Travel

https://youtube.com/shorts/XsWAjOjk5ic?feature=share A seaside walk

I don’t know whether I’m nervous or anxious about driving from 11-13 hours almost non stop tomorrow. In the past I have driven from Switzerland to Spain, without stopping. In the past we had to stop to refuel but not anymore, not with modern cars. We have to stop for toilet breaks instead. During long drives I spend my time listening, either to books, or to podcasts. Recently I have spent a lot more time listening to books.

Not too far from Aix en Provence you can find a Roman bridge with two arches under which to pass as you cross. I expect that the stones from others were quarried and so this is the last surviving example. If we check the sources we might find mentions of more. https://twitter.com/DrJEBall/status/1501998794036109319 I located it on Google Maps for you

There is a rock quarry where we can climb not too far away. The rock is different so easier to climb. I don’t think climbing on marble would be a good climbing experience. What is interesting about this image is the scale of the quarry. This is Luna Marble. The huge marble quarries of Carrara, Italy were first opened by the Romans in the 2nd century BC, their highly prized stone used to create many of Rome’s grandest monuments.

Leslie - Jan 3, 2022 These long walks.treks fascinate me as well. I’m not at all religious, but I think the experience of walking for days, stopping in small hotels/B&Bs along the way, connecting with other walkers, would be wonderful. Someday, someday! The easiest walk to do is the Via Alpina route that starts in Liechtenstein and ends in Montreux. A train ride to the start, and then walk back towards “home”.

Over the last month or so I have been reading Le Camino Seule, ou enfin presque and it is one of my favourite hiking books. It might simply be because it was written in French, by a french woman rather than in English by Brits or Americans but it made me feel more than other books. She often references Sylvain Tesson’s book Forêt de Sibérie, a book I read a few years ago.

If you’re wearing a mask, glasses, a hat, and have a fleece that covers your neck you look like the invisible man. I have been thinking about that recently, as I look at my reflection. Imagine if I was completely transparent. Pandemic times would be an excellent moment to hide that we’ve had an accident in a lab that made us invisible. Of course we are not invisible. We are just dressed for the weather, and the risk of being contaminated by Delta or Omicron, or the next variant of interest, whenever that may be.

richard - Nov 1, 2021 With the right people designing the interface it should be simpler to do things sustainably today. I think that a QR code that we can print out and add to a book with the same sticky things as for photo albums might be the best solution. A QR code takes seconds to scan and add a comment to. I should suggest that to them. I should study how to implement it.

Today I went for a slight variant and came across a book dating back to 1930 so of course I picked it up. I like the look and feel of old books. I also like that they carry history. The book is 91, almost 92 years old and it has been passed on from generation to generation for almost six generations. I looked in the book and at first I just ignored the scribbles at the front of the book, not thinking much of it.

When I left for Spain Switzerland was just starting to turn Autumnal. Today, when I looked around I could see that Autumn has arrived properly in Switzerland. In Spain the sun is still warm enough for t-shirt wearing and swimming. The sun is still strong enough to change our chrominance. Yesterday I drove for around 11 and a half hours, with just one stop to refuel. I usually stop three or four times on that route but I felt like trying to do it in a single hop.