Spotted this morning on the BBC’s Country Tracks programme on Dartmoor – a five minute segment with Ben Fogle talking to Eddy Meechan, TGO magazine’s lightweight guru, about ultralight wild camping. I doubt it will convert anyone to ultralight camping, but interesting to see it all the same.

You can see it here on iPlayer, the section with Eddy starts just after 39:30. As usual, it will only be available for the next seven days.

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

T.S.Eliot

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941

So, today my plan to fund a lifetime of walking all the long distance routes that I want to took a huge step forward. I just need another £10 lottery win to get the funds back into the black…

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

W.E.Henley

My brother (who should not be trusted with matches) sent me an interesting link to a review of the F!re Profi wood burning stove over at Carnets d’Aventures. The review is in French, but even if you don’t speak any, the pictures give you a good idea. In their tests, the F!re Profi boiled a litre of water in 6m10s vs 16m for a BushBuddy.

Links:

• F!re Profi review at Carnets d’Aventure (in French), http://www.expemag.com/rechauds/rechaud-a-bois-fire-profi.html
• F!re Profi website (in German), http://newfire.ch/

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… I’m not sure I should admit to this one, or share it.

On a long walk, there are a few songs I resort to to keep the pace up, and on my last walk this one crept in, to the extent that I eventually had to ban myself from singing it…

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Kids! Hey! Yo! If your teachers try and teach you crazy old songs, PAY ATTENTION! Give it 20+ years and they will turn out useful when you’re trying to complete a 40km walk…

Days: 28
Distance: 862km (not counting more/less due to directional variations)
Directional variations: countless
Longest day: 47km (catching up with plan…)
Boat trips: 3
Accommodation: Albergue de peregrino 19, Albergue juvenil 4, Hostal 2, Hotel 1, Patrol tent (albergue full due to fiesta) 1
Pairs of socks lost: 0.5