Email from Kerry

This is the view from our room looking back up to Helm Crag. We came over a high pass from the previous valley, Buttermere, round the rim of the next one and down the spine of this crag. Precipitous, but doesn't deter the dozens/ hundreds of holiday families from the climb, often with their dogs, from climbing up, to do a circuit of several hours up, around the rim and down the valley. Some as young as 4!  They breed them tough up here.

Glorious lush countryside.

Coast to Coast - Stage 1: St Bees to Grasmere

(Written by Gordon, posted by Ab)

My image of England has received a massive correction! Forty years ago, working in London, my image was of constrained people living tidy lives in stucco semi-detached villas in grey cities. My experience of empire in post raj India was of a theatre of government based on a schooling system that equipped young men to manage the empire through self denial and a sense of responsibility, but limited practical education. The practical stuff was left to sons of the Scottish enlightenment who provided the professional class. A middle class empire in its dying days.

These three days have been a delight. It has been a pleasure to meet and talk with so many walkers and locals who service the walkers – B&B ladies, pub staff, shop assistants, waitresses and others. The walkers, including women walking alone or in pairs, have a sense of purpose and confidence. Some are families with children of all ages and/or their dogs. Hosting a great Olympics, holding the Ashes and beating the Wallabies have all helped, I’m sure.

Ennerdale water, with Kerry

The route starts at St Bees, an Edwardian seaside resort, now a dormitory village for Sellafield nuclear power station and host to a very old private school. The first part of the walk is along the cliff tops above the Irish Sea, in an extended semi circle, before the track heads inland along the stem of the question mark shape of the walk. Through small villages and boggy bottoms and over a small hill to enter the Lake District through a narrow gorge – Nannycatch Gate. Overnight (with the best potato chips ever) at Ennerdale Bridge. An early start on Day 2 for a long haul up Ennerdale Water to the head of the glaciated valley; a stiff climb up to the ridge and some freezing rain across the tops before dropping down past a slate mine into Borrowdale, a remote valley. Day 3 began with a steady climb up the head of the u-shaped valley, muddy and stony, across the boggy tops to take the high road past the Calf Crag , Gibson’s knott and the Helmcrag to drop steeply down to Grasmere twinkling among the trees. Day 1 & 2 were about 14½ miles (23km) and 10 miles on day 3. Days 2 & 3 were up and over about 600 metres.

Calf crag to Grasmere

Gordon’s lightweight boots didn’t cope with the rocks, so one of today’s (rest day) activities was to find a better pair – with success. So this afternoon we walked the coffin route from Grasmere (where the church is) to Rydal (where there wasn’t one) and then on to Ambleside to gawk at the crowds and find an ATM. We’re both pleased with how we have stood up to the first three days, classed as strenuous, and delighted to have had a rest day. Weather has been good for walking, with rain today- so can’t complain. Am beginning to appreciate Wainwright’s  genius – he designed the walk.

2013 big trip - UK, Iran and France

My parents are SKIing (Spending the Kids Inheritence), and good luck to them - they've earned it.

This time around their itinerary looks something like this:

13 Aug - MEL to Heathrow, followed by a few days in Earls Court (where else would a Strine stay?)
17 Aug - London to North England for a few weeks walking (St Bees to Robin Hoods Bay)
5 Sep - Back to London for a few days
9 Sep - LON to Tehran, for a few weeks sightseeing/travelling (I'm sticking my fingers in my ears and going "la la la" about them flying internally in Iran - the food-for-oil deal doesn't include spare parts for planes)
27 Sep - Back to London and onto Toulouse for a two weeks, including a week's walking around Conques
13 Oct - Few days in London before returning home

Dad's feeling a little technologically challenged, so he's asked me to update the blog for them.  For all posts relating to this trip, I'll include the label "2013Europe".

Last of the walking

Looking down from the Gods above the monastery

On the Sentiero degli Dei

The last of the walking has been superb! Praiano lies between Amalfi and Positano and has a tiny harbour - but a good restaurant. Positano and Amalfi are tourist traps and in each, the size of the meal decreases and its price increases the closer you approach the pebbly beach. However, the walking is AMAZING! 

Positano from below the Forestry

Walking up the zig-zags

Above Praiano and Positano, vertical limestone cliffs start at about 200 meters and rise to about 600 meters, with vertical gorges breaking the faces. Each of the gorges has a few houses at the bottom, but most of the houses lie further up the hills. Once you get to the top of the cliffs and break through to the northern side, the land declines more gently and there are small townships and villages just over the crest.

One of these is Bomerano, with a regular bus service up from the Naples side and enough haberdashery outlets to let me replace my lost cap with a dashing cotton golf cap. The temperatures have been in the mid to high 20's and with limited shade, some eye shading and forehead protection is welcome. If you come back on to the cliff face from Bomerano, about 600m above Praiano, then you can walk west, gradually down to Nocelle, about 400m above Positano, with stupendous cliffs above and below the old mule track, now renamed the Sentiero degli Dei or the Walk of the Gods. The old Americans we met on the trail had been bussed to Bomerano and were catching their shuttle from Nocelle and, in fact, that part of the walk was quite crowded.

We enjoyed the climb up to Bomerano from Praiano, across a section of the Gods and then down about 2000 steep steps back to the hotel. Next day was up to the same height past an abandoned monastery with stupendous views (see top picture) to pick up the trail and walk west across to Nocelle. Then a bus down to the hotel at Positano. Today we walked up to just below Nocelle and then traversed west between the cliffs on an under-used part of the walk to join some stairs that used to be the main land connection between Positano and the Naples side until roads were constructed. Then up to a forestry hut for lunch at about 800 m and again down zig-zags to just below Nocelle. Great views and good walking. We're sad to stop walking every day and will need to keep our fitness up! It's been great to tackle these ups and downs with confidence after our poor showing five weeks ago.

View from our terrace

However, the locals build their vine and olive terraces all over this landscape and although some of the more difficult spots have been abandoned,  the whole area is very productive. Great tomatoes and sweet zucchinis and aubergines. A regular diet of fish, olive oil and pasta, plus the exercise routine that we have experienced, has been given UNESCO recognition as the "Mediterranean Diet", guaranteed to make you live a long and healthy life until your joints begin to pack up.

Amalfi Coast

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Amalfi harbour

Fuore inlet

We've walked about 15km each day, but doing a vertical 600m either in single or multiple ups & downs. Yesterday we walked along the old footpaths that connected the towns along the coast, some of them mule tracks, Within the towns, the streets are perhaps a meter wide on average and pass under and over buildings. In Amalfi itself, the main route between the upper and lower town was along such an arcade until they covered and paved the stream to allow wheeled traffic access. So, like Himalayan villages, everything moved on the back of people or mules until the motorcar became common after the war. We encountered mules carrying building equipment up some of these streets, others were taking their owner and some metal panniers up for another building project. Often there is no car access at all.

All the churches have been Barouqued, so I haven't spent much time in them. However, there are many shrines in various spots across the hills. The coast has an old history of Muslim pirate raids and our hotel at Praiano is just above a Saracen tower, now an artist's studio. The harbours are tiny, but were an important part of the Amalfitani trading empire, and before that gave important assistance to the Romans during the second Punic war. Fishermen still row or motor out each day to their fishing grounds, despite the influx of glitterati seeking sun and restaurants in these small isolated villages. On Sunday, the Neapolitan motorcyclists were out on the Harleys or Ducatis terrorising the locals with bad road manners.

Everyone here greets you with a boun giorno as you walk past. In Spain, the Galicians (including our guides) greeted each other as brother and sister - a really friendly society. The Amalfi coast is similar, but the tourists are more standoffish. The tourists in Galicia were generally pilgrims, happy to share a story or a g'day. 

The walk today was from our hotel at about 50m up along village streets (foot traffic only) up and around ever higher terraces to some grottoes underneath high limestone cliffs. Then through a high cleft to a gentle town growing grapes and everything else at about 650m. Across the top of the valley and the cliffs on the first part of the Sentiero degli Die - the Footpath of the Gods - to a saddle , then about 2000 steep steps down. Wonderful walking.

Our knees are generally standing up to it all. A caffeine dose in the morning helps our energy and plenty of water helps with the 26 deg days. Calves and cardio vasculars are coping well. Until a kid of ten passes you on an uphill slope of steps and asks what the sticks are for!

Amalfi & Salerno

Amalfi cathedral

Salerno has put some intelligent work into promoting its role as the first western medical school. The records of multicultural professional medical Guild date from 1040 although their reputation goes back about a century before that. Salerno’s stability and increasing trade under the Longobards continued under the Normans after 1077 creating wealth and attracting the service professions. Salernitan doctors provided advice to wealthy families, probably assessed slaves for health (there was an active trade) and treated the returning crusaders for unhealed injuries. They organized the existing medical knowledge so it was cohesive and helped recruit a North African familiar with Arab medical texts. Constantine the African translated the best available medical encyclopedia about 1080. His texts, together with some translations from Greek by Alfanus, the Archbishop of Salerno, made up the first western curriculum in medicine. Trauma surgery and ophthalmology were also adopted from the Arabs. The Salernitan traditions of women’s medicine was written down by Trocta, a female clinician. The study of anatomy was compulsory but was on pigs because human dissections were banned. And while the Greek Dioscurides provided the initial source for medical herbs, in the late 13^th century, a medical family created the first medical herbarium for teaching students and for treatments. All this was beautifully illustrated using medieval illuminations and the reconstructed herbarium.

Terrace of infinity

Arabesques at Rafulo

The first day of walking around Amalfi has been absolutely perfect. We made an early start, gradually climbing up behind the town, which is jammed into a narrow valley mouth. It is difficult to understand how such a small place (70,000 in the 10^th & 11^th centuries) became a world trading power competing with Genoa, Pisa and Venice. The Amalfitani used galleys built with local timber and manned by locals but were also early adopters of the Arab lateen sail that allowed them to sail into the wind and improvers of the compass. In the 13^th century, they followed the Muslims at Seville in making paper from cloth and there are perhaps 20 water-powered paper mills up the valley – almost all abandoned. We climbed up though terraced olives and vines, past small villages to Revello. Revello’s carefully contrived 19^th century gardens were terraced above sheer drops so they give onto magnificent views up and down the coast. Our penalty for such perfection was to lose the 400 meters in altitude very quickly down knee-pounding steps. Thank heavens we’d got ourselves fit in Spain!

The second day was also perfection. We walked between sheer limestone cliffs from Scala to Pogerola and then down 750  much more gradual steps to Amalfi.

Normans in South Italy

Norman cathedral to schock and awe Trani

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The Norsemen had been settled in Normandy in the tenth century to stop them raiding and pillaging Paris. In the eleventh century, poor leadership and political unrest enabled William the bastard to win at Hastings in 1066 as every child knows. However, earlier in the century, a number of Normans returning from pilgrimage to Jerusalem were hired as mercenaries in southern Italy and made a name for themselves. Their success attracted others and by 1040 they were winning battles in their own right. Italy south of the Papal States had been governed by the Byzantines, mostly in the east and in Sicily, with Lombard principalities in the west of the mainland. Muslim raiders had captured Sicily and made life uncomfortable on the western mainland. In this context, the Normans worked together (mostly) and by 1080 had effectively captured and ruled all of southern Italy and most of Sicily.

Frederick II, chipped

The leaders of this transformation were all from the family of Hautevilles, many of them brothers. The star on the mainland was Robert (the fox) Guiscard, who reliably defeated larger armies sent against him by the (German) Holy Roman Emperor, the Pope and his various allies and the Byzantines. In Sicily, most of the work was done by his younger brother, whose son became Roger King of Sicily (which included the mainland) for the first part of the twelfth century. Lack of good leadership in his sons led to enemies looking to share in some of the wealth of the kingdom. His daughter Constance was taken out of her convent to be married to Henry Vi of Germany and at the age of 40 bore him a son, Frederick. Henry died and chaos reigned for a while until Frederick claimed his patrimony. Through his parents, Frederick was able to become both Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, posing a serious threat to the Pope.

Frederick's castle

Frederick, known as “the wonder of the world”, could speak seven languages, wrote a famous book on falconry from his own reading and observations, established a centralized bureaucracy and a university to provide it with bureaucrats and doctors. He has been credited with creating the first modern state. While the government of the kingdom passed first to the French and then to the Spanish and became progressively impoverished, the outlines remained intact until the resorgimento in 1860.

We’ve been looking at the massive Romanesque cathedrals built by the Normans to shock and awe their subjects and opponents. Where the Greeks had small churches and managed by bureaucracy, the Normans built fortress churches that soared into the sky with sheer walls and ruled by fear until they constructed a bureaucracy much later. Their churches were built using modular techniques for the basic components such as naves and columns and still make you gasp with their daring. A lot of columns and capitals from roman temples were recycled. Typically each church has a T-shaped floor plan with shallow apses, but BIG and TALL with opportunities for theatre and relics.

Pantocrator 12th C

Our last two days were around Salerno, where  Greco-Arabic medical knowledge was first translated for the West in the 11^thcentury. Those responsible were Alphanus of Salerno and Desiderius of Monte Cassino, together with Robert Guiscard. The political stability at Salerno in the preceding century had attracted wealthy merchants who could support learned doctors from Islam, Judaism, the Latin West and the Byzantine empire. The city became recognised for medical excellence to the extent that it's motto is still 'Civitas Hippocratico". They also built wonderful churches and used Byzantine artists and mosaicists to challenge Constantinople for dazzling effects.

We start walking the Amalfi cliffs tomorrow.