Wayback
Acropolis, Athens
Beograd, Yugoslavia
The train journey from Venezia to Athens was overnight; note the working steam locomotive in the engine shed in Beograd (Belgrade) even in 1981. Athens was a culture shock, a bustling business city, not only even hotter, another currency and another language but another alphabet so we had trouble even reading the signs. We stayed in a hostel and found we picked up crabs from the beds but enjoyed a boat trip for a day out to the island of Aegina.
More photos: Athens - Olympia - Kalavita. Inter Rail 81 pt 2
Arrival at Firenze (Florence) railway station (I)
Camping at Koblenz on the river Mosel, then Nürnburg (D)
An Inter Rail ticket gave almost unlimited travel on European railways for a month for the Under 26’s in the days before cheap air travel.
More photos: Kôln - Koblenz - Firenze - Pisa - Sienna - Venezia. Inter Rail 81 pt 1
I enjoyed a week hiking on the Indian Ocean island of La Réunion in November 2008. The hiking in and around volcano craters was spectacular but the climbs were tough. I stayed first at Saint-Gilles-les-Bains, the first couple of days were cloudy in the mountains, eventually I got a hike up from le Maïdo. Then I moved to Cilaos, but had to return early due to an Air France strike.
We were hiking a trail in the Lamar Valley in north-west Yellowstone National Park: it’s a wide alluvial valley with lots of grassland, which was giving me serious hay fever. Lamar Valley is also habitat for a number of Yellowstone’s biggest animals, which is why we hiked there.
We were following two hikers, Terry spotted a bear ahead, we froze to see what would happen as the bear had already spotted us. I suppose it knew the route hikers would usually follow. The hikers up ahead carried on, I’m not sure they had yet spotted the bear. The hump on its shoulders characterised it as an adult grizzly, so maximum caution. Of course we didn’t have the binoculars with us as we were hiking light, but I did have my telephoto lens which I swapped on to the camera as quickly as I could.
More photos: Grizzly bear encounter - Yellowstone National Park - June 2000
Pavement coffee at Fulham Broadway. Bit of a reminder of my stay in nearby Farm Lane care home following a collision in the North Pennines, that’s now ten years ago. No wheelchair and sling for me today. Rehab rides out in the wheelchair with friends were a big treat that hot summer as I was relearning how to walk. It took surgery to get my upper arm back in one piece then gym to get my strength back. My faithful CBR600FW never came back; those tasty white Dainese leathers saved me but were trashed on their first ride.
