Outdoor Odysseys

Into 2025

There was a time when I ensured that the start of a new year and the anniversary of my setting up this place got marked with a piece like this one. That lapsed over the years. Other distractions took hold, and the marking of these occasions felt less important.

Yesterday, I reflected on the year just gone, with all its ambles along Celtic and French trails. This time, I try to look ahead while bearing in mind that much is uncertain. After a break to sort out matters in Ireland, my freelance business needs to be put back in operation; its technology needs an upgrade too. That likely will mean less time for other things.

Even so, some things always need to progress; it is always a matter of prioritisation and balance. Working from Ireland might become a possibility, for instance. That would allow Irish explorations to continue, recognising that one base is not enough and that staying somewhere like Galway has its uses.

At one point, I toyed with a Pacific northwest escapade in the U.S. until I realise that some added work was required for assembling such an excursion. Piecing together a trip featuring both Seattle and Portland (the one in Oregon) sounded like a task for a travel agency or concierge. While 2020 may have begun with weeks of research, that is five years ago now. Thus, some undistracted time is in order to piece things together. Until I see how the U.S. goes, that will wait for now. The main thing that stalled it last year was the need to attend to other matters that are now in hand.

Canada comes to mind as another option for a transatlantic undertaking. Toronto is coming to mind here, and I am checking out the hiking possibilities for a non-driving enthusiast like myself. The early signs are encouraging, so looking into accommodation and travel arrangements could be a next step there. New AI tools are proving their worth as I ponder any prospects.

A few days based in Inverness would allow for something closer to home to go with any Irish hiking. Other ideas could emerge yet, and continental Europe has its share of options. Non-flying ones could work: train travel could return me to Switzerland after a long time, for instance. Norway is another place that I would like to see again, either by spending more time in Oslo or going further north. With enough time, both could be part of the same trip.

Time for idea gathering would add to the above, since things are very open at the moment. Many years begin like that for me. The serendipity of life adds to its variety, so we should plan that out of existence. First, I need to get used to dividing my time between two places before adding in others on a temporary basis. In some ways, that has been done before, so it cannot be ruled out now. For now, though, I hope that 2025 brings you some good things as counterpoints to the challenges that no one can avoid.

Pondering past trends

Some years feature multiple visits to a single area, or a sign of a developing theme. Going back in time, 2001 was the year of the Peak District, while it was the turn of the Yorkshire Dales in 2002. 2003 then became a year for the Lake District.

Other places were visited too as I began my hill wandering journey in those years. After all, the first decade of the century saw ever deeper incursions into Scotland, while Wales did not get neglected either. The mention of Wales brings me to 2005, when I spent a good deal of time around Denbighshire and Gwynedd.

2007 was a year for a single theme: long-distance trails. Both the West Highland Way and the Gritstone were completed then using a section hiking approach. That has not been the end of long-distance trail walking for me, partly because it is difficult to avoid them if you want something more established than making your own way.

Some years have not offered any meaningful trend. 2004 was one of those, and not a year best remembered for its weather. House moving also limited movements. 2008 is remembered for recovering from a mental travail as much as its most dramatic foray: spending some time around Skye and the Western Isles. 2009 did get me to the Cairngorms, but only twice before career travails overtook me.

A new job limited things from 2010 before family bereavements then dominated things. After that, international travel took over for a while from 2015 onward. Even so, 2014 can be remembered for multiple visits to the Lake District, offering a much-needed respite from what was happening at the time.

A developing taste for overseas explorations was set back with the onset of the pandemic. Before that, destinations of a Scandinavian or Alpine feel were attracting my attention, and there was a first leisure trip to North America that took me to British Columbia. Local hill country across the Peak District then became a godsend in both 2020 and 2021, though I also got to Shropshire and the Llandudno during 2020.

2022 not only marked the start of my returning to travelling farther away from home, but it also became the first year with numerous incursions into Irish hill country. The moors around Marsden also got some of my attention, as did some Lakeland fells and Scottish hills, and Wales was not excluded either. Even so, the Irish excursions in the counties of Dublin, Limerick, Clare, Tipperary, Kerry and Cork were the big feature of the year. It was as if I were moving beyond the pandemic more in my native country than anywhere else.

The Irish explorations were fewer in 2023, while Wales got much of my attention, and there was a longer distance escapade to the San Francisco Bay Area. The Channel Islands became the subject of two visits too, with the first of these allowing a day excursion to Saint-Malo in France.

Thus far, 2024 has become another year with numerous Irish explorations. The counties of Cork, Kerry, Limerick and Waterford all featured. However, it also has been a year with numerous Scottish incursions, reaching the Trossachs, Strathspey and Lochaber. Other business has deflected explorations from Inverness that would take in more around Loch Ness, as well as getting a hike in from Achnasheen. Much like a mooted trip to the American Pacific Northwest, these will need to wait. Having unused ideas cannot be a source of criticism. France also featured on two itineraries that took in its capital city, Brittany and Grenoble. They may not end explorations of a country that I scarcely had probed, but some extra reflection and learning needs to precede such things.

It helps to have good maps…

While writing trip reports for Tenerife, I was reminded of the travails that I encountered with using the maps that I had in my possession. At the time, I found myself cross-referencing data between different providers for working out where I was going. That was not ideal, but I managed to make it work.

Something similar happened in Canada. When the maps from Natural Resources Canada did not have all the detail that I expected, I resorted to using the base map provided by ViewRanger because it showed trails on there. For my various traipsings, that did suffice, even if there are possible risks like those highlighted in an article on the TGO website.

In the UK or Ireland, it may be that the tracks shown cannot be used by the public, so you need to check how things look on the ground. Then, there are possible errors because many trails are crowdsourced. That is another reason for checking on what surrounds you and applies when using user routes found on various apps and websites. The likes of AllTrails and Outdooractive come to mind here.

In my case, I ran into no problems in Canada because I was following low-level trails and established tracks much of the time. For off-trail use, mapping from National Resources Canada would have proved as necessary as the use of a compass and awareness of wildlife. Hiking in North America takes one into wilder places after all. Finding paper maps takes a bit more work, as I found, but the added effort pays dividends as long as you watch coverage of where you are planning to go.

In a more recent excursion to California, the Gaia GPS app became invaluable as long as I had downloaded the map data before setting off on hiking trips. Topo Maps+ from Glacier Peak Studios may be another option for users of Apple devices, but I stuck with what I had courtesy of a subscription to Outside+. In any case, Gaia GPS did whatever I needed, and I hardly needed to check any paper maps that I had.

That was just as well, since map scales vary widely for U.S. hiking areas anyway. USGS quads may be standardised, but the same cannot be said for other publishers, with National Geographic being a prominent example. Still, any device has a limited battery lifetime so being proficient with a map and compass remains a necessity, especially in remote areas where mobile signal may be too limited.

Pondering time’s passing

Earlier this year, I spent a stretch of time perusing guidebooks while pondering and plotting a summertime North Atlantic escapade. U.S. states like Montana, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon and Colorado all came within the scope of this armchair knowledge gathering. Of the lot, it was going to be Colorado that was getting my nod for a July 2020 excursion with Denver and Boulder offering themselves as likely basis. Of course, the arrival of a global pandemic has eliminated the possibility of any such thinking becoming reality for this year but ideas remain live in spite of this so another year may offer and I now need to wait for that.

Another guidebook for Colorado may await and there are others for California and Ontario too but guidebook reading has been parked for now even if continue to get through a backlog of travel magazines. After all, there now is plenty of time to get back to it again. In the meantime, I have returned to other nature and travel books. The planet’s northern reaches have become part of this with Malachy Tallack’s 60 Degrees North and Gavin Francis’ True North having been completed and I am now in the middle of Peter Davidson’s The Idea of North before going on to Barry Lopez’s Horizon. The time feels right for reading these since guidebook reading for me involving website address gathering and I just want something engrossing that will help to relax me in these testing times.

In parallel, outdoor reading in local parks during the now departed spell of warm sunny weather saw me complete Edward Thomas’ Icknield Way before making a start on his In Pursuit of Spring. The first of these documented a journey on foot trying to retrace the route  of the eponymous long distance thoroughfare while the second describes a journey by bicycle from London to the Quantock Hills in Somerset. If anything, the latter happens to be the more readable of the two and I intend to get it completed even if warm sunny weather does not return to us all that soon.

The reason for the title has nothing to do with the forestalling of trips away by current necessary travel restrictions though. It was caused by my listening to a program hosted by Don Letts on BBC Radio 6 Music last Sunday night in an effort to curtail restlessness at bedtime last Sunday night. What occurred to me then was the passage of recent decades and the way that I have not caught up in some ways.

This matter brings up the subject of music and that is not customary for this blog. It reminds me of how the 1960’s felt to me in previous decades. During my childhood, it was a mere 20 years before and figures like Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and David Bowie were active as part of what felt to me like an afterglow of that decade. This was before the revival of interest in music from the same decade during the 1990’s when it was just 30 years before. Now that the last decade of the last century itself is pushing on for being 30 years ago and it was the decade when I began to find my feet in life, the 1960’s feel even more distance and that realisation gave me something of a shock when it hit me.

An upshot of all this is the added need to collect new experiences as restrictions are lifted. Such is our current situation that I will not be in the vanguard of wider travel and that especially is the case given my dependence on public transport. Nevertheless, those expanded horizons discussed at the start of this entry again begin to loom larger after other places nearer to hand are revisited before them. These will be in Britain first before other European destinations around Scandinavia or in the Alps get tested first. There may be a need to do these in a new way, not only because of our changed world but also because of my changed perspective. More time may allow me to further develop what that might mean.

Weather better suited to indoor investigations

Unlike this time last year when I was in the middle of string of outdoor excursions, this month has little very little action at all. The weather has brought storm after storm and the rain is flooding down from the sky as I write this words. January may have been more appealing but other concerns like gaining a new contract took precedence. That has been sorted now so next week should see a start on revenue earning work again.

That is not to say that I have not been exploring ideas for overseas trips or one nearer home even if COVID-19 could limit such excursions for a while. Finding possible destinations in Washington State, Oregon, Montana and Wyoming has drive me to perusing various guidebooks and others for Colorado, California and Ontario have found their way onto my reading list. It is the prospect of extending North American explorations after last year’s stint in British Columbia that is the underlying motivation for all of this.

There is no shortage of wilderness areas but there is a need to find a base from which to explore them. Denver looks promising for a stay in Colorado but I need to uncover more about that state and, in a sense, the same applies to Lake Tahoe on the boundary between California and Nevada or Ontario where being based in Toronto could have a use.

Reading guidebooks may not sound exciting but they do advance all these pipe dreams. Consulting local magazines like Distinctly Montana, Wyoming Magazine, Big Sky Journal, Montana Outdoors and Montana Quarterly would augment these in a more bite-sized manner and some have email newsletters too so it is not a case of reading everything at once only then to forget it all afterwards. My European explorations have been more gradual affairs, after all, and it always helps to find ideas one at a time.

The next steps would be to make use of these but that will depend on how the year goes. COVID-19 is a reminder that events can derail such designs so it is best to see what can be facilitated. One thing is sure though: another visit to North America could happen yet.