Not many instrumentals make it into the pop charts, but in 1965 one did. “Eine Schwarzwaldfahrt” by the German musician Horst Jankowski was released in other countries as “A Walk in the Black Forest”. I have amended that title slightly for this post, returning the area to its German name of Schwarzwald. Unfortunately, work had…
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In the years that I have been in Switzerland, I have walked many trails and hiked over a substantial part of that country. But even though I live just a couple of kilometres from the German border, my hiking activities have only once crossed that border, when I was hiking the perimeter of Basel and…
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After my last posting here, I was reviewing the list of Jura Mountains summits. I realised that there was one of the major Swiss Jura summits that I had missed out on, the mountain of Le Noirmont. It is tucked away in a corner, between the Jura Höhenweg and the French border. And of course,…
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Over the years that I have been based in Basel, I have walked a lot in the Jura mountains. There was the Jura Höhenweg in 2020, and then last year, I walked the Chemin de Jura and the Via Jura. The Jura Höhenweg in particular took me over some of the highest summits in the…
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My last Swiss walk of 2024 was in the snow, walking the Tüfelschlucht and on to the Belchenflue. It seemed perfectly natural then, that my first Swiss walk of 2025 should also be in the snow. When I arrived back in Basel just after New Year, there was snow on the ground in places in…
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When last I wrote about the Midleton Greenway, I described my walk out from Midelton to the village of Mogeely. That was in October of 2024. Later, in November of 2024, it was announced that the remainder of the route would open in December, all the way to Youghal. I resolved that during my winter…
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As 2024 came towards its end, it was once again time for the annual outing to Lugnaquilla. This time, as well as my sister Moira, we had Joff with us again. We reverted to the traditional route for our walk this year on 26th December, starting at Fenton’s Pub, and going via Camara Hill onto…
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I have been meaning to walk the cliffs at Ballycotton for some time, but something always seemed to get in the way. And then, this year, I made my Christmas journey to Ireland earlier than usual, arriving in mid-December. After a couple of walks around the town of Midleton, and with the weather seeming relatively…
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Last year, in 2023, I took part in a 100km walk in Belgium. It was called the Dodentocht, or Death March. Every year, some 13,000 people start that walk, with about 9,000 finish it. I was one of them. But I was determined that this would not be a one-off event, a flash in the…
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The prospect of a railway line from the city of Cork to the town of Youghal (pronounced Yawl) was first proposed in the early 1850s. For some years, there was little progress, but the line as far as Midleton was opened in November 1859, followed by the remainder of the route to Youghal a few…
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Walkingman 