Mouflon Refuge

Very little sleep, a leisurely breakfast at 8 having got our bags and gear ready to go, and then we set off at about 9 for a great days hiking.
Left the village on this path, which wound around (and UP) the mountain, and up the valley past the village of Aroumd, across a floodplain, and up into a steeper valley. Weather is beautiful and we are all toasty. We find the donkeys tethered just below the snowline, and have lunch at a place that may or may not be Chamharouch!

(skipping the last opportunity in a while to shop, and spotting a Lammergaier circing very high above us as we eat)

From here on, we are on snow, but the path is worn and we make easy progress.This was my favourite sign. Good thing we knew you weren't allowed to scuba - it was so tempting, being sunny and all . . .

despite the occasional snow shower. The views of snow-covered mountains with razor-sharp peaks is stunning.

This path is well known, and at about this point, you are guaranteed to be good and thirsty!

It's also the place where the snow showers blew in again, but we're tough and hard, or something.

The walk is great, views are fantastic. Clouds pass, covering over and then exposing the mountains again.

Eventually . . .(and I mean eventually - Gerry reckons this is the hardest days work he has done in his life!) we reach the refuge, where there is some hot mint tea waiting for us. The refuge is huge, and comfortable (so long as you understand that heating is not included, and you dress appropriately!) Note the snow piled up outside. We shake most of the snow off and sit for a minute to recover.

Inside the refuge, a fire warms its immediate vicinity, but does nothing for the rest of the place. Unpack, dinner, a chat by the fire and we are done for the day - especially as it transpires we are aiming for a 6:00am breakfast and a 7:00am departure.

Imlil

Arriving at the agreed rendezvous point, we met the third hiker of our party, Mikka, and the taxi driver who would take us up to Imlil to meet our guides.

We'd hoped Mikka would be fit enough to complete the walk, but not so much that he would make us look like the middle-aged, unfit, office types we don't like to admit we have become.

Turns out he is about 6'4", 21 years old, from Finland, hikes alone for weeks in Lapland, recently completed the Finnish version of SAS training and is going back to the Army in September. He is on this walk because all his friends went to the Himalayas and Everest base camp and he had to skip that trip.

. . . . so we were nearly right!

Fortunately he is also extremely gracious, and made for good company throughout the trip!

An hour or so up the road brought us to Imlil, where we met Matt and Helen, our guides during the trip. The snow had been particularly heavy, so our route had changed. We were going to spend the night in Imlil, having a 5 hour 'warm-up' walk instead, and then leave from Imlil the following day to hike up to the Toubkal refuge. We dumped packs and got ready to set forth. Helen checking that we had everything in the right place!

The route for the day changed quickly from road to dirt track . . . to mountain path . . . and into deep snow.

One side of the valley is north facing, and in snow (our way up!) and the other is south facing and was clear of snow (the way down). We trekked up through deeper and deeper snow, first of all in warm sunny conditionsand later in snow showers, until we reached the col at the top of the valley.After a quick lunch under a tree we headed back down the other side of the valley.The route home took us through this Berber village: tiny winding paths in between the houses. Helen has become friends with most of the village, it seems, so we stop frequently to greet them. Shy children peep at us as we go past.

Dinner back in the hostel is very welcome. We wandered around the village in the evening, but night-life isn't really its forte, so we gave up and headed for our beds, hoping that a couple of blankets would keep us warm enough for the night chill. (They didn't - roll on the nights with the down sleeping bag!)

So ... Morocco

Gerry was 40 this year. I will be 40, and also felt some 'event' to recognise the fact that I finally got my M.Sc. was in order. Opinions will forever remain divided as to whether the wives in question were sacrificially allowing their husbands get away for a few days, or sending their husbands away to get their mid-life crises over with!. Either way, after weeks of gear collecting, organising and a little hiking in preparation, we headed to the airport on the Sunday morning, stopping at Gerry's to pick him up and organise the gear into bags. At the airport Zeph made a strong case to be allowed come as our handluggage.

The flights were uneventful until we were nearly at Marrakech. Then the pilot announced that there was a storm over the airport, so we were going to circle for the foreseeable future and hope it went away. I guess it did as we landed about 45 minutes later. A shared taxi brought us into the centre of Marrakech.

My memory of arriving in Marrakech is bedlam! It was dark, and althoguh we were close to the central square, we couldn't see it, or any other landmark, street sign or anything else to identify where we were. But there were people everywhere, many clamoring to get our attention, shop windows galore, gaudy signs and general hustle and bustle. We were wandering up the road, vainly trying to get our bearings, and waving off the folks looking for our money under a variety of pretexts, when one young man waved a little sign and tried to convince me to come to his hotel. I was busy waving him off, explaining that we already had a booking, when I saw the name - Riad Agnaou - the same hotel as we had already booked! I thanked him and allowed him to lead us down a little alley, where sure enough, was our hotel.

After finding our rooms and dumping the gear, we headed out for some food. The main square (d'Jemma al Fna - hereafter called Jemma) had been recommended as the pace to go so off we went. Again: organised chaos, people everywhere, shops, stalls and eateries all competing for our attention. Great fun, so we wandered for a while, checking out the souks and the square before settling on one food stall which seemes to be mainly for locals. The delicacy plate was sheeps brains and tongue, but we also managed a plate each of 'normal' meat to have with our bread. And little glasses of sweet tea of course.

(Brain photo to be added!)

And back to the hotel to get some sleep.

It snew

It started snowing in Wicklow on Sunday night, and has been going on and off since then!

It was too slippy to go anywhere Monday morning. We tried, but both turned back after about 1/2 mile. Spent the day by the stove instead. There were about 8 inches on the ground this morning, so we have had another day working from home, with a couple of exploratory trips out!

This is our garden - the normally scruffy looking part! Zeph has a fort here, and I have my shed and a couple of patches I optimistically call vegetable patches.

See the strategically placed planks up against the shed?

Zeph uses it to get to the top of the shed. Great place to throw snowballs at dad. I was really tempted to fire one back knowing he couldn't dodge, but didn't want to have to deal with a broken arm!

and here is the shot!

Eventually the garden was too small, and we set off over the fields.
















taking a dive into the snow to make angels along the way.















We ended up a few field away where there was a great snowdrift. It got dived into quite a few times before Zeph eventually got snagged up in some barbed wire, and I had to rescue him.

Back home to make a snowman before lunch (and then back to work for a few hours).
When the lure of the snow got too great, the whole family set off up the hill.

Where we well and truly pelted each other with snowballs (see the results of my shot on Zeph's forehead!)

Snow is set to stay for a few days by the looks of things.

Roll on Toubkal!

Jan 2009 family snapshot

Zeph is 9 now, and will be 10 in February – scary that he is reaching double digits already! He’s in 3rd class – and enjoys it when he doesn’t find it boring! He learns fast, loves maths, animals, history and reading. He cannot be bothered about spelling and has no fear of writing – he’ll make up the spelling as he goes along and taught himself joined writing as soon as he realised they weren’t planning to teach it to him in school any time soon! (It’s very idiosyncratic!)

He’s stubborn as an ox and will argue a point down to the nth degree. We can’t really blame the poor kid for those characteristics, but it makes for some frustrating family discussions!

He’ll watch Michael Palin travel DVD’s or David Attenburgh wildlife documentaries for hours, and loves meeting new animals. He’s not so good with fiction, and finds films VERY scary. He’s doing well recently though, we have been having family film afternoons and have watched the first four discs (2 films) of the Lord of the Rings trilogy together. He loved them although they were the very limit of his stress levels, and he was only able to cope because he has watched all of the ‘making of’ DVD’s about a hundred times each, so has seen a good portion of the film already in a much safer context! I gave him ‘The Bridge to Terabithia’ for Christmas, so we all sat down to watch it last week and cried our eyes out! (We still have no telly, and no plans to get one, so DVD’s are our current compromise)

He’ll still come on hikes with me, although he moans more each time. I think I’ll have to leave him behind more often, until he starts wanting to come badly enough again!

He’s learning the piano, and is quite proud of himself, having passed his first exam (the one pre-grade 1!) We’ll see if the interest lasts. I hope it does, I think he could be very good. He took hip-hop lessons for a while last year with Rowan, one of his school friends.

Wendy is tired – although as it is half way through winter, and just after Christmas and New Year, that is hardly surprising. We've had a run of visitors, and visits, and are looking forward to a some quiet!

The Matilda Project eats up a lot of Wendy’s time (and Zeph and I more than account for the rest). She is in regular contact with all of the partners in Zimbabwe, and gets very regular updates on the situation there. It is really tough, and requires a lot of ingenuity on all parts to keep funds flowing to our partners there so that they can buy supplies and keep the HBC work and the school breakfasts going.

And I’m sick! Nothing serious though, just a lingering post-Christmas sore throat & general flu-like feeling. I’ve been working from home the last 2 days so that has been easy.

Other general lifestyle stuff:
We still have a dog (Teddy)

and a cat (Tiger)

but no hens at the moment, although we may get more in spring.

We put in a wood-burning stove, which keeps the back room toasty, so we practically live in there, and I work there a few days a week. We also have a lean-to at the side of the house where we store a pile of wood to feed the stove. We put in a fruit cage over our fruit bushes and raspberry canes, which made an enormous difference to the amount of fruit we actually got! And we have planted 3 apple trees, a damson tree and a plum tree as well as a load of conifers of various kinds.

I’m driving a motorbike! I ditched the car and got a Honda CB500 (which is way too big a bike to start with, but suits the distance I travel well). It’s great. It takes an hour into town instead of the two hours it was taking me in the car, and I don’t have to pay for parking, and can park pretty much anywhere! Mind you, it’s been freezing for the last few weeks and I have avoided using it. It looks like we are in for a tough winter, and I’m not sure if the bike will cope. I don’t mind the cold if there is no ice on the roads, but won’t use it if the roads are slippery.

I still rock-climb when I get a chance, although with the rain last year, and ACET and other responsibilities, I have done very little. I’m still hoping to claw back more time, but not succeeding yet.