Spain is different (1)
I’m writing from Barcelona, where I lived for nine years during the 1990s. The early 90s were boom years for the Catalan capital, as they were for Spain in general. It was a period in which the...
View ArticleSpain is different (2)
Spain may be hovering on the brink of disaster, but Barcelona is not the kind of city to allow the prospect of bailouts, cuts and economic collapse to interfere with the essential rituals of the...
View ArticleWith map and compass
I’ve just spent a fantastic week in the Lake District, doing a course on walk leading and navigation. It’s not a part of the UK I know at all well, but I now see what Wordsworth and Wainwright were on...
View ArticleCatalonia’s human castles
A very good Catalan friend of mine has just sent me a fabulous calendar of one of my favourite Catalan folk traditions: els castellers – the castlemakers. It’s a tradition that was first recorded in...
View ArticleA Week in Galapagos
Last month I was lucky enough to spend a week in the Galapagos Islands while leading a walking group in Ecuador. In fact we didn’t do much walking on Galapagos itself, but spent most of the time on...
View ArticleThe Savage Frontier: Page 99 Test
Marshal Zeringue’s Campaign for the American Reader blog has a fun exercise called ‘ the Page 99 test.’ Following Ford Madox Ford’s dictum ‘ Open the book at page ninety-nine and read, and the quality...
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