Walkingman

Happy New Year to everyone who reads this. With the old year gone, and as we look forward to 2023, I have set my objectives for walking in the coming year. I did not do too badly in 2022. My Swiss objective of walking from Basel to Stans, and back from Luzern by a different…

It has become an annual event that I should go up Lugnaquilla with my sister Moira and her partner Joff on the day after Christmas. It is a moot point whether you call that St. Stephen’s Day or Boxing Day. In either case, the objective remains the same: to go up Lugnaquilla and back down.…

Having reached Wasserfallen on my last outing, all that remained of my 2022 Swiss walking project was to get back to Basel. A review of the maps and the route recommended in the 2006 guidebook suggested that I could do that in one day. It would not be easy, but possible. So it was that…

At the beginning of each of the last few years, I have set myself a Swiss walking objective, and an international walking objective. This year was no exception. My international project was the Chemin de Stevenson, which I have written up in these pages. My Swiss project was to walk to Stans, and walk back…

Day dawned bright and clear on the last day of our walk. This part of the journey is not described by Stevenson; we had left his travels behind us. We breakfasted in the gite, similar to the previous evening, paying for the food we took, based on the honour system. And with breakfast over, we…

It was still raining when morning came. But we were not going to let that stop us. We enjoyed our breakfast, packed our backpacks, filled our water bottles, and got out our raingear. It would be the first time on the entire walk that we had to use them. With the raingear on, we said…

Although it did not provide a very comfortable night, the campsite did have one major advantage that our more luxurious accommodations of the nights before did not: it offered breakfast. And a good breakfast it was, setting us up well for the day. Although the rain had stopped by then, the morning was still misty,…

In Florac, just as in Pont de Montvert, the accommodation did not provide breakfast. So once more, we rose early to find a place for a meal that would start us on our way. Our first hope was for the place where we had got the beer the previous afternoon, but alas, that had not…

The next morning, we rose early. The gite, though luxurious in many respects, did not provide breakfast, just as it had not provided dinner the night before. Once more, this time for the final time, we went down the hill into Pont de Montvert. We stopped for breakfast at the same restaurant where we had…

There was a heavy dew during the night. I had left a damp t-shirt and a damp towel out to dry, and now in the morning, they were very wet. But no matter, there was a dry day forecast, and if I hung them off the rucksack, both t-shirt and towel would dry easily. I…