All articles filed in Thorgrim54

Stage 2 of my project to walk the borders of Basel began exactly where the first stage ended: at the Birsfelden power station. I started out early in the morning, a light mist still hugging the river. The trail follows the southern (left) bank of the river. This stretch of the walk is part of…

There is something special about borders. No, I don’t mean the borders that you cross when you fly. That is too easy. I mean those invisible lines on the ground that are marked out sometimes by fences and checkpoints, or sometimes by just a sign or a stone marker. Moving at ground level gives them…

Since we are at the beginning of February, it is a good time to look at how I am doing against the walking target for the year. Unfortunately, I have to say that it is not so good. I am not on target. It is not irrecoverable, but I need to improve. The target for…

  Yesterday I wrote about looking back and reflecting on my walking activities in 2017. So now it is time to look forward to 2018, and to set goals and targets for this year. If 2017 was good, the thing now is to make 2018 even better. I am not one for making New Year…

The change of the year is always a time for reflection and for looking forward. So every year at this time, I review my walking activities for the previous year, and I look forward to the year ahead. In this posting, I will look back at 2017. In an earlier posting, I wrote about the…

The area of the Freiamt in canton Aargau has always had a distinct identity somewhat different from the rest of the canton. Originally, it was taken from the Habsburgs by the Swiss Confederation, and only added to Aargau when that canton was set up under the treaty with Napoleon in 1803. The people of the…

In my last posting I wrote about walking through the older parts of Kleinbasel and the Muensterberg area. So last weekend I followed that up with a walk around the Spalenberg part of old Basel. There are a couple of buildings in Basel that are well known and will always appear in tourist photos form…

Last Sunday I went for a walk in Basel. If you have read my previous blog posts, you will know that I like to walk around this city. Usually, I take an extended walk that skirts the city centre, but on Sunday I was thinking that I have not been in Old Basel in quite…

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s book The Hobbit, as Bilbo returns to the Shire after his adventures, he breaks into a song that begins with the line “The road goes ever on and on”. The song emphasizes the adventures and ordeals that he has been through, and how glad he is to be home again. A similar…

In these blog posts, I have described my previous ventures on the Aargauer Weg. The entire route is 105 kilometers long, divided into five sections. The first section is 31 kilometers, and both the second and third sections are 22 kilometers each, which makes up 75 kilometers when all three are put together. That only…