Hiking
A “seize the moment hike” in borrowed kit took advantage of a fantastic clear November day took us to 500 m. altitude above the town of Die on the river Drôme, which flows in to the Rhône at Valence, south of Lyon. We hiked up the zig-zag path called “Les 40 lacets” (the 40 hairpin bends) which also included fording a number of streams in spate following heavy rain. The fine view with fresh snow on the cliffs is of the Montagne de Glandasse and the Cirque de Archiane, which form part of the southern cliffs of the Vercors plateau. A great place for a midday casse-croute, today it was fresh bread with rabbit pâté.
An autumnal walk through Berkshire passing Sunningdale church and war memorial, with commemorative wreaths and poppies freshly laid. We enjoyed that peculiar seasonal pleasure of walking through autumn leaves in the woods alongside The Valley Gardens near Virginia Water.
On to Windsor Great Park and down from the 1829 Copper Horse statue of King George III by the Long Walk to Windsor castle: you can readily identify this from an aircraft window on take off from Heathrow nearby. The Royal Standard was flying on Windsor castle, indicating the monarch in residence, presumably after this morning's ceremonials at The Cenotaph in Whitehall.
Thanks again to GOC London for organising this walk.
Boston Manor, Syon House and Osterley House are all in walking distance of each other in West London. They're grouped around the Main Line of the Grand Union Canal, the Main Line of the Great Western railway to Paddington, the M4 motorway and the flight paths to the runways at Heathrow. But the old houses and their magnificent trees were built long before these modern transport arterial routes. Boston Manor Jacobean house was completed in 1623; the exterior of Syon House dates from 1547 and is still the Duke of Northumberland’s London home; the current Osterley House was constructed from 1761 in the Georgian style by the architect Robert Adam.
Berlin's Tiergarten is a city park which offers welcome relief from the unrelenting city architecture and general rudeness of the Berlin city. No matter the traffic, including tourist buses passing between Berlin landmarks peeking through the depressing grey gloom.
The origin of the Großer Tiergarten is as a royal park for hunting. My little hike would have been much more lively with a European bear or two around, rather than just statues, squirrels, birds, ducks and sleeping bats. And sunshine!
Here's a postcard from the South Downs, the new National Park. We were a group of seven or eight from the GOC West Kent group. This was billed as a 9½ mile linear hike from Falmer railway station to Lewes railway station, along a portion of the South Downs Way in the National Park.
Very definitely not the Alps, nor even Dartmoor or the Lakeland Fells, it's the furthest I've hiked off road so far, with the added pleasures and pressures of hiking in a group from the club. Plus of course the orchids, the pretty colours and the far views of the Sussex Weald and the coastal cliffs.
