I'm as free as a bird now

I'm leaving for the airport in a few hours, everything is packed. Very happy that today is actually here and that most of the hard work is done. Gonna miss everyone in England, thank you for everything you have given me for the past eight years, I hope to see you all soon!

"If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be travelling on, now,
'Cause there's too many places I've got to see.
But, if I stayed here with you, girl,
Things just couldn't be the same.
'Cause I'm as free as a bird now,
And this bird you can not change.
Lord knows, I can't change.

Bye, bye, its been a sweet love.
Though this feeling I can't change.
But please don't take it badly,
'Cause Lord knows I'm to blame.
But, if I stayed here with you girl,
Things just couldn't be the same.
Cause I'm as free as a bird now,
And this bird you'll never change.
And this bird you can not change.
Lord knows, I can't change.
Lord help me, I can't change. "

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird.

Thirty four and counting...

...It is now just 34 days until i leave the tarmac at Heathrow. I've managed to have my vaccinations mostly sorted out now so with any luck infected mosquitoes will not be a huge problem!

Really looking forward to mostly the freedom that will come from traveling alone, and the characters i will meet along the way. Reading the "Motorcycle Diaries" really gives a feel of what tramping around South America is like, let's just hope 1953 wasn't too different to 2009!

For the past few days I've been looking for a small digital camera so i can take a few snaps along the way, if you're lucky enough maybe post a few on here every once in a while, to some as proof that I'm still alive, to others simply to see how long my beard has grown!

My good friend from Mexico has bought a few tickets to go see "The Killers", which will be awesome as well as going to Acapulco for a few days, finally some sunny weather, and maybe dare i say; a proper summer?!

We'll see about that once i get to South America!

A quick update on my plans

It's something like 75 days until i leave England now. I've been thinking of my plans a bit more closely, mostly things i want to do once i arrive in Argentina.

I will keep to my original plan of going from North to South, covering as much as i can, and doing so by land. I want to board the "Tren De Las Nubes" - which translates to train of the clouds - because literally it goes through some of the highlands of the Andes throughout a 16 hour journey. This train however, stops running for the "rainy" season on November 31, I arrive in Argentina November 15.
So i will first of all be visiting the Iguazu falls for only about 5 days at most and from there making my way West towards the Andes. That's all i have planned for now, the rest of the trip will be more 'go with the flow' style, and just hitch-hike in any southern direction, eventually reaching Bariloche in Patagonia.

Snowdonia 28 to 31 May

Waking up to the sound of downstairs' burglar alarm isn't exactly on my top 10, but on Thursday this faulty alarm proved itself especially useful as it went off just before my alarm, at 3.28am to be exact.

It was about 5am by the time we were in the car and slowly making our way to that wonderful place that is Snowdonia. We stopped only a couple of times, it wasn't the most comfortable of rides with all the equipment crammed into the car. We eventually arrived at our campsite for about mid-day.

Tents set up, well fed and happily hydrated with plenty of water, we set off on our first walk which took us across a ridge and up to a summit of 320m. From here we followed the ridge right down to the other end where it descended to a lake and the path soon led us back to our campsite about 1.5km away. The weather was moderate, a few clouds at just over 300m limited our visibility slightly, the forecast was to improve over the weekend with some very sunny weather during the next couple of days.

On Friday we awoke to a cloud-less sky, ignoring our plan to sleep well into 10am we set off early in order to get the most out of the sunny day. It was beautiful, all the peaks that were covered the day before - and most other times i've been there to be honest - were now perfectly visible and glowing in the morning sun. I decided to take us to the Glyders, a group of mountains to the North East of Snowdon whose peaks reach about 950m. We started off with a nice walk up into the base of the first mountain, and climbed up a steep path that lead its way up a ridge and was at times a very steep path. From here we walked the top of the mountain range, descending and ascending from peak to peak. The famous canter lever rock was about 3/4 of the way into the walk and a steep descent down the side of Glyder Fach left us standing at the bottom of Tryfan, which i did attempt but was too windy and would have taken too long to summit in the short period of time we had left of the day (one for next time). From Tryfan it was another half an hour or so to the car. We walked about 8 hours that day.

It was Saturday morning when for the second time in this little holiday i was awakened by words which described the amazing blue sky above our heads. Today we were going for Snowdon, the highest mountain in England and Wales which stands at 1085m.

After finding a suitable spot to park the car - it's extremely busy on Snowdon - we made our way up the "miner's track". It starts off long and fairly flat but eventually takes you to the bottom of the North Ridge where you have a steep climb up to the top of the ridge. This leaves you just 90m from the summit which is an easy walk up. We made the climb in good time, i decided on more than one occasion to skip the zig-zags on the path and a climb straight up - a move which can be quite dangerous at times, but faster and certainly more enjoyable if like me you prefer the "off the beaten track" style. The summit was ridiculously busy, we're talking about 200 people up there. Not my idea of a nice mountain and is a clear disadvantage of climbing easy mountains, but the astonishing views all over and the perfect weather more than made up for it.

After eventually reaching the car, and driving back to our campsite we concluded that this had been another fairly long day, just over 7 hours.

Sunday was our last day and we had to make our way back home. We had lunch by a lake near Capel Curig, laid in the sun for an hour or so then drove back along the busy motorways.

It was an excellent holiday, everything turned out really nice and it was a great success, but for me it was more like a mere drop of water to someone who has just walked across the Sahara desert. I think it's safe to say i am more than looking forward to my next visit to the mountains.

Plans for Snowdonia/May

Plans for May 25 week are starting to fall together now, should be leaving very late Wednesday or Thursday and spend a few days in the mountains with the family. Will be a good chance to finally climb the mountains again, it's been way too long. I'm planning to time-lapse record the whole car journey to about 3 minutes long, will be interesting to see if it actually works!

Snowdonia on Gold D of E 2008

Sheffield and Manchester

So on Tuesday i had a bit of a lie in, woke up about ten or eleven am, took a few things out of my pack that were no longer necessary, mostly food, and made my way to the train station - bought a book on the way to read on the coach, Sir Edmund Hillary's High Adventure which basically goes through how he got into mountaneering and how he came about being the first to successfully summit the world's highest peak. A very good read and although i've yet to finish it i recommend it to anyone - it's inspirational even for someone who isn't particularly a mountain freak.

I made my way to London Victoria without any real problems, apart from the fact that i was purposefully 2 hours early and therefore decided to go for a pint at one of the nearby pubs.

After around four hours and a stop at Milton Keynes for the Nottingham passengers whose driver had ran out of hours, i arrived at the Sheffield Interchange. I suspect it was around 9pm and i had to wait an hour or two for Sam to finish work and meet me.

Wondered around found the skatepark and chilled with some BMXers for a while, it's a really nice park with some steep and large hips and flat banks, would be good to learn some park down there as most of ours is based on street stuff.

After meeting Sam (he was fashionably late), we went for a walk up the top of Ski Village which is basically a random hill in the middle of Sheffield that hasn't got many houses and is mostly woodland. The view from this place was; as Sam had very rightfully told me; astonishing. I have never seen anything quite as good in England and was very glad we decided to do that instead of drink at a bar. We eventually got to his at about 2 or 3 in the morning and got some sleep.

Wednesday he had work during the day so i woke up at my own pace, met Sam's housemate who was Theo, really decent bloke very nice to talk to and we shared some funny moments over the period that i was with them. Their house had a couple of problems, which mainly consisted of a slug infestation which has been there for about two years, i mean we drained the sink to do the washing up and found a huge, dead slug laying at the bottom of the sink where all the washing up had been soaking. Apartently their land lord is a bit of a t-nuc and does nothing to get the problems sorted. Oh and the bath felt and sounded like it was about to fall through the floor whilst you were having a shower.

I made my way back down to the skatepark on Division street - after going past the skatepark and getting a new bolt as i managed to wear the thread on the old one - and met a guy called Tom, he was really friendly like most people up North seem to be. We chilled had a game of skate got some food and eventually went our separate ways when i went to meet Sam once again.

Over the next two days we spent a lot of time in pubs - to socialise more than to drink - played a few games of pool, and best of all, met a lot of the people who Sam had met over the last two months that he'd been there.

It's cool that Sheffield is a student city, literally full of the buggers, but that means we benefited from the cheap service offered by the bars and pool tables at the Uni.


To cut a very long blog short enough for you to be able to read without falling asleep, Sheffield was amazing, the people were really friendly and down to earth, the town centre very clean, and the skateparks good fun.

Manchester was just a short train ride away which i did on Saturday morning. Train was to the airport and was packed, but after finding my way out of the station into the heart of the city i was quite happy about it all. A very nice city and it feels pretty much like London. Sheffield was more of a town - at least it felt that way. There was a little skatepark under the motorway in Manchester which was proper safe, the locals were cool, at least two of the Harmony guys were there, and i chilled there for a few hours. In the evening i went to the Just For Kicks gig which went really well and had a very enthusiastic audience.

There is so much more stuff that got done but i simply haven't really got the time to write it all down, but that's an outline of what i've done for the last week. I really enjoyed it and very much look forward to my next trip, which is likely to be Snowdonia in May.

Plan B

So was up early this morning, went on down to a spot near the dual carriageway which heads to London, after about 4 hours i decided that hitch-hiking to Sheffield ain't worth it since not a single car had stopped.

I've booked a ticket on a National Express coach for tomorrow, hopefully that one will pick me up!
Will post photos of this week up soon.