Tag: walking holidays

A treasure hunt in southern Snowdonia

SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA

We’re going on a treasure hunt. We’re going to find a big one. What a beautiful day. We’re not scared.

A walk in the woods at Coed y Brenin Forest Park near Dolgellau could inspire a Michael Rosen story.

It was a couple of days away, some quality-time bonding for Maya and I after the recent storms. But, in the great storytelling tradition, it also was far more than that.

On the geocache trail, hand in hand in the spring sunshine, we feel into an easy rhythm.

Mossy treestumps stood to attention as we passed. Spring birdlife called to us overhead.

When we stopped at the viewpoint to consult the map, Maya delivered an impromptu weather forecast (see it here SANY0005) – grey clouds clearing at last.

As we tramped, searching for the first geocache, the tiny plastic box with its logbook and secret treasures, the conversation drifted with the breeze.

  • What is a good age to get married?
  • Of potential career paths between a doctor, a teacher and a writer, then doctor earns the most money, but who has the most fun?
  • If I was a character in hit TV show Miranda, which character would I be (decision: I’d be Garry’s helper in the restaurant, not Mike the Knight.)

Later that day we would drive onto Graig Wen, spending the night in the new eco-cabin (pictured above).

It was dusk and she set off to explore, taking my camera to capture images of the site, the B&B, camping and yurts set just off the Mawddach Way long-distance trail around the Mawddach estuary.

That night the stars were amazing. As we walked up the path to our cabin after dinner, we looked up to the night sky, illuminated with a thousand tiny tealights, for comfort and reassurance.

“That’s nana,” said Maya, pointing to the brightest star I the sky. “I know she’s looking after us.”

We never did find the treasure in the geocahe at Coed y Brenin. But it didn’t matter. We had space and time to just be together.

And that was something to truly treasure.

* The accompanying commission to this will be published on greentraveller.co.uk – check back for updates.

GAZETTEER

Coed y Brenin Forest Park

Graig Wen’s Caban in the Glade

The Mawddach Way

Discover Dolgellau

SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA

Story of the day: Island walking trails in Croatia

DSCN0930 copy

Another one from the archive.

This time it’s the first in a series of stories about Croatia and the Dalmatian archipelago. I must have done something right because the last one won a travel-writing award.

As is often the way, the first trip sparked off lots of new ideas. Lucky, really, as this firs trip was a bit of a shambles.

Tip to trip organisers: seven hours on a minibus with a bunch of Germans looking at tourist-trap souvenir shops does not good copy make.

What I did enjoy was the walking on the island of Brac.

Here’s an extract:

The last walk takes in three lost-in-time villages – a far cry from harbour-side apartment blocks and all-night clubs.

A bus transfers me to the trailhead at Lozisca, where I start walking from under the Baroque bell tower of St John and St Paul, one of the island’s Unesco-listed monuments.

I head uphill through the cobbled backstreets of the village, following a path to the nearby settlement of Bobovisca, with the waft of wild catmint on the air.

From there, as a couple of donkeys look on nonchalantly, I head across country through rough scrubland, taking a less waymarked trail to St Martin’s, a 1,000-year-old white-stone church clinging stoically to the hillside overlooking Milna [pictured above].

Read the full story, Walking in the rural heart of Croatia.

What’s your favourite walk around the archipelago? Or what angle should I look at next to revisit Croatia?

Post your comments below.

Story of the day: Hiking remote trails in Turkey

SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA

I had an email this week from Wanderlust magazine.

They’re updating the profiles of contributors on their website and collecting their stories together in one place.

After adding my own profile, I uncovered a link to an old story. It was the first of a trio of adventure-travel narratives for the magazine that took me from Turkey to Portugal via Croatia.

This was also the toughest: a serious, long-distance hike through a remote region with little infrastructure.

Thankfully we had the jovial Dennis (pictured above) to accompany us. He smiled throughout the trip – despite not having a change of underpants in the 40-degree heat.

Here’s an extract:

He led me through the spring-flowering village, all tulips and wild tortoises, to a traditional timber house.

Animal quarters downstairs, living room on stilts above, with rugged floors, wood-burning stove, and his 86-year-old mother hiding from the mid-afternoon sun under a patterned headscarf.

“Any stranger can still come to a village like this, knock on a door and have a place to stay and eat,” said Murtha Mustafa Acar as we sipped tea more saccharine than a Turkish love song.

“Ten years from now, when the trail is established, I hope villages like ours will be alive again.”

After we finished the hike, we headed to the airport at Antalya to find ourselves stuck in volcanic ash-cloud chaos.

But that’s a story for another time.

Read the full story, The St Paul Trail.

And check out my profile at Wanderlust.

Any comments on hiking in Turkey?

Please post them below.