The Drowned Man: a Hollywood Fable

The Drowned Man

By: a Browned Off Man

Please, please, please don’t waste your time and money on this dreadful ‘con’.  If you’re interested in dance then it might have something for you – stay in the Tavern on the top floor and watch the show repeat at least a couple of times.  Then just before the end make your way to ‘Studio 2’ for the dance finale.

This show is put on by ‘Punchdrunk’ productions in association with the National Theatre.  By the end of the show you may be punchdrunk too.  They have hired out an ex-post office sorting warehouse just round the corner from St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington.  There is a portentous story line that there are two different versions of the Woyzeck (Georg Buchner) story going on.  As one enters it feels a little bit like the Tower of Terror in Disney World, but unfortunately the excitement pretty well ends there in the lift (elevator).  The story is happening in simultaneous vignettes in a number of rooms in this four storey warehouse.  It’s mostly rather dark and one is compelled to wear a mask.  Hints are to follow a cast member from scene to scene, but since there seem to be about 15 principal cast members and at a rough guess some 600 to 900 admittees, you can immediately work out that there is likely to be a minimum of 40 people trying to rush along behind the actor up the narrow stairs and along the passages in the dark to the next scenario.  We paid extra to be ‘premium’ guests which gained us entry to a control room which was supposed to add light to the proceedings but didn’t.  A pretty girl in the control room thrust a note into my hand which suggested I make my way two floors up to the tavern, and that I ‘come back and see me very soon’.  The tavern is the scene of the best set-piece dance in the show, and fortunately we saw it twice.

Don’t expect any dialogue – there isn’t any.  Another reviewer has questioned why this wasn’t billed as a dance event.

In fairness, there have been a number of reviews posted on sites such as Trip Advisor, and writers seem to be polarized one way or another, but my view concurs with several others which use the phrase ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ to describe this event.  If this is Immersive Theatre, I’ve been fully immersed and I’ve had it up to here.

At Christmas 2013

At Christmas 2013

Swan Creek Road by Fern Isabel Coppedge, US Impressionist School

With some hesitation I venture a few words at Christmas.  The newspapers at this time of year are full of columnists giving magnificent ‘send-up’ examples of the Christmas ‘Round Robin’, the trumpet of triumph we might call it.  Those impossibly bright children, the exotic holidays, the unexpected £100,000 bonus, the purchase of the idyllic holiday hideaway cottage, the list is endless.  As a Times columnist once wrote, emphasizing that these achievements are also matched by a never ending stream of banalities, ‘it is a matter of polite indifference that a dog you never knew has died’.

But technology moves on.  The Christmas industry means that however well meaning the purchase of cards to support a charity, that other self-aggrandizing institution, the Royal Mail, will attract a substantial portion of your Christmas card spending, and an electronic blog with a few photographs will allow us to donate the money that we might have spent on cards, printed pictures, and postage to charity.

So, mostly I will let our pictures tell the story...

The Anglo-Swiss Trekkers reach Petra

In the spirit of carpe diem, we have tried to achieve some things which, with the passage of a few years more, we may not be able to do.  Our ‘awfully big adventure’ this year was a trek through the Sharah mountains in Jordan to reach the Nabatean city of Petra.  This is a very remote area.  Although thousands visit Petra every day, the Ma’an Governate of Jordan which includes the Sharah, has a population density of less than four people per sq km.  In the first four days of walking we saw only one goatherd and a small Bedouin family sitting by their tent.  The picture captures the moment that our group of eight (seven from Dorset and Marina Bergamin from Switzerland) reached the ‘Monastery’, the largest rock cut building in Petra.  Our guide was the amazing Yamaan Safady, who pioneered this trek, now voted one of the National Geographic’s 15 Great Hikes of the World.  See www.adventurejordan.com.  Yamaan was deeply touched to receive our picture taken in Moreton churchyard, Dorset, of T.E. Lawrence’s grave.  Despite revisionist history, it seems the memory of Lawrence is still respected in Jordan.

Moreton Churchyard, Dorset

As another attempt to turn back time, Marina, Lindsay and I, together with our guide Yan, spent Hallowe’en night climbing in the dark up the volcanic cone of Mount Agung, Bali’s highest mountain, to see the dawn rise over the sea towards Lombok.  Our ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ was ended by a spectacular sunrise, and wraiths of mist rising over the paddy fields below.  Does anyone remember the ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ sequence in Disney’s Fantasia?  No procession of novitiates singing Schubert’s Ave Maria on the way down the mountain.

Early light at the summit of Mount Agung, Bali

Lindsay, Andrew, Wayan, Marina on Mount Agung

After the last picture, I attach my (failed) entry to the Telegraph’s Just Back competition, the 500 word review of a travel experience, which will give you a more detailed flavour of the climb.

In the early part of the year, we spent a wonderful sunny day in Lenzerheide, with our friends, Richard and Rita.  I think Rita took the picture. Congratulations to her on recently completing a very arduous trek around Dhaulagiri in the Nepal Himalaya, during the course of which she was frequently at 5000 metres plus, and spent three or four days entirely on crampons.

Richard Horden, Lindsay, Andrew in Lenzerheide

At the conclusion of our Jordan trip, we returned just in time for a small party organised by Natalie for Lindsay's 60th birthday.  I attach a photo of the birthday cake and the main protagonists.  We had at least had time for a night's sleep and a bath, but as Yamaan says, you can never get rid of Jordanian sand, so there are probably a few grains in there, not visible on camera...

Natalie, Trudi, Cake, & Lindsay

Sadly, on April 5^th, Lindsay’s mother, Marjorie, known to everyone as Marnie, died peacefully in Bird’s Hill Nursing Home, Poole.  We would sincerely like to thank the kind and caring staff at Bird’s Hill.  The picture shows Lindsay and her dad Norman, with some of the flowers from the funeral.

On a happier note, we attended Lindsay’s cousin’s son Jeremy's wedding in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on the 1^st of June.  The picture shows the Stump family group at the reception.

Annie, Chris, Jeremy & his sister Isabella

Andrew, Lindsay, Alex, Howie.  Franklin Marshall College chapel, June 1st 2013.  A kilt perhaps not ideal when the temperature is in the high 90s

Also a happy occasion, Katie graduated in Business with Economics with a 2:1 degree from Leeds University.  Lovely weather in Yorkshire, so the graduands were extremely hot in their heavy gowns and hoods.  She is currently cleaning chalet toilets in Val d’Isère, working for a ski company, but hoping to spend her free time on the slopes.

Talking of proud parents - Andrew & Katie, Leeds University Graduation Day

Another happy week, this time in Marsascala, Malta.  We were able to host Lindsay’s cousin and her son Dermot, Ben and Natalie, Nicholas and Joelle.

Natalie, Nicholas and Joelle, Marsascala, Malta

Lindsay, Joelle, Nick, Dermot, Natalie, Ben, Andrew, Caroline

Anna has been working for the charity Sported, based in central London.  She loves her work, and is doing some higher level qualifications in marketing.  She is shown in her favourite habitat, London’s South Bank.  She currently lives in Brixton, but likes adventure, and has recently been to Nicaragua.

Anna, South Bank, London

On September 4^th, memorable for being probably the last day of a hot and enjoyable summer here in Dorset, we were reunited with ‘The Horsewomen of the Mendips’, the girls who trekked on horseback over the Salkantay trail in Peru in 2012.  We rode on Shanks’s pony...  The picture is in Philippa and Xerxes’ garden.

Lizzie, Philippa, Karen, Julie, Xerxes, Andrew

For the record, Natalie has gained promotion within Barclays.  She is working in Canary Wharf, and lives in Maida Vale.  Nicholas continues to be very ‘hands on’ as manager at Salterns Marina.

Finally a few oddities:

Andrew gets in touch with clan members in Dunkeld...

Dunkeld, Perthshire

On the beach at Lyme Regis.  No sign of Meryl Streep, but with 2,275 other guitarists participating in the UK’s largest guitar ensemble playing Buddy Holly’s ‘Rave On’ on what would have been Buddy’s 77^th birthday.

The beach and Cobb, Lyme Regis, September 7th 2013

Two happy trekkers on the Globi-Wanderweg, Lenzerheide.

September in Lenzerheide

American Impressionist Art:  a painting by Edward Redfield in the Philadelphia Museum of Art

A lotus flower, Bali.  A symbol of purity and a suitable motif to wish you all a very peaceful and happy Christmas and a healthy and fulfilling New Year.

Mount Agung in 500 words:

How to spend Hallowe’en in Bali

A thin line of exquisite pink appears in the Eastern sky, towards Lombok.  A strip of turquoise lies above it.  Above this again, the implacable blackness of night weakens.  The Milky Way, a mass of tiny pearls, so luminous an hour ago, begins to fade.  As we climb, the rock at our hands changes from an inky black in the light of the head torch to... inky black, for this is volcanic basalt.  A gossamer veil of mist below becomes visible, hiding the green of the rice paddies behind it.  Silhouetted against the now golden glow over the sea, the rocks of Mount Agung, Bali’s highest and holiest mountain look sharp and unwelcoming.  It’s perhaps just as well that our climb has taken place in the dark, concentrating only on the next metre or two of rock ahead.  Approaching the rim of the volcanic crater, a pungent aroma of sulphur lifts over the edge to greet us.  Little wonder that this peak is revered, but the early populations of these islands could not have known that it is the very pre-eminence of their mountains that guarantees the rain that fills the rice fields.  As we savour the dawn at nearly 3000 metres, the gradually lifting mists remind me of the cessation of the satanic activities in the film Fantasia, at the end of the Night on Bald Mountain sequence, as the wraiths disappear.  Now that it is November 1^st it would be entirely appropriate to hear Schubert’s Ave Maria, but there is only the soughing of the wind.  Our memorable Hallowe’en begins not with pumpkins but papaya, jack fruit and mango; then vampire-like a sleep during the afternoon and evening before rising at midnight.  We leave Bali’s Eastern coast to drive to the temple, Pura Pasar Agung, from which most climbers start.  The lanes are deserted except for a hundred sleeping dogs, but the small towns are alive with midnight markets in preparation for the religious feast of Kuningan which is to commence next day.  We reach the temple at 1.30am.  Before the climb there are Gods to propitiate, which takes another twenty minutes, and fills the night air with incense.  There are only four personal names in Bali, so it’s not hard to remember our guide’s name – Wayan (the first child).  To be distinctive he calls himself Yan.  Even at 1500 metres the temperature is about 25°C, but Yan has a beanie and an enormous padded jacket.  The climb is not difficult, but the steps and hands of thousands have clutched at these rocks, which in places is worn to a shiny black mirror.  In consequence, our ascent takes four hours, and the descent almost as long.  In the morning heat and broad daylight the peak seems distant and remote.  Were we really there a few hours ago?  Returning through villages bedecked with palm frond gewgaws, the temples swathed with cloths in the holy colours of yellow and white, the population is ready to celebrate, and so are we.

Buddy Holly’s 77^th Birthday

A strange week.  Returning from a very hot and humid Malta, to find beautiful British weather, and having to knuckle down to work.  It’s not all bad though.  The nurses who assist me so well with my Royal Bournemouth Hospital cardiac catheter sessions were by turns both solicitous and curious as to what I would do with the afternoon off after my Tuesday morning list.  ‘Probably go for a swim in the sea,’ I answered.  In the event I did, but I felt as though I had earned it.  One of my colleagues in his wisdom had asked that I catheterise (cardiac not urological) a frail lady of 98.  Do you know what 98 year old blood vessels are like?

Some friends from Somerset who have never seen Poole came down to visit us.  We call them the Three Horsewomen of the Apocalypse because we met them on horseback riding beside us (and frequently far ahead of us) as we slogged over the Andes to Machu Picchu (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/southamerica/peru/10266146/Machu-Picchu-the-Inca-Trail-on-horseback.html).  Strictly speaking they are the Three Horsewomen of the Mendips, because that is where they live.

So Wednesday 4^th of September was an idyllic afternoon, and perfect for a trip around Poole Harbour.  It was hot and sunny and we swam as usual at Goathorn, battling against the outgoing tide as in a flume.  As we lay there at anchor, we could see the sea fog beginning to come in beyond the Haven Hotel, and by the time we poked our nose out past the chain ferry, the whole of Studland and the Sandbanks and Bournemouth beaches were swathed in mist.  See the rather spectacular photo below, as Brownsea Island castle appears to be on fire as the mist rolls in.

Sea mist rolls in over Brownsea Castle

Weather forecasters predicted a dramatic change in the weather by the weekend and they were right.  Dorset had a day’s grace – Friday – but the one day international cricket match England vs Australia at Edgbaston had to be abandoned without a ball being bowled.

While listening to the seemingly evergreen Brian Matthew on ‘Sounds of the Sixties’ on Saturday morning, a communication from a listener who described himself as the biggest Buddy Holly fan from ‘somewhere or other’ mentioned that later on in the day he would be making his way to Lyme Regis to play in a World Record Attempt for the largest guitar band ever – playing Buddy Holly’s ‘Rave On’ on the beach to celebrate Buddy’s 77^th birthday.  No sooner heard than preparations were made, picnic packed, waterproofs gathered, and we were off...

Note for future participation:  take camp chairs, take an umbrella, make sure your oldest guitar and its backpack style portable case is not 600 miles away in Lenzerheide, Switzerland.

I don’t think there is much else to report.  Having sat watching some very dramatic clouds roll in all afternoon, and the organisers distinct lack of nous in being able to bring the event forward, ‘the rain came heavily and fell in floods’ as Wordsworth put it.  The organisers themselves and the house band were up on a covered stage, but I noticed some of them nervously poking their guitars up at the awning to push off the puddles of water.  Eventually, as a reward for those thousands of people who had registered and gathered, both the rehearsal and the main event were brought forward and we did it.  Photographic evidence attached!  YouTube link attached! 

Yamaha Jumbo at the Cobb, Lyme Regis

Not good weather for guitars.  At least it wasn't electric

The Movie Evidence:

 http://youtu.be/Lha_NR7OT_g

Looking at myself on film and in portrait, I have to report that I don’t look as exciting as many of the participants, but Lindsay’s sensitive nose detected strong aromas of cannabis floating above the beach, so I probably wasn’t as disinhibited as some of the other guitarists.  I was however trying to concentrate on the chords (there are only three – G, C, D – but they do have to go in the right order) as well as singing the words.

While all this was going on, Lindsay at least had the opportunity of visiting the Lyme Food festival and a fun cookery demonstration in the tent above the beach by Angela Hartnett (Murano), Luke Holder (Lime Wood, New Forest), and Mark Hix (local restaurateur, perhaps most renowned for serving the last meal that Keith Floyd ever ate).

Angela Hartnett in uncompromising mood

Luke Holder, Angela Hartnett, Mark Hix

So that’s the news from Lyme Regis and Poole, where as Garrison Keillor would say, ‘All the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.’  At least they were on the beach...  A six year old sang ‘Over the Rainbow’, perhaps not terribly well, but Dr Johnson’s comments on women preachers come to mind.  For ‘Over the Rainbow’ fans, the American soprano Joyce Di Donato sang it beautifully later that evening at the last night of the Proms, ably conducted by our local heroine (former Principal Conductor of the BSO), Marin Alsop.

DORSET OPERA FESTIVAL 2013

DO Programme 2013

Craig Brown is just one of many writers to pay tribute to an inspirational English master, and in my own small way, I would like to pay my debt to Bill Currie, English master (and Colonel in Chief of the Cadet Corps) at King Edward’s School in Bath.  It was Bill who introduced us to Coleridge’s famous remark about the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ which is necessary to take a work of fiction on its own terms.  Bill was the author of a number of books about his times at KES, and less well known, he produced many little editions of ‘crammer’ notes about literature for the publishing firms which specialise in helping the less gifted among us learn the rudimentary concepts behind some of the great works that examiners send to try us.  Among these, Bill produced a masterly crib to W.B.Yeats, though his researches on Yeats led him to believe, as he confessed to me many years later, that despite the quality of the writing Yeats himself was ‘a great big fake’.  Still, when called upon to believe in the fiction before us on stage or in film, Coleridge’s words through the medium of Col. W. T. Currie tend to come back to me.

Before turning to opera, which is where one’s disbelief is sorely tested, parenthetically, the web leads one on to read about a wonderful term in this regard – that of ‘cognitive estrangement’.  This is defined by James and Mendelssohn in the Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction as ‘the sense that something in the fictive world is dissonant with the reader’s experienced world’.  Science Fiction is the genre par excellence where disbelief must be suspended in order to enter the new world.  But of course, the frisson of science fiction is that all of what one is reading might well be true.  Many of the classic works of science fiction from the 19^th and 20^th centuries have in fact come true.  Space exploration, and the Roraima plateau of Professor Challenger’s Lost World, are examples.  In opera, the dichotomy between the fictive and experienced reality can be substantial.  The consumptive heroine who sings at full blast only minutes before her death (where would the 19^th century novel, play, and opera be without tuberculosis?  Dicken’s description of the death of Smike comes to mind, but the list is long).  So, to engage our passions and interest, such productions must be of the very highest quality.  Was this the case with Dorset Opera Festival 2013?

In brief, the answer is yes.  In their bicentenary year, DO chose works by Verdi and Wagner, and works that were remarkably dissimilar.  La Traviata is full of expressive and poetic melody.  I hadn’t seen it for many years, but as the action unfolds, one cannot help but be overwhelmed as the music of yet another aria starts up and one thinks, ‘Oh yes, I know this, how wonderful’.  In the Flying Dutchman, rarely performed, the familiar music is limited to the overture and incidental music; but it is remarkable how familiar the style is, and how little Wagner changed some of his leitmotivs in subsequent operas.  With only a few tweaks, it’s clear that the Dutchman’s theme, and some of the sea motifs become Siegfried and some of the Rhine music.

We went to see La Traviata on an English summer evening of beauty and heat, picnicking in the grounds of Bryanston School, and then filing into the auditorium for a hugely enjoyable performance of superb musical playing, great sets, choral ensembles, and stunning soloists, particularly Violetta and Germont.  The heat of the evening lent a rather healthy colour to the skin of Jessica Muirhead, the British-Canadian soprano, but some white makeup and pallid lighting enhanced the illusion of the tuberculous patient in the final scene.  Very early in the 2013 plans of DO it was announced that Jonathan Miller was to be the director of the production.  Predictably it was a sell out.  Some friends were only able to get tickets front right, where their view was a little infringed upon by the double basses, but as one of them remarked, ‘I was trying to empathise with the dying heroine in the final act, only to have my eye caught by the trumpeter in the orchestra pit, who was reading a magazine throughout.  “Railway Modeller” I think it was...’  Yes, only a few toots were required at key moments in La Traviata.  As a doctor myself, I was deeply touched at the devotion to duty of Violetta’s physician, who turned up at seven o’clock in the morning (it’s true, it’s in the libretto), even though streptomycin had not yet been invented, purely to confirm that our heroine had only hours to live.  ‘The doctor is allowed to tell white lies’, he assured us.  I may yet need to use that before the GMC one day...

I feel sure that the brass section’s copies of the “Railway Modeller” had been left behind for the following evening when I attended ‘The Flying Dutchman’.  Again, a wonderful heroine, in Lee Bisset, slinking around the stage in a red dress, and a rather surprising fur coat.  Perhaps her would be lover, Erik the huntsman, had lovingly crafted it from the skins of his prey?  Her outfit was attuned to the black spars and the red sails of the eponymous voyager, whose sea chest labelled FD had been carelessly left on the stage.  To a Poole sailor, the FD is evocative of the much lamented Olympic class sailing dinghy, and the great Rodney Pattisson, Britain’s greatest Olympic sailor until Ben Ainslie.  Further inland, in Blandford Forum, the weather had changed, torrential rain swept Dorset, and on stage storms swept the coast of Norway.  Wagner’s love of brass was well in evidence, and our trumpeter was surely far too busy to think about the 4-6-2 of Sir Nigel Gresley.  Once again, disbelief was difficult to suspend, particularly in the frequent references to the pale face of the accursed Dutchman, when the character was portrayed by the handsome black African-American bass-baritone Mark S. Doss.  But what a voice and presence!  On an evening when members of the audience were once again fainting with the heat in the auditorium, Mr Doss striding around the stage in a giant nautical greatcoat and gumboots, and Ms Bisset in her fur coat should be congratulated for their stamina, as well as their wonderful singing.

There is a little difficulty in staging the ‘Dutchman’ in that Acts 2 and 3 take place in differing locations, which at the Met would no doubt require two intervals, together with much scene changing.  DO chose to put their one interval after act 1, which resulted in two ‘halves’ of 50 minutes and 90 minutes respectively.  There has to be an interval between Acts 1 and 2, because the contrast is enormous.  Act 2 opens with as close as Wagner can get to a scene of happy domesticity; with a spinning song which is so melodic one assumes it must have been written by Brahms.  The scene soon changes however, and since this is Grand Opera, we know that things are not going to end well.  To see two opera seria in successive nights and to get away with a body count of three (two if you don’t count the fact that Mr Doss is officially dead anyway) is pretty good going.

I could ramble on, like the three Norns at the beginning of Götterdämmerung, but I won’t.  Well done, Dorset Opera, you were fantastic.

The Long and Short of Long Island

An entry for the Daily Telegraph 'Just Back' competition - a 500 word maximum travel essay:

The Long Island ‘Expressway’ of New York is optimistically, even mendaciously named.  But at last here we are in trendy Southampton.  The twee shop fronts of the boutiques look like something that Prince Charles has dreamed up to represent ‘Olde England’.  ‘Honey, that stuff is way too old for you, we’re not going in there’, insists a tanned fifty something in shorts, who looks like Harrison Ford, and is considerately clutching the hand of a girl who might or might not be his niece.  But later he is marching her back down the sidewalk, she feigning pseudo-reluctance.  ‘If you want it honey, we’re just gonna go back in there and buy it’, Harrison announces.

Personally I’m way too old for everything here, including the flashbulb popping trendy lunch venue, 75 Main, where everyone wants to be photographed with a woman who is apparently in ‘The Real Housewives of New York City’.  The Western half of Long Island is Dutch, this Eastern half is English.  Indeed we are in Suffolk County.  Signs proudly announce the settlement of the area in the 1630s.  A fashion shop states that the style is ‘Fabulously English’.  But the most beautiful people in Southampton, or at least the wealthiest, are rarely seen, hidden away in their enormous houses behind the beach on Gin Lane.  In the gas station I think I recognize a film star at the wheel of an immaculate 1958 Chevvy Corvette convertible, but it turns out he is just the mechanic, and he won’t say who owns it.  A tanned superfit man jogging along the road is just as likely a hedge fund manager as a film star.

Beyond here, in the more picturesque Easthampton, we are looking for the remarkably named Springs-Fireplace road, and the cabin of Jackson Pollock, the abstract expressionist artist, who moved here in 1946.  The cabin has a rural feel.  ‘It looks like something by Andrew Wyeth’, I tell our guide.  Predictably she is not impressed.  In Pollock’s studio, where he painted on the floor, there is almost more paint left on the boards than ended up on his canvases.  It’s a curious feeling to walk across these rough strips of wood, and to reflect that they would probably fetch a hundred million dollars in themselves.  A cliché maybe, but somehow it seems possible to feel the rhythms of Pollock’s paintings in the whirls and swirls of paint left behind.  The genius in the floorboards, is still there, catapulted into art history, literally, as he turned his Oldsmobile over near here one night in 1956.

In late Spring the temperatures are pleasantly around 25°C, the creamy dogwood blossoms have still not faded, and everything is green and fertile.  On the Northern fork of the island, we sit on the deck at one of the many vineyards which have all sprung up since the 1970s, and sip a glass of Long Island wine.  The sun streams down.  One doesn’t have to be Jay Gatsby to enjoy Long Island.

Chevvy Corvette 1958, Long Island, June 2013

A more beautiful rear than J-Lo?

The Pollock-Krasner house, Springs, Long Island, NY
I still feel it looks like an Andrew Wyeth

The genius in the floorboards

Jackson Pollock's painting equipment

The beach at Southampton, Long Island, NY

Jordan - one of the National Geographic's top treks in the World

Yamaan Safady, the originator of Adventure Jordan (see www.adventurejordan.com), has spent many months researching the Bedouin trails in the Sharah mountains.  His trek is an arduous five day hike across the desert of the Jordanian rift valley and through the mountains to Little Petra, and then on to Petra itself.  Most groups then travel on down to Wadi Rum to enjoy the spectacular scenery and spend a day or two in R&R before returning home.  Additional options include a day or two in Amman, visiting Jerash, or at the end a day or two in the Red Sea port of Aqaba.  Even those on short timescales such as ourselves usually visit Madaba to see the early Byzantine mosaics, Mount Nebo to see where the death of Moses is supposed to have occurred, and the Dead Sea, if only for a quick float and a chance to get a classic photo of one's friend/spouse/lover/ resting back in the buoyant waters and reading a newspaper.  Rather than bore by account of the trek, here are the photos:

Desert journey from Wadi Dana to Wadi Barwass

Ascent from the desert, looking at the Jordanian rift valley

Stones are decorated by millions of years of mineral deposits

Strictly single file over some of the terrain

The longest day - 5 hours in and we still need to reach the conical hill in the distance

The first temple of Little Petra

Petra - the Monastery

Made it!

The Treasury, Petra

The 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' at the entrance to Wadi Rum

An easier form of locomotion, Wadi Rum

Natural stone arch, Wadi Rum

Sunset, Wadi Rum