Tag Archives: Hiking

We awoke on the mountain, breakfasted, and drove down the road a little to the start of a walking track we had planned. We were met with quite open, grassy terrain, dotted with autumnal birch trees, and the bald grey hills of ex-craters poking out. And the faint smell of sulphur (not, as it turned out, Nettle’s grey water tank). … Continue reading

We woke to the tantalising vision of that beautiful red, orange and yellow hillside out the window, and lay for a time just soaking it in — it’s pretty amazing that we can wake up in a place like this (and still get up to a hot shower!). Man, getting a motorhome was the best idea ever. Newly enthused by … Continue reading

After exploring the extreme heights of Mount Etna briefly, we wanted to spend some time at slightly lower altitudes and see what else this fascinating area had to offer. Armed with our inscrutable German map, we made a vague plan to spend the next week or so driving around Etna’s flanks, doing some walks along the way. We left the … Continue reading

I’ve been so wrapped up in writing software, the blogging has suffered! Time to catch up: Last time I wrote, we’d just left Selinunte, and had spent a night wild-camped on a hill overlooking the quite pleasant scenery near the road towards Mount Etna. So, we drove on, and caught our first glimpse of the volcano’s gigantic snowy peak soon … Continue reading

We had just left Scopello after a very enjoyable week spent developing software and painting: We wanted more! But it was also time for a change of scene, so we drove on towards San Vito Lo Capo, another town that sounded quite promising. A short and picturesque drive inland through pretty, rocky mountains, through a rather sad-looking town amusingly called … Continue reading

Having taken a windy little road down through the mountains, switchbacking through ramshackle villages, we stopped for lunch with a view down through pine trees and vineyard-strewn mountains to the azure-coloured sea. With the plan to find a wild-camp in the village of Monterosso al Mare, the first of the five villages that make up Cinque Terre (“Five lands”), we … Continue reading

After a very scenic drive through the mountains, we arrived fairly early in Letterfrack, at the slightly-disappointingly-crowded visitor centre. With, refreshingly, most of the day ahead of us, we decided to do the 7km walk up to the top of a nearby mountain, Diamond Hill. The beginning of the walk, starting at the visitor centre, felt a bit like being … Continue reading

Belfast behind us, we drove west for a long way, following the motorway. We arrived in Strabane in the evening, a town right on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; picked a random road that looked relatively promising, leading towards the river that marked the border, and stopped when we found an adequately out-of-the-way clearing beside … Continue reading

Having woken up and found ourselves in a car park in Cushendall, we set off again in bright sunlight down a small suburban road recommended to us, off the official Causeway route. To our great pleasure it quickly became a winding rural road, snaking through rolling emerald-and-yellow patchwork hills punctuated by four-or-five-house proto-villages. Sometimes the road was perched on hillsides … Continue reading