Travel
A weekend with Pascal checking out routes of some of the motorbike itineraries the forthcoming GLME motorbike camp, which is being organised by the French club AMA.
From our base in Chorges, Pascal and I checked out routes to the dam of the river Drac at Le Sautet in Champasaur, the Col du Noyer (1664 m) and the valley of the river Béoux. And the impressive citadel and powder store of Mont Dauphin, built by the engineer Vauban.
Unfortunately, we didn't have time to enjoy the stunt bike meet at Dévoluy. Maybe another year...
Shoreham Beach is a small island with a shingle beach, just over a couple of bridges from Shoreham town. There’s a brackish lagoon which is a wildlife reserve. The separation from the mainland is small but the change in feel of the place is huge. There are million pound properties fronting on to the public beach and also affordable single bedroom flats just a road back. The sky seems that little bit brighter than the mainland, we stayed dry on our walk on the shingle although the mainland was clearly enjoying thunder and lightning.
Weather still treacherous in the Alps, we headed west from Marseille to the Pyrenees, staying in the spa town of Bagnères de Luchon. I stayed there for a couple of nights back in 1988 when I was working on the location crew for London Weekend Television's drama “Wish Me Luck”.
One night north of the River Clyde at Pacific Quay in Glasgow on a business trip. Strange architecture around the science museum and the BBC's Pacific Quay building evocative of insects or armoured animals, like huge armadillos.
The shimmering reflection of the BBC building looks like the thrust of rockets while its twin satellite dishes look like bug eyes; so maybe the aliens landed here and these are the husks of their landing pods...
Easter weekend based in Kendal, Cumbria. Contrasts between Victorian Westmorland and the realities of twenty-first century Cumbria. The high fells of the Pennines and beach at Bootle on the West Cumbria coastline, typical of West Coast beaches anywhere but particularly reminiscent to me of the bleak isolation of Haast Beach on the south island of New Zealand. Daffodils on grass verges almost everywhere - I wonder who plants them. Yes no lakes in my postcard: Cumbria, the agglomeration in the eighties of Cumberland and Westmorland, is more than the Lake District.
Competitive campanology on Easter Sunday between bell ringers at two of the churches added a pleasing soundscape to the landscape as I wandered among the castle ruins and the singing birds on Kendal castle hill.
