A Return to Reality? The End of the Communication Blues

The 'Gothic' phone used to try and contact BT - see post for August 27

Driving back from yet another day spent in cafes using their 'free' wi-fi, with intermissions to contact BT from payphones to try and find out what was happening to my lightning blown phone line ("we apologise for not meeting the deadline"), I spotted a BT Open Reach van on the verge and a man standing with a bundle of cables in his hand. I swerved into a parking area and ran over. A real human being! Perhaps he could tell me when my connection might be restored. I gave my number. Working on it now, came the surprising reply. There'd been two faults on the 5 mile cable from the exchange and there was still one in my house. I'll be up there in ten or fifteen minutes, he said. And he was, to replace a blown connection box. Luckily the internet cable was detached so the router and PC were fine. Only a portable phone had been damaged. The engineer told me he was from Stornoway and had been over here for two weeks fixing faults - there were 60 or 70 in total in the area he said. That day the three affecting my phone were his work.

So now I'm back online and catching up with emails and other admin. My thanks go to all the BT engineers who are working seven day weeks mostly outdoors in often wet weather. Some people are still without phones sixteen days after the big storm. I just wish BT was better at actually communicating with customers as to what is happening. Always saying the fault will be fixed in three days time, isn't helpful, especially when two deadlines go past and it ends up as eight days.

Now that my PC and the internet have been reunited I'll replace the phone photos of the last few posts with better camera ones and add some more so if you're interested in my pictures keep an eye out for these.

Latest TGO: pyramid tents, stupid heavy/light backpacking, Pacific Northwest Trail photo-essay, Friedrichshafen show report

Belatedly, due to connection problems (see last post), here's a look at the September issue of TGO (well, it is still August). My main feature is a photo-essay on my Pacific Northwest Trail walk with a special offer on my book on the trip, Grizzly Bears and Razor Clams.In my backpacking column I write about the weight of gear and going stupidly light and stupidly heavy while in gear I review a selection of pyramid-style tents.And in the Hill Skills section I answer questions on looking after your feet in hot weather (not a problem often this summer in Britain!) and the advantages of 'technical' legwear. There's also a feature written with Daniel Neilson on the new gear we thought the most interesting at the Friedrichshafen OutDoor Show last month.

Elsewhere in this issue I'm delighted to see Jim Perrin praising Edward Abbey's wonderful Desert Solitaire, one of my favourite outdoor books.Vivienne Crow follows the River Esk in Cumbria from its mouth at Ravenglass to its source high in the hills at Esk Hause, an interesting route.Daniel Neilsen goes sea kayaking round the Llyn Peninsula in North Wales and climbs its two little hills, another interesting approach. The most exciting story comes from Hanna Lindon, who describes an unintended night out on the Cuillin Ridge on Skye. Luckily the weather was fine but even so it sounds quite an ordeal. This year is the 400th anniversary of the notorious Pendle witch trials and there have been a number of events marking this. For TGO Carey Davies describes a walk over Pendle Hill and considers this grim period of history. Other interesting features include Roger Smith asking if Scotland's national parks are doing their job well (whilst by no means perfect I think they are doing better than Roger does), a useful key for identifying birds of prey (I suspect an awful lot of buzzards are mistaken for eagles), John Manning's review of 15 mid-range waterproof jackets and Stuart Brooks, chief executive of the John Muir Trust, appealing for walkers to get involved in protecting wild land.

No Phone, No Internet

Work station in The Grant Arms

Back from Edinburgh full of ideas and photos for blog posts, magazine articles and more I reached home to discover the phone wasn't working. A friend turned up soon afterwards. Big thunderstorm a week ago, he said. Lines melted, fused, destroyed all over the area. We were almost cut-off. In our fairly remote rural home the mobile signal is very weak - too weak for the Internet, except for occasional emails. The phone connection is very poor too, with calls constantly breaking up. Texts do work okay so that's been our main form of communication with the outside world for the last week. BT - our telecoms company - said the line would be operating again last Friday. The day came and went. No phone. BT's auto response was to apologise for missing the deadline but not giving us another one. I cycled out to the nearest call box, a couple of miles away. Brushing aside the cobwebs I ventured inside. It looked like something out of a Hammer horror film. A lonely call box set in woods far from the nearest house. I half expected to hear wolves howling and hear the echoing sound of horses hooves as a sinister black carriage pulled up. Cobwebs, dead flies, leaves and rust decorated the interior. No one had used it for a long time. Detaching the phone from its nest of cobwebs I was surprised to discover it still worked. All I got from BT was more apologies though. I noticed they had bothered to decorate the outside with a large poster advertising their sponsorship of the Olympics and the superfast broadband they supply (when it does work mine reaches a maximum of 1.1mb - average slow broadband would be nice).

Two days later, having patiently waited while BT managed to find a human being for me to talk to, and trying not to be irritated by the constant advice to go onto the BT website for information, I was finally told that the line should be working again 'in two or three days. We'll see. In the meantime TGO magazine final deadlines were approaching at great rapidity. How to send them my work, which was on a hardly portable PC. Transfer it to my netbook and find a wi-fi cafe to send it from. How do I do the transfer?? By wi-fi. Ah, but I haven't now got wi-fi. This was a dilemma my partner and I keep coming across, showing just how much we take internet communications for granted. I'll watch it on iPlayer, I'll look it up on Wikipedia, I'll get an online weather forecast. oh, I can't. Suddenly the radio and TV and DVD player take on greater significance. But these I realised are one-way only. You can't communicate directly with them, merely consume what they produce.

For my work dilemma I fished out an old memory stick and used that to transfer material from the PC to the netbook. Then I went into Grantown-on-Spey, five miles away, and settled into a corner of the very comfortable Grant Arms with coffee, egg roll and wi-fi, sent off my work and felt a great sense of relief. This will now be my workroom until the phone works again.

Edinburgh in Festival Mode

Photos taken while wandering Edinburgh during the Festivals, all with the Sony NEX 7 camera and most with the Sigma 30mm lens, which is ideal for street photography.

Essential refreshment

Menus & Rain

Venues are Everywhere

Grecian Lighting

New Usage

Johnny Blues

Poster Man

Optimim on the Royal Mile

A Meeting of Minds

Empty Space, Crowded Space

In the Grassmarket

Artwork

Famous Son

Conversations

A Walk in the Pentland Hills

 

After a week in Edinburgh, roaming the streets from show to show, I was beginning to feel the need for fresh air, open space and the sounds and silence of nature rather than the undulating metal thrum of traffic, the closed-in hard lines of buildings and the agitated, constantly moving crowds. Happily, as well as the miniature mountain of Arthur's Seat inside the city Edinburgh has its own range of hills just outside, the Pentlands.

A half-hour bus journey at the ridiculously low price of £1.50 return took me out of the city to the foot of the hills. I then spent a day wandering through the glens and over the summits. The day was cloudy with showers and there were few people around - just a half dozen walkers on the tops and maybe twice as many anglers on the reservoirs that fill some of the glens. The hills are grassy but steep with distinctive summits and occasional tiny crags and patches of scree. There are steep-sided little valleys, rushing burns and attractive waterfalls. Overall the Pentland Hills are much more akin to the Southern Uplands to the south than the more rugged Highlands to the north.

The Pentlands aren't high, reaching just 579 metres on Skald Law and 576 metres on Carnethy Hill, the two highest summits, but they still have a wild feel and there is no doubt that you are up above the world as you look out over the flat patchwork fields of the lowlands to Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth. I walked the ridge from West Kip over Skald Law and Carnethy Hill to Turnhouse Hill and a fine rolling ridge it is too, with extensive views and interesting twists and turns. 

Refreshed, I caught the bus back into the urban bustle, ready for more shows and city streets. Having such hills on its borders makes Edinburgh a good city for outdoor lovers. Knowing you can be in the  Pentlands less than an hour after leaving the city centre is wonderful

Edinburgh Festivals: Music

The cast of This Land giving an encore on the steps of the venue.

At my almost annual urban interlude at the Edinburgh Festivals ('almost' because other activities, such as the Pacific Northwest Trail, do sometimes intrude) I've been to several musical shows, my attendance at one of which surprised even me. All of them are worth seeing though only one is still on in Edinburgh. My review starts with this.

This Land: The Story of Woody Guthrie

Described as a musical rollercoaster this is an exuberant, enjoyable and inspirational celebration of the life of Woody Guthrie, undoubtedly one of the most significant figures in American popular music of the last century, from Interplay of Leeds. The versatile cast play a variety of characters and swap instruments regularly. All seven male cast play Woody at different stages of his life with the lone woman member playing everyone from his mother to both his wives to a BBC presenter. Using a basic but effective set the cast conjure up freight trains, hobo life, houses and hospitals. The music is great of course and much of it familiar -  I knew most of the songs despite not owning any Woody Guthrie music (a defect I have now remedied). The singing and playing are both excellent and really capture the feeling of a time when folk music really was popular music of the masses. Whilst mostly energetic and upbeat there are poignant moments - deaths, divorce, illness - but Guthrie is always shown as being strong and positive right up to the time when near his death after years in hospital he is shown handing on the spirit of his music, not this time to the next stage in his own life but to a successor - Bob Dylan.


The Makropulos Case

I am not an opera lover. In fact it's fair to say that I've spent most of my life with a strong dislike of opera. So  my ever attending a full opera seemed unlikely. However a friend in Opera North was playing violin in a production of Janacek's The Makropolos Case at the Edinburgh International Festival so I surprised my partner, who does like opera, by saying I would go along, even though an opera about a legal case didn't  sound too promising. What I found was that actually going to an opera both confirmed and confounded my prejudices. The music was dramatic and thrilling with great dynamics. It surged and rolled and faded and really powered the production along. The singing was, well, okay. I didn't dislike it but it's not a style of singing I warm to - it sounds rather emotionless to my ear. The acting and melodrama conveyed the feelings well however. The sets were surprisingly interesting, given they consist of a lawyers office and a hotel. The story, which I didn't know, was strong enough to hold my interest. I appreciated having the words displayed as I couldn't always follow the singing and anyway sometimes I concentrated more on the music and let the words run as background. The audience and my companions were all enthusiastic so for those who like and understand opera it's obviously good. I guess I was pleasantly surprised but not so much that I'll be dashing off to more opera anytime soon.

Richard Thompson

If there was one performance I'd have been very surprised and disappointed if I hadn't found enthralling it was this solo show by one of Britain's greatest songwriters and guitarists of the last forty plus years. Somehow I'd managed not to see Richard Thompson since the early 1970s, on his farewell tour with Fairport Convention, so I was very pleased to finally manage to attend a concert and even more pleased that it was even better than I expected. Over the years Thompson's voice has grown in depth, range and emotional intensity and he is now a very good singer indeed, which was shown especially on the slower, sadder songs. As to his guitar playing, well, it's always been good but on this occasion it was really stunning, especially when he let rip on the uptempo numbers. At times I could swear I could hear bass, rhythm and lead at the same time, all from one acoustic guitar. The songs were a mix of old favourites from his now vast back catalogue and four good-sounding new ones from an album coming out next year. It was a good range of songs too - everything from the pathos of Beeswing through the rock'n roll of Valerie to the humour of Don't Sit On My Jimmy Shands. A brilliant hour and half's music.

Edinburgh Fringe on Arthur's Seat/ Images of Arthur's Seat

One of the great joys of Edinburgh is the miniature mountain of Arthur's Seat. Anytime the traffic, crowds, buildings and urban intensity become too much you can wander up this rocky volcanic remnant and feel a touch of the wild. Usually you can escape the festivals too. But not this August as every day during the Festival Fringe, whatever the weather, comedian Barry Ferns is up there with his show This Arthur's Seat Belongs To Lionel Ritchie. On a sunny day it's a pleasant if surreal way to spend twenty minutes. In a storm it could be quite bizarre. To enter the 'venue' the audience passes through a wooden door frame then Ferns entertains with gentle humour, audience banter and some information on just where we are - sitting on top of a 350 million year old volcano. Then it's back through the door and the show is over.

There's no dashing off to the nearest bar or cafe though. There isn't one. Instead you have the crags, flowers, grass and sky of Arthur's Seat. Any outdoors lover who finds themselves in Edinburgh should go up there. I spent a few hours wandering round this surprisingly complex little hill reveling in the unusual feeling of being in wild nature yet with a city spread out before me.