Does the world make much sense to you? If it does, even in a small way, you are doing much better than me. Much of what I know about the state of the world I learn from podcasts as I walk my dog along the quiet, meandering tracks of our beautiful Andalusian campo. Listening to the news keeps me broadly in the loop, but it is hardly cheerful. I may be surrounded by peaceful landscapes, but my headphones connect me to the woes of distant parts of the world. Even nature struggles to help at times. A little owl may be peering down at me from a telegraph wire as news comes in of the latest madness from Washington, or some random cruelty meted out to innocents far away.
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You may have noticed that I have been very quiet for some time on the subject of my own local river, the Río Guadalhorce. The simple truth is that it has been through some hard times in recent years but there are signs now, happily, that it is beginning to pull through. The river dried out in the summer of 2023 following a period of drought and the fish dropped back into whatever deeper pools they could find, or down towards the estuary.
View full article »They say that an early morning swim in the sea is a good cure for a hangover and so at 08.00 yesterday we dragged ourselves to the stony beach by the harbour at Hastings and launched ourselves into the waters of the English Channel to test this particular theory.
View full article »If a person had even half a brain, they would not have given a second’s consideration to walking from Reinosa to Fontibre yesterday afternoon. The rain did not let up for even a moment, and that would have come as no surprise to any of those half-brained people who had kept an eye on the weather. So yesterday afternoon — as you will not be surprised to hear — I decided to leave Reinosa and walk to the source of the River Ebro at Fontibre.
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