Starting to get concerned about walking 300miles in temperatures above 30 degrees centigrade!

There is a good write up from some who did The Lycian Way earlier this year here http://bit.ly/qWhrOV I’ve ‘borrowed’ their GPS trail and put it in the Gaia GPS iPhone app and also on my etrex unit! Let’s see ho often we wander off the trail

Tonight I christen my new birthday sleeping mat from Sally The tent is safely pitched in the garden of Yann Cornic at his gite in Saint Lizier gite in Saint Lizier
Last night I was sharing a room with Michael and Cherie? In the slightly hippy gite at Esbints learning about sheep dogs and farming in the mountains from it’s young owners ( who were about to disappear for the night salsa dancing) whilst his father was stuck, on his own, in a mountain cabin for 90 days looking after the sheep!

I left M&C at 8am to Walk the Tour du Val du Garbet to here, imagine my surprise to bump into them walking into Seix (pronounced Sex). Yep I had nearly walked a circle I continued into Seix with them and then found the correct walk! Some shortcut, twas another difficult day.
An even bigger surprise was when trying to negotiate the final bend I was to discover them behind me again two pressions later they returned to Seix, by taxi, for the Tour de France tomorrow and I continued my walking here!
Tomorrow I will journey on to Aulus or even Bassies.

Having walked 51 miles in the past three days and with over 18,000 feet of ascent and descent on the GR10. Last nights storms & heavy rain this morning gave me a good reason to spend an idle day here in the luxury of La mason du Valier
Yesterdays highlight was been only feet away from a massive eagle taking off from a dead cow! The low was getting lost 3 times descending from Clot de Lac in thick cloud
Tomorrow is another epic day to Esbints, the guides reckon 10 hours so I guess it will be more like 12!
The calendar here says my birthday saint is St Samson, let’s hope I live upto the name….

Today I recommence my GR10 walk from the Atlantic to The Mediterrean along The Pyrenees. I stopped halfway in Luchon 4 years ago in freezing cloud & very wet! Today is not looking so good either. It should be 11 hours to get to Fos reaching 2193metres above Luchon (650metres).
Now for breakfast….
Evening update!
I arrived in Fos at La Gentilhommiere hotel (run by English folks) at 17.47 having walked 18.2 miles in 7hr 21min plus 3hr 6min of stopped time. Must have done at least 2000m ascent & descent
Drank all my 2 litres of water!
On Pic de Cabanere (2193m) I managed to glimpse above the clouds the Pyrenees only glacier! Otherwise visibility was horrific – thank goodness the balisage were plentiful on the tops.

Whilst on my evening walk on this glorious midsummer’s evening listening to the amazing Matt Darey Nocturnal show #305 I bumped into Rend, whilst chatting to her,  I realised that few people are aware that I read / glance at about 900 blogs/feeds in my free time. Any posts that catch my eye or that I like are shared

Once at home, even I, didn’t realise that google has made a very nice page of all my shared items that is visible here. I will make this a link in my main menu bar.

Now for some more reading & Matt Darey.

If you are of a curious nature and love snooping around business information. Level Business is a great site for INSTANTLY downloading accounts and other information on all UK limited liabilty companies, and even better its free and produces the information in easily read form.

Here’s a pretty interesting site that allows you to generate random numbers. Not quite sure what I would use it for but interesting in a random sort of way.

One of the reasons I enjoy travelling so much are the fascinating people you meet. in unexpected situations.

Yesterday when getting on the bus to Marocos I bumped into Ann & John, we instantly struck up a rapport, (they were confused as they had been told to use Bus 1 whereas we were on Bus 208 that was on Bus Stand 1 )

They were taking a day out from their cruise trip, A Boddington’s special cruise in their words! Ann was trying to find a beach John , I suspect, was more after a walk!

What fascinated me is that they had left England 20+ years ago to live in Switzerland with John’s job as an industrial chemist. This, immediately bought back memories of my time doing bucket chemistry in the labs at Renishaw Iron Company and at the same time made me reflect on the job offer I turned down 34 years ago  to work at ILL in Grenoble, France when Nick was 1.

They alighted at Santa Cruz whilst I continued to Marocos to walk the Levada do Canical to the Canical tunnel. A lovely walk where, for the first time, I met several walking parties who would definitely be in the Cambridge Rambling Club B group. Near the end I saw the sign to Boca do Risco (its rated a black walk  in the Rother walking guide to Madeira) so I thought why not! The climb up to the Boca (Col) was excellent. I started to get nervy as I rounded the bend and saw the crashing  Atlantic waves over a thousand feet below me. I continued on but at a land slip my head finally stopped my feet from continuing! After my near drowning in the Trisoli River in Nepal I’ve become far more cautious. Looking back at the narrow path cut into the vertical rock face I was not disappointed at my decision….

In the evening whilst having my after dinner coffee in Cafe do Teatro who should come in for their after dinner drinks,  before their cruise sailed at 11pm, but John & Ann. Ann was adamant that Madeira wasn’t for her as no decent beaches!  So I guess you will find her on Gran Canaria. John it turned out had recently walked and thoroughly enjoyed the  Camino de Frances from SJPP to Muxia, just like I did in 2004 the year I retired! He had found it every bit as emotional as I had, (At the end I was in tears on the bus from Muxia to Santiago and would gladly have turned around and walked it again).

All in all a very interesting day and so good to meet up with a very interesting couple, maybe we will meet again in July when Sally & I go with Paul and Sarah to Les Gets, I’m quite sure we will be visiting the thermal spa in Ovronnaz so we could all meet up there!.

Geoff in Maderia

One of my dreams has been to live in the winter sun, I really hate to be burning up money just to try and keep myself warm! It seems a lot more economical to live in a climate where the sun keeps you warm! However, I couldn’t live in really hot countries like Dubai etc where you equally  have to waste money on AC.

So the challenge is to find somewhere that is sunny but  still cool!, reasonably economic to live and with walking and snowboarding close by

So here I am in Madeira. 32 degrees North of the Equator surrounded by the cool Atlantic ocean, so warm but not hot! Currently its around 20ºC in the sun but cooler in the light wind. As a mega bonus the walking is superb, I’ve spent the last 7 days walking over very varied terrain and still haven’t seen but a fraction of the island.

My return flight from Stansted on Easyjet was  £57.93  I’m now staying at the very central (behind The Cathedral) Residencial queimada de baixo which is run by the Chafariz Hotel,  the rate I’m paying is €500 for a month (Equivalent to 14 days at their €35 day rate). Which I think is very reasonable; it includes breakfast and a daily clean too. For the 10 days Sally is here they are charging me €50 more My evening meal at Cafe do Teatro is about €17 for beer, main, dessert & coffee. Coffee’s in town are about €1and the cakes are delicious.

The hotel has no internet but the municipality have installed wifi points around town so you can get free internet OK. (T-mobile are charging £10 for 50MB on their roaming tariff).

Walking is a dream Buses (SAM, Horarios do Funchal & Rodoeste )  to the the walk starts are between €2 and €3. I’m using the Rother walking guide to Madeira. In the past week I’ve completed walks 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 17, 19 & 35 so still 41 more to do in that book!  Although some will need taxi’s to get to the starts and a couple I’m probably not capable of doing due to my vertigo

All my walks I’ve done this last week are on Everytrail with pictures on Picasa.

• Penisular walk still one of my favourites
• Tabua Valley on a very wet day.
• Lavada dos Tornos but I walked from Funchal to Monte
• Trout Levada but it was dry! I also walked down to the coast.
• Donkey pass incredible mountain views.
• Levada do Norte uncompleted due to vertigo

Two very useful iPhone apps (both based on the Open Street Map project) are OffMaps which stores the OSM map locally on your iPhone and the slightly buggy Mobile City Maps on Madeira by dubbele.com.  The OSM map so far has had all the Levadas and walks beautifully mapped and its great to know exactly where you are and in what direction you are facing!  Thank goodness for the dxpower WT-1700B power pack on the iPhone.

So far I’ve only found one outdoor shop, O Bordao on Rue Carreira 171 run by the very helpful Joao who sold me a cheap trekking pole! Very useful since Easyjet won’t allow my lovely Leki’s on the plane

And now to plan tomorrows walk…..

Just had this great email from the last tenants in my Les Gets apartment

Hi Geoff,
We’re all back safe, sound and much refreshed having had a great time in Les Gets.
The apartment was clean, comfy and well appointed and helped us to have a super skiing trip. As you said the pistes were firm but most had the fresh snow- cannon snow making the local area very extensive and we were certainly enjoying the blue skies and sunshine.
I’ll get your keys returned in the post on Monday.
I’ve taken the liberty of attaching a group picky.( I’m the guy on the end with the bright hat )
Once again thanks very much for the facility and hopefully we’ll be able to use your place again.
Cheers,
R

So even with poor snow conditions you can still enjoy yourself in Les Gets.

Emails like this makes it all worthwhile, especially that I now have Helen & Chris doing a full clean on the apartment after each letting