Category: Adventures & Courses
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Canoeing from Loch Morar to Loch Arkaig
I recently came back from my second canoeing expedition in the highlands of Scotland. The first trip was fantastic but felt too short so we vowed to come back again but do it for longer. Fast forward a few years and with a deep yearning to reconnect with the wilderness we (me & Wes) set off from Shropshire on the Thursday morning with…
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Paddling from Loch Morar to Mallaig
I just got back from an epic trip to the highlands of Scotland, open water canoeing with some mates. We were prepared for the sort of weather that an October in northern Scotland could throw at us (which the weather forecasts were also suggesting would happen) but on this occasion they got it wrong and we really…
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Round Wood Timber Framing with Ben Law
Mention the name Ben Law to most people and they’ll say “Who?”. However if you follow that up by describing a certain episode of Grand Designs where a woodsman, permaculturist & author who, whilst living in a caravan in the woods, built his own home from timber sourced from his wood and there’s a good…
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Scything with Simon Fairlie
Learning how to use a scythe has been something on the to do list for a couple of years now, ever since hearing Simon Fairlie enthuse about them at a course I attended that he was leading on low impact smallholding. Unfortunately life and other projects got in the way until during the summer I…
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Unicivilisation Festival – Edited Highlights
Over the recent bank holiday weekend I was fortunate enough to attend the Dark Mountain Project‘s Uncivilisation festival in Llangollen, Wales. I had a really great time and I met lots of interesting and friendly people who had all come together to discuss options for – as the website puts it – “a challenging and…
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Green Woodworking with Mike Abbott
Since starting my beginner’s cabinet-making course, I’ve been intrigued by the differences between modern woodworking techniques and the more traditional methods such as Green Woodworking (like chair bodging). Why use green wood? Well, Mike Abbott, who is, as you’ll read, the guy that ended up teaching me, explains in his article in the Summer 2009…
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Course: Low Impact Smallholding
I am feeling very inspired after attending a LILI course on Low Impact Smallholding over the weekend. It was held at the LILI HQ which is a community called Redfield in Bucks and was run by Simon Fairlie of Chapter 7 and author of Low Impact Development. It was a very detailed course covering things like…
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Jean Michel Jarre – Oxygene Live at The Albert Hall
On Sunday, Kurt and I went to see Jean Michel Jarre at The Albert Hall. He was for the first time playing Oxygene – his first album released in 1976 – live in its entirety. We had top-dollar seats that gave us a very good view of the antiques that he was going to be…
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Philip Glass – Music in 12 parts
Hard work. Kurt and I attempted to see the entire piece last night at the Barbican. We managed the first half, which was 1.5 hours, and whilst being in awe of the complexity and the sheer effort being used to manually repeat the same chord for 45 minutes without a break by halftime, we could…
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Le Mans 07
I just got back from my third visit to the Le Mans 24 hour race, and it was a good one. For the previous two years, we had circa 30-degree temperatures with no cloud cover, and it really got unbearable, so to strike a balance, this year we had a lot of rain. Still, it…