Walking Commentary

Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023

travel

Inya and Offa

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‘Write and tell us when we are going wrong’ said Aung Sang Suu Kyi at the end of her interview with Fergal Keane in 1995.

I wouldn’t know this but for walking along Offa’s Dyke for a few days in 2019. My walking buddy and I found ourselves in a bookshop in Hay-on-the-Wye where I picked up a used copy of Fergal Keane’s Letter to Daniel, published in 1996 for his new-born son. While I’ve enjoyed dipping into these stories over the last fifteen months, I realise that Daniel must be around 24 now and I wonder what he thinks of his Dad’s letters. And I wonder if Keane ever wrote to tell Daw Suu how they were going wrong.

Swe Dagon Pagoda, Rangoon 1992 © Simon Robinson
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Enduring Decisive Moments

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There are times when photographers ruin your day. It happens to us all and there’s one such annoyance that I recall many years later. I’d positioned myself early, ready for the sunrise when another photographer put himself in my frame. He knew I was ahead of him in time but behind him in space. I called across the harbour and he squatted down, as if that would help. He might as well have said ‘Just a second’ knowing the exposure for his decisive moment wouldn’t last that long. But no, he brazenly stayed put for thirty minutes. My enduring decisive moment was just a quarter of a second and it’s lasted eight years and counting.

An enduring decisive moment I captured in 2013. Sunrise in Coliemore Harbour, Dublin
Ruining My Sunrise © Simon Robinson 2013
Coliemore Harbour, Dublin
Canon EOS 5D | Canon EF24-105 F/4L IS USM | 24 mm | 1/4s | f/16 | ISO 100 | tripod
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Dog Walk HDR II

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This day eleven years ago, trapped for the weekend in Uxbridge by heavy snow, I thought I’d walk to Windsor for lunch. Some 16 km and five hours later, I was cold, tired and very hungry. I’d missed Sunday lunch by a few hours so I settled for a dinner before catching the train back. But trains that serve Windsor don’t go by Uxbridge so it took a few hours to return. I’m glad I did the walk because the Berkshire countryside was utterly transformed in a way that I only saw that once.

Deer appeared as I skirted the M25 along the treed banks of the Colne Brook.
© Simon Robinson 2010
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Yachts, Leaks and Bacteria

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One night last week, I’d had a bad night’s sleep, broken by rain pounding on the roof. There were also sheets of wind-blown water crashing over the side of the house. I knew I wasn’t on a leg across the roaring forties in a round-the-world yacht race because the bed wasn’t rocking. But I wondered about the strength of water, the power of the ocean while remembering the damage I’d seen on the keels of maxi yachts on a hard stand in Fremantle. And the cataclysmic noise just above my head simultaneously prompted thoughts about the end of time, which for us as individual sailors, would be the same as the end of our lives.

Three maxi yachts and the prow of W60 Yamaha – Whitbread 1993 – recovering in Freemantle
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Loose Connections

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I read yesterday that George Blake has died. I’m old enough to remember his escape from Wormwood Scrubs jail in 1966 but not old enough to recall his trial with much clarity. I walked past the jail in Hammersmith a few years ago and it was Blake’s name that came to mind. Notoriety is strangely long lived.

Today’s late afternoon winter light in Dun Laoghaire Harbour.
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