I was discussing a recent holiday with a colleague at work, and told him that tarping was a great way to camp on backpacking holidays. He nodded along a bit then changed the subject and the next day I showed him the photos from the holiday, his response: “oh so that’s what tarping is! I confess I wasn’t entirely sure…
On one of my cycle rides around Dorset during my university years I stumbled upon a most unusual thing. As I peddled along one of the Dorset lanes I spotted a tall tower atop one of the nearby hills. I cycled in a large loop around it, trying to figure out how to get closer. At one point stopping to…
When you first start working it doesn’t take long to decide that buses are a last, last, very much last resort and that walking can take too long. So what do you do? My suggestion is to start cycling to work! The main dangers for the commuting cyclist isn’t the cars as you may think. Most motorists in cities have…
I first realised that using my camera’s flash on close-up subjects had a nice result two years ago when photographing Coral Fungus, before then I had never really used it. I even scoffed at it as I had never taken a photo that improved upon using it. But now I am a little wiser and understand that the flash feature…
My entire week had been building up to this day, I had been specially avoided anything overly strenuous in preparation for a 70 mile cycle to Durdle Door with a friend from university. If you had told me two months ago that I would even be thinking about doing 70 miles in one go I would have frowned and said…
In 2015 I was fortunate to be invited to Venice for a few days with my sister, Rachel, and her husband. He was on a work trip and so they were both paid for, but it meant I was in the Generator Venice Hostel whilst they stayed in a five-star hotel. The hostel was pretty good though, and one of…
The sudden hot spell just after Easter 2015 happened to coincide with a bike touring holiday in Scotland with a close friend, so we had an incredible week cycling in the sun instead of Scotland’s usual mist and rain. The route was around the Eastern edge of Skye then across to the top of Uist and back on the Western…
After backpacking for the last few nights and camping at Col de l’Aup Martin and Vignemale we decided to settle down in La Bérarde for a rest day. Of course a rest day doesn’t mean resting, it means hiking to Glacier de la Pilatte, roughly 6 miles up the valley from the village. La Berarde sits at a friendly altitude…
The second overnight hike was up to Lac du Muzelle and back down the following day. One of the best bits of advice I can give for getting comfortable hiking and camping in the mountains is to do a couple of overnight trips up to the top of a valley. Camp as high as you can whilst still having water…
For the first overnight walk we left the car in Vallouise and walked up to and past Reserve Biologique des Deslioures, where we camped in the valley beside the river. As you can guess from the name, the reserve had plenty of butterflies which I spent ages trying to photograph. The second day was mostly taken up by the huge…