Far Lands

After all that we were knackered:-

Following a tricky snowy col descent (see photo) we joined the GR10 and began to walk down through thick forest. We thought it was all over - it was our penultimate day and we were already dreaming about a proper bed, beers and ice-cream. One more night. But after a very wet and late Spring the rivers were surging and the bridges in the forest were washed away. Off-path I exited through the forest just above this meeting of the two rivers. We appeared to be stuck. There was one possible exit which was to climb onto the snow / ice that covered the river (the right hand one in the above photo) about a 100 metres upstream from this video above. It sounds very straight-forward but the snow and ice across the river that formed a bridge was melting and there was a gaping hole in it. Our tactics were (i) grin and hope and walk quickly across, and (ii) send James first. We managed it (photos taken from this side looking back over what we had crossed). Quite scary, and we th...

Just back from a couple of weeks in The Pyrenees - mixture of wild-camping ( trowel-camping as one of our friends refers to it), and a week in a Cottage. Our garden is a jungle of growth. It was supposed to be our Summer holiday but we were glad we had packed ice-axes, crampons, rope and harnesses. Sarah was glad that I was carrying them. We stayed a night in this hut. Sarah negotiating tricky melting snowy slabs on the mountain-sides.

Although we have almost no blossom in our new orchard, our established fruit trees are looking good with plenty of blossom on the plum (now over) and the three apples. There are six stages of apple blossom:- 1. bud burst 2. mouse-ear (how fantastic is that!) 3. green cluster 4. pink bud 5. full bloom 6. fruitlet Our apple trees (pictured) are currently moving developing from stage 4 to stage 5.