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Walking Commentary

Walking Commentary

Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023

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ManRom2021

Wednesday’s Hump

May 27, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

‘Don’t you like landscapes?’ someone once asked during a Tadaa challenge in 2012. Tadaa was an Instagram kind of app very popular with iPhone users in the time before Instagram took off.

Of course I like landscapes. The question came at a time when I was learning how to capitalise on the tiny lens in a phone. I spent several years on an iPhoneography mission while learning how to spot ‘the decisive moment’. Things have changed but here are five iPhone photos from 2009 that were ‘published’ on Tadaa in 2012.

  • Tree Spotting
    20091010 iPhone 3GS
  •  Paris Smile
    20091010 iPhone 3GS

  • Another Fluffy Souvenir
    20091010 iPhone 3GS
  • Hotel Des Invalides
    20091010 iPhone 3GS
  • Sea Walking
    20091107 iPhone 3GS
[Read more…] about Wednesday’s Hump

Filed Under: Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: centre culturel irlandais, henri cartier-bresson, instagram, iphoneography, landscape, photos, tadaa, travel, walking

Tuesday’s Muse

May 26, 2020 by Simon Robinson 1 Comment

A quote from Laozi, the author of the Tao Te Ching:
‘If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.’

Myself and my walking buddy might have had good reason to have broken from our walk towards Rome and gone to Marseille last weekend. Day 52 of the trek would have found us in Lentilles. I’m still not sure how we’d have made the 700 km diversion from the Aube which is poorly served by trains. Nonetheless, we both had high hopes that Leinster Rugby would have made it to another European Rugby Cup Final and made good on the failure to win a fifth title in Newcastle last year.

[Read more…] about Tuesday’s Muse

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: booklink, conwy, george santayana, john berger, laozi, leinster rugby, marseilles, pandemic, photos, plague, wales, walking

75 to Dún Laoghaire

May 14, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I went for a 10 km walk today. The 5 km to the lighthouse at the end of the east pier in Dún Laoghaire was mostly downhill, the skies were blue and the birds were singing. The trees were in leaf and some of the spring colours accentuated my giddy mood. It was my first time out like this in over two months. Coming home was mostly uphill and by 11 am, there were a lot more folk out and about.

Triptych of iPhone photos
A comet amid a traffic-light, augury of a second coming?
A house name that dares to remind us?
Old style defence against invisible invaders?
[Read more…] about 75 to Dún Laoghaire

Filed Under: Anchoritism, ManRom2021 Tagged With: bus, charity walks, photos, scotland, walking

Kinetics

May 7, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

We all depend on movements for effect and those effects drive society. A learned friend introduced me to the term ‘kinetic elite’ that describes highly mobile business and political leaders and I guess global geoscience advisors too. I knew that US military still use ‘kinetic operations’ to describe their overseas interventions. With hindsight, perhaps both concepts were aligned when I was jogging around rocky Algerian deserts on fiery summer evenings deep in the Sahara. We’d wait until the temperature dropped to 44 C, then run an outbound 5 km before sunset to avoid dehydration and ensure the return 5 km could complete before total darkness, avoiding the reportable health or safety incidents used as adjunct measures of our job performance. We were among trails used as caravan routes for millennia, ‘kinetic smuggling’ routes perhaps. I was accompanied by security advisor MdS who joked that he was born into the ‘mobility’. I’ll call him MdS because he was a veteran of the Marathon des Sables as well as special kinetic operations. Discreet when not downright secretive, he had mind-bending stories he considered safe to relate to while away a slow evening jog with me.

Jogging Terrain © Simon Robinson 1997

‘Can you imagine …?’ is how she often starts … I wrote this a month ago not imagining that government had already restarted their harassment of Nurcan Baysal for ‘inciting hatred and enmity among the public’.

[Read more…] about Kinetics

Filed Under: Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: dna, google, marathon des sables, movies, nurcan baysal, pandemic, PEN international, sahara, xenophobia

Caspian Fishing

May 4, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

We’ll be walking to the Somme this day next year or perhaps the year after, pandemic dependent. The day’s walk will be mostly through lands occupied by Germany in 1916, east of the main battlefields of the Somme. We’ll walk south from Bapaume, passing Combles and finishing in Péronne. I look forward to the opportunity to visit some of the sites not out of macabre interest but to remind me just how fragile peace can be. Assuming things haven’t kicked off again in post-pandemic melt-downs.

Still under curfew, I trawled disk drives yesterday and recovered a lot of ‘missing’ photos. Among them were some memories of a month in the Caspian. Ironically, my first memory was my return journey.

[Read more…] about Caspian Fishing

Filed Under: Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: aktau, albert einstein, baku, book festivals, booklink, chernobyl, dalkey book festival, geophysics, insurance, jostein gaardner, kazakhstan, pj o'rourke, russia, seismic, somme, sturgeon, walking, ww1

Volcanic Adventures

May 2, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Taranaki Spring 2011 © Simon Robinson

What does a photograph depict? What are your expectations? Tag this one with visible elements such as sky, blue, mountain, egmont, ridge, tree, norfolk pine, tower, clock, shops and categorise it by landscape, travel or urban. But if you knew more you might add the contexts of spring, dormant, opportunity or shopping. And if you lived in New Plymouth, you might discard it entirely knowing you had hundreds of better shots. Because if you lived there you’d have the knowledge and time to realise better opportunities.

[Read more…] about Volcanic Adventures

Filed Under: Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: arctic, booklink, gns, new zealand, photography, photos, rugby, taranaki, travel, volcano, walking

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