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North Africa: 3. Libya
At Tunis airport it was obvious we were the only non-Arabs on the flight to Tripoli. As we boarded, people were asking if we were journalists; of course we weren't, but we stuck to the job description on our visa forms of 'engineers'. Once landed in Tripoli airport we joined …
Read moreNorth Africa: 2. Tunisia
Tunisia was an unexpected destination after our time in Egypt, but our travel options had been limited by this point after the Libyan consul in Alexandria refused us entry visas. We submitted another visa application before leaving Cairo, hoping that we could pick up entry stamps at Tripoli airport three …
Read moreNorth Africa: 1. Egypt
Deciding that you want to go travelling somewhere is the easy part. Organising and making the dream happen is the much harder next step. To make an east-west traverse across North Africa was the idea of my friend Oli, as a sort of procrastination for returning to the UK from …
Read moreMary Mary reopened
With bad weather curtailing the January trip, last weekend was the first REU camp of 2013. Seven of the Fat Belly Boys made it in, including a first-time visit for Henry D. The lack of good air at the main Starbar dig left us splitting digging efforts across several projects: …
Read moreThe Welsh Ice Cap Interaction
The following Google Earth animation is an 'optimal' numerical reconstruction of the Late Devensian Welsh Ice Cap, derived in the publication 'The last Welsh Ice Cap: Part 1'. Timeslices of the ice-surface velocity begin at 27.8 ka BP and refresh every 200 years. To view properly: Make sure the time …
Read moreFire and Ice in Kamchatka
The guys over at letsbewild.com have made one the photos from our expedition to the Kamchatka Peninsula as their 'travel photo of the day'! Fantastic news, and well worth checking out the rest of their website for bucketfuls of inspiration to get out there and explore, or even to submit …
Read moreRhobell Fawr & Dduallt
Rhobell Fawr is one of the many hills people drive past on their way to Snowdonia without realising that there are in fact some pretty stunning hikes to be done in Mid Wales as well. The advantage of course is that because people flock to Snowdon or Tryfan, walks on …
Read moreBirds on the Dyfi
Acute toothache meant plans for spending the weekend underground in Daren Cilau had to be shelved. It did however leave Hollie and I free to visit the wildlife reserves next to the Dyfi estuary on Sunday. We first dropped in to the Dyfi Osprey Project to see how the new …
Read moreMendip misery
A trip down the Technical Masterpiece in Eastwater Cavern is probably some of the gnarliest caving you can do on Mendip, and certainly not a place you would hope to get rescued from. It's less than 300 metres long, however the tight passage is a real test of caving technique …
Read moreWhat are the Russians hiding?
There are not many places that Google Earth don't allow the public to view, but in a remote section of Russia's Far East one small section of mountains in Chukotka has been intentionally blurred. On Yahoo Maps the scene is similarly hidden from sight, this time with a more blatant …
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