Once and future holidays
Feb. 22nd, 2010 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI've talked before about all the unfinished projects in this LJ, and my mental image of them as a series of tabs: so that instead of "shall I move on with writing about our trip to Iceland?" I think "shall I open the Iceland tab?" Now that our holiday plans for 2010 are becoming increasingly definite, it seems a good time to take stock of the open tabs.
Setting aside the open-ended series of book posts, there are three trip reports still in process: our explorarion of the river Meuse in 2008, our trip to Iceland in 2009 and our short break in Brittany in 2009.
We've bought our tickets (train and ferry) to go to Fair Isle in May, and stop off in Orkney on the way back - I'm very excited about this. We still need to decide how to travel to Italy, both in August (to celebrate D's birthday in Vicenza) and at Christmas (to celebrate J's birthday just south of Como - she has returned from a half-term break in Italy with accommodation booked, so that project begins to feel more real).
And, on the theme of storing up holiday ideas for the future, Saturday's Guardian Magazine carried an advertisement - this can't be right, wanting something because I've seen an advertisement for it! - for walking holidays in the Swiss canton of the Valais, following the 'bisses' irrigation channels which carry the water down from the mountain glaciers to the cultivated valleys. They sound like the levadas of Madeira, and it leaves a bitter twist to be thinking about this at precisely the time when Madeira has been suffering so badly from being hit by rainfall that the levadas couldn't cope with.
This was the first I'd heard of the bisses, and it sounds worth further research. Irritatingly, the web addresses given in the ad lead to the general web site, but I persisted: here's the page with the brochures, including a pdf of one about walking the bisses, complete with sketch maps. A chalet available to rent suggests some walking routes (and a pdf illustrating them on a map). Or there's the Chemin du Vignoble, a walking route through the vineyards of the Valais.
Setting aside the open-ended series of book posts, there are three trip reports still in process: our explorarion of the river Meuse in 2008, our trip to Iceland in 2009 and our short break in Brittany in 2009.
We've bought our tickets (train and ferry) to go to Fair Isle in May, and stop off in Orkney on the way back - I'm very excited about this. We still need to decide how to travel to Italy, both in August (to celebrate D's birthday in Vicenza) and at Christmas (to celebrate J's birthday just south of Como - she has returned from a half-term break in Italy with accommodation booked, so that project begins to feel more real).
And, on the theme of storing up holiday ideas for the future, Saturday's Guardian Magazine carried an advertisement - this can't be right, wanting something because I've seen an advertisement for it! - for walking holidays in the Swiss canton of the Valais, following the 'bisses' irrigation channels which carry the water down from the mountain glaciers to the cultivated valleys. They sound like the levadas of Madeira, and it leaves a bitter twist to be thinking about this at precisely the time when Madeira has been suffering so badly from being hit by rainfall that the levadas couldn't cope with.
This was the first I'd heard of the bisses, and it sounds worth further research. Irritatingly, the web addresses given in the ad lead to the general web site, but I persisted: here's the page with the brochures, including a pdf of one about walking the bisses, complete with sketch maps. A chalet available to rent suggests some walking routes (and a pdf illustrating them on a map). Or there's the Chemin du Vignoble, a walking route through the vineyards of the Valais.
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Date: 2010-02-24 08:02 pm (UTC)Your travel plans make me all envious, btw. I look forward to reading about what you see. ;-)
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Date: 2010-02-25 09:14 pm (UTC)I don't have posts half-written from way back - I have notes from past holidays and, well, as it happens, I have half a book post I didn't manage to finish last night. Guess I'd better get back to that, then...