15
Sep 16

A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur

Went to see A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur by Tennessee Williams at the Print Room theatre at Notting Hill. Very enjoyable.

Print room

Coronet


14
Sep 16

Botany Bay

It was so so hot in September (it seems so long ago now, writing this in December, because I’m like the only one wo cares to update this blog, and even I don’t care so much. But I care enough to do the posts in order and not to cherry-pick whatever I want to do and skip the old ones!), that I wanted to go to one of the beaches on Sunday. But Iest pointed out that going to the beach on a Sunday like this will be a terrible experience full of people so much, as the whole of London will have the same idea. This was a good point. You can look up google images of beaches and they look so pretty and serene, but you go there on a hot Sunday and it’s just terrible. So, one of us had the genius idea (and it was probably me, tho it’s been a long time and I don’t really remember) to just take a day off during the week, and go on a Wednesday. Genius! We decided to go to the Botany Bay, and it was just magical. Just a few people, not too many. Blazing sun. Warm waters. On the way there I even got a nice little net to scoop up critters. White cliffs. Warm send between the toes. And on the way back we even had a lovely dinner in Canterbury. Best. Wednesday. Ever.

Botany Bay

Canterbury


29
Aug 16

Wales

Looks like we went for a nice weekend trip to Wales at the end of August, but who knows – only very few people update this blog regularly, and now many months later this is just a faint memory. Looks like a nice scramble who knows where, also up Cnicht, some beach, and I was doing so well with my macro lens.

Scramble somewhere

Scramble

Hike too

Beach

from Cnicht

Macro spider


07
Aug 16

Rochester & Whitstable

Iest got a nice Escape London book for his b-day (among looooads of other things), so we went to test it with a sunny trip to Rochester and Whitstable.

Rochester turned out to be a nice little very English town with a pretty high street (including apparently the biggest second hand bookshop in England), cathedral and a castle. Had a yummy lunch of pancakes before heading out to Whitstable.

Rochester High street

Rochester High street

Baggins book bazaar

Baggins book bazaar

Rochester back street

Rochester back street

Castle

Castle

Lunchies

Lunchies

Whitstable was even sunnier, and probably the whole of London was in there (parking mission impossible!). We still had fun on the beach and eating some fresh seafood, and that’s about the extent of the things that can be done in that place. We also sketched a bit though, although that was just me i think.

Whitstable

Whitstable

Beach

Beach

Seafood

Seafood


23
Jul 16

Y Garn scrambling

A nice quick summer trip to Wales. Iest was still a bit sore after his surgery so he was taking it easy, but I had my new book on North Wales scrambles so I was not letting this opportunity go.

The weather was a bit uncertain, cloudy and a bit windy (although it turned out ok for the day with no rain). I chose the east ridge of Y Garn as an mid-easy little trip, and it was very enjoyable indeed.

Y Garn east ridge

Y Garn east ridge

Y Garn east ridge

Y Garn east ridge

Y Garn east ridge

Y Garn east ridge


03
Jul 16

Cardiff

Nice summer Saturday, Tafwyl 2016 in full swing, us being proper Welsh we decided to head out to the ‘diff to partake.

Cardiff

Cardiff

Weather couldn’t have been better, and the Cardiff castle was buzzing with welshness. We pottered around all kind of stuff in the market, I got me a pretty canvas shopping bag ‘Barod am antur’, and we got ourselves on a tour of the insides too (‘flamboyant fantasy world’ as our guidebook would call it).

Tafwyl 2016

Tafwyl 2016

Arab room ceiling

Arab room ceiling

Animal wall

Animal wall

Afterwards we made our way down to the Bay (through some dodgy ‘hoods tho), which was buzzing with summer life, welsh cakes, music and gentrification; all very lovely. We checked out the Senedd, the Pierhead and the new beautiful Millennium centre.

Pierhead & Senedd

Pierhead & Senedd

Millennium Centre

Millennium Centre

Overall a great welsh day!
(Plus, got Jon Jovi’s greatest hits in hmv for the trip back! (and many other future trips indeed))


22
Jun 16

Trento

On our last day we decided to be a bit cultural and made our way to lovely Trento, which was hot and sunny and pretty. That was pretty much the last highlight of our trip to Italy this time, if we don’t mention that thanks to air traffic controllers being on strike (the French ones of course, that goes without saying) the next day, we missed our vote in the brevet referendum.

Trento

Trento

Trento

Trento


21
Jun 16

Gistavo Vidi

Given that Sosat was under snow, we decided to do Osvaldo Osat – but alas! the road to that was so bad that we didn’t dare to take carcon, our rented friend too far on it, and had to turn back. What was left was to go back up to Rif. Stoppani and do the Gustavo Vidi, a nice unchallenging horizontal traverse once again (we did this a couple years ago), but this time to finish the whole circle on the other side of the ridge. Weather was fine and views were spectacular, and unlike the last time, there were still fairly large snowfields to muddle through this time (I was trailblazing the way for us of course), so it was actually a bit more challenging up to the Pass dei Tre Sassi.

Gustavo V.

Gustavo V.

Up to the pass

Up to the pass

Here we are

Here we are

From there, we needed to drop hugely on the other side through a long and steep scree, which was a bit annoying, but after that it was mostly traversing back towards the rifugio. The only problem was that we were a bit tight on time, to get the last cable car at five. If we missed it, it would be at least a couple of boring hours of descent back down to the road, and we were really not feeling up to that. So, it was a bit of a race, I admit I was losing my hope for a bit there, but eventually we made it with about fifteen minutes to spare – beer never tasted so good!

Beer!

Beer!


20
Jun 16

Madonna & marmot

Got up, packed up the tent, said goodbye to Cortina and headed over to Madonna di Campiglio, for a bit of change of scenery. Had a nice strudel breakfast by the lake. Then we drove merrily out of the mountains and into the sunshine.
Arriving to Madonna in the afternoon, we stopped by Passo del Groste for a quick trip up the cable car to see the snow situation for tomorrow. We pottered around Rifugio Stoppani for a bit, and indeed it seemed that Sosat ferrata still under snow and closed – which was then further confirmed by a couple of German climbers who’ve just been there.

Rif. Stoppani

Rif. Stoppani

For now, we walked up a bit towards Gustavo Vidi, and the place was alive with marmots. We had especially one fun encounter with the brave soul of the pack who gives the warning to the rest, and who valiantly faced us standing up.

Bird of prey

Bird of prey

Marmot

Marmot

In addition, we saw a great bird of prey, which was truly huge & majestic, of which Iest thinks was an eagle, which probably was not but huge, it really was.
Afterwards we took the last cable car down and found our usual campsite at Adamelo, and – after a little search around – also our usual restaurant for dinner.


19
Jun 16

Nuvolau

The morning sky was overcast but with high clouds so not so bad, so we decided to do a hike & ferratas with the prospect of some beautiful views, in the Nuvolau group. We took the lift to Rif. Scoiattoli, right by the famous Cinque Torri, and from there a nice hike over to ferrata Averau. The views were truly epic in all directions.

Cinque Torri

Cinque Torri

Nuvolau group

Nuvolau group

Rif. Scoiattoli

Rif. Scoiattoli

We reached Rif. Nuvolau (2.574) in good spirits, and had some tea and snacks. When we walked down to Rif. Averau the weather turned really quite bad, snowstormy with zero visibility. We obviously had no choice but to get us a couple of cakes in the hut, and see if it blew over, as we wanted to do a quick up and down on the ferrata Gusela to the top of Averau (2.649).

View to Averau

View to Averau

Top of Averau

Top of Averau

Fortunately, after the cakes we had a sunny break, and we quickly ascended the last peak, and downed it the same way but fairly quickly as the weather was coming in again. From there it was already close back to the cable car station, and we got there just in time before closing for the day. By now all the great views were already immersed in fog and it started to rain too, so we were very happy about how lucky we were for the day.

We were pretty tired too, so we took a shower and dropped into Cortina for a nice dinner, with a proper tiramisu today. The usual evening beer in the camp, but off to bed early.