Tag: travel

The West Highland Way – Part 3

On By James HandlonIn Hiking Adventures, The West Highland WayLeave a comment

The West Highland Way – Stage 5: Tyndrum to Bridge of Orchy – 7 miles/11.3km

Day 5 would be a great day of easy short walking! The scenery was beautiful and now we were able to get into our stride by using the fast-going military roads on this part of the route to our advantage. We would follow the valley to Bridge of Orchy, a small village for our overnight stop. As we walked up the valley we passed under the slopes of Beinn Odhar with the distinctive and shapely cone of Beinn Dòrain directly ahead of us.

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The West Highland Way – Part 2

On By James HandlonIn The West Highland Way, UncategorizedLeave a comment

The West Highland Way – Stage 3: Rowardennan to Inverarnan – 14.5 miles/23.4km

Day 3 started with a taxi ride back seven miles up the road to Rowardennan. Physiologically it felt good to be quickly transported back up the line. We needed the boost because another gruelling 14 mile day lay ahead of us.

We had to make it to Inverarnan by nightfall and the famous Drovers Inn. We would still be hugging the shores of Loch Lomond for the majority of the day but by the end of it we would have made it to the start of the real Highlands.

Continue reading “The West Highland Way – Part 2” →

Foto Friday – Forbidden Palace

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In 2009 I found myself travelling around China on a whistle-stop tour visiting the countries great cities and landmarks. Somewhere that I had always wanted to visit was The Forbidden City in the former capital of Peking a city now renamed Beijing.

It lived up to all expectations when I finally got there. The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is located in what is now the middle of Beijing and houses the Palace Museum. For almost 500 years, it served as the home of emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political centre of Chinese government.

The architecture is amazing, the scale mindblowing and its history resonates from every corner ofpalace the complex.

Foto Friday – The Laugavegur Trail

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Following stone cairns for guidance I found myself trekking in a small team across a snowy plateaux in southern Iceland in 2013.

The whole team found the going to be way tougher than we’d expected for even though it was early July there was still a load of persistent deep snow left on the ground which made the going pretty hard.

The trek took five days to complete and took me from Landmannalaugar geothermal springs to the Þórsmörk nature reserve.

See more photography from the trek at www.jameshandlon.com/category/iceland/