April 2010
18 posts
Run to the hills
Less than two weeks later and I’m hitting the road again. The fish farming process was moderately interesting for a week (more so than the banter of my new colleagues), but ultimately the numbers didn’t add up. Working outside all day in often hostile weather, doing a job that was periodically both strenuous and/or unpleasant, in a potentially dangerous environment - for six quid an...
Modern parallels
Kicking around the NW Highlands, you can’t help noticing the abandoned buildings and agricultural land, reverting back to nature. Some of this is relatively recent, a result of changing social patterns, but much of it goes back to the Highland Clearances. Some Scots use this as a stick to beat the English with; the fact is that a lot of it was actually down to the clans’ own...
The Yushu Earthquake
Yushu, devastated by the earthquake earlier this week, is the town where I was bitten by a potentially rabid dog four months ago. I’d endured a 16 hour winter bus journey over 5000m passes in order to get there, scouting out the area’s potential for a bike trip. What I’d found was an area more ethnically ‘Tibetan’ than any part of the TAR (Tibetan Automonous Region)...
Conforming to society's norms
I know people do read my blog, although I’m unclear what their motive for doing so is. I suspect, on one level, they’re eager to chart my anticipated decline into an existence as a solitary hermit, wandering out of the mountains once a week in ragged, piss stained trousers to buy food, rave drunkenly at tourists and throw stones at passing motorhomes. I’m sorry to disappoint...
Ullapool or bust
It’s too early in the season for the local bus service to be running in the Far North so, food and fuel exhausted, I set out to hitch back to Ullapool. Not one bastard so much as dabbed his brake lights in the whole walk back from Kinlochbervie to Kylescu, by which point I’d given up in disgust. After two days’ walking I tottered over the top to Skiag Bridge on numbed feet and...
