Polar Opposites

Last time I was in Morocco I was in Tangier. Someone pulled a knife on me, around every corner someone was trying to scam you or rob you, and that is literally no exaggeration. It’d be a stretch to say I’d go back to Tangier to save my own mother. OK, well maybe I would for that, but nothing short of that. All I remember of being there is having to watch your back wherever you went, not really being able to trust many people. I think in four days, I met possibly three or four people I was able to warm to and actually liked.

When I was invited back to Morocco, I was naturally apprehensive. I know you should never judge a book by its cover, however, it’s almost human nature to do that. If you don’t have any good experiences somewhere, why should you come back with a positive outlook on the place? Now that I’m out here, I have to say I’ve had enough humble pie to even put Desperate Dans cow pies to shame. I’m ashamed and embarrassed to have held such negative views on Morocco and Moroccans.

A rather dry mouth

I wasn’t at my most comfortable, having Moroccan security officials pulling all of my possessions out of my bag in front of the whole of arrivals. Everyone starts to stare, more and more security turn up. Eventually there were five of them there! 5?! All for a camera?!

“Follow me please sir”

This really will be a hassle! I’ve never been taken away for an interview before. Let alone one with someone that can’t speak English. I’d done nothing wrong and I knew it, but there’s still something inside you that’s making you nervous, that little “what if”. What if what?! “I’ve not done anything!” I kept telling myself, but as I sat in this small dark office with someone pulling my bags apart, I felt my heart start to beat faster, my legs start to tingle and my mouth going as dry as the Sahara.

And so it begins!

Despite some very careful packing, I was still way over my weight limit for flying. Things were getting desperate. Toothbrush, gone. Toothpaste, gone. About 3 pairs of pants and socks, gone. Eventually I got my main luggage down to 25kg and my hand luggage down to 7. Even that wasn’t good enough! I mean yeah it weighed the same as a small child…but maybe the baggage handlers should have just eaten their weetabix!

The anti-guide

This isn’t a guide on how to plan, neither is it always applicable. All it is, is something that works for me and I enjoy.

I was sat having a clear out of my computer the other day when I found a folder absolutely full of different trips planned out from a trip to Greenland via the Orkneys, the Shetlands, the Faroes and Iceland, to a trip down the the Pan-America Highway starting at Prudhoe Bay all the way to Capehorn including a way through the Darian Gap between Central and South America. These weren’t just ideas of trips, but somehow I’d immaculately planned out each trip including local contacts without even realising I’d done so much.

Shaddongate Shadows

At around midnight, a dangerous cocktail of boredom and insomnia began to kick in. For the last 4 months, I’ve been living next to a local landmark in Carlisle known as Dixons Chimney. This chimney, at its time, was the tallest in the UK and was named after its original owner, Peter Dixon. Put it this way, it’s a pretty big chimney. It’ll put a crick in your neck if you try staring up at it for too long. Since moving in, I’d noticed that in the right conditions, the moon created a stunning corona effect around the chimney at night. Although the moon was too low to be able to catch that effect this evening, what I was able to catch are the following shots of light clouds racing behind the chimney, leading to a pretty interesting shot.

Finland 2010

Here’s a video that was made by us (Adventure & Media ’11, University of Cumbria) on our expedition back in April to Finland where we spent 4 days trekking through the Seitseminen National Park near Tampere. This should give you an idea of what we get up to.

Cold Shots

As some of you may know, I recently entered a competition run by Gore-Tex. The theme of this competition is “The big picture is in the small details”. It’s not often I’d choose climbing as my first port of call for media, but on this occasion I decided It was time to start playing with roped and literally hang out. Over the last week or so, Cumbria has been getting fairly chilly, and I didn’t really know that snow isn’t the best weather to climb in. With this knowledge safely not in hand, I put the call out to see if anyone fancied climbing for me to get my shot.

A taste of island life.

This week I had the opportunity to stay on Skomer Island as a good friend of mine is the head warden there. It’s not really an offer a sane person would turn down, so of course I went! What an incredible few days it was, just from walking around the island and seeing common song birds, to getting a brief insight into the research done on the migratory sea birds that breed on the island. Anyway, here is a selection of shots from the last few days. I’ll write something decent up soon, it’s been a long day though so I’ll keep it simple and stick to the photos for now

An example of how tame the resident rabbits are with no land predators.

A rather cheerful close to the day

As I walk, all around me things are catching my eye. My eyes dart to a striking Mohican reaching at least a foot into the air formed into 5 perfect black spikes.

As my eyes begin to drop I catch sight of a man who looks like he fell asleep at a party and several very talented yet drunk graffic artists got to work on his face.

They drop yet lower and onto the next person, a t-shirt that says something along the lines of “Look at my face when I talk, not my tits”. Well don’t fucking write stuff all over them then!

Simply Downhill

The dreaded knock on the door came at some holy unsociable hour, something like twenty past seven in the morning. It’s not light all year round at twenty past seven, so we’re not really supposed to be out an about, so why should we change our waking hours?! We should just get up at 10am all year round. Besides, I don’t want to get eaten by a bear or saber tooth tiger because it was too dark in the morning to be able to see it. Now that really would be a shame. Anyway, rant about early moments over. There we were, at twenty three past seven in the morning, sat in the big blue van and rubbing our tired eyes.