At Christmas 2013
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| 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...
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Early light at the summit of Mount Agung, Bali |
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| 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.
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| 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...
Sadly, on April 5th, 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.
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| Natalie, Trudi, Cake, & Lindsay |
Sadly, on April 5th, 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 1st of June. The picture shows the Stump family group at the reception.
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| Annie, Chris, Jeremy & his sister Isabella |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Natalie, Nicholas and Joelle, Marsascala, Malta |
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| 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.
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| Anna, South Bank, London |
On September 4th, 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.
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| 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...
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| 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 77th birthday.
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| The beach and Cobb, Lyme Regis, September 7th 2013 |
Two happy trekkers on the Globi-Wanderweg, Lenzerheide.
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| 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 1st 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.
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