Tag Archives: Places

Picos de Europa 2016

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The best laid plans of mice and men go up in smoke with the european civil unrest which culminated in my travel plans being cancelled by my insurance provider at 23:00 on the night before I was due to leave the UK… now I am not a reckless man nor neither am I stupid, and to travel when expressly discouraged by the FCO and my Insurance Provider to me just seemed foolhardy… so I took the ribbing and rebooked at short notice all my crossings. So in 2016 having been north (twice) and east (twice) I have decided to go south again to explore the dirt trails of the Picos de Europa.

The Picos are really three separate mountain ranges with a network of maintain trails and passes split midway by the Cares Gorge. I am relieved to know that after my nights in a bivvi bag in the Scandinavian forests in both 2013 and 2015 that the native cantabrian brown bears are reportedly very timid and will avoid human contact but even then the thought of a 150kg bear snuffling in my pannier is one that might wake me when the wild boar or hedgehog trundle past my head!

Spain 2016

We will not be moved

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I found these iconic statues of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels whilst looking for shade (and an ice cream) in the Marx-Engels-Forum which is a great open park in Berlin, a place for relaxation, surrounded by fountains and picnicking families. Whilst much of Berlin has been rebuilt, the site of these two great memorials is on the land in past occupied by the Old Town quarter which was heavily bombed during allied air attacks when most of its buildings reduced to ruins. For some reason after the war, the ruins were cleared but nothing replaced them and the open space remains. Despite the peaceful facade, the Marx-Engels Forum has been the subject of public controversy, with some saying it is an unwanted reminder of austere past times stepping past the political arguments, I welcomed the shade and respite and pondered on George Santayana’s wise words “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” as I ate my decadent western ice cream.We Will Not Be Moved

The Lapland War

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Riding south from Ravaniemi on the E75, I spotted a small side turning leading east marked Tervola and slipped quickly of the rough north south route, into the unknown. The brilliant sunshine glimmered of the the new bridge over the Kemi, as I stopped in the shade of the Kirk. Finland’s wartime past is not widely publicised but knowing the Russian pacts and advance from the east and the Finnish resistance and the earlier Lapland War, the number of German and Finnish war graves with similar dates reinforces the strategic importance of this river crossing in 1944.

The Bridge at Tervoia The battle for Tervoia