Walking Commentary

Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023

Fake Memoir

Brief Encounters: 1976

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August 1976

The hitchhiker on the outskirts of Ballyshannon was a large man and cleanly dressed. Tall, broad-shouldered under sun-bleached hair behind an engaging smile, he looked interesting by the standards of the day. That was once the way that drivers assessed hikers. Would they be interesting to talk with? Today we might put safety first and rarely offer a lift to a stranger.

He put his back-pack in the boot and we drove north towards Donegal Town.

Most hitchhikers I’d encountered had been continental European or Kiwi. This Joe was American and I was enjoying the cartoonish drawl of his Georgian accent. We got on well enough that I suggested a pint and a sandwich as I dropped him to wait at the bus stop for Killybegs.

The view east across southern Lough Eske 1976 (scanned from a negative)
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Saturday Pencil Blues

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Saturday started badly. I had a bad night’s sleep and then the TV locked up before we could watch the breakfast news. I was already grumpy and my coffee mood boost was still in the cup when there came a glitch that became a technology challenge.

I should explain that we have a streaming service that provides our ‘terrestrial’ TV. It’s a service that comes bundled with our broadband via a DSL router and a set-top box. We’d surrendered a satellite service once we lost sight of the satellites beyond the growth of neighbouring trees. Copper wire transmission was all that was available as replacement. Indeed, our road is only now being upgraded with suitable fibre-optic connections.

I was watching a small holding farmer tend to a flock on our willow tree …
… this day six years ago.
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Laden Bin

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I know there are people out there who think that calling something a ‘first world’ problem is elitist. The real ethical dilemmas are often the reverse of the correction. Does a quota system that manages for inequality discriminate against those that formerly had the upper hand? Does labelling for first or third reinforce the stereotypes? Probably but what other language do we have?

Another Strange Gift – from my 2017 blog post Loops
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Radio Condor Skiing

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Three words to start today. Skiing came to mind when I was listening to a discussion about the Andean Condor on the car radio the other day. The enthusiastic recommendation was to go see a Condor on your travels. The reason the Condor was being discussed was the recent publication of studies based on GPS tracking plus a motion sensor that counted the bird’s wing strokes. There’s a science alert you can read on this subject if you want more. Meantime, for me, the most interesting part is not that a condor flew for more than five hours without beating its wings once. Sure, it flew over 170 kilometres using nothing but air currents. I’m pretty sure this has been happening for millions of years. What I want to know if it ‘sees’ the thermals or relies on something else entirely?

Albatrosses fly huge distance too. Same kind of problem. Dovetail this with how both species manage to stay aloft and you have an interesting chance to find something new. New ways of seeing our world perhaps?

Volcanoes of food sustained my writing today.
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Shaggy Fenec: Episode 2

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Continuing from last time, you’ll recall that we were in a desert dealing with a health and safety policy that mandated a full test of an emergency response plan within four weeks of setting up operations. We were in week four and about to create a cautionary tale of ill-considered independent action that rivals Hilaire Belloc’s lion-eaten Jim.

‘And always keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse’

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