Travel – Page 35 – a sibilant intake of breath

Planning to vanish in a week

Please note: I will be in Branscombe, Devon working on my thesis between the 31st of March and the 7th of April, as previously noted. During this period, I will have limited internet connectivity at best. Upon my return, I will have sixteen days left to finish my thesis, so don’t expect to hear enormously much from me during this period.

Oh, and I will be leaving for Paris sometime soon after the submission of my thesis on April 23rd…

[Update: 11:30pm] I have just learned that there will be… no Internet access at all. I am told that: “There may be some internet cafes in Sidmouth, a walkable 6 miles away.” Gasp! Sputter! That is almost reason enough to just stay and work in Oxford.

[Update: 26 March 2007] For some reason, whenever I go on vacation my reader numbers plummet. This happens when I leave pre-written posts set to appear at timed intervals. It seems to happen even when I blog from internet cafes while on vacation. Should I simply not bother, leaving a pause in this long-advancing progression of text?

Wales 2007 photos: fourth batch

Welsh landscape with sheep, taken on the third day of walking.

Small lake, halfway up a mountain.

Welsh valley, viewed from the highest point we reached on the third day.

Snowdonia does not suffer for lack of moss. I like the colours.

A gloomy view of Snowdon, as well as the two other peaks we climbed on the first day. This is the last photo from Snowdonia that I will be posting.

Wales 2007 photos: third batch

Bridge in the nature reserve we visited on the second day. Because of the low altitude and protected status, there was far more vegetation there than elsewhere in Snowdonia.

Pool at the base of a waterfall

Another group photo, this one with me in it

Creek flowing from the waterfall

View uphill to the ‘barn’ in which we stayed. Nearby was a small power plant, with turbines operated by water pressure. A long pipeline – resembling those for natural gas – ran down to it from a lake somewhere above us.

Wales 2007 photos: second batch

Keeping my hat on was a constant challenge, given the lack of a chin-strip and the strong winds.

Because the winds on the second day prevented us from going up any peaks, we visited this nature reserve instead. It was nice to see some trees.

In the reserve, some of us climbed along a steep hillside to see a large waterfall from above. We also got some nice views of the valley below and the seashore.

The Welsh landscape is dominated by bare rock, separated by grassy sections. Often, you see veins of quartz in the shale that look like snow, from a distance.

Wales 2007 photos: first batch

Shed beside a Welsh lake.

All over the Welsh countryside there are walls and paths made of slate. The amount of labour involved in building them all must have been colossal.

Our first group photo, in front of the view we had from all three peaks on the first day.

Climbing Snowdon was a foggy business.

On the third day, we hiked up to a ridge but found it too windy to continue. On the way down, we walked around this lake.

Welsh surprises

Wales was not without surprises, two of which I will quickly detail now.

The first concerns the ‘barn’ in which we were to stay. When I heard the term, I thought about the barn that Meghan Mathieson’s family has in Duncan: uninsulated wooden walls, big swinging doors, hay, and the rest. What we actually got was a ‘hut’ belonging to the Pinnacle Club – a group of women climbers. It was the size of a house, warmed by a coal stove. It had fridges and stoves and showers and a special room for drying sopping gear (though our numbers and level of soppingness challenged it). When compared with my initial expectation – better than a tent, with the possibility of rats – it was downright palatial.

The second surprise should be evident from the videos I posted last night. We were almost constantly buffeted by gale force winds during the first two days, and still encountered moderate winds at high altitudes on the third. I spent much of the trip literally holding on to my hat. Since it has no chin-strap and I could not come up with a way to tether it that did not risk either destroying the hat or garroting me, I had one hand on the brim (or atop my head) for the better part of all the hiking. On Snowdon, the cold and relative thinness of my gloves meant that my non-hat-holding-hand was always desperately trying to recapture warmth in a fleece pocket, before I did the switch – mindful that a pause could send the hat flying off into the foggy abyss.

As is so often the case after a vacation, things have piled up in my absence. I have two issues of The Economist to read, two letters to respond to, several dozen emails to deal with, and a thesis chapter ostensibly due on Wednesday (with all the reading and writing that entails). Forgive me if I am a less prompt correspondent than usual for the next while.

Atop Snowdon

This short clip was made when the Oxford University Walking Club reached the peak of Snowdon – the highest point in Wales – on March 10th, 2007. As you can see, we did not get a terribly good view for all of our upward marching.

Here is another short video, and some photos on Facebook. I will post some nicer versions here soon. For now, I need to prepare for my meeting with Dr. Hurrell tomorrow.

Last pre-submitted post

I should be getting back to Oxford any time now. I hope so, at least, since I am meeting Dr. Hurrell on Tuesday to discuss chapter two and I am meant to submit a complete version of chapter three on Wednesday. With luck, I got at least a bit of reading or editing done while I was in Wales.

Shipping news

By now, I have quite possibly finished climbing the highest mountain in Wales – almost certainly in the pouring rain. A saner person would have been at his desk with a cup of tea and a thesis draft progressing. An even saner person would have finished the draft before leaving…

One thing I have been pondering lately is the logistics of moving on from here. I arrived in Oxford with a big suitcase, a backpack, and a suit bag. Heavily laden, I made my way in the rain from the train station to Wadham. While here, I have picked up about thirty books. I also have about ten binders and a box of hanging files, mostly related to the thesis. If I am going to do another research degree in the future, I am probably going to want this stuff. Not bringing my environment related books here was a mistake I have regretted many times.

The most sensible option would seem to be putting the books and binders into one or more big boxes, wrapping the file box, and sending the whole collection back to Canada by the slowest and cheapest form of mail possible. Given that I will be working, rather than going to school, I won’t need it urgently.

Has anyone undertaken such shipping? How much can I expect to pay, either by weight or by size? Is there a better option than the normal mail service?

From a flat in Oxford to a barn in Wales

I should pause from the frantic assembly of rain gear and the overly optimistic inclusion of thesis reading in my rucksack to say that I am off to Wales in a few hours (there seems to have been some confusion about whether I had already gone). I will be away until late on Monday, making this the longest interruption in my love affair with the internet since I went to Scotland in July. One day longer, and it would be beaten only by the Bowron Lakes canoe trip in the summer of 2004.

This is what happens when even the cheapest hostels have web access, and internet cafes are plentiful. The worst a connected person need endure are unfamiliar foreign keyboards.

Despite the urgency with which I will need to finish my third thesis chapter, you can expect some photos to find their way online within a few hours of my return. Expect panoramic vistas, drenched hikers, and sheep.

PS. Fellow Canadians trying not to forget all their French may be interested in a new blog that Richard Albert, from Lady Margaret Hall, has established. Now that quarterly Oxford bloggers’ gatherings have fallen by the wayside, I need a new way to decide how frequently to update my list of Oxford blogs.