential buildings. Driving on the wrong side of the road was fine – the hardest thing was adjusting to sitting on the wrong side of the car. It took a little while before Ryan stopped wincing in anticipation of scraping the curb, but it was otherwise surprisingly easy to pick up. We drove down to the French Alps, watching excitedly as increasingly large, jagged mountains emerged from either side of the autoroute, and arrived in a pretty town called Les Houches. We picked up some groceries from Carrefour and headed to our AirBnB cabin, half an hour down the road in a tiny village near Saint Gervais Les Bains.

Les Houches
The beautifully neat French shops put the English to shame

The cabin was dreamy. Tiny, cosy and well-equipped, with an easy to use (even drunk) pull-out sofa bed, small kitchen area and a bathroom so little that Ry had to sit diagonally on the toilet to fit his gangly limbs in. My only qualm was the coffee machine, which I just couldn’t get the hang of. Ryan made all kinds of hot drinks with ease and admittedly it did only have one button to contend with, but every drink I made was too small, too weak, too cold or served in a wet cup because I nailed the volcano effect – where the water exploded out the top of the machine, rather than the bottom.

He cooked a lovely sausage and prawn stir fry that evening, with an unknown orange fishy-smelling sauce which was horrible on its own but lovely in the stir fry, and we spent the first night drinking a €6.50 3l box of heinous wine mixed with grenadine syrup, working out how (not?) to vlog, climbing around the little wooden cabin and planning the next day.

90631368_237246007661705_1523638376945680384_n

This photo summarises our first attempt at vlogging. At least we can laugh about it

Update: excuses, activities and armageddon

Leave a comment

I’ll make the excuse now: I’ve been vlogging. Having written in January about how I’ll write more blog posts in 2020, I’ve failed to do so entirely. I went on holiday to the Alps, took loads of videos, and my train journeys (previously reserved for reading and writing) have been spent editing a hilariously amateur vlog, which I recently uploaded to YouTube – find it here (nothing can embarrass me now). But it’s done and I’m back.

I’ve had a busy couple of months as I’ve just moved offices from Reading to Bristol, which has meant moving house from Alresford to a lovely little cottage in Warminster. My new train journey is just under an hour, which suits me as it gives me the opportunity to write my blog, read books and do other productive things which require me to sit still – something I struggle with on the best of days. The town is nestled in the Wiltshire countryside, has plenty of pubs and shops, and is a good mid-point between work and friends/family in Hampshire.

Notable activities since I last wrote include a brief bouldering trip to the Agglestone (Dorset), a week in the Alps, walks round the New Forest, camping in the South Downs, a weekend at Butlins with the Hillbillies (inc. my first time powerkiting), a trip to London to see Touching the Void in theatre, a few days exploring/hiking/climbing in the Peak District, a weekend of rugby in Kent, work trips to London, Birmingham, Guildford and Taunton, and moving house. I also conducted my first court hearing and secured an environmental prosecution, which was pretty cool.

Now that this horrible virus is doing the rounds I’m not getting out as much so I hope to sort out all my admin, get my cottage ship-shape, do some creative stuff, get back into some kind of fitness routine and catch up with the blog. I’ll write again soon, no excuses. In the meantime, I hope everyone who is panic buying stops being a **** (choose your own word).