Go to Hell

I don't mean the title in a bad way - I was just trying it out for the tourist board of the Norwegian town called Hell... which quite often freezes over.

If the Aztecs knew about Norway, they would have thought it was Hell anyway... not because they have a fear of fjords or are troubled by trolls, but they believed the dead travelled to Mictlan, 'a neutral place found far to the north' - and if that isn't Norway, I don't know what is.

I've never been to Norway, but I may have already been to Hell. The Jewish / Islamic 'hell' is Gehenna - the valley of Hinnon outside the old city of Jerusalem where unsavoury types used to make burnt offerings of their (or possibly other people's) children. It came to be used as a general term for 'the place where bad people go for a good burning'. I'm paraphrasing here.

I love the way that so many places mentioned in the Old Testament are real locations, not made up Heaven's, Purgatories or Valhalla's. I've been to Armageddon... also know as Har Megiddo in Northern Israel, where 'the final battle' is supposed to take place. It isn't much to look at but there is a warren of tunnels underneath, where I once had a romantic interlude. Well, they say that if it's the end of the world, you might as well make love.

Incidentally, that was the second time I've returned unscathed from the end of the world (the first is here).

So what's YOUR idea of Hell?

OK, Let it STOP Snowing Now!

Where I live, you can go for years without a dusting, a flurry, or even a frost!

But I've just been making a list of how many times - and where - I've been snowed on during the last few years.

March 2009 - My first proper snow (alright ice) sighting for years and was too much fun NOT to mention - heli-hiking on Fox Glacier, NZ (of which more in a supplemental post to come).

April 2009 - Unexpected blizzard whilst staying in the Mt Cook YHA - unseasonably early (equivalent of early October!). The 2nd picture is near neighbouring Lake Tekapo.

May 2009 - Patagonia. OK, winter in Patagonia we weren't expecting a heatwave. Torres del Paine, Perito Moreno Glacier (3rd pic), and Ushuaia were all quite chilly.

January 2010 - snowed in at home! (4th pic) This never happens.

January 2010 - snowed in in Scotland - twice!

February 2010 - snowed in in Bury. A walking weekend (note absence of the words 'exotic', 'luxury' or 'pampering') turned into a chilly knee-deep stumble in a desperate bid to escape.

March 2010 - Scotland (again). 2-storey mounds of snow outside Tesco in Keith (could have been worse - mounds of snow outside Keith in Tesco)

* there may have been a bit of summer here *

November 2010 - snowed in in Scotland. I mean really snowed in. Read this post.

November 2010 - snowed in in Prague (bottom pic)

December 2010 - snowed in at home again. It is starting to thaw... but the year ain't over yet!

It's just a good job I have a range of cold-weather head-gear you will not fully appreciate from these pictures alone.

Write around the world

This is me with the whole world in my hands.

On this day two years ago today me and my best friend set off on our Big Adventure - to backpack around the world for 9 months -a trip that began in Bangkok, took us on a whistle-stop spin through SE Asia, campervan tour of Australia, motoring around New Zealand, a (slightly traumatic) stop in Fiji, then on to Chile (which I'm watching on the news as I write - such moving pictures from the San Jose mine), Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.

I haven't mentioned it much here because (a) it souns a bit like gloating) and (b) this isn't a travel blog - if it was I'd have a lot more to say on the subject. I'm even considering starting an additional travel blog like my new chum L'Aussie... but how could I fit it all in?

As I always used to say: 'It's a small world - but I wouldn't like to hoover it.'  

But I was wrong. It's effing ENORMOUS!

So from time to time over the next 9 months I may drop a little travel tidbit into the mix here, just to share some amazing pictures and experiences - hope regular readers are ok with that?

Meanwhile, here's a taster...

My Lake District Hell

I'm off to the Lake District for a few days tomorrow - that'll make it rain. (Have you SEEN the weather forecast?)

Having never really been there before (just a couple of days a few years ago, or driving through en route to Scotland) - which is crazy considering some of the places I have been - my impression has always been of somewhere bleak and damp, looming hills, without the easy charm and ice-cream-scoffing nuns of say, the Italian Lakes.

It will be heaving with holiday-makers, awash with torrential floods and snooing with* murderous taxi drivers.

So I was delighted to find in a guide book in the library a couple of quotes that matched my own (probably errant) expectations:

William Gilpin, on Grasmere: "The whole view is entirely of the horrid kind. Not a tree appeared to add the least chearfulness [sic] to it. With regard to the adorning of such a scene with figures, nothing could suit it better than a group of banditti. of all the scenes I ever saw this was the most adapted to the perpetration of some dreadful deed."

Daniel Defoe, from A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (English Library) on Westmorland in the 1720s: “a country eminent for being the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England, or even Wales itself.”

This quote is especially enjoyable as it manages to put the boot in about Wales in the same breath.

And was it not Wordsworth himself who wrote (in an early draft):

I wandered moaning with the crowds
That blot the highways, hills and vales
When all at once I saw some clouds
Oh bloody hell, it's grim as Wales.

Let's hope I'm wrong. It happens. After all the Lake District was voted Britain's greatest natural wonder ahead of Scottish Highlands. Of course I daren't say anything against the Highlands or The Good Doctor will bite my knees.

So I may or may not be online before Sunday depending on wifi - but feel free to agree or disagree wildly in the comments if you feel inclined.

* This is an expression my mum uses but most people claim never to have heard of such a thing - this might be one for the Inkyfool

The End of the World

"It's not the end of the world." So easily said, so often true.

This time last year it was the end of the world for me.

I was in Ushuaia - the southernmost* city in the world. It's in the far south of Argentinian Patagonia on the island of Tierra del Fuego - all the place names around there are evocative, the Beagle Channel (no sightings of beagles, but plenty of seals, sealions and cormorants), the Magellan Straits, and further south again, Cape Horn.  They call it 'El Fin del Mundo.' It's quite a selling point for the tourist industry, I suppose.

It's not the first time I've dabbled with the apocalypse. 

I once explored the clammy tunnels under Har Megiddo in northern Israel. You might have heard of it as Armageddon. No sign of Gog or Magog but I did get a snog. That's a whole other story. If it was the end of the world it's kind of the way I'd want to go.

The thing about the end of the world, like so many other things, is that it seems really humungous - something you cannot even grasp the idea of, let alone the reality. It seems completely implausible that you would find yourself at it.

I mean how do you even get there? And do they have a B&B?

As it happens, you simply take the bus - 3am from El Calafate to Rio Gallegos, across the border into Chile by ferry across the Straits of Magellan, back into Argentina, arrive in time for a tea tenedore libre in Ushuaia town centre. I say 'tea.' I also say 'simply'. I mean one thing just leads to another.

It's a bit like real life. Coming events, tasks or goals can seem impossibly daunting and unattainable. But break them down into smaller steps, each one taking you nearer, and even mammoth tasks are achievable. The trick is not looking at the end point - just the next step.

Some religions - notably the Baha'i faith - believe we are already in the end of days. And the Zoroastrians must be wondering too, having prophesised, among many other abominations, that men will: "... become more deceitful and more given to vile practices."  The Mayans think it's going to happen in 2012. Pretty well everyone agrees it will feature a panoply of natural disasters - earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves, the sun rising in the west etc.

But it is most likely that people are generally right when they say: 'It's not the end of the world.' Mostly they say this during moments when you are in great personal distress - as if it would somehow make you feel better. It so rarely does. 

And even if it is the end of the world, it might not be as bad as you think it's going to be. As long as you have a bus ticket and the right outfit.

* Pop quiz. If Ushuaia is the southernmost city in the world, can you tell me without looking what the equivalent northern latitude would be? Guess which city in Europe? 

Related post: We apologise for the eruption of normal services