THE BIG TRIP ... an outdoor life hiking, cycling and paddling

A hike through Europe: The route

2012-01-30T21:26:00.002+01:00

Right now I am planning the longest continouos hiking trip I have ever done: Inspired by a book by Nicholas Crane called "Clear waters rising" I want to hike across the whole length of Europe from West to East, a hike of about 10,000 km. Nicholas Crane hiked from Cabo Finisterre to Istanbul across the three big European mountain ranges Pyrenees, Alps and Carpathian mountains. But he was not an experienced ultralight hiker and miscalculated his route: He ended up in the Alps in winter and had to detour a lot to lower altitudes.

I want to avoid Crane's mistakes and decided to hike in 2 seasons: I will start with Western Europe one year and hike Eastern Europe another year splitting the route into two 5,000 km trips. But even with this trick it turned out to be very difficult to hike the whole length of the Alps and Pyrenees in one season: You cannot really start hiking in high alpine terrain before mid June and the season finishes already by end of September. I therefore decided to skip the Alps (which merit a trip alone anyways) and concentrate on an interesting route for the rest of trip incorporating the whole length of the Pyrenees. I also decided to hike from East to West one year and starting at the same point the other year but hiking East then. And because the map situation for Eastern Europe is still a bit dire I decided to start hiking in Western Europe - the longer I wait the more maps and information will be available for Eastern Europe.

Although I am still working on the details of my route this is already a rough outline linking together existing long-distance trails in Germany, France and Spain. My emphasis is on creating an interesting and very varied route visiting areas I have not hiked in before. And of course this being Europe and want to incorporate some cultural sightseeing once in a while. I will start in Altenberg at the German/Czech border and finish in Cabo Finisterre, the "end of the world".

Kammweg Erzgebirge: a new Premium German long-distance trail: 286 km
Rennsteig: the oldest German long-distance trail finishing in Eisenach: 168 km
Elisabethpfad: a pilgrimage trail honouring St. Elisabeth: 167 km
Lahn-Dill-Bergland-Pfad: 83 km
Westerwaldsteig: 241 km
Rheinhoehenweg und Ahr-Venn-Weg: to cross from the Rhine to the Eifel: 91 km
Eifelsteig: home of the famous Eifel crime thrillers: 282 km
Saar-Hunsruecksteig: 66 km
Saarlandrundweg: 66 km
Pfaelzer Jakobsweg: a short stretch on a pilgrimage trail: 44 km
Pfaelzer Waldpfad: 123 km

GR 53: through the Vosges: 152 km
GR 5: through the Jura: 486 km
GR 9: from Geneve to Grenoble: 283 km
GR 91: through the Vercors: 204 km
GR 4: an old friend I have already hiked: 127 km
GR 44: into the Cevennes: 48 km
GR 7: from the Cevennes to Languedoc: 281 km
GR 36: from Languedoc to the Pyrenees via Carcasonne: 228 km
GR 10: the whole length of the Pyrenees (maybe replaced with GR 11 on the Spanish side): 746 km

Camino del Norte: a less travelled alternative to the Camino Frances: 480 km
Camino Primitivo: a "wild" camino alternative: 370 km
Cabo Finisterre: The grand finale from Santiago to Finisterre: 90 km

Total distance: 5.056 km

Winter trip in Franconia: Fraenkischer Gebirgsweg

2012-01-21T21:31:00.000+01:00

I had to leave Berlin to attend my parents wedding anniversary and decided to combine that trip with another winter test hike. This time I chose one of the new certified long-distance trails in Franconia called "Fraenkischer Gebirgsweg" (Franconian mountain trail). Don't take the "mountain" trail too literally - the trail just rises over 1,000 meters only a couple of times. But that suited me right as snow fall had been predicted and I did not want to carry around snow shoes. As I visited parents and friends and did a lot of sightseeing before my hike I did not want to carry any cumbersome gear at all and therefore left my trekking poles and an extra cell foam mat at home. Temperatures were supposed to be cold, too and therefore I decided to hike only three days and two nights. I might sound like a wuss but I am renting this nice and warm room in Berlin now - why should I then stay outside and freeze my ass off in my tent?

Anyways, my short hike started in Pegnitz and ended in Bayreuth from where I took the train back to Berlin. I stepped out of the train in Pegnitz at 7.30 in the morning just before sunrise - and immediately started freezing. Stupidly enough I had brought my Platypus bottle with a drinking hose and within half an hour of hiking the water in the hose was frozen solid... On the positive side though the weather was brilliant: very cold, but blue sky with even the sun shining. I hiked into a glorious sunrise and a solidly frozen forest. Everything was icicled - even my nose....

The trail was nice enough - usually well marked, nice views and little attractions like show caves, castles and museums, but of course everything was closed now in the middle of winter. At least there was some open air modern art sculpture exhibition in the middle of nowhere. I made good progress but night was approaching too soon and I had to find a campsite. One of the downsides of hiking in Franconia is the lack of shelters. In the Black Forest there had been shelters almost everywhere and it had been relatively easy to plan an overnight stop there in bad weather. But no such luck on the Gebirgsweg - I had to camp in the forest which was no problem as it wasn't raining or snowing or windy. Still the night seemed endless. It gets completely dark at 5.30 pm and even with setting up camp, dinking around and cooking you are done with everything by 7 pm. As it was so cold I had no choice but to crawl into my sleeping bag and try to sleep - until 6.30 next morning... This is a long time in a tent at - 10 C.

I started hiking next morning with the first daylight at 7.30 am. The light was fantastic and I enjoyed a great sunrise again - but I would have enjoyed it even more if it had been 10 degrees warmer. The cold was getting to me, especially since I had planned to spend 3 long days completely outside without any warming break in civilisation. As long as I was moving things were not too bad, but as soon as I took a break I started shivering. I sort of started dreading my second cold night out... I had planned my next campsite ahead in a nice big forested area. Well, the area was nice and forested but I had not taken into consideration that the motorway 2 km away sounded like next door. Also I had overlooked the fact that there was a busy train line going through that forest with train traffic till 1 am in the morning. I had to hike much further in the pitch dark before I found a quieter camp site in the woods and thank God for ear plugs.

Again I was lying inside my sleeping bag at 7 pm looking forward to a long night. At least I did not get sleep deprived on that trip. Although I had brought a very adequate winter sleeping bag for that trip, a Western Mountaineering Puma, it was just about warm enough. I always seem to have the same problem: After a couple of days of use the down gets damp and starts clumping, especially on the back of the sleeping bag where there is less down to start with. Lucky are those you can sleep on their backs because it will not bother them, but I am a side sleeper and as soon as I turn around to go to sleep I wake up again because my back gets cold. To make things worse I woke up and realised that the upper front side of my sleeping bag was almost soaking wet. First I suspected I had been drooling in my sleep, but then it dawned on me that this was condensation from my breath. Sleeping in a fetal position brings a lot of problems....

I was happy about the prospect to spend the next night in my warm bed in Berlin again! My tent was frozen solid when I packed it up as was my water bottle. Ice cold muesli with ice cold water for breakfast - what a treat! But I only had to hike half a day to Bayreuth where I would do some sightseeing and thawing before I took the train back to Berlin. Unfortunately I visited the unheated and ice cold castle of Bayreuth - so much for thawing out. Still it had been a nice trip. Due to the cold but sunny weather I had enjoyed some brilliant views. But I also had to find out that my winter equipment needs some more improving...

Winter trip in the Black Forest: The hike

2012-01-07T23:51:00.001+01:00

Ursula and I set off hiking after visiting the fantastic bathroom museum in Schiltach. She would accompany me for only one night and one day whereas I would continue northward on the Mittelweg up to Pforzheim and then back southward on the Ostweg. We had just one hour of daylight left and made it to a nice stealth campsite even with a little table, a bench and a spring next to it. These accessories were really important as we had brought Swiss cheese fondue and a little bottle of red wine for dinner. And then we sat there at freezing temperatures in the complete dark in the Black forest and enjoyed our sumptuous dinner.

Next morning we set off early and arrived on top of a mountain just in time for a glorious sun rise above a lake of fog in the valleys. Absolutely fantastic view! But the day turned out to be slower than expected.... There was much more snow than we had thought.... We arrived much later in Freudenstadt than planned. Ursula went back home and I rushed to Aldi's to do more shopping. I eventually hiked out of Freudenstadt in the dark. I had to camp close to civilisation and despite the winter weather there were still people out jogging making stealth camping a bit risky... but nobody detected my tent.

Unfortunately I had not realised that a storm warning had been issued for the next night. I had planned to camp in or next to a shelter that was indicated on my maps but when I arrived there in the last rays of daylight I found out that it was more a house than a shelter and telling from the smoke coming out of the chimney people were actually staying there! I did not have much choice but hiking on which brought me on top of a 900 m mountain - very exposed, but luckily there was an open shelter. I deliberated whether I should set up my tent inside the huge shelter and luckily decided for it! During the night the weather got worse and worse: I could hear the wind howling with storm force and saw to my great horror that my tent started to get covered in snow - inside the shelter!!!! When I woke up in the morning everything inside the shelter was covered with about 5 cm of snow and outside there was at least 30 cm of fresh powder snow with the storm still going on.

The storm turned into a thunderstorm and I must admit that I have never experienced thunder and lightning in a snow storm before. When the whiteout had disappeared I hiked in a beautiful and untouched winter land scape but the snow slowed down my progress and in the end I had to take a train for the last km into Pforzheim. In Pforzheim all three long-distance routes through the Black Forest converge: Westweg, Mittelweg and Ostweg. Pforzheim has been completely destroyed in WWII and is now about one of the ugliest German cities I have ever seen. I lacks any charm and the only interesting thing to see there is the jewellery museum. But this was my one and only day in a bed on this trip.Unfortunately, couchsurfing has failed me in Pforzheim and therefore I had booked myself into a B&B.

The next day was the 31st of December and I definitely wanted to avoid the noise of the fireworks by camping in the forest which turned out to be more difficult than expected. I was still very close to Pforzheim and although I was at least 2 km from the next village I was still woken up by the noise of the fireworks at midnight. Happy new year then! Lighting the fireworks must have been a big problem that night as the weather had changed dramatically from subfreezing temperatures and snow to 14 degrees Celsius and rain!!! Of course my rain jacket had failed me again and I had arrived soaking wet at my shelter. This drastic temperature change led to a complete snow melt and turned the trails into mud pools - and flooded the rivers. I started 2012 with hiking in spring like temperatures....

Mark stone

The rest of my hike on the Ostweg was a wet and damp affair - luckily I could camp a lot inside shelters which reduced condensation in the tent and made packing in the morning so much more comfortable. But I came across a last highlight in Calw: The Hermann Hesse Museum. Although I am not the biggest fan of this author I learnt a lot and really enjoyed this informative little museum that kept me busy for almost 2 hours! I spent my last night in a shelter again because there was another storm warning. The wind was blowing my tent around even inside the shelter! When I broke camp in the morning before sunrise I was nearly caught by a logging truck but luckily the forest workers had probably not expected a lunatic camping in the storm and I could escape undetected. At least the train trip back to Berlin turned out to be uneventful...

This trip had been a test trip for an extended winter camping trip in the Southern Appalachian Mountains in the US. And unfortunately I had to realise that my gear set up is not to this challenge: My winter sleeping bag and a new cell foam mat are so bulky that I had to switch to an old, very big backpack in order to even fit everything in. My new Integral Designs rain jacket had leaked like a sieve and does not even deserve the name rain jacket! I do not understand why it has gotten so many positive reviews. And on top of that all my WM Puma sleeping bag which is rated down to almost arctic temperatures was just about adequate because all the dampness reduced its warming capacities. I have to think about some serious gear adjustments before I can tackle months long winter trips...

Winter trip in the Black Forest: A surprise beginning

2012-01-05T21:57:00.001+01:00

Ursula and Alfred

I do hate Christmas and I do hate New Year - especially the noise of fireworks that scares the shit out of me. So for many years now I have always tried to spend those days in the middle of nowhere on my own. But this year I have had a very nice invitation to spend Christmas with my old hiking friend Ursula aka Fritz in the Black Forest which I could easily combine with some winter hiking and camping. Ursula is not only the only other German female Triple Crowner, but she has done a tremendous amount of hiking, paddling and cycling. She has not only paddled the Yukon, but also the Mississippi which is another river high on my list. So I was looking forward to some fantastic Christmas food, lots of paddling advice and an interesting winter trip.

Train evacuation

Alas, things did not start smoothly. I had booked a train ticket with efficient Deutsche Bahn to Ursula's town, a journey that would take about 7 hours. Unfortunately, it would take me more than 12 hours.... Just one hour after leaving Berlin I suddenly smelt something burnt like hot metal. I must admit that I started to worry what was going on when the train slowed down more and more and eventually came to a full stop in the middle of nowhere. As this was the main track between Berlin and Hannover it was definitely not a good place to stop: Something must be awfully wrong. Sure enough after a couple of minutes we learnt that a wheel had overheated (therefore the burnt smell) and could not be repaired: the train would have to be evacuated! This sounded easier than it was because we are not talking about a dinky little tshu-tshu train but a ultramodern high speed ICE on a busy electrified and fenced in track First .of all another train big enough for 240 passengers had to come (which took 2 hours) and stop alongside our train thus blocking the route completely. Tremendous delays for all following trains were the result. Then firemen would put ladders between the two trains on which passengers could pass from one train to another. And eventually 240 passengers including all their luggage had to get into the evacuation train on only two ladders... The whole operation took 215 minutes and of course I missed all connecting trains and arrived 5 hours late - and all this on the 24th of December! It was indeed a merry Christmas for me.... (Germans celebrate Christmas on the evening of the 24th).

The tractor and me

But as if to compensate for all that hassle the weather turned really nice once I had arrived and I experienced the first white Christmas in decades! I devoured a whole Black Forest cake and tons of fantastic Christmas biscuit. We went for short hikes with dog Leika who loved the snow but was shit scared of wind turbines... Ursula's partner Alfred collects old tractors and he insisted that I should test drive one. I was very much afraid to start with, but hey - I had just come back from the UK where I had been steering a 18 meter long narrow boat. Driving a tractor could not be much worse - and it was not. It was great fun instead and an unforgettable experience. But before I set off with Ursula on a winter hike we had some interesting sightseeing experience: Hans Grohe is a global manufacturer of designer bathroom fittings and its headquarters are in Schiltach which is smack bang on my Black Forest hiking trail. Integrated in the factory complex is the Aquademie, a water experience centre with a bathroom museum, design exhibition and a life shower experience. I had hoped it would be nice but it exceeded my expectations by far: First of all the whole thing is free. That includes free entry to a fantastic little museum with bathrooms from 5 centuries, a posh designer area, an audio guide to all that and a free drink. If you reserve ahead you can even experience the shower world where you can "test shower" HansGrohe products. Everything is supplied from towels to shower gels and body lotions. Unfortunately this was the start of my hike; elsewise this would have been the perfect opportunity for a dirty hiker to get a luxury shower. Honestly: this is a fantastic secret tip: If you hike the Mittelweg in the Black Forest, try to visit HansGrohe - it is definitely worth it.

Back in Berlin again

2011-12-11T11:01:00.000+01:00

For the fourth time this year I am back in Berlin - quite unusual for me as I normally return only once a year. But now I am preparing a new long trip. Instead of hiking 35 km every day I am sitting in front of my laptop 10 hours daily planning hiking routes in mapsource, improving my blog and doing research on my upcoming trips. As much as I like planning new trips, meeting old friends and getting a cultural fix in a big city - I am already longing to live outdoors again. By April I will be back in my tent!

How to steer a narrowboat

2011-11-16T23:04:00.000+01:00

When I first thought about steering a narrowboat I was truly intimidated. It seemed HUGE! It is 18 meters long and with a weight of 17 tons it has enormous momentum once it is going. At least you are never faster than walking speed, but you can still create quite a crash when hitting a wall or bank. I have seen several severely damaged bridges on canals that must have been hit hard by boats....

My first lessons

The first problem is that the engine and the steering called tiller is at the back of the boat. Therefore you are standing at the back of the boat too, and try to look along your 18 meter monster in order to see where the front is going. To make things even more complicated steering a boat is opposite to steering a car. If you want to turn left you have to turn the tiller right. Although I should have been used to that from paddling I still got very confused in the beginning and ended up with pointing my hand to right hand side in order to make me realise I have to steer in the opposite direction. Unfortunately this very illogical system got me so confused in the end that I stood there with my two arms pointing in different directions and no hand on the tiller..... I freely admit that it took me more than 3 days to even steer the boat in a straight line and John confessed afterwards that he had regarded me as a hopeless case.

But somehow it sort of "clicked" after 3 days and the steering became sort of automatic. I managed to keep a straight line and even got around bends - still screaming "John, help me" every time I was about to crash into a bank or wall. My straight lines sometimes looked very zigzaggy, but I started to feel more confident.

Going into a lock after a bridge

Unfortunately, boating is not only going along in a straight line on a broad canal - there are various obstacles to master. First of all there are other boats around trying to pass and that means you better get out of the way without hitting them or getting stuck on the shallow sides of the canal. And then of course there are tons of bridges. New bridges tend to be very wide and pose no problem but the old original bridges are very narrow. And if bad comes to worst the are located in a bend of the canal. With an 18 meter boat you cannot turn directly under the bridge or the back of the boat will hit the bridge. Therefore you have to "thread in" already in the right angle - not easy for a beginner. And because bridges were difficult and expensive to built, some canal companies preferred lift bridges that are so narrow that a boat can just pass through - a nightmare for me in my first steering lessons.

Perfect lock approach

The most difficult part though is going through locks and it took over a week until John would allow me to try that. But to my big surprise I seem to have a hidden talent for locks as I never crashed into one despite the fact that the locks are so narrow that there is just centimetres of water on either side of the boat when in a lock! When approaching a lock I felt like a pilot trying to land a jet on a airplane carrier on the ocean. Again you have to get the angle 100% correct before you enter the lock as you cannot steer once the front of the boat is inside - and the front is almost 18 metres away from where you are standing and trying to figure out which way to go. Also you have to approach very slowly or you are not able to stop the boat before it hits the front of the lock.

The worst is over once you are inside the lock but you still have to pay attention. When water comes rushing into the lock while going up the boat is bashed around a lot. In a single lock this is not too much of a problem but when alone in a double you have to be very careful not to damage the boat. Boats have fenders in the front and on the back which lessen the impact when hitting a lock gate a bit. When going down you have to watch out not to get stuck on the cill - or you will end up like the boat in the picture. This is one of the worst possible accidents for a boater as you cannot float the boat again without drowning it - you have to get a crane to lift it out.

Opening a lock gate

I still feel a bit frightened and claustrophobic when inside a boat in a lock and the water comes rushing into the lock chamber bashing the boat around. It feels like a big relief when the lock gates open and you can get out. By the way: Opening and closing the locks is hard work, too. You run up and down the locks always trying to prepare the next one while the first one is in the process of filling up or draining with water. Sometimes John even uses a foldable bike to cycle between locks and speed up the process. Opening the panels on the locks can be hard. If the water level inside the lock chamber and outside are not absolutely the same you are not able to open the gate. Luckily most locks have grips on the gate area to help you push the gate open.

Threading into a tunnel

My biggest nightmare are tunnels: Usually narrow as locks they are not only difficult to get in, but even more difficult to steer once inside as there is hardly any room for steering corrections. On busy canals there are 2-way tunnels and they are wide enough for two boats to pass each other - but no matter what you do you will most likely scratch along the tunnel walls or hit the other boat.
Don't take a wrong turn in a canal as turning around in a boat is a difficult operation. You can reverse in a boat, but steering in reverse is almost impossible. Basically you just hope for the best and correct by going forward again. By the way: Braking is also done by reversing.

Disappearing into a lock

All this sounds really complicated and it definitely is very difficult for a beginner - but it is also great fun. After having been classified as a hopeless case and then re-emerged as a natural lock talent I became really addicted. So in the last month John has mostly been twiddling has thumbs (and silently praying) whilst I was doing all the steering and becoming better every day. I might not have been John's fastest student, but definitely his most enthusiastic. I am very sure that this has not been my last time on a narrowboat.

The Narrowboat

2011-11-15T23:09:00.000+01:00

I must admit that I did not have much clue about what to expect on a narrowboat; I mean before John had bought one I did not even know that there is such a thing as a narrowboat! So when I arrived I did not expect much - and was surprised a lot. After having spend the last 4 years mostly in a tent a narrowboat seemed like a palace!

Cream Tea on the boat

Let's start with some figures: John's boat is 18 meters (60 ft) long and weighs 17 tons. When I first saw it I would never have believed that I would once be able to steer that monster into narrow locks without even touching the walls... At least they do not run very fast: You are mostly ambling along at walking speed and you are legally not allowed to go faster than 4 mph. Most standard narrowboats including John's have the following areas: A sleeping area with a double bed, a bathroom with a toilet and shower/bathtub, a kitchen, a dining area with a table and seating and a lounge with comfy chairs and a book shelf. After having cooked on a camp stove with one pot only on my JoGLE hike I was mostly impressed with the kitchen: A real stove with 4 flames, a grill, an oven, a microwave, a fridge and of course, hot and cold running water. And to make luxury complete John even has a washing machine on his boat! Oh, I did forget to mention the TV...

Rainbow Lorikeet

Now you will wonder how all this is run. These boats have two separate battery systems: One small battery to start the engine and one big battery for all the electric applications on the boat. Both batteries are re-charged when the engine is running. There is a 450 litre water tank - that takes ages to fill up at the water points. The water is heated when the engine is running and can get so hot that you could burn yourself. In fact, the water is used as a cooling system for the engine. I was surprised to see that almost all waste water like for example from the washing machine or the shower is disposed directly into the canals. Only human waste is collected and disposed in sanitary stations. The boat is heated with a stove burning either solid fuel or Diesel like the engine. Considering the luxury such a boat offers I was surprised how little fuel it needs. The fuel tank holds 225 liters and John assured me that he usually only fills up once per month for around 120 £.

John bought his boat second hand from an Australian couple and that might explain its name: Rainbow Lorikeet which is an Australian parrot. The pre-owners apparently were great bird lovers as there are bird pictures and statues all over the place including a knitted sulphur-crested cockatoo. I noticed another peculiarity of the boating community: People are not called by their own name but by the name of their boat. John thus became Rainbow... Well, it could be worse.

The British Canal System

2011-11-14T21:31:00.000+01:00

James Brindley,
engineer of the first canal

My first big surprise with the canal system was to find out how old it is. I had somehow assumed that all those canals had been built at the same time the railways were built in the second half of the 19th century. But in fact the canal system is 100 years older: The first long canal was constructed in 1761 and the heyday of the canals was in the second half of the 18th century. The main reason for those huge projects was to get coal from the mines into the big cities. Transport with horses on roads was expensive and unreliable whereas canal boats were much cheaper and predictable. With the advent of the canals the price of coal was halved! More and more canals were built by different companies and were sometimes running parallel for several miles. But 50 years later the canals got a big competitor: Railway - and railway would eventually and almost completely replace canal transport.

In the first half of the 20th century most of the British canal system had fallen into disrepair. Only very few working boats were left and due to lack of maintenance some canals could not even be navigated any more. But in 1939 British writer Tom Rolt decided to spend his honeymoon on a narrow boat touring the canals and write a book about it. Very unexpectedly this book would trigger the renaissance of the British canal system after an unpromising start. First WW II intervened and then no publisher wanted the manuscript because there seemed to be no market for it. But when it was eventually published in 1944 it became an immediate success with both public and critics and stirred a new interest in canal boating as a form of recreation. The timing is very important here: The decrepit canal system was nationalised in 1947 and many canals were facing closure. Rolt's book and the Inland Waterways Association, a group co-founded by Rolt prevented closures through campaigning and created a lot of public interest in the canal system.

Lock

Today British Waterways runs the 2,200 miles long canal system that is used by approximately 35,000 boats. There is almost no commercial traffic left on the canals. Almost all boats are serving a recreational purpose and many people actually live on their boat year round. British Waterways maintains the canals, bridges, locks and tow paths and supports the boaters with water points, sanitary stations and rubbish disposal. The use of the canal system is free for hikers and cyclists on the the towpaths, but boaters have to pay for a license in order to use the canals. The price depends on the length of the boat: John with a 18 m boat pays 790 £ per year for his license that allows him to use the canals and all its services including short term mooring for up to 14 days at one spot. Only long term mooring costs extra. Boating has become incredibly popular in the UK and has created its own subculture. There are magazines ("Canal boat"), an internet forum ("Canal world") and tons of boat yards, marinas and boat shops.

On a boat to nowhere....

2011-11-14T21:21:00.000+01:00

John

After finishing my JoGLE hike I had planned to visit my former British cycling partner John. John and I had coincidentally met in Australia over 2 years ago and ended up cycling together for 7 months in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea. In September 2009 we split up: I went back to Germany to prepare my next trip and John completed his round the world cycling trip in the US. Over two years we have always stayed in contact and I observed with great curiosity how John was dealing with similar problems I have had: Where and how do you live after such a long period of nomadism?

John has found a great solution for this problem: He lives on a houseboat on the English canals now! Before he gets too upset when he reads this I want to correct myself: He lives on a narrowboat - but anyone who is not intimately familiar with the canal boat scene in the UK will probably not understand the difference between a narrowboat and a houseboat: A narrowboat is a houseboat that is narrow enough to fit into the small locks and bridges of the British canal system.

Me having fun on the boat

When he got back from his 3 year long round the world cycling trip he stayed with family first. When some other German cycling friends (he seems to be stuck with Germans wherever he goes) he knew from his RTW bike trip came to the UK, he went on a cycling trip with them around his home country. As many bike routes in the UK follow tow paths he saw a lot of narrow boats - and decided very quickly that this is the way to go. Without much hesitation (and no prior experience in boating) he bought a boat and started living on it. When I heard about his new investment, I was more than skeptical: John has never showed any interest in boats before - for Christ's sake he can't even swim!!! I was not very keen on the house boat part, but I wanted to see John again and therefore he eventually persuaded me to visit him on his boat after my hike. He promised that I would not have to do anything (especially not walking) and that I could cook 3 course dinners every night on something better than a camping stove. Although all this sounded very tempting I had planned to stay only a couple of days and then fly back to Germany.

Well, things turned out to be very different: I ended up running several kilometers each day between locks (so much for no more hiking) and my stay extended from a couple of days into an entire month - because I started to like narrowboating so much!!! In fact I like it so much and became so interested in it that I will write a couple of entries about it.

John O'Groats to Land's End: Tipps and Tricks

2011-11-10T23:45:00.000+01:00

Churches and Cemeteries: When I hiked through Germany I always looked for churches and cemeteries. Why is that? German cemeteries almost always have a free and easily accessible water tap because people have to water the plants and flowers on the graves. And now the bad news for the UK: British cemeteries generally do not have water taps - because they graves are usually just plain tombstones with no plants.... So what about churches? In Germany I used them to recharge my electronic equipment while having lunch outside. In the UK this strategy showed mixed results: In most areas, especially in Scotland and Northern England I found that almost all churches were locked. But when I had almost given up hope I found that many churches on Offa's Dyke Path were extremely hiker friendly! Not only were they open and had electrical outlets, they also offered free tea-making facilities! That is something that should definitely be exported to Germany....

Animals: The UK is definitely a dog country. Nowhere else in the world have I encountered so many dogs. Usually I am very afraid of dogs and have had some unpleasant experiences with them. But to my big surprise I never had any bad experiences on my JoGLE hike. I hardly ever saw a stray dog - almost all dogs are out with their owners. Although they are still dogs and have selective hearing I was never attacked or even felt threatened. Due to the dog density "No Fouling" signs are ubiquitous - as are they little dog doo doo plastic bags that are now littering the countrysides.... I have mentioned unpleasant cow encounters several times and indeed did I feel very threatened by cattle, especially after having read a magazine article about several hikers who had died in cow attacks. But I want to put this into perspective: All fatal cow attacks were connected with free running dogs. The dog attacks the cow who in turn wanted to protect its calf and went for the dog. Unfortunately, the dog owner then got between the cow and the dog - and got trampled to death. As I was hiking without a dog and trying to give the cows a wide berth I probably never was in any serious danger - although it felt very differently.... I liked sheep best: They always run away from you, do not make much noise and leave very little poo!

Clouds and sea on the SWCP

Weather: This hike proved that what we learnt in our English lessons at school really is true: British are obsessed with their weather! It really is the most favourite topic for small talk and countless times I was greeted with "Lovely day, isn't it?" - even if the whole day has been miserable and the sun had just come out for 2 minutes. Two things really surprised me about British weather: I did not expect such a tremendous difference between the weather up North and down South. Although I was hiking into from summer into fall instead of getting colder it got warmer and warmer because I walked from North to South. Although this can partly be attributed to an unusual weather pattern this year this huge range of climate should be taken into consideration when planning a hike - as should the probability of rain. It seems to rain almost every day and Brits think they are in drought when it has not rained for three days - I am quoting a native here. But the good news is that the rain usually does not last very long: Very often I would hike in sunshine with very little clouds, that became more and more within 15 minutes, then dumped a 4 minutes shower on me only to disappear and let me dry my now wet stuff in brilliant sunshine again. For me wind has been the biggest problem - not rain.

TT Rainbow in the Scottish Highlands

Equipment: I do not want to go through my whole gear list here - I was carrying pretty much what I am usually using on a long hiking trail. But I want to point out two pieces of equipment that posed a certain problem for me but worked out extremely well in the end. The first item was the tent: My default tent was a Tarptent Contrail but this has proved to be not very wind stable on my last trips. As I knew that I would be camping in very exposed terrain most of the time I had to bring something more robust and therefore I decided on a Tarptent Rainbow - which was even donated to me! And this tent worked out remarkably well. Only slightly heavier than the Contrail it was even roomier, very easy to set up and worked resisted the wind pretty good. It still is not a Hilleberg expedition tent, but is a very good compromise between weight and stability. I will definitely take it again on a similar trip. The next concern was my sleeping bag. Although I had always used down bags before I realised that this would be a trip in very damp conditions with little opportunity to dry stuff in the sun. As down's warming capacity deteriorates rapidly when damp I decided to bring the BPL synthetic quilt. It worked surprisingly well, too: When temperatures dropped below zero Celsius I was still pretty warm in it - although I had to wear all my clothes. But still: it fared much better than expected and will probably become my standard bag from now on.

John O'Groats to Land's End: Conclusion

2011-11-04T20:06:00.007+01:00

As you might have guessed from my previous posts this hike has not been my most favourite hike. To tell the truth it has probably been the worst hike I have done since I have started this blog. But still: If you asked me if I would recommend this hike to a friend I would not say "No". I would just say that there are better hikes out there. So why has this hike been such an unpleasant experience? There are various factors that in combination with each other turned this hike into a miserable trip. Some of them are just bad luck, some are my own mistakes, but most of all I came to the conclusion that the UK is not the greatest country for long-distance hiking:

Bad luck: I started August 11th and finished October 23rd. Right from the beginning of my trip all the way to the end of September I have had bad weather. Not disastrous weather like the torrential rain I had experienced on the Florida Trail or in Australia, just colder and windier than usual weather. I had frost on my tent on August 25th!!! The constant strong wind made hiking cold and miserable and camping challenging. Bad weather can happen on any trip but in the UK it has a much higher impact on the quality of your hike than in other countries. And unfortunately, Scotland and Northern England were experiencing a very cold and rainy summer this year. End of September the weather changed all of a sudden and I was rewarded with an unexpected glorious Indian summer. But unfortunately by that time I had already been so ground down that the good weather could not boost my morale any more.

My own mistakes: For JoGLE I had used the same sort of map / guidebook setup like on my hike through Germany a couple of months earlier. I had the whole route as a track on my GPS. The GPS had only basic maps, in this case Open Street Maps. I carried guidebooks with strip maps for the marked official trails and print outs for the stretches between them. On top of all that I carried an overall guidebook for the whole route by Cicerone - something that was not available for my German hike. This set up had worked extremely well for my hike in Germany, but was absolutely insufficient for JoGLE. Why is that? Well, in Germany there was not much need to find alternate routes due to bad weather. Also German trails are very well marked. Even if you do not have great maps, you will get there by just following the trail markers. The situation in the UK is very different: Gale force winds and driving rain very often made me want to change to a lower or less exposed route - but unfortunately alternative routes were not covered by my strip maps or print outs and my basic GPS maps were too unreliable and not detailed enough for creating alternates. Following established trails was not an option either: There are far less waymarked trails in the UK than in Germany and even if there was an established trail the waymarking is usually so bad that you will get lost without a detailed map.

Stile

A second mistake has been to trust the Cicerone guidebook. Although the route given in there, the list of trail town amenities and the sketch maps were pretty good and accurate, the break down into daily stages led to several problems. The author gives 2 schedules for JoGLE: 2 months or 3 months. I had always considered myself to be an experienced hiker and therefore believed I could easily do the hike in 2 months. I planned my resupply accordingly and set off with 9 days worth of food for the first 8 day stretch - and ended up with almost no food left in the middle of the Scottish Highlands because I physically could not hike the daily mileage. I only escaped starvation by detouring to Ullapool with the map another hiker had given me. Even in hindsight it is still a mystery to me how the author can suggest a daily mileage of 40 km and more in challenging terrain like the pathless Scottish Highlands, demanding Offa's Dyke Path or the steep South West Coast Path. I was falling more and more behind schedule and getting more and more frustrated by it.

UK is not a good country for long-distance hiking: Keep in mind that I am writing this paragraph just with respect to long-distance hiking, e.g. month long camping treks. What is tolerable for shorter trips becomes a big problem if you have to deal with day after day after day! And some problems do not arise if you are not camping but using hostels and or B&B. What made me arrive at my "not suitable" verdict?

No forest: As I have pointed out in earlier posts, only 5% of the UK is forested as opposed to 30% of Germany. And this leads to a serious problem for long-distance hikers: There is no shelter from the inclement weather. You are almost always directly exposed to the wind and rain. This can make hiking miserable and camping almost impossible. If you are able to find a rare patch of forest it will be fenced in and most probably completely overgrown.

Bad waymarking: There are not many fully waymarked long-distance trails. Of course there are thousands of public footpaths, but finding your way on them can be challenging. Because there are no trees, blazes on trees that are used in Germany will not be found in the UK. Instead you will see signpost showing you the general direction - and then you are on your own finding your way across huge pastures full of aggressive cattle or mud pools. If you are lucky you will find foot paths signs on stiles and gates, but again they will only show the general direction. Even with a good map and/or a GPS navigation is difficult and time consuming.

Difficult terrain: The combination of cattle, a lot of rain and no forest turns a huge part of British trails into one huge mud pool. Especially notorious are cattle gates: Because there is a lot of animal movement the area around them is generally one big dirt pool. But of course the gates are usually locked and you can only open it by stepping right into the deepest part of the dirt pool - yuk! Although you would assume that there aren't many steep climbs and descents because the UK does not have any high mountains. Wrong! Whenever there is a hill the trail climbs straight up the steepest slope only to drop straight down again immediately. It seemed to me that they tried to make the hills as difficult as possible in order to disguise the fact that there are no mountains. Also: Switchbacks do neither exist in British vocabulary nor on trails....

Can you spot the stile?

Stiles and gates: It is not a great problem to climb a stile once in a while, but if you have to climb one every 10 minutes it starts to get annoying. I encountered the highest density of stiles on Offa's Dyke with up to 80 stiles in 20 km!!!! And of course most of them are not exactly easy: I encountered loads of half or completely broken stiles, slippery rock stiles and stiles completely overgrown with stinging nettles and/or thorny blackberry bushes.

All those factors lead to a dramatic drop of my daily mileage. I usually hike around 36 km per day, whereas I was happy to cover 30 km on my JoGLE hike. The only stretches were I could actually just hike without spending hours on navigation, climbing stiles and mastering mud pools were on canal tow paths or rail trails.

To sum it up: I think there is much better and easier long-distance hiking in other countries than the UK. If you do not want to specifically hike in the UK for whatever reason, I would just recommend hiking somewhere else. If you insist on hiking in the UK be prepared for a low daily mileage and lots of rest days due to bad weather. Carry good rain gear and bring detailed maps for the whole trail. If I was to hike in the UK again I would chose a route along towpaths and rail trails - or cycle John O'Groats to Land's End instead of hiking it. But if you are just looking for a 1 or 2 week hiking holiday the UK offers some really unique and beautiful trails like the Pennine Way, Offa's Dyke Path or the South West Coast Path.

John O'Groats to Land's End: South West Coast Path

2011-11-02T22:41:00.000+01:00

Walking towards Westward Ho!

I joined the South West Coast at Barnstaple still without a South West Coast Path guidebook. I had not been able to get the one I wanted in Bristol or any other town along my route. So I really pushed hard to make it to Barnstaple before shop closing time. I had even decided to reward myself with a stay in a B&B there. I reached the Visitor Information just 15 minutes before closing time on a normal weekday in October and asked them to book me into a nice B&B - only to find out that everything was fully booked! This was the one and only time I wanted to splurge - and then I cannot find accommodation.... I had to walk back for about 3 km to the last possible campsite I had passed without having indulged in a shower, laundry or other luxuries of civilisation. At least I had been able to purchase a guidebook 5 minutes before the book shop closed and was now able to plan the last days of my hike.

I must admit that I felt really tired and worn out by then. I had only about one week left to go but it seemed like an eternity. I just wanted this hike to be over - a feeling that I had not had before very often. I still wanted to finish but if I did not want to hate this hike I had to take it easy - and that is difficult on the SWCP that has constant steep climbs and descents. Therefore I made 2 decisions: Stay in hostels wherever possible to avoid camping in gale force wind and short cut the SWCP by flat road walking when quite country lanes offer an easy alternative. My first hostel stay on the SWCP was Westward Ho! This little town is really spelt like that - including the exclamation mark! The hostel was fantastic and I even had the whole dormitory for myself - an experience that should repeat itself in the two other hostels Boscastle and Perranporth. This was low season and hardly anyone else around except for the weekends when sometimes the whole hostel gets rented out. The road walking was just a short experience: First of all because there were not too many feasible quiet country lanes, but mainly because I realised that the coast was really spectacular and even worth the constant ups and downs.

The terrain on the SWCP varies from walking on sand beaches to rocky cliff top walking and is truly spectacular most of the time. As an added bonus there is lots of evidence of former tin mining. There are mine shafts and ruins of former industrial buildings. You can even visit a former tin mine which is right on trail - but I must admit that I could not be bothered to see it. On average I had 1.500 meters of ascent every day and that does not put you in sightseeing mood. At least the weather was behaving itself during this last week. Camping became my biggest problem: There was no shelter from the wind on the exposed cliff tops and the only chance of finding a decent campsite was in the small valleys or by venturing a bit off trail into a little patch of forest. It was difficult to tell from the map what the ground would be like but I was usually lucky and found a halfway decent spot.

Eventually the end of my hike came into sight. I was counting down the days and hours and still feel a bit guilty about it. The SWCP is truly beautiful but I was not in the mood to enjoy it much. After a while all the rugged headlands and beautiful beaches looked pretty much the same to me. Most of all I was constantly worried about the weather changing. My hike had taken longer than expected and I was well into the second half of October. How long would this good spell last? Well, it lasted until my very last day on my thruhike - I was very lucky.

The End at Land's End

I finished on October 24th at Land's End in gale force wind that made walking difficult and even scared the tourists at this well visited tourist spot. It is so touristy that the famous "Land's End signpost" is owned by a professional photographer who does not allow individuals to take pictures of it with their own camera - you have to pay for that privilege. I dutifully took some finish pictures, signed the John O'Groats to Land's End register, had a look into the gift shop and waited for the bus to take me to Penzance. My hike was finally over - thank God.

John O'Groats to Land's End: Offa's Dyke to South West Coast Path

2011-11-02T21:28:00.000+01:00

M4 road bridge

The stretch between Chepstow at the end of Offa's Dyke and Bristol is pretty much a hiker's nightmare. First of all you have to cross the Severn River and the only way to day that beside swimming is the M4 motorway bridge. This bridge is 4 km long, is fully exposed to the elements and has 4 lanes of fast traffic on it. The only good news is that there is a separate bike lane that can be used for hiking and that I had exceptionally good weather on that day meaning that I did not get blown off. Once off the motorway bridge you meander around pastures and fields until you hit the suburbs of Bristol.

Bristol

It would have been a very long day without any good camping options if I had not planned a couchsurfing rest day in Bristol to break up this long stretch through urban areas. It came as a very positive surprise that my couchsurfing hosts almost lived on my route through the outskirts of Bristol! Phil and Sheila are very experienced couchsurfing hosts and guests and had a lot of interesting couchsurfing stories to tell. They have even couchsurfed in India - which has put some interesting ideas into my mind. As usual time was too short: So many stories to share and a lot of sightseeing to do. Bristol came as a very positive surprise, too: I had expected a rather ugly city with no sights and was surprised to find a vibrant city with plenty to see - I spent half a day in the newly opened Bristol Museum.

Dyke

Then I set off to tackle the second stretch of urban hiking through the outskirts of Bristol this time crossing the River Avon on the M5 motorway bridge. When I finally reached more rural areas I had to mostly hike along dykes. This was all very low-lying country and instead of using fences pastures were divided by dykes. I had found a nice patch of forest on the map for camping but when I got there I had to realise that it was completely surrounded by a dyke - no way whatsoever to get in. It was totally overgrown anyways. What now? I did not really want to camp with all those curious cows... but luckily I found a nice patch next to a footpath - separated from the cows only by a dyke.

Sunrise over Exmoor

Things got really bad when I reached Exmoor National Park. I have had decent weather for over 2 weeks by then but of course the one day I had to hike across moorland the weather turned bad. It rained the whole day and I was soaking wet. My morale reached a very low point when I met 2 farmers tending to their sheep and they told me: "We wondered wether we should go and work in this miserable weather, but you are even hiking in it?...." I should have just taken the next possible campsite then and had a half rest day. Instead I hiked on trusting my guidebook that promised campsites further along the River Exe. 2 hours later and even wetter than before I had reached Exe Head with not a single feasible campsite in sight. I looked around for almost an hour I could not find the tiniest piece of ground that would not bubble up water as soon as I stepped onto it. As light was fading I started to get desperate. I saw a tiny bit of forest but that was very close to a farm house. I did not dare to camp there without asking for permission - and usually I do not camp that close to civilisation. But this was one of the rare cases when I did not have a choice. I walked up to the farmhouse, knocked and yelled but nobody answered. I tried the door and it was open. I could have stolen the whole household as nobody was there but the house was clearly inhabited. So what to do now? I walked around a bit and then luckily the farmers showed up clearly surprised to find a totally drenched, slightly incoherent hiker at their doorstep - but they did not have any objections to my camping plans. And this being the UK I was immediately invited to a cup of tea. 2 hours later I emerged back into my tent after several cups of tea, half a dozen eggs, my clothes dried in their boiler room and loads of knowledge about farming in the UK. I had quizzed them with hundreds of questions and it had been especially interesting for me to compare my Australian agricultural knowledge with the UK.

John O'Groats to Land's End: Offa's Dyke Path

2011-10-30T00:36:00.000+02:00

Chirk Castle

I wanted to join Offa's Dyke Path as far north as possible in order to be able to see the 2 National Trust castles along the trail: Chirk and Powis. But unfortunately between me and Chirk Castle was the totally unmaintained Maelor Way - and Chirk Castle closed at 5 pm! I decided to roadwalk to get there in time for some sightseeing. I arrived at 4 pm only to learn that I had to walk half a mile around the whole place just in order to get my free National Trust member ticket. By 4.15 pm I was completely pissed off with the whole castle idea, but at least in the possession of a ticket. But 45 minutes proved to be enough for the castle - although impressive from the outside there was not that much to see inside.

Once on Offa's Dyke Path I realised that I had run into a positive problem: Good weather! I could not believe it, but now - already towards the end of my hike when I had completely given up hope that the weather would ever improve - an incredibly warm Indian summer had begun. On October 1st temperatures nearly reached 30 degrees Celsius - after I had had frost on my tent in Scotland on August 25th! Day after day after day sunshine! I started hiking in shorts and a T-shirt and nearly got a sunburn. Now you wonder why all that is a problem. Well, I wanted to as much advantage of the good weather as possible and lose not a single day of sunshine for a rest day. I even skipped Powis Castle in order to hike on and on and on - and ended up hiking 2 weeks without a rest day. After all that bad weather I had not expected that the weather would stay that nice for so long. But I did not only need a rest, I most definitely needed a shower and laundry. I started to smell really bad even for thruhiker standards. I washed up in a lot of rivers and hand washed one piece of clothing at a time so I could dry it a the back of backpack while hiking. On my second last day on Offa's Dyke I got to Monmoth were I discovered a camp ground with a coin-operated shower. I could not believe my luck but had to realise then that I did not have a 20 pence coin needed to operate the shower. I went off to get change. The first person I asked did not have enough small change but gave me 20 pence. "Don't worry," she said. "I just want you to have a shower." I guess I must have smelled really bad....

Offa's Dyke offered a lot of hiker amenities: Lots of the churches were open to hikers and offered tea making facilities and sometimes even free biscuits or juices. Free food was available in the form of huge apple orchards, the occasional plum tree and loads of blackberries. And to my great relief the waymarking was excellent. Still hiking was not easy: The trail follows a dyke built in the 8th century by the Welsh king Offa in order to defend his kingdom against the English. The steeper the terrain the better for defence purposes - and therefore 12 centuries later I was climbing up and down every single steep hill that was around. I felt like back on the Heysen Trail in South Australia! The actual dyke is sometimes very well preserved - and has sometimes completely been ploughed over by farmers. Although it often looks more like a mole hill than a defence dyke I still had to admire the technical achievement of building this 285 km long wall with just manual labour in the 8th century. Very little of Offa's Dyke Path is on exposed ridges, except the stretch along Hatterall Ridge at an altitude of over 500 m. But here you are rewarded with great views and the sight of wild ponies. Needless to say that when I hiked Hatterall Ridge I had glorious sunshine, but gale force wind....

Hatterall Ridge

I really liked Offa's Dyke Path a lot: Good waymarking, enough patches of forest for good camping, scenic and convenient trail towns and most importantly really nice hiking. The hiking is strenouos due the steep terrain but you see a lot of varied terrain. In addition to the usual sheep and cows (which here are very tame and used to hikers) you will even see wild ponies! I can definitely recommend Offa's Dyke Path and I prefer it to the Pennine Way because you are less exposed to the wind and the weather. And if you are forced to have a rest day due to bad weather then there is plenty to see in the trail towns.

John O'Groats to Land's End: From Pennine Way to Offa's Dyke

2011-10-26T23:04:00.001+02:00

I was really desperate to leave the Pennine Way: I was just fed up with the seemingly endless bog and the constant gale-force wind. I left it earlier than planned in an area where I unfortunately did not have any maps for... oops. Still by using my GPS map, asking day hikers and doing half a day of road walking I was able to connect back to my planned route. And what a relief it was to be off those exposed ridges! All of a sudden I was in low-lying, pretty agricultural country - apple and plum trees everywhere, no more wind and even sunshine! And the very best of all: I was back into trees. Of course there were no extended forests, but little patches of it and lots of trees lining the fields. Camping became easy again.

On my very first day off the Pennine I had a very funny experience: I had found a nice little forest patch on my map that even existed in reality when I got there. Nice pine forest, but very densely grown. And as always in the UK with a fence around it... But I managed to find a gate, fight my way through the trees and find a great camping spot on pine duff completely sheltered from the wind. Life was good again and I was enjoying an early dinner when all of a sudden I heard a voice. I was very much surprised as my little forest patch was surrounded by huge pastures - and no settlement in sight. So where would a person come from? To my even bigger surprise this person was not talking, but singing. Actually singing rock tunes very loudly?! What on earth was going on here? I was pretty much convinced that nobody could find me inside this little pine plantation jungle, but still... Well, after carefully peaking out of my tent and listening it turned out that some teenage boy with rock star ambitions was practicing being the lead singer while walking his dog. He was pretty persistent and sang for over an hour - not having the slightest clue that a very surprised German hiker was listening to his exercises hiding in the trees. It would indeed have been very embarrassing for either of us to be discovered...

Greeting comitee

My planned route was stringing lesser known trails together: The Gritstone Trail, South Cheshire Way and Maelor Way. Because they were less travelled than the National Trails I encountered new problems: First of all the cows were not used to hikers. As soon as I had to cross a field with cows I was checked out by my big four-legged friends. I developed the following strategy: Climb the stile into the pasture and wait for half a minute. If the cows ignore you, just continue walking. If you are immediately surrounded by inquisitive bullocks, climb back to where you have come from and look for a different way. Unfortunately because these foot paths are very little hiked they are also very badly maintained. I encountered lots of broken or non-existing stiles, bad waymarking and paths overgrown with stinging nettles. In short very hard work - until I discovered that there were canals close by. And that meant easy and smooth canal tow paths! The lesson I learnt is that 8 km along a tow path take as long as 4 km on an obscure and neglected trail like the Maelor Way. So even if the distance was longer it made more sense to detour to the tow paths. Better maps would have helped a lot but I still managed to make good progress eventually on tow paths and quiet country lanes only using the foot paths when absolutely necessary.

Moreton Hall

This stretch also brought a nice cultural surprise: Moreton Hall, a medieval castle now run by the National Trust. And I being a National Trust member could visit for free. Nice forest close by that provided lovely camping turned this day into a real delight. Plus the weather was getting better and better every day - I could not believe my luck. I started to look forward to Offa's Dyke Path, the next National Trail along my route.

John O'Groats to Land's End: The Pennine Way 2

2011-10-25T22:22:00.000+02:00

I had hoped that after a rest day in the youth hostel in Alston the weather might have had improved - and the forecast had predicted a less windy day. So off I went in the morning in order to go over Cross Fell - the highest and most exposed place on the whole Pennine Way. Cross Fell is just 893 meters high which is nothing really measured with German standards. But here in the UK with nothing between you and the Atlantic Ocean the winds on top of it were horrible. Again I had to be careful not to been blown over. I had realised before how dramatically the weather can change here but on top of Cross Fell a sunny and clear day turned into an almost complete white out with 10 meters visibility within 10 minutes! But with my GPS and following the flagstones I managed to get down Cross Fell into a nice and calm valley with no wind at the end of the day.

I still had seemingly endless days to go on the Pennine Way and I felt already thoroughly fed up with the miserable weather. Luckily another highlight of my trip should come up soon: A visit to my old PCT hiking friend John who lives close by the Pennine Way. We had started the PCT together back in 2004 and had even hiked one day together. We both finished on different days but had always stayed in contact - and this would be my chance to meet him again. We had arranged a date and place where to meet and due to his schedule I could walk at a leisurely schedule now. This came in very handy when one day at 2.30 pm I came across a very nice shelter on the trail. Of course this shelter was not mentioned in any guide book or any map: Brits seem to think that hikers do not need to know where shelters are - I had found that out already in Scotland with the mountain bothies.... I could not resist the temptation and settled into the shelter reading a book and relaxing - when all of a sudden all heaven and hell broke lose and it started pouring down hard. It rained so hard for half an hour that water was flooding into the shelter from underneath the door!!! I was very glad not be out there hiking and was rewarded with an incredible rainbow the next morning. Of course as soon as I left the shelter it would start raining again....

Crazy John

By the time I arrived in Horton-on-Ribblesdale and was picked up by John's partner Steph I was thoroughly fed up with the whole Pennine Way. It did not really boost my morale when John explained to me that the insufficient waymarking on the Pennine Way was done intentionally in order to achieve a sort of wilderness experience for the hikers! I was already way behind my original time schedule at that point and was getting worried about the ever deteriorating weather and my equipment that might not be really up to an English autumn. I was especially worried about my sleeping bag which at that point was just a synthetic quilt. I had already woken up in a frozen over tent in August and thought I would not survive colder weather without a proper winter sleeping bag. When I told John about my worries he just asked me: "What sleeping bag do you want?" First I did not understand his question but then he explained to me that as a freelance writer for outdoor magazines he gets a lot of equipment for free - for writing test reports. He actually came up with 4 synthetic sleeping bags I could chose between as a present. He wanted to clear his storage rooms and claimed that I would actually do him a favour by taking one. What hiker can resist such an offer? I mailed my quilt back to Germany and continued my hike with a new winter sleeping and other such goodies as replacement tent stakes and a new gas cannister. And of course we had a lovely time chatting about the good old times on the PCT. I left his place in relatively good spirits only to be drenched by a major downpour a couple of hours later and getting nearly hypothermic on another exposed ridge the same evening...

Malham Cove

I knew that in a few days another couchsurfing stay would come up in Hebden Bridge and also the trail offered a lot of very scenic highlights : Lots of waterfalls, High Cup Nick which is a fantastic glaciated valley and Malham Cove to name just a few. But the weather and the hard walking had ground me down. When I arrived in Hebden Bridge I was already counting kms before I could leave the exposed Pennine Way and return to some gentler hiking. And I had given up all hope on the weather ever improving. I still asked my couchsurfing host Karen to have a look at the weather forecast and we both could not really figure it out. We could not find the column for the probability and amount of rain. After a lot of guessing around we found the solution for this mystery: The forecast predicted a 0% chance of rain for the next 4 days. And that is something almost unheard of in Britain I assumed. I could hardly believe it but it almost turned out the be true. Only a little bit of drizzle for the next couple of days and then a major change of weather occurred: I was to experience a British Indian summer!

High Cup Nick

But to sum up the Pennine Way: It is a really very nice and incredibly spectacular and scenic hike - if the weather is good or decent. But if the weather is miserable you are in for big trouble. There are hardly any less exposed alternative routes to escape the wind and rain and hiking along these exposed ridges of the Pennines is a sure recipe for hypothermia. Do not assume that you can compare conditions between other countries and Britain at the same altitude - anything above 400 meters in the UK will be exposed and hard to walk in in bad weather. The lack of waymarking and fog with little visibility can make navigation a big issue. More than once could I see less than 10 meters and mistook cows for signposts! And of course you will be wading in mud most of the time.... No wonder that the popularity of the Pennine Way has steadily declined during the last 10 years. Half of the youth hostels along the trails have closed down you meet very little hikers along the trail. Still, it is a great trail - if you are willing to suffer through all I have mentioned you will be rewarded with unique sights.

John O'Groats to Land's End: Pennine Way 1

2011-09-13T13:37:00.001+02:00

I had hoped for things to improve on the Pennine Way. I had hiked it 6 years ago and had really enjoyed it then. But so far unfortunately it has not been very enjoyable. First of all it has turned out to be every bit as muddy as the Scotland - so I am back to wet feet and foot problems. Second the waymarking is really bad. As there are usually no trees around you cannot put blazes or signs on trees. The usual way to signposting is putting signs on stiles and fences. But if there is no such a thing around things are getting difficult. Very often it is impossible to see a trail on the ground as everything is boggy. Sheep and cattle make matters even worse as they mess up every sign of a trail, run down posts by using them for scratching against and generally turn the whole terrain into one gigantic mud pool. As the country is big and wide and open you cannot really get very lost, but still navigation takes up more time than I like.

Camping in this sort of terrain is also very problematic. Not only is it difficult to find dry ground, but because of high winds you want to find some shelter. Usually I just look for a forest, but this is diffcult in the UK. As I have mentioned before almost all the UK has been deforested already back in the Stone Ages. Nowadays only 5% of the UK is covered with forest as opposed to 30% in Germany and France. And the little forest that there is is usually ugly huge pine plantations. But at least those give good wind shelter! So on my first day on the Pennine Way I was planning on camping in one of those plantations. But to my big surprise I could not see any signs of a forest when I came closer to the area! I am not the greatest navigator on earth but I could not be that wrong in reading the map. Finally I realised what had happened: The whole forest had been completely - and I mean 100% - been clear cut. I was shocked! In Germany forest is very much valued and German forest law actually prohibits clear cuts. Of course even in Germany forest is economically used, but it is also regarded as a recreational area and therefore protected against clear cutting. I had not expected that clear cutting would be allowed in any Western highly populated country like the UK. Beside being an ugly scar in the landscape the negative effects of clear cutting like soil erosion are too well known now. But still here in the UK, that is scarcely forested to begin with it is still a common practice. Forest is just thought of as a commodity and is not given any protection as a recreational area. And I would see those ugly clear cuts again and again...

But this was not the end of my streak of bad luck: The weather has never been too good on this trip. In four weeks of hiking from mid-August to mid-September I have only been able to hike in a T-shirt for a couple of hours. Usually it is way too cold and windy for light clothes. Also it has rained almost every single day. Rain here has been very different though from the more continental German climate. In the UK you usually only get a drizzle - but it drizzles about every other hour. The usual weather pattern has been on and off rain during the day with occasional minutes of sunshine in between. At least you can dry out in between the showers. But two days ago things took a turn to the worse when the wind increased dramatically. With such a strong wind even a little drizzle hurts like needles and of course it chills your body temperature. I was hiking along Hadrian's Wall at that point - of course against the wind and totally exposed. I really started to worry about where to camp as I got wetter and colder by the minute and not even the tiniest bit of shelter in sight. I ended up camping next to a parking lot amongst at least some trees - and close to public toilets that could serve as an emergency shelter if things got really worse. The tent held up surprisingly well in these conditions and I usually put in ear plugs then - so at least I don't have to listen to the wind and be constantly afraid that a broken off tree branch will fall onto me and kill me. But at 4 am in the morning even the ear plugs could not drown out the wind any more and I realised that the night was over - and that I did not want to camp in this weather for another night. With the help of my GPS I planned a short cut hike to the next place with a youth hostel - mostly road walking and using rail trails. The Pennine Way itself is usually very exposed and I was not going to suffer through that. But even with this new route not being very much exposed and often sheltered by trees and rail embankments the wind was horrible. It was so strong that a couple of times I was nearly blown over and could hardly walk against it. I have very rarely been in wind like this before, but at least I made it to Alston and its fantastic little youth hostel where I am now having a rest day waiting for the wind to calm down.

John O'Groats to Land's End: The Scottish Borders

2011-09-13T12:56:00.001+02:00

After leaving West Linton and my fabulous CS host David I had 4 days to make it over to the Pennine Way and eventually leave Scotland for England. This short stretch shows how different hiking in the UK can be depending on whether you are on an established and waymarked trail or going cross-country.

St. Cuthbert's Way

The first day was partly cross-country again and as usual this ended up in a disaster. The cross-country section was only about 2 km but it took me 3 hours. Everything that could go wrong went wrong and I will give you a more detailed description to show what to avoid doing: First the trail was going exactly where it should go according to my sketch map AND GPS - great! But then - when the cross-country section started a nice track continued even with sign-posts saying it would go to my destination! So why go cross-country if there is a nice trail? I followed the nice sign-posted trail for about half an hour only to realise then that the direction of it was nowhere near to where it should go. And of course there was no waymarking now either. And of course I did not have a detailed map - a fact that I have come to regret hundreds of times on this trail before. So I just could turn back and get off the nice trail. When I was about 800 meters from where the cross-country section should be according to my GPS I decided to do a short-cut and just bushwhack over to it. Another huge mistake!!! I started out on what looked like a narrow trail on the edge of a plantation but it soon turned out to be a water ditch. And before I could think twice I was in the the middle of a grassy swamp between blow-down trees with wet feet. Well, I could manage another 600 meters of that, couldn't I? These 600 meters took me 45 minutes jumping from one grass island to the next one only to end up before a stream with knee deep bog around it. After wading through that bog I spent the next 45 minutes climbing up a steep hill through waist-high ferns scaring away the sheep who were wondering about this crazy hiker screaming German curses at herself. When I finally thought I would be where I was supposed to be it turned out that I was supposed to be 100 meters higher - so much for me being capable of reading a map. A last scramble through sheep shit and bog brought me eventually to a forest road - after 3 hours. So much for going cross-country in the UK.

But things did improve the next days as I was on established trails again. First on the Southern Upland Trail that was so nice that I am actually considering to hike it one day. There even was a purpose-built bothy on the trail! Next day was on St. Cuthbert's Way visiting the three Scottish Border Abbeys Melrose, Dryburgh and Jedburgh. The abbeys are all ruins so I did not bother paying 5,50 £ to visit them. The most remarkable incident for me was seeing a three-legged dog on that trail. As its owner assured me it is getting along very well on its three legs and gets spoilt by all the tourists and hikers who take a pity on it - it had lost its leg in a car accident 8 years ago. Now it has become a local celebrity with hikers on the St. Cuthbert's Trail as it is walked there every day and darts over to any hiker around to beg for treats. Finally a last day on Dere Street brought me to the Pennine Way. Dere Street is actually an old Roman road, although nowadays you cannot see much of it, but like all things Roman it is a big issue in the UK and has even been waymarked - with a Roman military helmet! And were Dere Street meets the Pennine Way there is a long fence - the border fence between Scotland and England.

John O'Groats to Land's End: The Central Scottish Way

2011-09-05T21:03:00.000+02:00

A JoGLE hike links together long-distance trails - but sometimes it is sort of difficult to get from the end of one trail to the beginning of the next one. On this stage of my hike I had to get from the Southern end of the West Highland Way on the Western Side of Scotland to the Nothern End of the Pennine Way which is on the Eastern side. And in between the two is the most populated and industrialised area of whole Scotland - the region between Glasgow and Edinburgh. So manouvering through that bit of civilisation seemed to be complicated and the only sort of trail I could find was call Central Scottish Way. There is a totally outdated guidebook from 1996 by a guy called Erl Wilkie about this "trail" and my Cicerone guidebook was going the same way.

First of all the Wilkie book turned out to be completely useless, but at least the sketch maps in the Cicerone were good enough - especially since basically all of this stretch is along disused train lines and canal tow pathes. I was really dreading this section because I thought it would be ugly, noisy and camping almost impossible to find. Well, I was wrong on almost all points.

The old rail trails and especially the tow pathes turned out to be very scenic, mostly through woods and albeit always being close to civilisation most of this stretch felt very remote. Plus I could see a lot of old industrial monuments like old aequaducts and railway bridges. Of course it was not the peace and quiet of deep forests, but it was remarkably quiet despite the fact that there was usually a railway and a motorway nearby. But these old railway lines and the canals are sort of in a deep cut channel - some of it protected from the outside world by huge heaps of shale (Schiefer), another reminiscent of Scottish industrial past. On these tow pathes I felt like in a little protected world. The only other people around were cyclists and people walking their dogs.

Canal tow path

Even camping turned out to be easier than I had thought. The first day I had planned with the map to end at a place with some decent forest to hide in and camp. I found the spot with painfully hurting feet and very little daylight left. Ok, I had to climb over a fence to get into the forest, but I did not think much of it. And I also did not pay much attention to the fact that there were cow paddies all over the place and lots of muddy footprints. I was just starting to set up my tent when the first steer spotted me. I was starting to deliberate whether to move or not when all of a sudden a stampede of 20 young steers came gallopping towards me. I was nearly shitting my pants and started panicking. I grabbed all my tent stuff and stuffed it into my backpack ready to run - but it was already too late: I was surrounded by a bunch of angry young steers that seemed to bluff charge me. They came running after me at full speed and would only stop 2 meters in front of me by digging in their hoofs in an emergency break. To make matters worse I had just recently read an article of hikers getting trampled and killed by cows... I started sweating profusely and praying. Slowly I retraced my steps back through the muck to the barbed wire fence - closely followed by my young steer friends who would run towards me from all directions. And when I had finally made it back to the fence in one piece they would not let me get to the fence by crowding in front of it. How would I ever get out of this paddock again? Luckily part of this paddock had been fenced off with only one strand of barbed wire and I just jumped over it into safety - with my steer friends watching every single one of my steps. I was shaking - but I was alive. And I still had to find a campsite with hurting feet and almost no daylight. When I eventually found a halfway decent spot in the twilight I realised too late that I was about 20 meters away from an active railway line. Luckily the trains stopped running around midnight....

Canal tow path

Next morning I saw a tent set up right next to the tow path! Turned out to be a father and his son on a bike trip and they assured me that according to Scottish law you can camp everywhere on public land including tow pathes. And later on I realised that they were not only right but that there are designated mooring spots for canal boats along the tow pathes that even have drinking water and picnic tables - plus usually a nice lawn to camp on. But while I was chatting with the cyclists loads of people walking their dogs passed by. The cyclist were just cooking breakfast: porridge and coffee. Apparently one of the dogs seemed to like that, too and came running over to stick his head into the porridge pot while knocking over the coffee. I was laughing my socks off: This was a scene right out of a slapstick comedy. The dog eating the porridge while its owner desperately tried to chase it away and apologised profusely for the dogs behaviour - and then the cyclists examing the leftovers trying to decide whether they could still eat it! This day started very funny and ended up with a nice campsite in a little forest which was quite despite the fact that M8 was less than 1 km away. Well, at least this part of Scotland came as a very nice surprise....

Leaving the tow pathes and entering the country side again brought me to West Linton and a nice couchsurfing host - and a well needed rest day. And it brought a definite culinary highlight of this trip: Vegetarian haggis with turnips and potatoes! Haggis is probably something you do not want to know what it is made out of - but I will tell you anyways: It is the lungs, heart and liver of a sheep baked in its stomach. The vegetarian version consisted of oatmeal, lentils, carrots and nuts - and tasted absolutely delicious, even without the obligatory whisky. In my case this was Islay whisky, which has a very smoky taste due to the peat water used in its making. And after hiking through Scotland I know a lot about peat now. To make things perfect David, my CS host even has a very energetic dog, a mutt called Murphy who would nudge me immediately as soon as I stopped giving him back rubs. I am more and more becoming a dog fan now. Well, right now I am waiting for a dinner of salmon with Murphy at my side and life is very good again.

John O'Groats to Land's End: West Highland Way

2011-09-05T19:05:00.005+02:00

Despite blisters and hurting feet I finally made it to Fort William, the Northern Terminus of the West Highland Way. I really had been counting days until I would get out of the mud and the wet socks and shoes onto the dry trails of the WHW! And it finally happened: On a sunny Saturday afternoon I finally arrived in Fort William. Of course, this being a bank holiday weekend I had been unable to find any accommodation there, but eventually this turned out to be a good thing.

Boat on the Caledonian Canal

The last bit before Fort Wiliam was a nice hike along the Caledonian Canal ending at the big lock at Neptun's staircase. And I could not believe my luck when I spotted free showers there!!!! Of course I could not pass this opportunity and even put on my last and only pair of dry socks for this occasion - and hiked into Fort William as a clean hiker! My first stop was at the local outdoor shop to buy another pair of socks... and of course do some resupply shopping. And to my big surprise there was a Lidl supermarket in Fort William - of course I ended up buying German chocolate there. But still I needed some sort of rest day soon - and everything seemed to be fully booked. On top of all that I had my one and only mail drop (new shoes and maps) in the next place on the WHW called Kinlochleven. I got a first sense of how crowded the WHW would be when I tried to make a hostel reservation in Fort William or Kinlochleven and everything was fully booked for the next couple of days! But somehow I got lucky and managed to get the last camping cabin in a hotel with campsite and this turned out to be godsent. The weather turned nasty and incredibly windy that day while I was lying snug in my cosy little 18 £ cabin with a little heater. My feet started healing and I feeling better.

Old military road on the WHW

Still the WHW was some sort of a culture shock. In the 2 week in the Highlands I had barely met anyone - and on my first half-day on the WHW I met about 70 hikers! The WHW is really incredibly popular and big business. Hostels, B&B and campsites everywhere - and literally hundreds of hikers. More than half of them did not carry any bigger backpack because they were slackpacking. There are actually several companies offering luggage service for the WHW. And the other half were carrying way too much luggage with all sort of equipment dangling from their already overloaded backpacks. And of course half of the WHW hikers were German....

Why the WHW is so popular is a mystery to me: For Scottish standards the scenery is rather mediocre. The route is a very low one that does not give spectacular views. And almost all the way a very busy and very noisy highway, the A82 is very close to the trail so that you can never escape the traffic noise. There are so many other interesting, beautiful and scenic trails in the UK or in Europe and still thousand of people want to hike the WHW. And on top of all that all these masses of people try to be as crowded as possible when it comes to camping. There are tons of free wild campsites all along the way but I have hardly seen anyone camping there. Instead all the hikers congregate in pay campsites or official free campsites that are dirty and crowded.

Well, at least I had dry feet again and made some progress - and I only spent 4 days on the WHW anyways. But if you want some advice: Don't hike the WHW - there are much better trails out there.

John O'Groats to Land's End: Northern Scotland

2011-08-29T12:27:00.001+02:00

Me at the start of the hike

My trip started turbulent enough. I was supposed to fly on a Tuesday morning and already a week earlier German air traffic controllers had been threatening to go on strike early next week - and that could be my Tuesday. And sure enough: Monday morning I read on the internet that a strike was scheduled for Tuesday 6 am to noon. Great! That was not only threatening my flight but all my onward travel connections, too. I started biting nails and watched the internet as the employer side went to court in an attempt to prevent the strike. When I went to bed Monday night I still did not know whether I would actually be flying the next morning. But when I got up Tuesday morning things had improved: The strike had been adverted in the very last minute due to mediation and my Ryanair flight was even early!

Cliffs near John O'Groats

Everything went according to plan: I got my prebooked train ticket fromt the ticket machine in Edinburgh train station, my train was on time and even my internet youth hostel booking had worked out. I spend the next day in Inverness sightseeing in pouring rain - at least I did not have to walk through that crap weather.

And then on August 11th I started my hike with bright sunshine at John O'Groats. Little did I know that this was to be the last sunshine for a very long time... But to already sum it up: My hike through Northern Scotland has been the worst hiking I have done in a very long time. I guess some of it is due to mistakes I made myself with planning:

Peat bogs

First of all I definitely underestimated the terrain. The sketch map of my Cicerone guidebook showed mostly pathes and trail and only about 15% cross country walking. I quickly realised that the cross country walking usually turned into a trip to hell. No matter where I went, the terrain was boggy, soggy and waterlogged. I was in mud up to my ankles and looked like a pig with dirt all over me. Even worse you could not usually tell beforehand how deep the mud would be. So often I just stepped onto what looked like solid ground and took a fall covering myself with more mud because it turned out a peat bog again. On top of all that the terrain got really steep and rocky (in between the muddy bits) once I was in the Highlands. My feet have not been dry for two weeks straight and started showing it. Not even on the Florida Trail have my feet been that bad. I had blisters and raw spots from rubbing all over my feet. Sometimes I just had to stop walking early because I could not stand the pain anymore. I usually average about 35 to 40 km per day, but on this stretch I was lucky to do 25 km....

Thousands of midges on my tent

Next big problem were the midges. I had known about them but I did not expect them to be that bad end of August. They were actually even worse than all the mosquitoes in Alaska!!!! There is a big difference between mosquitoes and midges: DEET works against mosquitoes, but does not seem to have much effect on midges. Mosquitoes are also relatively big - even if you get some in your tent you just kill them and then have a good night's sleep. But midges are so small and they are so numerous that you actually breathe them in. They get everywhere and once inside your tent they are too many to kill them all. Things got so bad that I actually started cooking inside the tent - not in the vestibule, but inside the tent - something I have never done before. Packing things in the morning was a great logistical effort because you want to minimise your exposure to the midges as much as possible. It was difficult to even get a break, because I would be eaten alive by the midges as soon as I stopped moving. Therefore also no chance of airing my feet which did make my foot problems worse.

In hindsight another big problem was that I did not bring any overview maps. I just brought the Cicerone guide book sketch maps and the GPS. Unfortunately the GPS maps for Scotland were really bad and hardly showed any trails or tracks. Sometimes even roads were lacking. And therefore I could not make up alternative routes in order to avoid the dreaded cross country sections. In the end I was just counting days: Only 4 more days in this shit, only 3 more days and so on.

Bothy

There are some very nice bothies (shelters) in Scotland which are maintained by the MBA (Mountain Bothy Assosciation). But unfortunately, due to vandalism MBA has asked all map makers and guide book authors to remove the locations of their bothies!!!! So neither my guidebook nor any map showed the location of a bothy - I would just come across them by coincidence. I have great difficulty understanding this secret policy for bothies that can be a life saver in emergencies - if you know where they are!

Scotland can be nice...

After one week it was already apparent that I could not keep my schedule. Luckily I had met another long-distance hiker who had given me the OS map for that area and by that stroke of luck I was able to work out an alternative detour route through Ullapool. I urgently needed to resupply. I had started with 9 days worth of food but being already 2 days behind schedule I was running out. By another stroke of luck I was even able to get a reservation at the youth hostel there. Right now is tourist high season and everything seems to be fully booked all the time. And so I had a bit of well needed rest in Ullapool and could let my feet heal a day. Unfortunately, I had the worst fall of my whole trip in Ullapool - I slipped in the shower and fell right on my tail bone which is still hurting now 10 days later and makes it awkard to sit. But from Ullapool onward I started counting the days until I would reach Fort William, the West Highland Way and REAL trail again.

But things would get worse before they got better and that brings me to the last problem: the weather. The weather has not been very good (3 days of sun in 15 days) but not very bad either. It is drizzling most of the days but there are not too many torrential downpours. But it is much colder than I expected. One morning I woke up and found ice on my tent. And this was August 25th and the altitude only 300 meters....

To sum it up: Scotland is a place where I definitely do not want to hike again in the near future. And I find it hard to understand why Scotland is such a popular hiking destination especially for Germans. Yes, the landscape is very beautiful and remote, but you pay a very high price for that. And personally for me it has not been worth it. I would rather go to Scandinavia where you have similar landscape, but easier terrain and footing - and no midges!

But things are going to improve now: I have made it to Fort William and this means the start of the West Highland Way with hundreds of fellow hikers, decent trails and a shop around every corner. And soon I will be out of Scotland and on the Pennine Way which I have hiked before and really enjoyed. Things will only improve from now on...

John O'Groats to Land's End: Planning

2011-08-04T20:57:00.001+02:00

The biggest challenge in planning this trip has been to comb through the vast amount of information available for the different sections of this trip and condense it all down into a comprehensive and lightweight version.

There are two guidebooks on the market that feature the whole route - and hundreds of guidebooks and mapsets that cover sections of it. One of the "thruhiker guidebooks" by Andrew McCloy turned out to be rather useless. It contains only route descriptions without any actual maps. I was already starting to get discouraged by all the confusing route descriptions when I luckily came across the Cicerone guidebook by Andy Robinson "The end to end trail". This was exactly the kind of guidebook I had been looking for: It describes the whole route in good detail and gives sketch maps for the sections that are not part of a waymarked long-distance trail. It even gives overview information on shopping opportunities and accommodation. This book has proven to be invaluable in the planning process (I will almost completely follow its route suggestions) and will definitely be the main guidebook on trail.

Another invaluable online resource turned out to be the website of the Long-Distance Walkers Association. Their searchable data base does not only show all British long-distance trails on a map but also shows where they connect with each other. There is a lot of information for each trail and you can download gpx tracks for most of them. All the info is free, but you have to be a member (13 £) to download the tracks. (I found gpx tracks for all the trails I needed for free elsewhere on the net.)

I wanted to create a gpx track for the whole route and use the track together with maps on my GPS. So next I needed GPS maps for the UK. I was even willing to spend many on that, but everybody advised against the Garmin topo maps for the UK: Too much money for bad quality. There are a lot of other GPS maps for the UK on the market, but they were all for route planning only and could not be downloaded onto the GPS - and of course they were expensive, too. The solution came with Talkytoaster.info: Here you can download openstreetmap based maps for the UK - completely free! I was a bit afraid of the downloading process that sounded rather complicated, but it all worked fine. Mind you though that these maps are ok when following an existing gpx track, but they are by far not detailed enough for route planning of hiking trips.

Now I needed good online maps to map the missing sections based on the sketch maps in the Cicerone guidebook. The solution was www.grough.co.uk. Grough turned out to be a mixed blessing: First of all it is very cheap. 2 £ buy you one month of unlimited mapping using the wonderful Ordenance Survey maps and 40 pages of print outs. The map details are fantastic - 100% like your typical OS paper map and the printing is easy and renders high quality results. But grough is not the perfect solution either: First of all you can only use these maps online - you cannot download them onto your computer or your GPS. This means that everything takes forever. Theoretically you can upload existing gps tracks and print them out on the respective maps. Unfortunately, this did not work at all. Uploading tracks that had more than about 50 trackpoints led to constant time outs and system crashes. I got very frustrated and wasted entire days with this system until I realized that it is much faster to create the track in grough itself instead of unsuccessfully trying to import it. Still this process was very time-consuming, but less frustrating. Exporting tracks on the other hand worked quite well as long there were less than about 300 waypoints per track. I also used grough.co.uk to print out maps for the connecting stretches.

So now I will use my Garmin etrex GPS with OSM maps and a gpx track for the whole route. I have print out paper maps from grough.co.uk for the connector sections and will buy guidebooks or stripmaps for the established long-distance trails locally. I will carry the Cicerone guidebook that shows the connector sections in sketch maps.and has route descriptions and town info. And last but not least I have an info sheet with all the logistical information on store hours, cheap hostels, gas canister availibility etc. that I have compiled myself with a lot of internet research.

A lot of work has gone into this project and I do hope it will pay off.

John O'Groats to Land's End: The Route

2011-08-04T18:40:00.001+02:00

Next on my agenda is a hike through Great Britain, 2.000 km from John O'Groats in Northeast Scotland down to Land's End in Cornwall. Although this is the most popular hike across the UK, it is not a defined trail. Every hiker chooses their own route, but most link together existing long-distance pathes - and so will I. Most hikers walk from South to North (LEJoG), but I start rather late in the season and will therefore head the opposite direction (JoGLE). I would rather be in populated Southern England when the weather turns bad and the daylight hours dwindle than in Scotland - but that means that I will have to read all the guidebooks backwards! These are the sections and long-distance pathes used:

Northern Scotland: John O'Groats to Fort William: This will be the technically most difficult stretch of the whole hike - right at the start. There are no existing long-distance trails and most of it will be cross-country. And to make matters worse there is only one little shop on day 8 of this stretch of 11 days. I will have to carry a lot of food!

Southern Scotland: Fort William to Jedburgh: At Fort William I will encounter the first established long-distance path of this trip, the West Highland Way. I have already hiked it, but that was in December 2003 - and hiking it in winter with only 7 hours of daylight had not been the smartest idea. I did not like it very much back then, but there aren't any good alternatives and so I will hope the WHW is better in summer. At the end of the WHW near Glasgow I come close to the most populated and industrialized are of whole Scotland - the corridor between Glasgow and Edinburgh. There is no really good way of covering this stretch so I opted for the Central Scottish Way that mostly follows canals on tow pathes - at least promising fast hiking on this rather unattractive stretch. Short stints on the Southern Upland and St Cuthberth's Way then take me to Jedburgh.

Pennines and Cheviots: Pennine Way: I am very much looking forward to this section as it is almost completely on the Pennine Way - one of my most favourite trails that I have already hiked in 2006. The Pennine Way seems incredible remote despite the fact that it is so close to the industrial heart of Britain.

From the Pennine Way to Wales: This has been the most difficult section for chosing a route. You have to circumnavigate a lot of very industrialized and populated areas and I chose a route that combines a lot of little-known but waymarked trails: Gritstone Trail, South Chesire Way and Maelor Way.

Wales and Bristol Channel: I will next connect with Offa's Dyke Path which follows the Welsh border. Again, I have hiked parts of Offa's Dyke before, but this almost 10 years ago before I even knew that there is such a thing as ultralight long-distance hiking! Things get nasty after the end of Offa's Dyke: I have to cross the River Severn on a huge motorway bridge and then manouver around the urban sprawl of Bristol until finally meeting the South West Coast Path.

Cornwall: South West Coast Path: This last stretch takes me through Rosamunde Pilcher country - and hopefully some nice coastal walking. I have hiked parts of the SWCP before - end of November! Only God knows why I had chosen that miserable month. By the time I arrive in Cornwall it will be early to mid October and I do hope that the weather will be nicer than last time in November. Although the UK hike officially finishes at the appropriately named Land's End I will continue on past Penzance to see the famous St Michaels Mount which I think is a more spectacular ending than Land's End.

Garmin Mapsource with which I planned this route tells me that my hike will be exactly 1.989 km long - and I expect to take a bit over 2 months. I am planning on doing a lot of sightseeing along the way and I have already purchased a National Trust Pass, allowing me to vist a lot of castles and monuments for free - and I am planning on taking advantage of it.

But you might wonder why I chose Great Britain? There are various reasons and one is a financial one: I always try "to hike with the exchange rate" and right now one currency that is even more desolate than the Euro is the British Pound. Great Britain has always been a very expensive country, but the exchange rate and couchsurfing will hopefully help me to save some money.

The other reason is that I always like to hike in countries that offer something unique - like the kangoroos and outback in Australia. Great Britain's nature is very unique: The Brits have already chopped down most of their forest back in the Stone Ages creating a very unique landscape with moors and exposed mountains. You either hate this sort of landscape and call it bleak or you love it and call it unique - I belong to the latter category of hikers. And of course there are all those castles, forts, gardens and mansions along the trail that are just waiting to be visited by me for free with my National Trust Pass.

And last but not least I love the British and their rather eccentric mentality. Nowhere else you find so much moulding carpets in bathrooms, so many complicated contraptions for just switching on a shower and such a love of purple plush sofa cushions. I love the old ladies that run B&B (not that I will be able and willing to afford many of them), the dry British humour that no German will probably find funny and the huge fully cooked breakfasts.

Denali National Park: Conclusion and Tipps

2011-08-01T15:00:00.000+02:00

Mt McKinley massif

My usual question "Would I recommend this trip to a friend?" is difficult to answer in this case. I liked and hated Denali at the same time. I realised that this sort of crosscountry bushwhacking is definitely NOT my cup of tea. I just want to hike - and not bushwhack at 6 km per day! So for hiking I can definitely not recommend Denali. But on the other hand Denali was breathtakingly beautiful - if the weather permits you to see it! I have been very lucky because it was raining only 2 days during my 9 day stay. I was even able to see the famous Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in the US between the clouds which is a rather rare, but spectacular event.

So my conclusion is: Yes, it is worth seeing Denali, but if you are not interesting in bushwhacking in alpine tundra I would not go out of my way to get there. If you are already in Alaska for whatever other reason, I would have a look at Denali through their bus system, maybe do a short 1 or 2 day hike, but I would not spend an extended period of time there.

Denali is a rather expensive adventure and here are some tricks on how to save money:

Savage River

There are various designated campgrounds all along the park road for which you have to make a reservation and pay a reservation and campground fee. You can easily avoid that by just getting a FREE backcountry permit for the surrounding backcountry unit. This way you only have to camp out of sight of the road and the camp ground which usually means just walking about 10 minutes. But you can still use the camp ground facilities like food stoarge locker, toilets and in some cases the running water. And you could even attend the nightly camp fire talks led by the park rangers which are really interesting.

View from Savage River

There is a free shuttle bus into the park as far as mile 15. If you want to go further you have to pay for the shuttle bus. Mile 15 gets you to Savage River campground, from where you can hike up the Savage River drainage which is a nice and relatively easy hike, as there are well used social trails. As described above you could camp close to the official campground for free in the backcountry unit. This way you can hike and camp in Denali without having to pay anything!

Moose antler found in a creek

If you opt to go inside the park and do some serious hiking / bushwhacking stick to either broad river valleys or ridgeline walking. Anything else will just lead to even worse bushwhacking. Do not expect to do more than 10 miles per day. Bring old clothes and backpacks as you will probably tear things up in the thorny bushes. Bring all your food with you from either Anchorage or Fairbanks as stores inside the park are very expensive. If you unexpectedly run out of food inside the park check the food storages at the popular camp grounds. They all have free food shelves for leftovers and some are so well stocked that you can resupply several days out of there! Bring enough time and patience for the backcountry permit process - the whole procedure including video and safety talk will take at least 1 - 1,5 hour. Expect to wait at least 30 - 45 minutes in line before you can purchase your bus ticket for buses beyond mile 15. I know all this sounds really painful, but overall the system works very well - as long as you have enough time and patience.

Denali National Park

2011-07-31T23:58:00.000+02:00

Bus on park road

There are no long-distance trails in Denali NP. There are no long-distance trails in whole Alaska! If you want to go for a hike, it will be crosscountry. Denali NP is relatively expensive: I had to pay for the shuttle to get there and back (80$ one way), entrance fee into the NP (10$ for a hiker), and the shuttle bus inside the park (31$). At least backcountry camping permits were free. Despite the high costs I decided to go to Denali because it made logistics so much easier: All of Alaska is grizzly bear country and for overnight camping you have to secure your food. In Denali you get a bear canisters for the length of your stay for free. In Denali you can cache food in all the campgrounds along the park road - thus reducing your pack weight tremendously. Plus you can use the shuttle bus inside the park to go back and forth as much as you like - you still only pay once for a ticket.

Braided river

I had heard all sorts of bad stories about the tyranny of the backcountry rangers and their quota system. Whole of Denali is divided into several backcountry units and only a limited amount of hikers are permitted into each unit per day. Although the permit itself is free, you have to get into that quota, watch a bear safety video and have a personal safety talk with a ranger. To my big surprise getting the backcountry permit I wanted was not a problem at all. Hardly any quota was full and I could chose whatever I wanted. But then I made a big mistake: I had only 25 minutes left before the departure of my bus, but the bear safety video is 30 minutes! I asked whether I could skip the last 5 minutes of the video.... big mistake! The ranger nearly freaked out, took the remote control away from me and insisted on watching the whole damn thing, even watching the door to the video room so that I could not escape early. I could not believe that... luckily the ranger relented after another tantrum and let me go running after my bus, that was already about to leave the bus stop - I made it in the very last second. So much for the ranger tyranny....

I had permits for 3 different hikes in Denali, but I want to focus on the longest one - a five day hike- to give you an impression what hiking in Alaska is like. As I have mentioned before there are no long trails in Denali. If you don't want to constantly bushwhack through alpine tundra you have two options: Either you climp up over tree and brush line (4,000 ft at Denali) and walk along the ridges. Or you follow rivers and streams. I opted for the latter, because I was afraid that the exposed ridgeline option could turn pretty nasty in bad weather.

Toklat River valley

The bus takes over 5 hours to get from the park entrance all the way along the park road (81 miles) to the end at Wonder Lake. My first hike started about in the middle at Toklat River - a huge wide glaciated river bed that I followed north for 2 days. This section of the hike was actually pretty easy for Denali standards. Although the river bed itself is almost 1 km wide, the stream itself is very small and braided in summer. It is not a big problem to walk on gravel bars, although you still have to cross the various streams occassionally - which have a strong current and can be up to waist high. Still, finding a suitable flat spot is not too difficult, albeit a bit time consuming. You have great visibility along the barren river bed - meaning you could see bears and other wildlife early enough to avoid it. But I did not see any bears in that section and only the occasional foot print. Weather was fantastic and the views great - I really enjoyed myself.

Clearwater Creek

The trouble started when I had to turn southward again this time following another drainage: Clearwater Creek. Clearwater Creek did indeed have very clear, but also very swift and deep water- and unfortunately was single channel, too. It was impossible to cross it in the beginning.Unfortunately it was surrounded by almost inpenetrable thick brush and sometimes even high cliffs. As it was impossible to walk in the swift water I had to fight my way through the brush always expecting to rip my clothes or backpack apart. Of course there were thousands of mosquitoes that made my life miserable. Things got especially bad when the river took a turn and on my side high cliffs turned up that I had to climb up and down. Going was incredibly slow as I had to move on arctic tundra which means layers and layers of thick moss interspersed with holes and thick brush. I was constantly afraid of stepping into one of these holes and spraining my ankle. To make things even worse I had to keep singing and speaking in order to make myself known to the bears - despite the fact that I was already huffing and puffing from the strenous walking.

After 10 hours of straight hiking (well, you can't really call it hiking - bushwhacking would be more appropriate) I had managed to advance less than 10 km and was totally exhausted. I was shaking from exhaustion. Eventually I had been able to cross the river, but these crossing were always iffy. As a rule of thumb you can cross very swift water as long as it is only knee deep. Usually you can still cross water levels that are a bit higher, but it takes a lot of effort and concentration. Clearwater Creek by now was up to mid-thigh, and although the crossing was now manageable - there were too many of them. I had to cross almost every 300 meters and the effort just drained my energy. I slept fitfully and had nightmares of not being able to get out of this mess. If the terrain did not improve, I would not be able to make it out to the park road before my food ran out.

Stony Creek

Luckily, the next day things improved tremendously. Clearwater Creek split into 2 different creeks and my side channel called Stony Creek started to braid almost immediately. River crossings got easier all the time and I made great progress. The weather stayed nice, too and my mood improved considerably - until I saw the huge amount of bear prints on the ground. There had been the occasional bear print before, but now they were all over the place. And for sure, it did not take another hour before I ran into my first grizzly bear in Denali. Just about 200 meters in front of me frolicking in the brush was a huge grizzly that had luckily not noticed me because the wind came from the other direction. I retreated immediately and pondered my options. The grizzly was feeding on berries along the river bank. I could not get around it on the right side, because there was the river with a steep high bank on the other side. But I did not dare to go around it on the left side either because it was all thick brush (possibly hiding bear cubs) and if the bear noticed me while I was on its left side it might panic because I was cutting off its escape route. I came to the conclusion that I could just wait till the bear moved on itself. Unfortunately, it took its time eating all those delicious berries. I sat there hiding for almost 45 minutes until the bear had disappeared.

Gorge narrowing down

I continued very carefully crossing onto the other side of the creek as soon as possible. Well, the bear had disappeared, but one hour later I stood right in front of a huge moose. Moose are no predators, but still more people die from moose than from bear attacks. And this particular moose seemed to be pretty deaf, because no matter what I yelled at it it would not move. It only ran away when I started moving towards it. I had less than 3 km to the park road but my problems were not over yet. I had to go through a narrow gorge first and a huge rockslide had gone down there a couple of years before. Instead of walking through tundra I had to rockclimb now. I thought I would never make it out to the road - but eventually I did!

Anchorage

2011-07-31T08:14:00.000+02:00

Era airline plane

The flight back from Kaltag on the Yukon to Anchorage could have been really nice- if it had not been forced upon me under these unpleasant circumstances. Kaltag is a little native community with about 150 people. There are no roads to Kaltag and the only means of transport is either boat or plane. The only way to get to Anchorage was by plane and I booked that flight immediately after arriving. You book over the phone, but you can either pay by credit card or in cash. Almost all the airstrips in these little communities are pure dirt. We were given a ride to the airstrip by the local airline agent who is collecting and delivering cargo to the plane as well. The plane was tiny and the pilot a spotty 20 year old with cheap sunglasses. He did everything from loading the cargo and our luggage to giving safety instructions ("Read the paper in front of you"). And off we went getting a last glimpse of the Yukon from above. I felt so sad about having to leave that I cried looking down on the river.

Yukon from above

We landed in Kaltag where we had paddled through several days before and changed into another plane. This time we were the only 2 passengers....The flight from Galena to Anchorage was much longer and the route left the Yukon immediately - so no more nice views. In Anchorage I had another challenge to master and that was going through immigration. We had only done the immigration process over the phone in Eagle and still needed stamps in our passports. I had anticipated big problems with immigration since we had come into the US in a very unusual way - but the officers were incredibly friendly and gave us no trouble.

Pike - the Iditarod dog

Adrian's premature bail out had been unexpected and therefore I had had no time to plan what to do next. I was also still under shock from the events and felt mentally paralyzed. Luckily I had arranged earlier to stay with Matias, a friend of Triple Crowner Skittles.When I had called Matias from Kaltag he had luckily agreed to take me in earlier and even picked me up from the airport. I must have been a mess these first days. I still had to digest the unhappy events, change all my travel plans and come up with what to do in my last days in Alaska. Matias lives in a wood cabin in the mountains around Anchorage with 2 huskies, electricity, but no running water. I loved the place - and the dogs. One turned out to be a real celebrity: He had participated in the famous Iditarod race. I was thrilled! So, after 2 nights at Matias' place I had changed my flights and made up some plans for Alaska: I was going to hike in Denali National Park.

Yukon: Gear recommendation and accommodation

2011-07-28T04:55:00.004+02:00

As this has been my first long paddling trip I had to do a lot of research into the appropriate gear - and bought a lot of new stuff especially for this trip. Therefore I would like to give some advice on what worked and what did not:

Boat: I had originally wanted to go in a foldable single kayak, but Adrian talked me into a 2 person canoe. For reasons explained in earlier posts this turned out to be the worst decision I have taken in a long time... But even taking the "divorce boat" aspect aside I think now that a solo kayak would have been the much better choice for a thrupaddle of the whole Yukon. The big problem on the Yukon, especially coming closer to the delta, is wind and the high waves dumping water into the boat. With a kayak you are far better off here than with an open canoe: A kayak is dealing much better with the wind and the spray deck prevents water from being splashed into the boat. Of course, you have less storage space in a kayak, but being an ultralighter this would have been not a problem. Also, it was much easier to find clear water than I had expected resulting in less storage space needed for drinking water. Another argument against the kayak had been the cold water temperature: Being much closer to the water in a kayak than in a canoe I had been afraid of getting cold. But other paddlers assured me that this has not been a problem for them, mostly because the air temperature is very warm during the day and the water gets much warmer once past Dawson. Also getting in and out of a kayak is much more difficult than in a canoe, but in hindsight I realise that we mostly camped on islands or sandy beaches where this problem would not have been an issue.

But my other new investments have proven to be very useful. Here is my list of the most useful items of this trip:

Camping in arctic jungle

Tarp: We had bought a very cheap tarp of the sort you can get in any hardware store. This had come in very useful when we had to quickly get ashore and wait out a rain shower or when we had to cook in the rain. Keep in mind that the Yukon is bear territory and you will not be able to cook in or close to your tent.

Synthetic quilt: On a paddling trip like this you have a very high risk of getting your sleeping gear wet or at least damp. During the last couple of years I have had constant problems with down sleeping bags in this sort of environment: The down starts clumping together and the insulation factor drops considerably. Therefore I had invested into a new synthetic quilt from BPL and it turned out to be one of my best recent investments! To my big surprise I have never been cold at night with this new setup and I never had to use the down bag I had brought on top as an extra layer. Most nights I was just sleeping in my base layer and shorts and was plenty warm. Only on very few occasions I had to put on long johns and a second pullover. From now on the BPL quilt will be my default sleeping bag.

Buff: This little accessory turned out to be of great value on the Yukon and I was wearing it daily. Especially in the mornings it could still be kind of cold on the water - too warm for a warm hat, but the buff was just right then. And when the wind started blowing the buff was perfect to hold my baseball cap in place and protect my ears.

Waterproof socks: I had first thought of buying neoprene socks but a British friend told me about Chillcheater socks. They are not neoprene, but still waterproof and much more comfortable to wear. I heeded his advice and have not regretted it. The Chillcheater socks do not give much warmth: When it got really cold I wore thick socks underneath them and it worked well. But most of the time it was actually very warm or even hot - but still we needed the socks because of the mosquitoes, and then the Chillcheaters were just perfect! I would definitely take them again.

Cheesefondue for my birthday

Stove: When hiking I always use gas canister stoves, but on this trip I was cooking extensively for 2 people and a gas canister stove is just not efficient (and the gas to expensive!) for this amount of cooking. Therefore I invested into a new petrol stove: The MSR Dragonfly. I had used that stove already for almost 7 months on my bike trip with John where his stove had worked great. Well, it turned out that it worked great on the Yukon, too. It was very reliable, used much less petrol than I had thought and most important of all, you can regulate the flame very well and simmer with it. This stove will definitely accompany me on future bike and paddling trips - but it is way too heavy and bulky for hiking.

Maps and guidebooks: There are tons of information about the most popular stretch of the Yukon from Whitehorse to Dawson City and we carried the German guide book by Dieter Reinmuth. The town info in this book is great, but the maps are rough sketches only and ok for navigation, but could be better. The much better choice is Mike Rourke's map guides of the Yukon: He covers the Yukon all the way to Circle. His maps are impeccable and he gives a lot of historical information. The best overall guide book is the invaluable Dan MacLean: The Yukon River and its tributaries. For the section after Circle we were relying on US topo maps from Garmin. Unfortunately, the data base of these maps is over 20 years old and the river is changing constantly, therefore navigation was rather difficult with these maps. Still, they were better than nothing and at least they showed were the villages were located.

Yukon-Charlie NP

And now a last piece of advice: On the Yukon there are not many possibilities for staying indoors - especially if you don't want to spend a fortune on expensive B&B. Also you cannot leave your boat and gear unattended on the beach as the local kids are infamous for stealing stuff out of the boat. But there is one really nice hostel in Dawson City that is run by the German author of a Yukon guidebook: the Dawson City River Hostel. There is no electricity or running water in this hostel, but the place has so much atmosphere that is an attraction in itself. Plus you will meet all the other paddlers there, as it is close to the river and the hostel has carts to get your boat up from the river to the hostel.

The best free accommodation on the Yukon is in the Yukon-Charlie River National Park, where a lot of old huts and roadhoused have been restored and are now fantastic public use cabins. Definitely take your time in this stretch and enjoy the free accommodation.

Yukon: Conclusion

2011-07-27T00:36:00.003+02:00

In this post I want to keep aside the big negative aspect that galled the trip for me and forced me to get off prematurely: my paddling partner. I also do not want to take into consideration that I had constant ear pain - and still suffer from it now. I just want to focus on the trip itself - and that had been GREAT! Yes, I would definitely recommend paddling the Yukon river to a friend and will probably do it again myself to make it all the way to the end. Still, paddling the Yukon is not a piece of cake either - it will not be an easy trip, especially not for paddling beginners. So what are the main issues to look out for?

Heavily undercut bank

First of all the strong current took me by surprise. Things were aggravated by the fact that this has been a year with unusual high water levels leading to an even stronger current. Handling and steering the canoe with a current up to 15 km/h was kind of scary - especially in the beginning and especially being a rookie. But I think now that I have gotten used to it and would not be that scared any more doing it again. Still, you should definitely practice the U-turn or so-called ferry before you embark on the Yukon...

Half submerged island

Second, camping turned out to be more difficult than expected. Again, things were more difficult than usual because the island were still very much submerged. Normally you would camp at the sandy front end of the river islands, but those were still under water! On the other side it was very difficult on camp on the main land either because of the very steep and high cut banks that made landing and getting out of the boat very often impossible. Very often the banks were extremely undercut and constantly huge chunks of soil or trees were crashing down - an eerie sound at night. When new soil gets exposed the permafrost starts melting creating a constant dribble. And if you were able to find a spot were to land it would probably be totally overgrown with thick brush and thorn bushes..... But on the positive side: Things got much better towards the end when water levels were residing.

Now to the positive surprises:


Bear print

Yes, the mosquitoes were bad and the can really taint your experience. But I have to admit that you sort of get used to them. Also their bites are not as painful as with other mosquitoes. They do itch, but the swelling and the itch subside after less than half an hour. Other than that the wildlife was just great! We saw lots of moose (with baby moose), bears with cubs and a surprising amount of interesting birds: Huge ravens, loads of ducks, eagles and very aggressive mew gulls that skydived on us.

Barge with mining equipment

I was also very much worried about paddling in high waves, especially in an open canoe. Although I admit that it is not the most pleasant paddling time, we were able to cope with the waves much better than thought. Except in the Five Finger Rapids we never got water into the boat. But not only the wind creates waves: Some stretches of the Yukon have quite a bit of barge and skiff traffic. Most drivers were very considerate and gave us a wide berth, but some came pretty close and their wake shook us quite a bit. On the lower half of the Yukon boat and air traffic is the only mode of transport as there are no roads. Therefore you can see barges loaded with mining equipment slowly coming up the river - and almost speeding coming back.

The weather can be an issue and paddling in rain and strong wind is miserable. We did have some bad weather, but luckily it never lasted longer than a day. I was expecting to be stuck for days on end, but that never happened. Actually I was surprised how many really hot days we had. Overall I was more too hot than too cold on the Yukon - but of course, I missed the last bit on the Delta.

Undercut bank

We had read that the low water temperature would be a big issue as well. If you capsize in very cold water you have little time to make it ashore before you die of hypothermia. The Yukon is very cold, but only in the beginning. The water warms up soon after Dawson and at the end of our trip we were actually swimming in the Yukon just for fun. You would not want to stay in there for hours, but you would definitely survive more than 10 minutes. The Yukon itself is very silty and could not be used as a source of drinking water, but there were plenty of clean side streams or little creeks coming down the mountains with good water. We usually loaded up with water in the villages.


Smoking salmon

There was also a surprising amount of interesting things to see: Lots of relics from the goldrush era, abandonded cabins, bearproof cemeteries, native villages, fish camps.... Dawson City and Fort Selkirk were definite highlights of this trip! I very much enjoyed stories about the interesting Alaskan characters and after having spent a bit of time in this hard climate myself I cannot help but admire the courage and endurance of the early settlers and miner to survive in such an environment.

Overall, paddling has been a very pleasant experience. It is by far less physically demanding than hiking or cycling. You go at a much more leisurely pace and have more break time (mostly due to bad weather). And because weight is not so much of an issue you can do a lot of very good cooking!

Bottom line: I will soon be paddling again and will definitely buy a folding kayak.

Yukon: Adrian or How to ruin a great trip

2011-07-26T21:14:00.008+02:00

It has been over a week now since Adrian has forced me to abandon the Yukon River trip and after having hiked again I feel in much better shape to write about the events that led to this sad end of an otherwise fantastic paddling trip. Unfortunately, Adrian never elaborated on why he bailed and therefore I can just write about my perspective of the events.

In the divorce boat

The trouble already started at Frankfurt airport where we met for our flight to Whitehorse. I had especially come to Switzerland for a planning meeting a month before our departure date to discuss our equipment for the paddling trip. Well, I could have saved myself the time and money..... Adrian showed up at the airport with all the equipment we had agreed on - but brought at least the same amount of extra stuff we had NOT agreed on on top! True, weight is not so much an issue on a paddling trip but you still have to handle and carry all that stuff at least twice daily. And being in a boat together with all his stuff would become my problem as well... Things got even worse once in Whitehorse when I had to discover that he had not only brought tons of useless stuff but that he had no clue how to pack it either. Everything was still in bulky packages taking up way too much space and Adrian stubbornly refused to reduce the bulk. Adrian was carrying more vitamin pills than I carried snacks. He had several complete sets of outdoor clothes. He had brought a ridiculously huge amount of cooking stuff we had not agreed on despite the fact that I was to do the cooking. He had brought everything from Balsamic Vinegar to organic broth! I was seriously getting worried whether we would even be able to fit everything into one boat! Well, we did at the end, but we ended up with way too little waterproof space in our dry bags.

Right from the start Adrian showed the most negative attitude I have seen in long time. Finding a campsite was very difficult with him. No matter what I suggested - Adrian found an argument against it: The place was either too wet, too low or too high or too whatever. But he never made any constructive suggestions himself - he was just bashing mine.... He would never say: "This is a good place to camp." The closest he would come to saying something positive was: "Camping is not entirely impossible here...." By the way: His most favourite word on the whole trip was "impossible"...

The next serious blow came after a week on the water in a place called Carmacks. We had discussed at great length that we would stop at the camp ground, have a look around and then decide together whether we would stay or not. But when I was still looking around checking out the place Adrian went straight to the office and paid for our stay - forcing me to stay as well. I was furious! This was already the second serious breach of trust in one week. On such a trip you rely on each other with your life and he was just doing whatever HE liked not caring at all about what I wanted to do. Despite his promises to be more considerate it would happen again and again later during our trip: As soon as Adrian saw an opportunity to get back to civilisation and spend some money, he would just do it - no matter on what we had agreed on before. I had to realise that I could not trust or rely on Adrian.

I soon had to admit that I myself had committed a big mistake. Due to the fact that Adrian had thruhiked the Appalachian Trail I had assumed that we would have the same outdoor background, experience and mentality, something that I would call thruhiker mentality. But I should have been more careful and asked more about his AT experiences. Adrian had indeed hiked the AT 10 years before, but his and my thruhike could not have been more different. Adrian had stayed in about every B&B along the AT instead of camping out - and expected this on the Yukon as well. He had received resupply packages with gourmet food every 4 days by mail and admitted that he had never eaten a Lipton side dish in his entire life!!!! And he had slackpacked whenever possible - but unfortunately he had to realise that you cannot slackpack on a paddling trip.... .Had I know about his AT experience I would have never agreed on a joint Yukon trip. When Adrian realised that the Yukon is much tougher than the relatively comfortable AT, he acted more like a spoilt 6 year old child than like an experienced 60 year old thruhiker. He was constantly whining about something: The weather, the mosquitoes, the paddling, the quality of the accommodation...

By the time we reached Dawson City I was ready for a break. Luckily we could get a bit of distance between each other during our stay there - I would only see Adrian coincidentally during the day sitting in a cafe drinking expensive cappuccino. But the break had done us good and leaving Dawson City I felt that things had improved. It was apparent that we would never be best friends, but we had found a way to get along. Adrian would get up half an hour before me to deal with all his gear. He was lowering his expectations on a camp site. We had settled into a routine.

We were just about halfway through when Adrian started to say that he did not like the trip.It was not what he expected it to be and he said he was not enjoying it because it was too tough for him. I must admit that I did not take that very serious and assumed this was just a little depression. I tried to be very positive and cheer him up - but unfortunately it did not help. These little depressions turned into almost daily bail out threats and it quickly became apparent that Adrian was more of a burden than a supportive partner. When there was a problem my first thought was to hide it from Adrian because it would just create another one of his bail out threats. It cost me a lot of energy to motivate not only myself, but Adrian as well! It was very obvious by now that Adrian was the weaker part of our "team" - but I still tried to keep him happy. Adrian on the other hand did everything to make my life miserable: He not only came up with his bail out threats every other day, he was also constantly criticising my abilities. True, I do not have the greatest sense of equilibrium and getting in and out of the boat would not win me a prize for grace and elegance - but I coped and got better all the time. Still, Adrian was not missing any opportunity to tell me that my J strokes are a disaster, that I would not be able to climb up a steep bank or that I would break the boat. I just closed my ears and let him rattle on - anything to make Adrian happy.

Adrian finally threw in the towel just before the tiny settlement of Kaltag. We had had a rather rainy and windy day and were camped at the local cemetery... I have had a lot of time to reflect about his bail out decision, but I still cannot forgive him - neither the decision itself nor the way he communicated it.

I was not a happy hiker then...

The decision itself was bad enough: We were 3/4 or 2,200 km through with our trip and had only 1/4 or 700 km left, which meant about 10 to 14 more days on the water. I had already suggested a compromise in just paddling to St. Mary's and thus skipping the last 150 km in the real windy Yukon delta. I do understand that there are situations when it is ok to bail out of a joint trip like a medical or family emergency or when the situation gets life threatening due to bad weather or the like. But on our trip nothing even remotely close had happened. The only person with a medical problem (ear pain) had been me. There was no family emergency. We were way ahead of schedule. The paddling and the conditions had been even better than described in the various guide books and trip reports. Everything had gone as or better as expected. Still, Adrian single-handedly decided to bail out and thus forced me to do the same. I can still find no excuse for that decision. I in his shoes would have just gritted my teeth and finished the last 2 weeks. Hey, we were not talking about a yearlong expedition, there were less than 2 weeks left! I still feel that Adrian had an even stronger moral obligation to continue: HE had talked me into paddling in a two person canoe, whereas I had always wanted to paddle in 2 single kayaks. In a single kayak I would have been able to continue on my own, but I could not handle a 2 person canoe alone in these windy conditions. In hindsight his motivation became very obvious: Adrian would never have been able to get all his luxury equipment into a kayak - he needed a canoe!

The way he communicated his decision was even worse than the decision itself. A decent person would have tried to talk about the problem, see the other person's view, find alternatives or compromises - but at least have a face to face talk. Not so Adrian: At 7 am in the morning he came up to my tent where I was still sleeping and told me through the tent wall that he was leaving. He did not even have the guts to tell me face to face. I struggled to awake and tried to stick out my head of the tent (where hundreds of mosquitoes were immediately attacking me) to at least see him - well, Adrian always tried to stay out of my view range... I think that tells a lot about his character. He did not offer any apology, any compromise, or even the chance to talk his decision over. He had made up his mind - and did not care about anybody else.

This trip could have been fantastic - but it turned out to be a disaster. I still cannot help but feeling abused by Adrian.

But I learnt one thing: They don't call a 2 person canoe divorce boat for nothing.....

Yukon: Galena to the sad end

2011-07-16T05:42:00.001+02:00

Great grassy campsite in Galena

Galena is the last "bigger" settlement on the Yukon and therefore the logical place to stock up on supplies for the last 500 miles to the delta. It has a big paved airstrip, 2 shops and a B&B for Adrian. But when we stopped just short of the public landing to hide the boat and find a camp site for me Galena did not look to inviting: Mosquitoes everywhere and hardly a good place to camp. Luckily a local in a car stopped for us and gave us some great advice: There is a nice meadow with a picnic table in front of the Fish and Wildlife Bureau and other paddlers had stayed there before. He even gave Adrian a short ride to the place and showed him the lay of the land. The rangers were very friendly and not only allowed us to camp on their lawn (Adrian's B&B had closed forcing him to camp as well), but stored our luggage during the day (local kids tend to steal stuff out of canoes) and let us refill our drinking water supplies. They even printed out the weather forecast for us. And when we learnt that there is a coffee shop with free internet the world looked much better.

Washeteria in Kaltag

We spent the whole day shopping, doing laundry, working on the internet and hitching from one end of town to the other. The only thing we could not do was taking a shower as the public showers had been closed due to vandalism. We had a nice dinner prepared on the Fish & Wildlife barbecue and got a good night's sleep despite lots of air and ATV traffic.

Next day was my 44th birthday that we celebrated with Swiss cheese fondue, white wine and mousse aux chocolate. Beside Adrian about 1,000 mosquitoes had invited themselves to the party, but after a bottle of wine for the two of us they did not matter that much any more...

Fish wheel

In this stretch the river is dotted with loads of little native settlements - you pass a village almost every day. There were still lots of fish camps, but now they only consisted of smoke houses and no other buildings. The river is truly wide now and crossing it is definitely not recommended. We had to fight with strong head winds and high waves for the first time. Although I was a bit scared in the beginning I soon realized that the waves don't provide the most comfortable paddling, but they are not as dangerous as they look. We made very little progress due to the wind, but still managed to do 40 to 50 km per day. The weather got colder, too and it began drizzling a lot. Not the most comfortable conditions, but still pretty manageable - I thought, at least.

Alaskan bearproof grave

One evening we ran into a group of native fishermen. Of course we were immediately invited to visit and Adrian was given a fishing rod to try his luck. Well, Adrian did not catch anything, but our new friends insisted on giving us a fish. I was not overly enthusiastic about this idea as we were in prime bear country and would probably not be able to find an island for camping. And fish would of course attract the bears much more than our usual vegetarian fare. But it was already too late: Adrian was handed a huge fish and off we went - luckily being able to find a campsite on the grounds of a former hut. We decided to cook far away from our camp sites and built a fire for the fish. Adrian did a pretty good job cleaning the fish and wrapped in aluminium foil and roasted on coal it turned out to be a delicious meal. We had just started eating when our Indian friends showed up in their boat and tried to entertain us.... I must say that I felt a bit uncomfortable when we were offered alcohol and a gun (to defend us against the bears) - and all their stories about how many people they had killed in the Afghan war as soldiers in the US army did not improve my mood either. But eventually they left and we spent a quiet night inside Adrian's bear proof electrical fence - despite all the locals' warnings about bears.

The weather continued to be windy and forced us to spend the next night in the cemetery next to the little village of Kaltag. Some locals driving by could not believe their eyes when they saw that some crazy foreigners were camping right between the graves... and warned us about bears, of course.

Unfortunately, this was the end of my Yukon trip as Adrian decided that night that he did not want to continue on the Yukon - thus forcing me to give up as well because we were paddling in a 2 person canoe that is not suitable for single person use in these conditions. Now, 3 days later, I am still so furious, angry, frustrated and disappointed with Adrian's egotistical behavior that I have a hard time writing about it and will save these events for another blog entry.

I am in Anchorage right now licking my wounds and trying to recover from the shock and disappointment of having had to abandon an otherwise fantastic trip. I will leave for Denali National Park tomorrow to do some hiking and clear my head.

Yukon: Yukon Crossing to Galena

2011-07-16T04:51:00.003+02:00

Oil pipeline

Yukon Crossing is more or less the halfway point of the Yukon. It is not a real settlement - there is just a hotel (with rooms for 199$ per shabby room), a gas station, a restaurant, a laundry and showers for 10$. As you might have guessed I preferred to stay dirty with these prices. Yukon Crossing is the last place where a bridge crosses the Yukon - the next 1,300 km there is nothing but boats and airplanes for transport. The road bridge has only been constructed in the 1970's - as a by-product of the oil pipeline crossing Alaska. Due to the extreme weather conditions the bridge is able to move 2 1/2 ft! Construction work in winter took place under a heated tent: Not to keep the workers warm, but otherwise the cement would have frozen.....


Bridge at Yukon crossing

Approaching Yukon Crossing we saw the bridge from far away, but nearly panicked as we could not determine which side the buildings were on. According to our map they should be left, but it looked better on the right side. The Yukon is almost 1 km wide there and you really do not want to cross from one shore to the other with 4 bridge abutment right in front of your nose and a strong current.... Luckily, we made the right decision for the right side and were immediately greeted by the woman running the local crafts "shop", although shed would probably be the more correct term. She told us all about here house on the Yukon, her kids, fellow paddlers and life in general. We spend half a day there with Adrian doing his washing and phone calls.

Last highway for 1.400 km

Just before Yukon Crossing we had changed position in the boat: I was sitting in the back now doing the steering and Adrian in the front doing the navigation. I became more and more confident with steering, but Adrian turned out to be a disaster as a navigator: He could not read the maps or GPS without his glasses and therefore we were very often not there were he thought we would be... But instead of focusing on his navigation job he seemed to enjoy more criticizing my steering and he seemed to believe that he must give me a lesson on J-strokes every single day. Well, I might not be a world class paddler, but I managed all right. I even made it through my first rapids in the steering position without capsizing the boat!

In this section the river turns back into the mountains. It is very wide now, generally about 1 km, with various big islands in the middle, cut banks and a very manageable current of between 3 to 8 km/h. Camping became less of a problem as the water levels were slowly sinking and exposing sandy beaches at the front and back end of islands. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes became more and more of a problem. Sometimes they were so thick that you could hardly open your mouth without eating some of them. They actually taste quite good, almost sweet.

Fish camp bath room

Fish camps were abundant in this section and were quite comfortable. Usually people leave this fish camps open when they are not there and only take bear precautions in the form of nail boards or boarding up windows. We had some very nice lunch breaks out of the wind in these very comfortable structures that sometime even come equipped with satellite dishes and fully equipped kitchens. Of course we left everything as we had found it.

In this section we had to stop at a village called Tanana because we both had a mail drop there. We arrived on a Sunday but had called ahead to the post mistress and she had promised to leave our packages at the local store. I must say that people tend to very flexible in bush Alaska. But when we finally arrived after a very windy day the shop had already closed. Not a problem as it turned out: A local woman just rang the the shop owner who came down to not only give us the package (unfortunately, mine had not arrived yet), but also gave us some time for shopping!

Inside a fish camp - not a B&B

She was also running the local B&B and of course, Adrian could not resist the temptations of civilization and had to stay there - despite our prior agreement to stay at the free local camp ground. The B&B owners must have been very much surprised that Adrian had ditched his female paddling partner into a tent while luxuriously staying indoors himself. So after being told that he would not have to pay more when I stayed there as well I was finally invited indoors as well. Although I would rather have stayed outdoors this unexpected stay in civilization turned out to be a good thing: Checking my mail I was horrified to read that my credit card had been frozen due to suspicion of fraud! With free wifi and Adrian's laptop I could contact my bank and figure out how to access money now.

Yukon: The Flats

2011-07-15T08:59:00.001+02:00

The National Park and our maps ended at the village of Circle where another interesting river section starts: The Flats. Until now the river has always been confined by high mountains on each side and although the Yukon had already became very wide you could still manage to paddle from one shore to the other within reasonable time. Now the Yukon left the mountains and entered an extremely flat area - and immediately spread out tremendously. At some points in the Flats the Yukon is over 6 km WIDE!!!! Of course the river is now a maze of big and small islands, sand bars and loads of different channels. Navigation is sort of a nightmare here. The river changes constantly and our maps were made more than 20 years ago - so almost nothing looked like it should according to the map.

Small side channel

At first we tried to follow the main current which was still surprisingly swift with over 10 km/h. This strategy turned out to be a recipe for disaster. The river is very shallow and peppered with all sorts of obstacles like sand bars or driftwood and trees. On top of all that there are lots of eddies in the water that can swirl you around into directions you do not want to go at all. If you end up in one of these eddies it feels like the river wants to swallow you and eat you alive. This eddies can just show up out of the blue. I called them piranha eddies as they reminded me of a pool of hungry piranhas at feeding time. After two days in the main current we were both nervous wrecks, but luckily discovered how to avoid all these problems: We just stayed on side channels that were much longer and winding and had little current, but were very scenic, easy to navigate and had no steering problems. Paddling became relaxed again and actually turned out to be one of my favorite stretches. But don't get me wrong: These little side channels are usually still wider than the main river Danube!!!

Only once we had another problem on this stretch when we ended up in a thunderstorm in the middle of a big channel. As usual the storm started without prior warning within 10 minutes. We could just make it to shore in time when the waves got so high that paddling became almost impossible. Unfortunately, we were now stuck at a very high cut bank and we had to use almost acrobatic efforts to get ourselves and the gear up on high ground onto one of the most miserable, overgrown and mosquito-infested campsites of this whole trip. But other than that the Flats turned out to be an interesting section of the river.

Yukon: Yukon-Charlie National Park

2011-07-15T08:37:00.001+02:00

Moss insulation of cabin wall

Right after the 100-people-Yukon-metropolis-without-immigration-officer Eagle Yukon-Charlie National Park starts. The Park still causes a lot of tension: Several people are still living inside the park on subsistence fishing and although they are allowed to continue to do so, they are not very happy with the Park Rangers. So when we stopped at a fish camp to get out of the rain we were welcomed by a local who immediately told us all the bad stories about park policies. But the guy did not only talk about local politics, he had also a couple of years ago paddled the whole Yukon himself and gave us some interesting information about our upcoming trip. He stayed at the fish camp together with 21 sledge dogs who were all tightly chained up to their tiny little hut - because otherwise he would not be able to control them. Still I found this treatment very cruel - but it is standard practice all along the Yukon and we would see it several times.

Old greenhouse & meat storage

I personally really enjoyed the park, especially because of the various restored huts that are now used as public use cabins. We had a very good guidebook with maps for this section and learnt all the stories about these places and the people who had once lived there. My favorite story is the one about a German immigrant who ran a roadhouse on the Yukon together with his wife. After too much alcohol consumption he became delusional and started having nightmares about the German army invading the Yukon (this is taking place in the 1930s and 40s). Eventually he became so depressed that he decided to shoot himself - but instead of killing himself he just hurt himself badly. He was found by his wife who suffered so badly from rheumatism that she could hardly move - I guess the Yukon climate is not really helpful with this sort of ailment. Despite being in the middle of winter she got her crutches and made her way to the next neighbor who lived several miles away. The neighbor got his sledge dogs out and took the husband to the next settlement to get medical help. Unfortunately, all this proved to be too much for his poor wife and she died of a heart attack the same night. So when her husband came back from hospital he could not find her and would not believe his neighbors that she had died. He set out in a canoe to look for her and drifted down the Yukon River towards the Bering Sea - only to be never seen again. Hey, who needs TV out there when there are all these true stories around....

Public use cabin

The public use cabins turned out to be fantastic. We had lunch in the first one, a hunting hut built and used by a Fairbanks optometrist who later died from the effects of a plane crash. Next came an old subsistence fisher hut that was so inviting that we decided to stay the night. Next day we just made it to Slavens Roadhouse, another public use cabin that turned out to be the Hilton of cabins. It had two stories with 2 rooms on each floor and even had a fully equipped kitchen! Not to mention the rhubarb that was growing in front of the house that ended up in my cooking pot as rhubarb compote... And when we had just finished our Swiss cheese fondue two fellow French paddlers showed up out of the rain - but we still each had a room for ourselves!

Slaven's Roadhouse

This first evening a torrential downpour started that would last for 24 hours. We just watched the Yukon River in amazement as it swelled more and more and every minute a huge tree trunk came swimming down the raging torrent. We were happy not to be out there and even happier to be in this fantastic hut! In the afternoon a young ranger showed up and told us the Ranger version of local park politics. At least we had a balanced view now!! The second evening ended with another rhubarb compote and a weather improvement - and on day 3 we were able to leave this fantastic place. By the way: According to our guidebook this roadhouse was once run by a Czech immigrant called Slaven and a Mrs Bissell - an alleged ex-prostitute from Dawson City who was already past her prime. They catered for travellers on the Yukon and the people who worked the nearby gold mine. The guidebook says laconically: "Frank Slaven ran the road house - and Mrs Bissel ran Frank Slaven...." So much on women on the Yukon.

Yukon: Eagle or Reporting a tragedy with a happy end

2011-07-08T23:49:00.003+02:00


Capsized boat

The first day out of Dawson should get us to the abandoned settlement of Forty Mile where we were planning on camping. And so we were happily paddling down the river in the afternoon when I suddenly spotted something weird on the far shore - something red that looked like an upside down canoe. After a quick discussion we decided to check it out and made a mad dash to the other shore (keep in mind that the current is still strong with about 12 km/h and therefore traversing requires some effort). On the other shore we saw that it really was an upside down canoe buried under some driftwood - and no one around. This was not a good sign and we started to get a bad feeling about the whole situation. This feeling did not improve when we turned the boat around and found a barrel and a backpack still tied to it. It was quite obvious now that someone must have capsized and lost the boat. We opened the barrel and the backpack and tried to find some ID, but only found lots of trash, very little food, maps, toiletries and a leather hat. Both the barrel and the boat were marked as property of Up North, the same canoe rental place in Whitehorse where we had bought our own canoe. Judging from the lack of food and its expiry dated we concluded that this person must have capsized shortly before Dawson City where most paddlers with rental boats get off and a shuttle back to Whitehorse. The big question now was: What has happened to the capsized person?

View from Forty Mile

We took various photos of the boat and the GPS coordinates of the place. After that there was nothing else we could do - especially since it was apparent that the accident must have happened quite a while ago. By now the capsized person must either have been rescued - or died. Of course we talked almost about nothing else and speculated a lot about what could have happened. Losing your boat here in this cold water is a sure recipe for killing yourself, but on the other side we had not heard about any missing paddler or had seen a search and rescue party. I must admit that I had visions of skeleton hands coming out of Yukon trying to grab me....

Phone at Eagle

We would have to inform the authorities but the questions was how? Forty Mile was supposed to have a caretaker but unfortunately he was not there when we arrived. Therefore the next chance for us was Eagle, the first town on the Alaska side. Eagle was important for us anyways as we had to do immigration into the US there - without a customs officer who had died the previous year in a tragic accident and not been replaced. We had been given a leaflet with the immigration details now: You have to stop at the public landing, go to the customs building were there is a telephone. Pick up the phone and it will automtically connect you with US immigration. Well, this is how it is supposed to work in theory. In reality we arrived at the public landing, found the phone box, openend it - and found no phone. It just had not been connected.... Great - what were we supposed to do now? We asked some uncredibly friendly locals who directed us to a free camp spot and promised to drive to the local shop with the only public phone for us and try to locate any authority that might exist in the little town of Eagle. So eventually the local park ranger showed up - there is no other public authority left in Eagle. But by now it was too late to call to Up North Canoe Rental in Canada or the US immigration office. We just camped in the worst campsite of the whole trip and waited impatiently for the solution of the capsized boat mystery and our legalization next morning.

Our camp site at Eagle

Right when the ranger station next morning opened we were there and met the ranger's boss who helped us with all our problems. First she let us make a phone call to US immigration who officially allowed us to enter the US via the phone. We still have to complete the immigration procedure once in Anchorage where there is a real officer. And then she called Up North to find out about the capsized canoe - and the happy ending of our mystery. The canoe had been rented by a Brit in Whitehorse on May 20th. He had indeed capsized on May 28th, but been rescued thereafter. But nobody had found the canoe yet. He had capsized above Dawson and they had searched for the canoe there, whereas we had found the canoe more than 60 km below Dawson! We communicated the GPS data of the boat - and were very happy with this happy ending!!! After a city tour of Eagle and its historical Fort Egbert we left Eagle happily and legally (!) into the Yukon-Charlie National Park.

Yukon: Dawson City

2011-06-18T00:01:00.002+02:00

From Fort Selkirk to Dawson City our landing skills vastly improved. Both Adrian and I had to admit that up to Fort Selkirk neither of us had felt really comfortable in the boat. We felt that any minute some disaster could strike that we would not be able to handle. The combination of a very strong current, weather that can change within minutes from sunshine to hail storm, our only basic paddling skills and the cold water temperature that can kill you within minutes from hypothermia made us feel uneasy. When hiking I usually feel very confident. Depending on what trail I am hiking iffy sections like river or snowfield crossings make up only between 0 - 5% of the time. Paddling on the Yukon River I felt uneasy about half of time! But things improved after Fort Selkirk: We started to feel more and more confident. We are still very attentive and careful, but at least we start feeling more or less at ease most of the time. Bu disaster can still strike any minute like when we ended up in a sudden hail storm and did not land quickly enough... We ended up soaking wet with a boat full of water but otherwise unscathed...

Hostel "bathroo

Dawson City is definitely a highlight of this trip.We are staying at the Dawson City River Hostel which is an attraction in itself. It is situated on the Western Bank of the River that is not connected to electricity or running water. As the sun shines day and night now I do not really miss electricity. And the "showers" are the very best of the hostel resembling an old-fashioned Japanese onsen. You can either use cold creek water or heat water (and the bathroom) with a wood stove. West Dawson is connected with Dawson City via a car ferry that is running 24 hours every day at 10 minute intervals. There is no bridge over the Yukon in Dawson City and therefore the ferry acts as a substitute for a road brigde.

Dawson had a population of 30,000 during the gold rush in 1897, but nowadays only about 1,500 people are left. The town lives on tourism and gold mining and I must admit that they do the tourism well. Everyone in the visitor centre and all the tour guides are dressed up in authentic period costumes. Being an efficient German tourist I immediately bought a visitor pass and set out to see as many sights as possible. And for a little place like Dawson there is a lot to see: A city tour takes you to the first bank with only chicken wire as safety precaution. Well, if you rob a bank where would you go with the money? You could leave on the Yukon and would be found immediately. Actually the very first bank in Dawson was situated in a tent (!), before it was moved to an old storage shed.... Almost all dealings were done in gold dust and so the most important banker's instrument used to be a scales.


Saloon

You can also visit the old Grand Theatre, where "40 shapely ladies" were singing and dancing to entertain the miners - and relieve them of their money. The "percentage girls" were dancing with the miners for 1$ per 1 minute waltz that ended at the bar - where the girls would receive a percentage of the price of every drink their suitors would be them. But eventually the Women's Temperance Movement would put an end to all that drinking and gambling when the gold mining slowly subsided after gold was found in other places in Alaska. But even during the gold rush Dawson was a relatively civilised place - the Royal Mounted Police would see to that. Everything was shut down on Sundays and nobody was allowed to carry guns in town. Nowadays tourists can join a police officer to solve the only brutal murder incident that happened in Dawson in 1902 - and even then the murderers where caught and brought to justice.


Board walk

Still, Dawson has a "Frontier" feeling to it: Only Front Street is paved, all other roads are plain dirt with old fashioned wooden board walks. You can still see plenty of interesting characters on the streets. 100 years ago Dawson was home to 2 famous authors: Jack London lived here and in a cabin of a Yukon side creek. And there is Robert Service, of whom I have never heard before in my entire life, but who is incredibly popular in North America. He immigrated from the UK and became one of the most famous poets of the last century after short jobs as a cowboy, vagrant and bank clerk. He mostly became famous with his ballads about the gold rush and his old log cabin in Dawson can still be visited and hosts daily poetry readings. Robert Service died as a millionaire - which proves that you can even make money with poems...

Yukon: Fort Selkirk

2011-06-17T20:25:00.002+02:00

The first stretch along the Yukon boasts a lot of historical monuments. Although most of them are just some rotting log cabins that nobody would look on twice in Germany, they are historical sites here in this relatively new country. We have already seen a fair share of rotting steam wheeler ships and collapsed cabins, but next on our route was Fort Selkirk, an abandoned trading post. Once a flourishing city on the banks of the Yukon it is now bypassed by roads and only accessible via the Yukon River - and therefore an abandoned, but nicely restored ghost town. Even the former keeper has passed away... But our guidebook mentioned camp sites, privies, shelter and even drinking water and therefore we were quite excited to get there.

But before Fort Selkirk we had to survive more adventures in an area suitably called Hell's Gate. There the Yukon widens into a myriad of little islands and channels - and lots of submerged tree trunks and sandbars that pose a serious danger to canoes coming down the river at a swift current of 15 km/h. The name Hell's Gate was given by the steam wheeler captains that feared that stretch as well. We found the right channel without problems but as soon as we were inside Hell's Gate the wind came up. Hiking this sort of wind does not pose any problem but in a canoe and shallow and fast flowing water this is a serious problem. Steering the canoe became almost impossible and we were nearly spinning around. We decided to make an emergency landing on one of the islands, but even getting out of the main channel into one of the side channels turned out to be a painful effort. I only started to relax once we had the boat out of the water and stable ground underneath our feet. Luckily bad weather has not lasted very long so far and within 2 hours of napping and reading under our tarp the wind had calmed down enough to continue.

Old school

Fort Selkirk was coming up soon at the confluence of the Yukon with the Pelly River and a very strong current was to be expected according to our guidebook. We were still 5 km away from it when the wind came up again - and after our scary experience that very day Adrian and I made a quick dash to the shore where a faint path up the banks miraculously showed up - and we even managed to land there without any problem! We were so happy that we decided to stay there instead of continuing on the Fort Selkirk and running the risk of missing it or not being able to land.


General store

Our fear turned out to be unfounded. The next morning we made an easy landing at Fort Selkirk despite the strong current and the high river banks that were needed for the steam wheelers to land. We spent some interesting hours visiting the beautifully restored houses and churches of Fort Selkirk that can easily function is film set for a Wild West movie. I even found a huge thick trash bag in the kitchen shelter that will make a wonderful rain skirt for the rest of the trip. We filled up with drinking water as the Yukon River is so dirty that you cannot drink it without long treatment. We learnt at one of the explanatory boards that during snow melt 1 litre of Yukon water can contain up to 845 gr of sediment! We realise that, too as the rasping sound of our boat in the water gets louder and louder every day.

Yukon: Five Finger Rapids

2011-06-17T03:30:00.004+02:00

Yukon Bridge at Carmacks

The Five Finger Rapids are the only really "dangerous" or whitewater section of the Yukon. I have been afraid of them ever since I started deliberating this trip and have read everything about them. And now the day was coming closer and closer. The Rapids are 38 km downstream from Carmacks and our outlook did not improve when we woke up on the decisive day and realized that it was raining. Usually rain stops very quickly but it rained on and on and on. We had already packed all our stuff into the boat and were just hanging out at Carmack campground waiting for the weather to improve. We agreed on 2 pm as cut-off time as we did not want to go through the rapids too late in the day. And for sure, right at 2 pm the clouds broke up and the rain stopped.

We made a quick dash to our boat and embarked on this critical stretch. My stomach felt weirder and weirder the closer we got and Adrian had to take a "fear pee". There is a back eddy right before the rapids were you can watch the whole thing but we decided not to procrastinate it much longer and go straight through. All the guidebooks say the same thing: Just use the right most channel and you will be fine. People only die taking the wrong channel.... The actual passage is very short: The current is strong and you are sucked in and spit out seconds later. With that in mind we raced down the Yukon very nervously into the roar of the rapids - kneeling in the boat to lower our centre of gravity and everything firmly tied up.


Cut bank

To cut it short: The passage was both easier and more difficult than expected. We had feared to capsize or crash against the rock walls. Neither of those happened. Our boat is so heavy that it was absolutely stable in the water and the channel so wide that even we rookies would not even come close to the rock walls. The problem came from a different angle: Inside the channel some violent wave were raging. I was kneeling in the front and even had difficulties getting the paddle into the water when we were thrown up by a wave. And those waves would slosh water into our boat - lots of water!!! Within seconds I was soaking wet and realised in a wave of panic that the whole bottom of the boat was already covered with water. For seconds I was afraid of sinking... But we just paddled on - and within two minutes we were through the channel. Once through I immediately started bailing water, although it became very quickly apparent that we were not even close to the danger of sinking. Still we had taken in about at least 30 - 40 liters of water.


Cut bank

Shortly after the rapids there is a public campground and to our great relief we saw two groups of fellow paddler already beached there - and bailing water. They had suffered exactly the same fate. I felt much better now seeing that we had not done anything wrong - you just get wet going through those rapids. I quickly changed into dry clothes and then we decided to paddle on and tackle Rink Rapids, which are 9 km downstream and less dangerous. Again you take the right channel. Approaching the Rink Rapids it looked even worse than Five Finger Rapids but as predicted in the guide book in the very last minute a calm channel on the right opens and ensures a safe passage.


Cooking in bug proof clothes

We felt elated! We had made it through the technically most difficult stretch of our whole trip without suffering any casualties. Now we just wanted to camp as it was already relatively late for our standards. Mind you that right now it never really gets dark at night here. But this is when the real problem started: The current was so strong now that we had great difficulties to land. As soon as we saw a suitable spot we were already past it. Even trying to get out of the current seemed like a life threatening undertaking. And when we finally were able to land somewhere we could not find a spot to set up camp. After 1 hour of futile searching I almost became desperate. Our map showed an "official" camp site 5 km further down and we decided to try our luck there. Good move! After sneaking along the shoreline for 10 minutes and trying to figure out where the place was we finally found a faint path up the shore - and were even able to land there! The place is called Yukon Crossing and serves as a winter crossing of the Yukon. Plenty of space were to camp, some old relics from 100 years ago and even a new privy. Totally exhausted I cooked dinner with about 100 mosquitoes and then we went to bed thankful that this exciting day had gone so well.

Yukon: Carmacks

2011-06-10T22:55:00.003+02:00

As you can see from this post we have survived our first days of paddling. And actually it has not been too bad.. Let's start with the good things:

The weather has been ok. It has been a mix of short showers, overcast and cold spells as well as a lot of sunshine. It can actually be quite hot in the sun here and my face is almost sunburnt. The mosquitoes have been behaving so far, too. In the first days we saw almost none - but I had to get out my bugshirt last night eventually. We also make a lot of progress and paddlde up to 80 km per day due to the strong current. And of course the food is great, too - which was to be expected as I am cooking on a petrol stove and a new pot set.

Beach on Lake Laberge

Now the problems: The current is incredibly strong - up to 15 km/h and an average of 12 km/h. This lets us move very fast. We could just sit in the boat without paddling and still do 60 km per day. How will I ever enjoy hiking again where you only average 4 km/h with a lot of effort? The problem starts when you want to steer the boat and beach. The current is so strong that you can only beach doing a U-turn. You first have to turn the boat around and then paddle upstream against the current. Next the person in front of the boat has to jump out and secure the boat. So far we have succeded in the U-turn, but the person jumping out of the boat (which has been me so far) does not exactly win a prize for grace and elegance. As the campsite are not very obvious from far away all those manouvers have to be very fast, too. So far we have not missed any spot but each beaching causes us a bit of a panic attack. Hopefully things will improve with more practice and slower current.

Cold forest fire

Another unexpected bad surprise has been a huge forest fire. Luckily, the Yukon River stayed open for paddling and by the time we reached the site most of the fires had already gone cold. Still it was depressing to see what huge amount of forest had burnt. We first noticed the fire on Shipyard Island, an island that served as a shipyard for steam wheelers - just as the name suggest. One old steam wheeler is left there and the fire crew was working hard to protect this heritage site by reducing the "fuel". We were told that the fire starts 8 km further downstream and would accompany us for quite a bit. This quite a bit turned out to be more than 30 km - a really depressing sight with smoldering trees everywhere.

Yukon: Whitehorse

2011-06-04T06:32:00.002+02:00

So far everything went according to plan. Adrian and I met at Frankfurt airport and had an uneventful and smooth flight to Whitehorse. Whitehorse has only about 20,000 inhabitants - but a weekly direct flight from Frankfurt and one from Switzerland. I guess there are a lot of German-speaking people dreaming of the Yukon! Here in Whitehorse we are staying at a very nice hostel: Nice room, kitchen, free internet - and a huge supply of free food (leftovers from other guests) that saved us already a lot of money as we could pilfer their spice supplies.

Our new boat fully loaded

We have spent two rather stressful days shopping: First we had to find a boat. There are only 3 options: Canadian Tire, a huge home depot sort of store that also sells rather mediocre boats and two canoe shops that sell used boats. We eventually bought an Old Town canoe from one of the canoe shops for 900 CAN$ and are quite happy with it. Next we had to buy supplies for at least 2 weeks. As Whitehorse is the biggest town on the whole Yukon we tried to buy as much as possible. Our hostel room looks like a huge mess and I have my doubts whether we will be able to fit everything into our new canoe, but Adrian is quite optimistic. We will see tomorrow....

I don't know when we will have the next chance for internet access and therefore the next blog update take a while...

Yukon: The next adventure

2011-05-30T18:13:00.000+02:00

On June 1st I will fly to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory and start a thrupaddle of the Yukon River together with my Swiss paddling partner Adrian. The Yukon is 3,120 km long and the fifth longest river in North America. It usually takes about 60 to 80 days to thrupaddle it. I will fly back on August 23rd. Even after all my adventures in the last 4 years this expedition is something very special for me - out of various reasons.

This is my first long paddling trip. I have paddled 2 weeks in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota and the Everglades in Florida - but I have never been on such a long paddling trip. Luckily the Yukon is quite an easy river with no real white water and hopefully even paddling rookies like Adrian and I will be able to manage it.
This is my first long trip I have planned with a partner. Almost all my other adventures have been solo trips or I have met partners while travelling, but this time I am setting out with someone. I must admit that Adrian has done most of the planning. The whole trip has been his idea and is his birthday present for his 60th birthday. I have only joined him half a year ago, but we have been a good team ever since. On this trip we will literally be in the same boat for 2,5 months and I hope we will still be talking with each other at the end of the trip.
This is a relatively expensive trip. The air fare has been relatively expensive especially since I am only staying for less than 3 months. I have bought a lot of new equipment for this trip, like a new petrol stove, a two person pot set, a bugshirt, a synthetic quilt. And I will have to buy more gear in Canada like a life jacket, paddles and waterproof containers. Plus we will have to buy the boat, a Canadian canoe and many other little items in Whitehorse. We will sell the boat and the paddles at the end of the trip, but keep the rest. Although I will be able to use most of the new gear on other paddling and cycling trips, this has been a major investment for me.

The Yukon poses a lot of new challenges - and a lot of them are quite new to me. Still, I would be much more nervous about this trip if I were on my own. Having a paddling partner is a big help, especially since Adrian is an experienced long-distance hiker like me.

The average water temperature of the Yukon even in summer is only 5,5 Celsius. When you fall into water that cold you have about 10 to 15 minutes to get out - after that you will die of hypothermia. Remembering that we managed to capsize our boat even in the tame Everglades this is a scary prospect.
The Yukon is extremely silty. If you want to get drinking water out of the river you have to let it sit overnight so that the sediments can settle down. This fine sand is also a killer of tent zippers and fabrics. I don't expect that much of our daily gear will survive intact.
Wind is a big problem especially in the Yukon delta close to the Bering Sea where there are no trees left as wind breaks. These high winds can create standing waves that make paddling impossible, especially in a canoe. We are expecting to be stuck in our tents for a couple of days and I have brought playing cards to keep us entertained. We hope we have enough time buffer for these occasions.
Of course there are the mosquitoes. We have bought new bug shirts for this problem. But at least the mosquitoes and ticks do not transmit any diseases like Lyme Disease in Alaska....
And there are the bears - black and brown. Adrian has even bought a bear proof fence for them to ensure us a good rest at night.
The Yukon is very isolated. Once past Dawson City we will have very few resupply and communication possibilities. Probably there won't be many blog updates for that reason. We can just hope that we don't run into any medical problems and don't miscalculate our food supply.

The Yukon is a big test for me. I want to do more paddling on my own but don't feel experienced enough for long solo trips. If I can cope on the Yukon with Adrian, I will hopefully be able to cope on my own. And then the first solo paddling adventure would be the Murray River in Australia...This is how one trip leads to the next one!

A hike through Germany: Tipps and tricks

2011-05-30T16:45:00.001+02:00

Here are some tipps and tricks for hiking in Germany - especially for my non-European readers.

Decorated river source

Water: Getting drinking water is an important issue no matter where you hike. Because you are almost always close to agricultural areas, I try to avoid drinking surface water due to agricultural run-off. But there are many other ways of getting good drinking water: If you see water coming out of a tap and NO sign saying that it is not potable, you can drink it without any treatment. This applies to springs out in nature as well as to fountains in villages. On my hike I found a lot of those springs and fountains and they are generally marked on a map. If you cannot find a natural source you have get tap water from villages or farm houses on the way. Of course you can just ask people and they will generally fill your water bottles happily. But I always try to avoid this strategy in order not to attract too much attention especially later in the afternoon when I will soon start to look for a stealth camp site. Your best choice then is a cemetery!!! German graves are usually adorned with living plants that have to be watered - and therefore almost all German cemetaries will provide tap water.

Old Jewish cemetery

Recharging your electrical devices: On this hike I had the ambition to free camp almost all the time. But that led to the question where to recharge my cell phone and MP3 player. When visiting a museum or castle I would usually recharge it there, but the easier choice is churches! German churches are usually open during day time and have electrical sockets. Therefore I tried being in a village for lunch time where I would look for the church, plug in my cell phone and while it is recharging I am having lunch outside. In many cases the local graveyard is just outside the church and this provides easy access to water.

Hygiene: Even as a long-distance hiker you should wash yourself once in a while... in more remote areas you can just swim in a lake or river, but on this hike this proved to be difficult - because either there is no lake or it is too cold or there are too many people around. But being so close to civilisation had its advantages here: Spas are very popular in Germany and I hiked through a lot of towns that had one. Although this a rather expensive luxury (expect to pay around 10 - 15 EUR) it feels heavenly to sit and relax in a jacuzzi or a sauna and get spanking clean.

Shelters: You will find lots of benches along German hiking trails, some even with picnic tables and trash cans. On very popular trail you will even find covered shelters although those were pretty rare on this hike. The perfect solution for finding shelter in rainy weather is raised blinds! Almost all German forest is commerically used and hunting is one of these uses. Therefore you will find hundreds of raised blinds ranging from simple seats to completely covered cabins. Although some of these constructions look (and feel!) rather shaky they provide perfect shelter and seating in rain.

A hike through Germany: Conclusion

2011-05-30T01:09:00.001+02:00

The answer to my typical question at the end of a hike is easy this time. Would I recommend this hike to a friend? Yes, definitely and without any reservations. This has been a fantastic hike. The only negative aspects have been ticks and the resulting health problems. But other than that this has been the perfect hike for Germany - and it has helped of course that the weather has cooperated. In 5 weeks it has only rained twice and the temperature has been very warm, almost hot for German standards.

Hollow way

But especially for non-European readers I want to elaborate a bit more about trail conditions. When hiking in Germany you will not find any pristine wilderness. If this is what you are after, don't come to Germany or any other Central / Western European country. This is a very populated region and almost every piece of land is commercially used in some sense. But whereas 25% of Germany consists of built up areas, 31% of the surface of Germany is forested! (By the way: that makes wild or stealth camping in Germany relatively easy..... ). But almost all of these forested areas are commercially used. And as a farmer and forest owner told me: "A forest is useless without forest roads." Therefore German forest is crisscrossed by a multitude of forest roads - and this is what you will mostly be hiking on.

Wood storage along the trail

Almost none of these forest roads are paved and only a small part are wide "forest highways". You will not very often see a car driving on these roads. If you see a vehicle it will either be a farmer on a tractor "making wood" or a hunter or forrester. Logging mostly takes place in winter and in spring time farmers are collecting and storing the harvested wood. Unfortunately these activities can lead the horrible trail conditions, especially in rainy weather. Keep in mind that there is very little purpose built single-file hiking trails in Germany. The percentage of trail surface on my hike has probably been about 15% - 20% pavement, 15% - 20% single file trail and the rest is forest or farm road of some kind which can vary from wide forest highway to very old, overgrown and abandoned logging track or tracks along meadows and fields used by tractors. The good news is that if there is a trail / track / road you can almost always use it. It is not like in the US where many trails are fenced off and entry is prohibited because they are on private property. Therefore you have almost endless hiking possibilities in Germany.

Hiking along fields

Reading trailjournals of Americans hiking in Europe I realised that most of them are very reluctant to wild camp. Most end up in hotels/hostels/B&B or commercial campgrounds. I guess the reason is that they are afraid because they do not know or understand the legal situation. In Germany the legal situation for wild camping varies from state to state and the kind of property you are on. But generally you can assume that in strict legal terms wild camping would be prohibited in most cases. And the average German hiker on a 2 week holiday will not wild camp. But on the other hand "resting" is always allowed.... Wild camping is a huge topic in all European outdoor forums and bottom line is that most dedicated hikers practice it. And you will most probably not run into any problems as long as you practice some basic rules like not building a fire, not leaving trash, not camping in protected areas like nature reserves and generally being very discreet and staying out of sight. Obeying these rules you will probably even get away when caught by the land owner or forrester.

Chapel in the Black Forest

But you might wonder why you should hike in a country like Germany that has so little pristine nature attractions. Well, there are a lot of cultural attractions. The trails you are hiking on have generally already been used for a long time. And these centuries have left their traces. You will see all sorts of memorials, chapels, stations of the cross, mark stones, statues, cemeteries and so on along the trail... Hiking in Germany is always a walk through history, too and I find that extremely fascinating. Plus you have the opportunity to do a lot of sightseeing on the side as you come across some medieval castle (in ruins or intact), pilgrimage church or open air museum almost every day. On each hike I learn something new.

I really enjoyed this hike and I am looking forward to do some more hiking in Europe. But I also do not want to miss the wildernesses of the US or the different ecosystems of Australia. Each continent is different - and I love hiking in all of them!!!

A hike through Germany - continues in Austria on the Donausteig

2011-05-29T12:40:00.003+02:00

Rest area on the Donausteig

I usually hike about 1,000 km per month - and this had brought me from Waldshut-Tiengen on the Swiss / German border to Passau on the Austrian / German border. The route I had chosen was 1,000 km long and it took me exactly 1 month including 1,5 rest days. I still had 5 days left before I wanted to visit my friend Sabine and therefore I continued from Passau onward along the Danube on the newly opened Donausteig (Danube trail). The Donausteig follows the river Danube on both banks from Passau through Linz on to Grein in more than 400 km. I guess that the creators of the Donausteig have been inspired by the success of the Danube bike trail that is cycled by 437,000 bike tourists per year!!!!! I had cycled the Danube bike trail in 2008 where I already observed an incredible amount of fellow cyclists but this year was even worse. As the Donausteig and the bike trail coincide for some short distances I could watch a constant stream of cyclists - whereas I did not see a single fellow hiker on the Donausteig!!!

Designer bench on the Donausteig

The lack of hikers on the Donausteig really surprised me. Heaps of money have been pumped into this trail and I can only call it the Hilton of European hiking trails. The trail marking is impeccable and consists of metal sign posts of mileages rather than of blazes on trees. Special rest areas have been designed and boast designer seats and benches plus boards with stories and sagas of the Danube. Also the trail has been heavily marketed: The trail was officially opened less than a year ago and there are already 3 guide books! But still no hikers....

Schloegener Schlinge

I hiked about 150 km on the Donausteig and still it is difficult to say whether I liked it or not. The Donausteig offers some really spectacular views, especially at the Schloegener Schlinge, where the Danube creates an almost 180 degree bend. The banks of the Danube are very steep and very high - and also being heavily forested wild camping is very difficult due to the steepness of the terrain. But because of this steepness the banks could not be used for agriculture or any other commercial purposes and therefore present a wilderness feeling that I did not expect at all in this rather densely populated area. Of course there is a lot of culture to see, too, especially in churches and monasteries, but I think I have seen enough churches and monasteries for the next couple of months...

The biggest problem of the Donausteig is the trail surface which varies wildly. There are almost wilderness sections with small overgrown and steep trails, there are trails directly along the river that were used by horses pulling ships upriver against the current - but there is also a lot of walking on pavement. About 1/3 of the Donausteig are on pavement and this is the highest percentage of my whole hike. None of the paved sections is along busy highways but still they are very bad for your feet.

Voest Alpine chapel

The hike ended for me in Linz which I had already liked when I stayed here on my European bike trip in 2008. This time I opted for couchsurfing and had one of the most interesting couchsurfing experiences: I chose my host because he had studied mathematics and theology - a fascinating combination that led to hour long philosophical discussions. I was so intrigued that I almost did not want to leave for sightseeing, but I found a good compromise: I asked my theologist host to go church sight seeing with me - not the typical tourist churches, but weird or interesting churches and that idea turned out to be a great success. We visited an ultra-modern factory chapel at Voest Alpine, a former fabric workshop turned church with the former smoke stake as church tower and of course Linz cathedral.

Intellectually recharged I embarked onto the last station of my trip and took the train to Krems and my UL hiking friend Sabine. We spent two days talking trail and UL equipment. She showed me all her tarps and even let me paddle around in her new packraft which will probably be the piece of equipment on my wish list.... but that is another story. And finally, after 1,150 km of hiking and 5 weeks on the trail I flew back to Berlin where I have now 4 days to pack and prepare for my Yukon adventure.

A hike through Germany: Passau

2011-05-29T11:44:00.002+02:00

Pulpit in Passau cathedral

Passau sits on the German / Austrian border and was the 1,000 km mark for me. This was as far as I had wanted to hike - anything beyond Passau was just for fun. I had been in Passau twice before in 2008: Once when I had finished the Northern branch of the Goldsteig and on my bike trip through Europe as the Danube bike trail passes through Passau, too. On both occasions I had really liked Passau but had not have enough time to really enjoy it. So now I decided to spend a rest day in town.

As I was still suffering from ear pain and had started to take antibiotics I decided not to couchsurf but stay in a hotel/hostel. This turned out to be a very wise decision as I ended up staying in the Rotel Inn, a cheap Japanese-style cabin hotel in modern design. The hotel building looks like a sleeping person from outside. The inside is covered with graffiti about Japanese vs Western culture. The hotel is located close the train station and city centre right on the Danube. Almost all rooms have a view on the river Danube. The rooms are tiny and only as wide as the bed - but still have a little table, a chair and a storage board. Bathrooms and showers are across the hallway and everything is sparkling clean. Best of all: A single room only costs 30 EUR - and I immediately fell in love with place.

Organ in Passau cathredal

Passau only has a population of 51,000, but 1,6 million tourists per year!!! The major reason for that are the Americans! Passau is a popular stop over for Danube cruises and their guests are mostly North Americans. During the day Passau is full of tourists: Mostly American cruise ship tourist and also lots of cycle tourists, but in the evening most of them have already left again. Passau was spared from bombing in WWII and therefore has a beautiful old city centre and a huge cathedral with the biggest church organ in the world. I visited two organ concerts and the Americans sitting next to me promptly fell asleep - hopefully only due to jetlag and not to the music...

Passau seen from the Danube

Of course there are plenty of interesting museums and due to a Passau all inclusive card for 15 EUR I visited almost all of them. I even took a hour long river cruise. Passau sits at the spot where 3 rivers come together: The green Inn bringing flooding during snow melt from the Alps, the black Ilz bringing black tannine stained water from the Bavarian forest and the supposedly blue Danube.

A hike through Germany: Goldsteig

2011-05-29T11:12:00.001+02:00

Ilz valley

The Goldsteig consists of two branches: The Northern branch traverses the crest of the Bavarian forest parallel to the German / Czech border and I had hiked that section already in 2008 - albeit in much worse weather. So this time I opted for the Southern branch which stays a bit lower. Both branches end in Passau. The Southern Branch turned out to be another positive surprise: Although it traveses a very nice and heavily forested landscape there are hardly any tourists - which is a stark contrast to the Northern branch, which is a major German holiday destination. The two major nature highlights along the Southern branch are the Hoellbachtal, a "wilderness" creek valley (well, as much wilderness as you will get in Germany) and the valley of the Ilz. Especially Ilz valley which you follow for almost a day is very pretty: No roads are along the valley, only an abandonded railway line and literally 100s of joggers as this area is already very close to Passau.

Totenbretter

Another interesting cultural thing can be seen along the trail: Totenbretter (Boards for the dead). In former times the dead were laid out on wooden boards before their burial. In this region of Germany the boards were not buried with the dead but erected as a memorial for the deceased. To my big surprise this is still a living tradition as many of the boards I saw dated only a couple of years back. Along the trail you can also see a weird sculpture: a wooden hand! This hand was carved and donated by a regional artist who got lost in snow storm. Already afraid of dying lost in the cold a hand appeared out of heaven and pointed in the direction of the next village which he then found without any problem and was saved.

The wooden hand

I hope I was saved, too as I eventually got so worried about Lyme Disease that I decided to consult a doctor. This turned out to be a bit difficult as you pass through a lot of villages on the Goldsteig, but most of them are so small that there is no doctor. In St Englmar I found a GP - a real old fashioned country doctor who turned out to be an Alaska aficionado. So he was very sympathetic when I told him about my upcoming Yukon adventure and my fear of Lyme Disease. He prescribed antibiotics - which led to the next problem: There was no pharmacy in St Englmar and none for the next 3 days along the trail either. So much for Germany being very populated and commercialized. The doctor also took care of my ear which had been hurting for a while. He decided to take out the ear wax for which procedure he produced a huge metal syringe. When I told him that this thing looked rather brutal he replied: "It not only looks brutal - it is brutal. Now I will show you how country doctors deal with these problems..." As you can see he had a rather black sense of humour but he managed to get my ear wax out painlessly....

A hike through Germany: Oberpfalz

2011-05-29T10:36:00.000+02:00

Statue of St. James

Preparing my thruhike this passage has been the most difficult one. I had to connect the Frankenweg with the Goldsteig and did not know how to. In the end I decided to change from the Frankenweg to the Jurasteig and then continue on the Jakobsweg, which is one of the pilgrimage trails that eventually lead to the famous Camino and then on to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

The weather continued to be absolutely fantastic and another highlight was coming up in Oberpfalz: A visit of Ute, an old friend of mine in Weiden. The 50 km or so on the Jurasteig were nice, but uneventful. The Jakobsweg turned out to be remarkably well marked which came as a bit of a surprise as there is only one hiking guide for it and I had had a hard time finding gpx tracks for it. But pilgrimage trails are very popular and therefore well maintained even in Germany. It was amazing that most people I met on the whole trail would generally ask me whether I was on a pilgrimage trail - not whether I was hiking. The Jakobsweg provided another generous amount of pilgrimage churches, chapels and Stations of the Cross, especially since the Oberpfalz is predominately Catholic.

Old Forest road

I was a bit nervous about my stay with Ute as she has 3 kid living with her - and I have no clue whatsoever about children and how to deal with them. But things turned out great: The kids taught me everything about rabbits which they had as pets and even let me use their computer to update my blog. Ute and I spent hours talking and I even had a rest day mostly spent in front of the computer. It even turned out that I was leaving on Ute's birthday (about which she had not told me anything in advance). But this birthday led to this stage's culinary highlight: Ute's kids had baked her a cake and made a very generous amount of Tiramisu - both of which was served for breakfast! I had never tried Tiramisu for breakfast but be assured that it tastes as good in the morning as in the evening... I was very well fed and rested when I left Ute.

Ticks lurking everywhere

But unfortunately, the Oberpfalz also had a very bad surprise for me: ticks!!! I ran from one tick hotspot into another one and was picking about 100 ticks off my body - 30 of which had unfortunately already bitten me. I was getting more and more worried. In Germany ticks transmit 2 diseases: Meningitis (FSME), against which I am vaccinated and Lyme Disease (Borreliose) against which there is no vaccination. According to my internet research about 30% of German ticks are infected with Lyme Disease.

A hike through Germany: Franconia

2011-05-10T17:32:00.001+02:00

Waymarking on the Frankenweg

I was almost sad to leave the Swabian Alb and continue on the Frankenweg through Franconia. The Frankenweg itself is over 500 km long and I had already hiked the whole trail in long weekend sections when I was still working. Now I was only re-hiking a 170 km long section of it. To my big surprise I had almost no recollection of the trail although I had hiked it less than 6 years ago. The Frankenweg is not as spectacular as the Swabian Alb. The landscape consists of rolling hills, lots of forest and fields and many very pittoresque villages. Again there is plenty to see: Museums, churches, castles...

Maria Brünnlein

Most interesting was the amount of pilgrimage churches all along the way. Almost every day I would come across a pilgrimage church founded because someone had had a vision of the virgin Mary, had been cured of gout or rescued from a thunderstorm. Most fascinating was "Maria Brünnlein" (Mary Fountain), that actually has a fountain inside the church and people are queuing to fill their containers with "holy" water. Even I have never had the chance to fill my water bottles inside a church! Inside the pilgrimage churches you can see a lot of "Votivtafeln": These are pictures donated by people who have been helped which describe the circumstances of the miracle. It was interesting to see how these circumstance have changed. Whereas people 200 years ago were usually rescued out of thunderstorms they nowadays survive accidents on German autobahns with Mary's help.

Hiking on the Frankenweg

But there was much more to see than churches: I visited a Roman museum (the Frankenweg crosses the Limes, the old border of the Roman empire), a spa for a much needed general clean up, and plenty of old Jewish cemeteries. And of course there was also a culinary highlight: Bratwurst! Bratwurst in Franconia is a tiny little thing -which is very good for frying in a pan on a camping stove. The whole sausage burns within seconds and after the cooking the bottom of the pan is completely burnt. Still it is worth it as I think it tastes great - especially after a yearlong diet of American Lipton side dishes and Australian Continental pasta!

A hike through Germany: Swabian Alb

2011-05-10T16:46:00.001+02:00

View from the Alb

After Rottweil is was climbing up to the Schwäbische Alb (Swabian Alb) which is a 300 km long escarpment. The Schwäbische Alb Nordrandweg follows this escarpment for its whole length on the Northern side, whereas there also is a similar trail on the Southern side. Although this escarpment is not pronounced all the way it is quite spectacular for most of the way. The escarpment is up to 300 m high and therefore the views are fantastic. The high plateau is not very populated for German standards as the soil is very poor - but it is ideal for hiking. The trail itself is very old and has been created already 100 years ago. Although it is fairly well marked and there is even a specific map set and a somewhat outdated guidebook the trail is not very popular. I hiked it over the Easter holidays and there were a lot of day hikers out there (this is very close to the urban centre of Stuttgart), but I did not meet a single long-distance hiker. It is a shame that this area is not more popular as it has been a real highlight.

Lichtenstein

Beside the views and nature there is also a lot of cultural stuff to see. Wherever there is a mountain the Germans built a castle and therefore there was castle after castle along the escarpment. Of course most of them were mediaval castles in ruins, but some have been restored and can be visited - and some are even still lived in. My favourite is Schloss Lichtenstein (which has nothing to do with the tiny state of Liechtenstein!). Lichtenstein had been built in the middle ages and fallen into disrepair.This castle still played a little part in the history of Wuerttemberg during the reign of Duke Ulrich von Wuerttemberg who was expelled in a civil war in the 16 th century and had to hide in a nearby flowstone cave. The cave can be visited as well and I of course did it, too. He later restored his reign and became famous for introducing protestantism into Württemberg. Three centuries later in 1826 the German author Wilhelm Hauff wrote a novel about the (in)famous Ulrich von Wuerttemberg and called the book "Lichtenstein". One of the descendants of Ulrich von Wuerttemberg was so impressed by the book that he decided to rebuild the castle in the Neo-Gothic style at its old location and call it Lichtenstein again. The castle was really rebuilt in 1842, damaged again at the end of WW II, restored again and can now be visited. Of course I did that and even bought the novel "Lichtenstein" which is now my latest reading material. Literature does have an influence!

The escarpment is still moving and only 10 years ago 30 meter wide and a couple of hundred meter long stretch collapsed after heavy rainfall. The whole area has been converted into a protected geo park where you can see the bare layers of rocks and nature regaining the bare soil. Sign posts warn you everywhere not to stand to close to the edge...

The Swabian Alb also brought another culinary highlight: Maultaschen. This is a sort of giant ravioli filled with either vegetarian or meat filling. I was told that the dish was first introduced in the middle ages when people were not allowed to eat meat on Fridays. Therefore they developped Maultaschen, were the meat is hidden inside the dough and God could not see what they were eating.... Maultaschen can nowadays be bought in any supermarket and are ideal hiker food. You just put them into boiling water, let them heat up for about 2 minutes and then they are ready to eat.

A hike through Germany: Black Forest

2011-05-10T15:23:00.004+02:00

My actual hike started on Monday, April 18th when I took a train over the Swiss border to the German town of Waldshut-Tiengen in the Black Forest. The Black Forest is traversed by three long-distance trails (all about 250 km) which all start in Pforzheim in the North: The Westweg (West Trail) which ends in Basel and which I had hiked before, the Ostweg (Eastern Trail) which ends in Schaffhausen and the Mittelweg (Middle Trail) which ends in Waldshut-Tiengen and was my first stage on this trip. Hiking is very popular in the Black Forest and therefore I already encountered a big hiking trail sign post right out of the the train station. Weather was perfect: blue sky, sunshine and nice temperatures!

I hiked the Mittelweg three days up to St. Georgen where I met my old hiking friend Ursula. I had first met her on the PCT in 2004 where she completed her Triple Crown 4 years earlier than me. She had also paddled the Yukon River and had hiked through Great Britain before and therefore she was a great source of information for me. She is now living with her new partner in a huge farmhouse close to St. Georgen complete with a watchdog, chickens and a well. Her partner has given up farming and has leased all his farmland and sold all the animals (except the chickens). He still owns forest and was a great source of information and German forest law. I learnt that German forest owners are extremely restricted in what they can do with their property. Clear cuts are only allowed up to the tiny size of 100 m with 100 m and have to be immediately replanted. Beside that only selective logging is permitted. For hikers this is very good news: It means that if the maps shows forest, there will be forest (and good wild camping) unlike in the US where huge portions of forest can just be clear cut.

Ursula also provided me with the culinary highlight of this section: Black forest cake! I had already eaten this fantastic cake in every cafe I came across but hers from the local baker was definitively the best. Real Black Forest Cake consists of a lot of whipped cream - real whipped cream and not the sort of bloated sugary foam you very often get in the US. The cake base is soaked with cherry schnapps which gives the cake a great flavour. And the top is sprinkled with real chocolate flakes! Absolutely delicious!!! But even I had to give up after two pieces - very filling...

After St. Georgen I left the Mittelweg and changed onto the Querweg towards Rottweil. Weather was still fantastic and all the orchards along the way in full bloom. What a lovely picture! I really started to enjoy my hike through Germany. Still I must say that the Black Forest is a bit overrated. Yes, it is nice, but it is not as spectacular as I had thought. But see the next section.....

A hike through Germany: Start in Switzerland

2011-05-10T14:33:00.001+02:00

My hike through Germany started actually with a planning weekend in Switzerland with my paddling partner Adrian. I flew into Euro airport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg - a very interesting airport as it is situated in the corner of three countries. Depending on which exit you take you enter Switzerland, France or Germany. I was headed into Basel and therefore took the Swiss exit where a tram took me into Basel centre within 20 minutes.
I had been to Basel before: Once when I had hiked the Westweg through the Black Forest and ended in Basel and in 2008 when I had cycled through on my bike trip through Europe.


Door of Basel Münster

Basel is a very pretty town with plenty of museums and a spent a pleasant day strolling through town before taking the train to Adrians place. Adrian picked me up from the train station and a very efficient planning weekend started. It did not take long and outdoor equipment, gear lists and laptops were strewn all over Adrian's place. We discussed gear we need for our Yukon trip, compared gear lists and discussed resupply strategies. I had not seen Adrian in 4 years and had been wondering how we would get along - especially since we are planning to spend 2,5 months in one boat! Everything went very well, all questions were discussed and we genereally had a fantastic time. Now I am even more looking forward to our Yukon trip.

But the very best were the culinary highlights: I had asked Adrian to make Raclette for me - a sort of Swiss National dish. In the modern version of Raclette you put slices of cheese on a little "shovel" and put it into a table stove to melt. When melted you put the cheese over boiled potatoes or other vegetables and eat it. Swiss cheese is absolutely delicious and the meal was fantastic, but very filling. Next day was even better because Adrian made cheese fondue. You melt cheese together with garlic and white wine in a fondue pot. You then cut bread into cubes, dip the bread into pear schnapps and then into the melted cheese and eat it. Delicious is an understatement for this dish! I usually don't drink hard liquor, but the taste of the pear schnapps (of which you use only a little glass per person) is the very best of this dish. Adrian even told me that you can buy pre-made cheese fondue mixes in Switzerland and said that he might bring one for our Yukon trip!

A hike through Germany

2011-04-03T15:49:00.003+02:00

Why hike in Germany? Well, after travelling around the world twice it has been a while since I have done any extensive hiking in Germany and I have simply gotten homesick a bit. I have enjoyed or "suffered" through camping in swamps, deserts, limb-dropping eucalyptus trees and tropical jungle - now I just want to be in simple German pine forests. No 40 Celsius temperatures, no 90% humidity and please, no tropical thunderstorms. Just normal German spring weather.

It also fits well into my schedule. I need some time to prepare my upcoming trips. The time window for the Yukon thrupaddle is very narrow, too - we do not have much choice other than to start around June 1st. And that left me with about 1 1/2 months time before flying to Alaska. Not enough time for a long exotic trip, but definitely enough for a little hike through my home country. And then other things fell into place as well: I wanted to visit my Swiss paddling partner for a long planning weekend. He lives close to the German border which then became a natural starting point for my hike: Waldshut-Tiengen. The finishing point was easy as well: I want to visit an Austrian hiking friend of mine (whom I had seen last at the very beginning of all my travels back in May 2008) and so I wanted to end up as close as possible to her in Germany which meant Passau as the finishing point.

Having decided on the two termini of my hike I now just had to find trails between them. Actually this turned out to be easier than expected. The first point of consideration was that I would be hiking in spring and therefore all high alpine routes could be excluded. Instead I would go for the low mountain ranges in Southern Germany. One website proofed to be incredibly helpful for planning this trip: http://www.wanderbares-deutschland.de/ This website not only describes almost all longer hiking trails in Germany, but also shows them on an interactive map. For most trails there even is an English description. I just had to link existing trails together. When I planned the whole route in Mapsource for my Garmin GPS another website came in very handy: http://www.wanderkompass.de/ On this website you can upload gpx tracks for almost all long trails in Germany - for free! This was kind of a new approach for me: Before I had just embarked on one long-distance trail about 1,000 km or longer. As most long distance trails worldwide are maintained by some sort of voluntary organisation trip planning has generally been very easy. Just get in touch with the relevant organisation - mostly just through their website - order maps and guidebooks there, ask them all the questions you have and off you go. This time was different as I had to piece together my own route and consequently planning took much longer. Still it was a fun process and now that I have the practice I will do the same thing for my UK thruhike...

But back to Germany - this is the route I am planning to do: I will start out in Waldshut-Tiengen on the Mittelweg up through the Black Forest to St. Georgen (100 km) and then go eastward on the Querweg Lahn-Rottweil to Rottweil and then freestyle up the the Swabian Alb (40 km). There I connect with the Schwaebische Alb Nordrandweg and follow that almost all the way northeast to Harburg (323 km). This is where the Frankenweg starts and I will hike that about 150 km up to Holnstein where I change onto the Jurasteig. The Jurasteig is followed eastwards for about 70 km. Then I connect to an old pilgrimage trail for 50 km before eventually joining the Goldsteig, which will lead me 253 km through the Bavarian Forest all the way to Passau. Garmin mapsource tells me that this route is exactly 972 km long! This will take me about 1 month and depending on how much time I have left (that means how many people / castles / museums I will visit on the way) I will even continue into Austria. There is a new long-distance trail along the river Danube from Passau to Grein called Donausteig that would be another 140 km. And in a last push I could continue on to Krems a.d. Donau where my friend lives on the Waldviertel Weitwanderweg (130 km). I definitely want to get to Passau, anything further than that is an extra bonus. But after reading about (and remembering!) the famous Austrian sweets like "Marillenknoedel" or "Kaiserschmarrn" (I won't translate that - have a look at the linked website or even better: you just eat it) I have a great incentive to continue hiking.

Two more weeks of fattening myself up in Germany - and then my tent will be my home again.

A lot of work back in Berlin

2011-04-03T11:16:00.000+02:00

I am back in Berlin and have 5 weeks to prepare my next adventures. As usual the first problem has been logistics. Luckily friends had found me a place to stay and even bought and installed a laptop for me. It still took almost a week before everything was running smoothly: Get the bare necessities out of my selfstorage unit, find a German SIM card for my cell phone and lap top to be able to communicate, download programmes onto the new laptop, get health insurance for Germany etc.

It is amazing how many little things have piled up in the 14 months that I have been away and that have to be done now: I had to go through the mail of 14 months (luckily not that much), do my tax declaration (I even got money back from the tax authorities) and look after my bank affairs - and seeing several doctors. The dentist could not find anything, my eye doctor said I am still seeing fine and the yearly cancer screening was negative, too. My biggest concern was a constant pain in my right hip that had been accompanying me since the road walks in Florida and that got worse after I had stopped hiking. Being a hypochondriac I could already see the end of my hiking career due to osteoarthrosis, but luckily my friend Wulf directed me to a chiropractor. I had never been to one and actually had never believed in them either. But this guy examined me, performed a completely painless joint reduction and now, a couple of days later, the pain is almost completely gone! Well, my shoulder is hurting now instead.... but never mind. Seriously now: My visit at the chiropractor's has been an epiphany for me. Before, I had only consulted orthopedic doctors and they usually gave me bad news. One recommended glucasamine injections into my knees (which I had luckily declined and the pain went away anyways) and others have predicted an artificial hip joint at age 65 (I am only 43 now, so we will see...). Only the chiropractor had actually done something that brought immediate relief.

And now I am mostly sitting in front of my computer. It feels really nice and decadent to be inside all the time even when the sun is shining outside and half of Berlin is sitting in an open air cafe. But there is a lot of planning to do for three different trips:

hike through Germany (about 1,000 km)
thrupaddle of the Yukon River (about 3,000 km)
hike through the UK (about 2,000 km)

For the two hikes I had to download maps and plan the routes in Garmin mapsource. Because I am mostly piecing together existing long-distance trails I can often download gpx tracks from the internet and link them together. But I do not want to rely in my GPS device alone in the field. In 2010 two devices broke without warning and left me standing in the rain. Therefore I will carry guidebooks and/or maps for my European hikes, too. And this is why I have been pilferring my existing maps and guidebooks and bought a lot of new stuff. Some maps I had to print out. Of course everything has to be lightweight and so I cut out pages and copy on back sides of print outs and so on.

Equally important are logistics: Where en route are grocery stores (especially my favourite Lidl!) and outdoor shops in order to buy new gas cannisters? How do I get to the terminus and back to Berlin again? Is there anything interesting to see along the trail? Are there any friends and acquaintances that I could visit? Are there any potential couchsurfing hosts for rest days? All that involves a lot of internet research.

Then there is gear maintenance and replacement and here I have been especially lucky: First of all Colin, a British UL hiker whom I had met on the AZT, has asked me to "test hike" his new UL back pack - and therefore I will get a brand new and very interesting new back pack for free. And then even more amazing I was given an almost brand new Tarptent as a present! I had been posting on a German UL hiking forum and when a forum member realised I was about to buy a new TT Rainbow he offered to give me his as a present - just because he likes what I am doing! And I had never even talked or seen this guy before...thank you so much! Still I had to do a lot of research and buy new gear especially for the upcoming paddling trip as I do not have any paddling specific equipment like neoprene gloves or life jackets . The room I am living in looks like a mess: guidebooks, maps and hiking equipment are strewn all over the place and even I sometimes lose orientation.

Preparing the upcoming trip is almost like working again, although I love this kind of work. But I also do some recreational stuff and visit or call all old friends and family. Being culturally deprived after 14 months on the road I love to visit theatre plays and museums. And the very best is that I can go shopping at my beloved Lidl and Aldi (which are just 2 blocks from where I am living now) every day and eat German chocolate, real bread, cheese and butter all the time. I definitely have to go hiking soon or I will become overweight.

The long way home

2011-03-25T13:38:00.001+01:00

I did not fly straight from Kuala Lumpur to Berlin but had a week-long stop over in Great Britain. First I flew into London-Stansted where European reality hit me again. I had always complained about the inefficiency of Malaysian public transport, but now I had to realise that Europe is not much better. It took me 5 hours from leaving the plane to getting to my couchsurfing host in London.

Colin May 2010 in Arizona

Passport control for European citizens is automatized in Stansted. You have to put your passport onto a scanner, then your face will be scanned and compared with your passport picture. Sounds very efficient, but took twice as long as dealing with a human immigration officer. Shuttle buses here were on time, but all full - and therefore I had to wait 45 minutes in the cold in a long bus queue. Things got worse when I got into London Tube. Due to a bomb threat and/or flooding trains were not running on all lines and I had to make great detours. And of course, there are no public phones inside the tube to call my couchsurfing host and tell her that I would be late. Leaving Kuala Lumpur I had been very relaxed, but 3 hours in London transport turned me into a nervous wreck.... Luckily I had a very nice and understanding couchsurfing host!

Colin March 2011 in Scotland

After 2 short days of sightseeing in London I took the train up to Edinburgh in order to meet Colin. I had met Colin and his later partner Kimberlie on the AZT in May 2010. We had always stayed in contact and now Colin had asked me to be the test hiker (or guinea pig) for his new UL backpack. Of course this was an offer I could not resist.... Also Colin had hiked John O'Groats to Land's End in the UK and had offered to help me planning my UK thruhike. And therefore I travelled all the way to Scotland for a long weekend of trail talk - which turned out to be a long weekend of ME talking because Colin had such a sore throat that he could hardly speak....Bad luck, but we still got all the planning done. And then, after a day of sightseeing in freezing cold Edinburgh I eventually headed back to Berlin.

Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur

2011-03-04T09:44:00.002+01:00

In the bird park

I will fly back to Europe tomorrow - hurray!!!! I am ready for it! The last town I stayed in was Kuala Lumpur. And although Kuala Lumpur is definitely not the most interesting or exciting place on earth, it has been quite nice here. I have found a cheap and quiet hostel and having so much time left I visited any crappy museum or crocodile farm that there is here.

I think I have never seen so many zoos, butterfly and bird parks, crocodile farms and aquariums in my entire life before. In Kuala Lumpur alone I went to a bird park, an aquarium, a National zoo with Butterfly Park and a Hibiscus Garden. But I liked it - especially the bird and "multi-animal" shows, where cockatoes were rising Malaysian flags and cycling on little bird bicycles...

But other than that there was not really much to do except to hang out in posh shopping malls - and there are loads of them. And to my big surprise they are all full, too! Luckily they usually have nice food courts.

My favourite mall

A last highlight was my visit to the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. I was very much surprised to find out that there even is such a thing. And I was very delighted to hear that the cheapest ticket is just 4 EUR. But there was one thing I had not expected: There is serious dress code for any concerts. When you buy a ticket you are even given a little piece of paper with the details: No slippers, flip-flops or sneakers, no shorts, no jeans, no T-shirts! Great! With my hiker outfit that did not leave a lot of options - especially shoe wise. But I was assured that I could borrow a pair of shoes for free - and so I bought a ticket and went to a concert featuring Britten and Bruckner. I nearly made it inside without my sneakers being spotted, but in the last minute I was called back and had to get "decent" shoes. They actually had quite a big variety, but no woman's shoe would fit me - and so I ended up with black men's shoes. I would not have won a fashion contest before my shoe change, but afterwards I looked outright ridiculous. But at least I was allowed into the concert. Most of the musicians were Europeans or Americans. Even the conductor was German. And half of the audience was expats as well. But it was a nice change to be in a classical concert again, that's for sure.

Petronas Towers

After my concert visit I discovered that cinema tickets are even cheaper at 3 EUR and so I spent my last evening watching movies - something I never do in Germany. And because there are only about 23 million Malaysians, it is not worth dubbing the movies and therefore they are all in English - great!

Despite all these distractions I was really ready to leave in the end. I was counting days and stretching out my sightseeing options. And finally, on March 2nd I boarded my cheap Air Asia flight (Kuala Lumpur to London Stansted for only 144 EUR!) and went back to Europe... where I am now freezing my butt off!!!

Malaysia and the Islam

2011-03-01T11:28:00.005+01:00

One of the things I was really worried about in Malaysia was the influence of Islam. I have travelled in other Muslim countries before and mostly it has not been much fun for a single female. Malaysia is officially a Muslim country, but being such an ethnical mixture it is a pretty relaxed country. Almost half of the population is non-Muslim: The Chinese and Indian.

Malaysian War Memorial

So let me start with the positive thing: Malaysia really is a very relaxed country. I did not get any of the aggressive hassling I had encountered in North Africa. Actually, I was not hassled at all. But on the other hand I have seen a lot of women in head scarves - and that always makes me feel uneasy. I talked to a Malaysian woman about the headscarf and got a very interesting answer: Malaysian woman like the scarf because this way they do not have to worry about their hair cut!!! Whether this is true or not - I cannot tell.... At least the women here wear bright and colourful scarves and dresses. Only occasionally you see a woman in a full black burkha - and those women are obviously not Malaysian, but Saudi women on a holiday in Malaysia. You only see them in posh shopping malls...

After visiting loads of Malaysian museums I realised another interesting thing. In photos taken before the 1980's Muslim women hardly ever wear headscarves. But after that - up to today - every official portrait of a Muslim woman shows her with a headscarf. On the other hand Chinese women in Malaysia are running around very "lightly" clad here - they would arouse curious stares even in Europe!

Every bigger town has some sort of Islamic museum where you can learn about the Muslim way of life. Mostly these museums are pretty boring, but Kuala Lumpur has a huge Islamic Art Museum that was really fascinating. I was really impressed - until I starting browsing the books in the gift shop. To my big surprise there were a lot of books in English, even children's books. To my great horror I read in a children's picture book that a true Muslim must hate "Jews, Christians and others who are in the way of Islam". Things got even worse when I went to the adult section and started reading a book about how to become a pious Muslim woman: I learnt that a Muslim husband can beat his wife if she does not obey. I also learnt that a Muslim woman should never give birth in a hospital because she might be seen and touched by male doctor there. Luckily they closed the bookshop then before I could read more and get even more upset!

This photo shows an exhibit in the Malay police museum. This innocent looking handkerchief has been confiscated by the police because if you fold it in right way it shows a pornographic picture.... I don't think that many Westerners would go for such a subtle pornography.

Today I went to the Art Museum and there I was expecting a lot of critical modern art, especially some critical outlook on Muslim fundamentalism. But to my big surprise there was absolutely nothing in that direction. Most art works even had an explicit artist's statement - so I am quite sure I did not miss anything. Instead of seeing some critical statements on fundamentalism I was totally surprised to the complete opposite. One artist talked about "Zionist attacks" on innocent Muslims all over the Muslim world and some installations were even glorifying Koran texts. A lot of artists called themselves "Muslim" artists. There were hardly any female artists exhibited.

Jungle Trekking: I am defeated

2011-02-22T15:04:00.003+01:00

I have just come back from my second attempt in jungle trekking and I am not ashamed to confess that I got utterly defeated again!!! This is the hardest hiking I have ever done in my entire life and I have no inner urge whatsoever to try again now. I am just not made for this climate. So what happened?

Pitcher plant

After suffering from bronchitis for over 10 days now I thought I had sufficiently recovered to try some hiking again. I went to Bako National Park which is just outside of Kuching and the major tourist attraction in this area. The park is all jungle, but bordering the sea and is supposed to have some nice beaches. When I arrived I encountered the first bad surprise: Despite low season all accommodation was fully booked. I had my tent with me and could have camped at the official campsite, but the whole place did not look too nice and was more or less completely flooded.

But I remembered reading in my guidebook that there is a nice beach at the other end of the Park where you can camp for free. I enquired about it and was even told that there are even shelters there - great in these torrential downpours that my tent would probably not withstand. It is only 13 km from the park entrance to that beach and it was only 10 am - so no problem. Well, that is what I thought... I would normally hike 13 km in a bit more than 3 hours... here the trip was rated 8 hours!!!

Pitcher plant

I set out and realised that I was just doing 2 km per hour - and I had to take constant breaks. The climate here is very difficult to describe - the combination of heat and humidity is a real killer. As soon as you start the slightest movements you start sweating. Just from walking you will sweat so profusely that the water is constantly dripping down from your face. All your clothes are soaked. But on top of the climate you also have to deal with really difficult terrain - a constant steep up and down. The trail is overgrown and the blow down palm trees all have thorns. And I have a backpack to prove it, as I ripped it more in these 2 days than in the whole 12 months before. If you slip and try to get hold of something it will very likely have thorns. And I have lots of scratches to prove that, too. But worst of all everything is slippery, real slippery. Everything is wet and overgrown. If you step on a rock, you will probably slip.

After 4 hours and only 6 km I thought first of turning back, but I still could not believe that I am not able of hiking 13 km and I pushed on. I got down to 1 km in 45 minutes and got weaker and weaker every minute. I had to take breaks every 500 m. I was physically just not able to hike on - I had to sit down, drink water and recover for 10 minutes before I could attempt the next couple of hundred meters. After 6 hours and 8,2 km I realised that I would not make it. I was so weak that I could hardly walk straight anymore. I was sweating like a pig but was shivering at the same time. Being a hypochondriac I assumed I was either suffering from a Malaria attack or a heart attack was imminent. Neither option sounded good. I could not do another 5 km to get to the beach and the shelter, but turning back was equally bad. I was in the middle of the jungle and everything was completely overgrown and steep. I did not remember seeing any feasible camp site. I almost panicked and started hiking back. I had not even managed one km back when I realised that I was about to collapse. This had never in my entire hiking career happened before. I was just too weak to continue - physically impossible.

Wild bearded pig

To make things worse a thunderstorm was approaching. I had to do something now and quick. This was an emergency and I considered camping on the trail which is a really bad option. First of all animals use the trail as well and I did not want to be overrun by a band of wild pigs. Also when it rains here the whole trail changes into a river bed. I was getting desperate and managed to make it to the top of a small hill. At least here the water would not wash me away. And then I got lucky!!! I saw a tiny little clear and flat spot in the jungle. I tried to clear it as good as possible - I was so weak that I had to hold on to the trees in order not to collapse. The terrain was difficult and it took me forever to set up the tent with thunder rolling above me. When the tent was finally standing I just got inside and collapsed. I was so weak I did not even have the strength to inflate the Thermarest. I was afraid I would be sweating inside the tent, but the temperature was bearable. As long as I did not move I was hot, but at least not sweating. And after one hour of rest I felt recovered enough to force myself to eat something. I then also realised what had caused my collapse: I was still suffering from bronchitis and could not stop coughing. I think my body had not gotten enough oxygen while hiking in this vicious climate.


Pitcher plant

I was lying in my tent thinking that things were not so bad after all: The rain had just turned out to be a drizzle, my campsite was quite good and I felt almost totally recovered. But then I looked out of my tent and could not believe my eyes: My backpack, my shoes and the front of my tent were all covered with giant ants!!!! These ants were huge - over 1 cm long!! I have never seen anything like this. And they were all over my stuff. Luckily my tent is fully enclosed and they could not get in, but they were so big that I was worried they would actually bite through the tent material. And how would I get out of the tent in the morning without being bitten? I watched the horror ants for a while and discovered that they were just after salt. They were all over my sweaty backpack and shoes, but they left my trash bag alone. Eventually I fell asleep from pure exhaustion.

In the morning I was dreading to look outside, but when I did all the ants were all gone!!! I never knew that some ants are night active only. I packed up and faced a long walk back. At least now I had a full day for 8 km. I walked slowly and took a long break every km. Now that I knew how difficult the trail is and how bad my bronchitis I took it easy - and that paid off. It still took me a long time to get back, but I was not nearly as exhausted as the day before. I made it back to the park entrance and finally to my guesthouse in Kuching.

Bottomline: Although my bronchitis greatly contributed to my collapse, I had to realise that I am not made for this climate. My body just does not deal very well with the heat and humidity. This has been my last attempt for jungle trekking - I will not try again.

Malaysia: The animals

2011-02-18T15:21:00.004+01:00

As I have mentioned before there is not that much to see in Malaysia and therefore I jump to every opportunity to do some half decent sightseeing. The town of Miri does not boast many attractions, but it has a crocodile farm and there I went - not expecting much. But for once I was positively surprised.

Of course, there were crocodiles - and lots of them! They were all comfortably lounging in a wonderful mud pool in the sun. They were even sleeping with their mouths open! Only about every 10 minutes there was some movement. But after closer inspection I realised that the crocs were maybe kept a little bit too close to each other, because a big number of them had missing or invalid limbs. Apparently they had just bitten off each others legs! I was very careful not to throw my camera, wallet or other valuable things into the crocodile enclosure - I guess the staff would not be too willing to retrieve it.

Sun bear

But there was also a mini-zoo with some debatable practices. There was a little monkey and bear on a leash - for snapshots with tourists. The poor animals were frantically running back and forth within their limited little radius - a truly disheartening sight. But at least I learnt that there are bears in Malaysia - something that I had never expected. They are called sun bears and they are truly small, but have an enormously long tongue for licking up insects, termites, ants, whatever. In the zoo you just feed them bananas.

The feeding was the most interesting part of my visit. I bought bananas and set off to find out who would eat them. Result: They all eat bananas in Malaysia - only the way differs. There are of course the monkeys and they just grab their banana, peel it in split seconds and it is gone. Their social behaviour was most interesting: In one cage the alpha male chased every monkey away that tried to get a banana from me. Of course I would not give him any, but he had decided that if he doesn't get anything, nobody else should either. Reminded me a lot of some human behaviour... I spent hours and 2 kilos of bananas with the monkeys.

A week later I visited an Orang-Utan rehabilitation centre. The apes (monkeys have tails and therefore Orang-Utans are apes) are roaming freely in a huge nature reserve but usually come to the feeding area for the twice daily feeding with bananas. Of course there were loads of tourists - but also loads of apes climbing around in the jungle above. I truly regretted not having a better camera then! First the Alpha Male, a huge and very hairy guy called Ritchie had to be fed and then the rest of the group could eat as well. The babies cling to their mothers (one called Hot Mama because she bites at least one tourist per season) and the teenagers are running around catching each other. One was happily showing off his private areas for inspection and scratching his balls - making all the (human) girls giggle... Great photo shot if you have a decent camera - unlike me... The apes even drink milk out of bottles - but litter them after use!!!!

Malaysia: What do I think about it?

2011-02-15T13:27:00.003+01:00

Red heron in

I have been in Malaysia for 5 weeks now and so far my experience has been a mixed bag.

Let's start with the bad: I came here to relax after a hard year of hiking. Unfortunately, this has not worked out.

First of all, I am sick all the time. Well, maybe not all the time, but I have the second bad cold in 5 weeks now. I never ever have any cold on a long hike despite the fact that I hike in rain, sleet and snow and freeze my ass off at night in my tent. But here, the hot climate in combination with the air-conditioning is killing me. I am either too hot and sweating like a pig or I am freezing to death. Apparently my body cannot deal with these constant drastic temperature changes. Now I have bad bronchitis and cough like a chain smoker of 30 years. I hope this is my last cold in Malaysia - I am leaving in 2 weeks!!!

Second, the climate makes it hard to relax, too. Basically, there is not much activities I can endure outdoors. It is so hot and humid that you start sweating the minute you step outdoors. The leeches make hiking a bloody adventure.... And on top of all that, it is rainy season almost everywhere in Malaysia. I have never seen rain like that before - maybe in Japan, but nowhere else. When it rains here, the rain is like a solid wall. Even with an umbrella you are soaking wet within seconds. I have given up any idea of camping here - I would just float away! Even walking around town is exhausting - and chafing is a real problem!

Traditional longhouse

Third, I had visions of finding a nice guesthouse and staying there doing nothing. Well, this is easier said than done. In order to be able to stay in an enclosed room here you either need a fan or air-conditioning. And that is what lead to may two colds in the first place. Also, sound proofing is non existent here. One hostel I stayed in was directly above a bar. And on Friday I found at that they have live music on weekends. It felt like sleeping in a disco - and the music would not stop before 2 am!! I thought I learnt my lesson and booked myself into a rather expensive family hotel. Unfortunately this place was located next to a Karakoe bar that started blasting music at midnight and would not stop till 3 am. I have also encountered air cons that are as load as airplane engines and all sorts of biting insects - but luckily not bed bugs yet. All that is not really relaxing....

Orchid farm

Another disappointment is that there is not really that much to see in Malaysia! The museums here are mediocre to put it politely. They are also tiny and it is hard to spend more than 1 hour in them. And beside that there is not really much cultural stuff. Of course there are a lot of National Parks but first of all the weather is not really great now and second doing outdoor stuff is outrageously expensive. Most parks will not allow you to hike without a guide - and a guide is expensive. On top of all that most National Parks are not accessible by public transport - you have to join an organized and expensive tour again. Some parks can even only be accessed by plane! And the few accessible Parks have been closed now due to excessive rain...

As you might read out of these lines - I am a bit fed up with Malaysia. In fact, I am already counting the days before I can fly back to Europe. Don't get me wrong: Malaysia is not a total disaster, but it will never be one of my favourite countries....

But not everything is bad here and I want to end this post with something positive:

Nobody has tried to cheat me here. I only have to pay what the pricelist/menu etc.says. No rip-offs. When I unknowingly hand over too much money, I always get it back!!!

There is not much hassling - hardly anybody tries to get my into their shop, taxi, hotel, etc. Of course, I am offered taxis and other services all the time, but if you say NO, people just leave you alone. Funny enough I am constantly being called "Sir", probably because of my height - or shabby clothes...

Longhouse floor

The ethnic mix here - and how well everybody is getting along with each other - is truly astonishing. The 3 big groups here are the Muslim Malay, the Chinese and the Indians. Muslim women almost always were headscarves - even kids, but Chinese women run around in skimpy dresses and skirts that qualify more as a belt than a skirt.... - and nobody cares!!! You can buy newspapers in Malay, Chinese, Tamil and English! I still wonder how everybody understands each other. And here in Borneo there are even indigenous people more or less running around naked - no wonder in that climate!

But I had the biggest surprise today in a small corner restaurant. The waitresses there were either Malay Muslim with headscarves - or DRAG QUEENS. I am not joking here and I could not believe my eyes either, but I have lived long enough in Berlin to spot a transvestite. And half of the 'girls' working there were definitely guys in drag - with 5 cm long eyelashes and heave make-up. I mean, this was not a night club or anything, but a normal restaurant during daytime - in a Muslim country.....

Brunei Darussalam

2011-02-10T10:28:00.002+01:00

Brunei is a place that sounded so weird that I just had to go and see myself what it is like...

Main Mosque in Brunei

It is rather difficult to reach overland and so I took the ferry. Remembering how sea sick I got on the ferries in Japan I decided to travel as far as possible by bus and then change to ferry. Good thinking, but I forgot that ferry does not equal ferry... When I arrived at the ferry terminal I had the choice between the car ferry and a speed boat, the former taking about 1,5 hours and the later 20 minutes. I thought that it is better to be seasick for only 20 minutes and decided for the speedboat. Wrong decision!!! The speedboat turned out to be a small boat for just 14 passengers - and still it went across open sea at a breathtaking speed. When we hit the big waves the boat was bouncing up and down so badly that I nearly hit my head on the roof. I was clinging to anything I could get hold of in order not to be thrown out of the boat and my only consolation was the hope that the driver would know what he was doing... After 20 incredibly bumpy minutes we arrived on the Malaysian island of Labuan - all in one piece, the boat and I.

I had one day in Labuan to recover from the shock before I had to get onto another speedboat ferry to Brunei. This ferry was much bigger - but the waves were also much higher and I got terribly seasick. Luckily I met a British lady on the boat and she distracted me from my seasickness by talking to me...

Main Mosque in Brunei

Brunei is a sultanate or a Malay Muslim monarchy. The sultan of Brunei was one of the richest men on earth before Bill Gates and the like showed up. But apparently not much of his wealth has trickled down to his subjects. True, Brunei is a bit cleaner than Malaysia and much more expensive, but still it is a rather run down place. That is especially true for the guesthouse I was staying in....For a price that would get you a palace in Malaysia I ended up in a rather decrepit room with dirt on walls, noisy air condition and a bath room that would send any German house wife into a heart attack. I had to change rooms because the Indian family next to me was addicted to watching Indian TV at top volume. The next room had windows facing the street - but hey, there is not much traffic in Brunei, isn't it? Unfortunately, my guest house turned out to be right in the centre of the red light district in Brunei. I did not expect that such a thing existed in a Malay Muslim monarchy... but anyways, the customers apparently had a hard time choosing one of the working girls and kept cruising around the blog for hours on end. Seriously, I watched the same guy in a noisy tuned up Volkswagen cruise around the block every 2 minutes for 1,5 hours...

I had really looked forward to Brunei and had hoped for some decent museums, but my hopes did not come true. There is a Royal Museum, featuring the Sultan, the Sultan and then the Sultan again. In business outfit, traditional garb and mostly in uniform. Judging from the variety of uniforms Brunei must have quite an impressive army.
The Brunei Museum was not that much better. Beside a collection of Muslim art (donated of course, by the Sultan), it featured petrol production in Brunei (partly owned by the Sultan of course) and Brunei's history that was centred around.... the Sultan.

I would have really appreciated it if the Sultan had invested more money into the local bus system because it took me forever to get from one place to another - and I was intrigued to find out why. The reason for the delays in public transport was the German cruise ship AIDA. Whenever the AIDA docks in Brunei (every two months) half of the bus drivers are taken out of the local bus system and drive shuttle buses for German tourists instead. So buses were running only once per hour instead of every half hour. Nice!

I must admit that the biggest highlight of my visit to Brunei was the discovery of a donut shop with really good chocolate donuts. That says a lot about my cravings, but also a lot about Brunei as a tourist attraction. I had planned to stay at least 3 days but was determined to leave after only one.

So today I took the bus to Miri in Malaysia and was happy to escape Brunei. But another disappointment was waiting for me. I had planned to visit two more National Parks that do not require guides and was actually really looking forward to a little bit of jungle trekking again. But when I arrived at the visitor information centre in Miri I was told that BOTH are closed - due to damage by rain. I am getting really fed up with all my bad weather luck now!

About Royal Highnesses and Prime Ministers...

2011-02-07T13:53:00.002+01:00

Tower for Regalia

I had to realise that Malaysia does not really have the most exciting museums. There are a lot of them, yes, but they tend to be rather "provincial", which is a polite way of saying run-down, antiquated, with crumbling walls and fading markings - and totally bored staff.

But on the positive side they have a rather comical effect on me.. Let me explain this:

Malaysia consists of several provinces that all have a sultan. These sultans rotate every five years when they elect one of them to become king for the next 5 years. Therefore Malaysia is one of the very few countries in the world with an elected monarch, who is even rotated every 5 years.

Now every province is very proud of their sultan and therefore there are a lot of small museums dedicated to the respective sultan and his wife. I was truly amazed what sort of stuff you can find there: In Alor Star the museum was not only showing His Highnesses' old golf balls and tennis raquets, no, they even went so far as to display his old cell phones! And the Royal car park not only consisted of 4x4 drives and Rolls Royces, but also of old motor bikes and even Royal bicycles. Of course there is also an official portrait of the Royal couple - and one example resembled a Pop Art Andy Warhol style for beginners version. But on closer inspection I realised that I was just looking at silk embroidery.

Royal Palace

In Kota Bahru, another provincial capital, the Royal museum was much more dedicated to the sultan's hobbies. I learnt that Her Highness likes to broaden her horizon by reading magazines (I wondered what type... Vogue or what), whereas "His Highness can often be seen with a video camera recording the natural beauty of Malaysia." Luckily they did not torture me with the end products of His Highnesses video expeditions...

But even Prime Minsters are not immune to being exposed. Dr. Majathir Mohamad's house in Kota Bahru has also been transformed into a museum were I learnt that he had to take a bath every Friday at 11 am and was not allowed to eat fish because his mother believed fish contains worms.... Wouldn't any Germany die to learn similar things about Angela Merkel?

But this is Malaysia - where you have to remove your shoes even in internet cafes and where all the museums close Friday from 12.30 to 2.30 for Friday prayer....

Tomorrow I will go to Brunei - the place sounded so weird that I decided I have to visit...

Taman Negara: Jungle trekking in Malaysia

2011-02-06T12:17:00.003+01:00

Shelter in the jungle

I still have all my hiking gear with me so I was really keen on doing some hiking in Malaysia. Unfortunately, you are required to hire a guide in almost all National Parks here - except in Taman Negara, the biggest and most popular National Park in Malaysia. And according to my guidebook the rainy season there would also already be over.

Canopy walk

So I took the "jungle train" from Kota Bahru to Jerantut, the portal to the Park. There were also 4 other Westerners in the train planning on hiking in the park. But the closer we came to Jerantut, the heavier it started to rain....Arriving (on time by the way) at the station I could not even muster enough courage to step out and search for buses to the park. I went to a restaurant instead and had lunch hoping for the rain to cease. But no such luck. Eventually I found the bus station totally soaked despite my umbrella - and found the other four Westerners. All of them had already given up on any hiking plans and bought onward tickets to Kuala Lumpur... Very encouraging. I nevertheless decided to stay, checked into a hostel and did some internet research on weather forecast with the devastating result that it was supposed to rain for the whole next week.

But hey, I had come that far and did not want to give up. So next morning I took the bus into Kuala Tahan, a small village just outside the park boundaries where all the guesthouses and restaurants were. Of course it was raining the whole bus trip...but cleared up when I had settled into my guesthouse! So off I went to my first jungle hike!!!!

Well, I always thought that I am an experienced hiker and 35 km per day is nothing for me. I had to realise that jungle hiking belongs to a totally different class of hiking. First of all it is hot, usually around 30 degrees. Second, humidity is about 100% - you are sweating from just standing around. Third, due to the incessant rain and erosion all trails had been transformed into one huge mud pool. Fourth, the terrain is steep up and down all the time, climbing over huge tree roots holding on to ropes and slipping on muddy ground. Given all these premises you are luckily to hike 2 km per hour - and drink 1 liter of water/hour. Afterwards you look like a pig fresh out of a mud bath. I had to wash my clothes every day - but due to the humidity they would not dry, of course.

This is trail!!!

But the most nerve wrecking thing were the leeches. I am used to all sorts of insects and even to leeches - but not to these amounts of leeches. Every half hour I would stop and peel off another 10 leeches. And because of their anti-coagulant the little wound they leave will not stop bleeding. My socks turned bright red and seemed to attract even more leeches. I had always believed that leeches bites are not itchy and heal quickly, but I was totally wrong. Now, almost one week later I still have itchy bumps all over my feet. But the worst moment came when one leech had managed to climb up my inner thigh. I peeled it off, but the wound would not stop bleeding and in the end I looked like I was heavily menstruating and had forgotten the tampons. On my way back to my guesthouse everybody was staring at me...

I managed 3 days of jungle hiking and then I gave up. It has been a very interesting experience and I am glad I did it (even the weather cooperated and it rained only once per day), but this climate is not for me and extended overnight trips.

Georgetown, Malaysia

2011-01-28T15:55:00.002+01:00

In Georgetown I was very lucky again. Although the whole town was pretty much fully booked due to the upcoming Chinese New Year festival I got a very nice and cheap room in the very first hotel I asked. For 6 EUR I had a single room, even with my own shower. And of course, around the corner were plenty of food stalls and an internet cafe for 0,50 EUR per hour. Well, I ended up staying for 5 days....

Before I came to Malaysia I had always thought that it is a Muslim country. But inside the country I had to learn that this is not always the case. Some provinces are mostly Muslim, but the province of Penang for example is predominantly Chinese.


Buddhist Temple

Some historical anecdote here: When both Malaysia and Singapore gained independence from the British they were both ONE country for a couple of years. But then Malaysia decided to more or less "expel" Singapore. Why? Singapore is big and predominantly Chinese - in a combined country the Chinese would have been the majority. But Malaysian politicians wanted a Muslim country - and therefore decided to get rid of Singapore to outbalance the majority.

Georgetown has a lot of Chinese monuments - for example the Chinese clan houses. When the Chinese came first to Malaysia in the late 1800s they formed clans to help each other according to the region where they came from. When these clans got wealthier and wealthier their clan houses or meeting places cum temple got more luxurious - and are a big tourist attraction now.


Chinese Temple

Another Chinese monument is the Sun Yat Sen house - don't worry: I had not heard of Sun Yet Sen before either. Sun Yat Sen became the first president of the Republic of China in 1912 after the overthrow of the Chinese monarchy. As a revolutionary and political leader he was not liked in China before 1912 - actually there was a bounty on his head and therefore he was hiding in Georgetown for many years and planning the revolution from there. The house were he lived in is a museum now.

Fun War Museum?

But there are other, rather weird monuments as well, like an old British fort converted in a war fun park cum paintball now. The fort was built by the British in the 1930's in expectation of a Japanese attack. But when the attack came, the fort fell quickly and was occupied by the Chinese until the British regained it at the end of WWII. The fort is situated in the outskirts of Penang smack bang in the jungle. And despite the outrageously high entrance fee it was an interesting site. The new owners have "rejuvenated" the fort, added some rather tacky attractions for the daily night tour (advertised with "Don't miss the fun") and also created a paintball war game zone. The result is some Rocky Horror War Show Malaysian style..

Malaysia: The food

2011-01-26T15:09:00.002+01:00


Indian Banana Leaf Curry

I am a hiker after all and therefore food is one of the most important things in life for me....
And the food is one of the best things in Malaysia!!! Because there are so many ethnical groups, there are also so many food choices... There is Indian food, Chinese food, Thai food and Malayan food. You never get bored here.


Roti Canai with Milo

My first food problem was breakfast. I spent the first days in Malaysia eating overpriced Western style breakfasts with horrible toast, no butter and mostly no jam. Even the baked beans tasted horrible. I decided to try something else and tried Indian - and that is the solution. The normal Indian breakfast here is Roti Canai. Not that I had ever heard of that... It is some sort of chapati with a little bit of dhal on the side. It is made fresh in front of your eyes! The stalls have a big supply of little dough dumplings and when you order it they are squeezed into a rectangular form, put on the grill for 2 minutes and that's it. They come in all sort of varieties from plain (Roti Canai) to Roti with eggs, sardines, bananas and/or chocolate - but even with chocolate Roti you will be served dhal, which makes a weird combination!

For lunch and dinner there are so many choices that I always have a hard time deciding what to eat. My favourites so far are:

Indian dhosai: a sort of rice/lentil flour pancake - very crisp and served with 3 sorts of dhal
Indian Thali: is vegetarian, contains rice and various sorts of dhal, curry and dips. The locals just pour the sauces over the rice and eat it with their right hand - but I have not managed that art yet. In the cheap version you get all this served on a banana leaf.
Tom Yam: is a very spicy Thai soup. Comes as a soup but also as a rice dice.
Mee and Nasi: Mee is the Malay word for noodles and Nasi for rice. Goreng means fried, so the famous Nasi Goreng is nothing else but fried rice. Here you get all sorts of variations on rice and noodles - fried and in soup - with meat or vegetables - spicy or mild.... and so on and so on
Satay: is either little pieces of chicken or pork on a wooden skewer barbecued right in front of your eyes and served with peanut sauce.
Laksa: This is my favourite Malay dish so far. A very sour and spicy soup with noodles and seafood.


Peanut pancakes

And what do you drink? Again, various choices. In all the Indian places you get wonderful lassi. Then there are tons of food stalls that serve freshly squeezed fruit juice - with ice. And of course there is hot drinks as well and as I do not drink coffee or black tea my favourite is Milo. Milo is a sort of chocolate powder for water and you can get the drink cold or hot.

Desert was a bit of a problem for me first as I am very much chocolate oriented - and due to the climate chocolate is not very popular here. But then I discovered Mr. Sweet - and Indian sweet shop where you can buy all sorts of delights, usually made out of nuts, ghee and condensed milk. Definitely not dietary stuff and very sweet, but ultra-delicious. I will probably come back to Germany overweight! But this would give me an excuse to go hiking again... which I will do anyways.