BBC Radio Scotland Out of Doors Compass & Navigation Chat

Following yesterday's rather wild ski tour (see last post) I returned to Coire Cas to be interviewed for BBC Radio Scotland's Out of Doors programme about compass declination and navigation in snowy conditions. This should be broadcast on this weekend's programme - 6.30 a.m. Saturday, 11.05 a.m. Sunday.

Compared with yesterday the weather was much windier, snowier and wilder. The ski resort was closed due to the weather and the snow and wind blasted car park almost empty. We wandered a short distance and found a shallow defile partly out of the wind for the recording. I'll be interested to hear what the weather sounds like!

En route to Coire Cas I had a punctured tyre for the first time in many years. After managing to shuffle into a car park I was pleased to discover there was a jack and a wheel wrench in the boot along with a spare wheel. I hadn't seen any of these for so long I wasn't sure they were there! It took a bit of effort to force the rusty jack to turn and I had to kick the wrench to get the wheel nuts to turn but I did eventually manage to get the old wheel off and the new one on. The car park was in woodland and whilst I wrestled with the wheel two other cars came in with walkers aboard. In both cases the occupants came over and offered help. I didn't need it but it was really good to be asked.

Finally moving again I arrived in Coire Cas forty minutes late. Presenter Euan McIlwraith was still there. My thanks to him for waiting.

The interview over it was off to my local garage to get a new tyre. Two new tyres it turned out when the others were checked. And a sticking brake pad fixed. At a loose end whilst all this was going on I wandered down to the River Spey where there was some wonderful storm light. A short walk and some satisfying photography later I actually felt the burst tyre had been a cloud with a silver lining - and I had pictures of the latter. I'll post some of the photos tomorrow.

BBC Radio Scotland tomorrow - interview about the Cairngorms in Winter film.

A few days ago I was interviewed for the BBC's 'Out of Doors' programme about the Cairngorms in Winter film. The interview will be broadcast this weekend - the show is on from 06.30 a.m. on Saturday and 11.05 a.m. on Sunday. Then it'll be available on 'Listennow' for a week. The interview was around 15 minutes long. How much will be broadcast I don't know!

Out of Doors Interview Online

The interview about Walking the Scottish Watershed that I did for BBC Radio Scotland's Out of Doors programme is now online. It's available for the next six days. I haven't listened to it myself so I can't tell you where in the broadcast it appears!

Next week I'll be on the programme again, talking about the Cairngorms National Park along with others on its 10th anniversary.

Interview on BBC Radio Scotland Out of Doors about Walking the Scottish Watershed

A few weeks ago I spent a few hours wandering in Glenmore Forest with Mark Stephen on BBC Radio Scotland's Out of Doors programme. We recorded a number of items including one about my forthcoming Scottish Watershed walk. I've just heard that this will be broadcast during tomorrow's programme (March 16), which starts at 6.30 a.m.

When the programme's available on Listen Again I'll post a link.

Interviews for BBC Radio Scotland Out of Doors

In Okanagon country on the Pacific Northwest Trail

Today I was interviewed by Mark Stephen for the Out of Doors BBC Radio Scotland programme about my A Year In The Life Of The Cairngorms book and about my Pacific Northwest Trail walk. The first interview should be broadcast this weekend - the programme goes out at 6.30 am on Saturday, repeated at 11.05 am on Sunday - and the next a week later. The programe will also be available on iPlayer.

As Mark was coming from Aberdeen and I was coming from Grantown-on-Spey we met in Keith, where we had an excellent lunch (brocolli and stilton soup) in the wonderfully named Boogie Woogie Cafe before finding a quite spot for the interviews. Getting to Keith was quite interesting given the snow which, despite it being December when snow in Scotland is hardly unexpected, has caused some problems on the roads. I had five miles of minor roads before reaching the A95 main road. None of those minor roads had been cleared of snow and every bend (and there were plenty) was quite slippery even though I have snow tyres fitted. Not once did I go above 15mph or get out of second gear. The A95 had been ploughed and gritted but there were still slippery snow patches on some of the sheltered stretches deep in shady hollows. I was more concerned though by some of the other drivers, especially those who decided that because of snow on the edges of the road they should drive down the middle, expecting anything coming towards them to get out of the way. I crept along the verge a few times while the other vehicle sailed past taking up most of the road. But the journey there and back was completed safely, even if it did take much longer than expected. More snow is forecast, perhaps up to 10cms, so I'm glad I don't have to drive anywhere tomorrow. Maybe it'll be time for skis or snowshoes instead.

Interviews now online

Self Powered Interviews Chris Townsend - Part 1 by Selfpowered on Mixcloud

Above is the link for the interviews I did with David Lintern that have been broadcast over the last three weeks.

Next Tuesday (February 22) David interviews outdoor bloggers Andy Howell and Alan Sloman, which should be very interesting.

Radio Interview

Last month I was interviewed for radio by David Lintern, outdoor blogger and lover of wild places, who was up in the Cairngorms for a Glenmore Lodge winter skills course and to explore the area, which was new to him (how wonderful it must be to discover the Cairngorms for the first time!). We wandered through the forest past An Lochan Uaine to Ryvoan Bothy and back and then sat in the Lodge dining room looking out at the mountains and talked about the outdoors, long distance walks, writing, conservation (Dumnaglass and the English forest sell-off) and much more. I also chose some favourite music and read a passage from one of my favourite books - Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire (the picture shows my well-read copy, which I bought in Copper Mountain in Colorado during my Continental Divide Trail through-hike in 1985. I took it on the igloo trip described in the last post and in the chapter entitled Down the River read "wilderness is not a luxury, but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilisation which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilisation itself". I don't think Cameron, Salmond and our other urban industrial politicians could even understand that).

David has put all this together to make a series of hour long radio shows the first one of which goes out at 5.30 today (February 1st) and the following ones at the same time every Tuesday for the rest of the month on Resonance FM, which is at 104.4FM in London and for those outside the city also on the Resonance site itself here, under the name Self-Powered, which is also the name of David's blog, which is well worth reading and can be found here.

Birks of Aberfeldy on BBC Radio Scotland Out of Doors

Today I was interviewed by Euan McIlwraith about the threat to the Birks of Aberfeldy (see blog posts for November 12 and 22) for the BBC Radio Scotland Out of Doors programme. The piece should appear in this weekend’s edition. The programme is broadcast at 6.30am on Saturday and 11.05am on Sunday. It’s then available on BBC iPlayer for the next week.

The latest news on the affair is that the councillor’s meeting due to be held today to make a decision has been postponed until sometime in the new year. The Aberfeldy Community Council had a local ballot three weeks ago and received over 200 responses of which 70% were opposed to the scheme. And at a meeting of the Community Council early this month there was a 54-4 vote against the scheme. Normally only 10-15 people attend these meetings. Clearly local opposition to the scheme is strong and becoming vocal.

Photo info: The Moness Burn in the Birks of Aberfeldy after heavy rain. Canon EOS 450D, Tamron 11-18@ 18mm, 1/50@ f5.6, ISO 400, raw file converted to JPEG and cropped in Lightroom 2.5