Author: Alan Cole

Island Paradise 3

The Maldives – Bandos Resort Island

After a long flight and arrival in the Maldives during a torrential storm, we were soon on board a speedboat for a 15 minute transfer to the island resort of Bandos. There are so many island resorts to choose from that it can be over-whelming. They all offer similar things but can range in price...

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Off to the Maldives

It’s not every day that we have a holiday such as this, but it’s our 20th wedding anniversary this year so we thought it was time to save up and treat ourselves to the holiday of a lifetime in the Maldives. Most people that go to the Maldives, at least from the UK, tend to...

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Chilly Cadair Idris

As mentioned previously, I’m hoping to backpack along the West Highland Way later in the year. Honing my gear choices is one thing, but I can’t ignore the physical preparation as well. The best, and most fun. training for such an endeavour is of course hiking in the hills with a full backpack! With a...

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Testing my Tent

As noted in my previous post, I recently purchased a new lightweight tent and constructed a homemade footprint for it. Since buying the tent I’d been dying to try it out, but time and mainly the weather had prevented me from doing so. I’m planning to do some backpacking later in the year – hopefully...

Vestibule 2

Custom Made Tent Footprint

A tent footprint is just a fancy name for what we always (“back in the day”) called a groundsheet. In essence, it’s a piece of material that goes under your tent and serves two main purposes: Modern tents don’t need this as the base of the tent itself will be waterproof and should be fairly...

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Chilly

It’s been kind of chilly here lately, but that’s nothing in comparison to where Morgan is. The forecast for tomorrow is -36ºC with a maximum during the day of -31ºC. Yep, I’d consider that as cold! Morgan seems quite excited by the prospect really! He still hasn’t got a job, but he has been purchasing...

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Sun, Sea and Sand

There’s nothing to see here, just a normal day at Ynyslas. Everything you’d expect from the beach really, sun, sea and sand. It was just turned up a notch thanks to the fact that I was sharing it with Ivor, our local Katabatic wind…. he’s a rascal!!!

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Sunrise at Last

Finally, after what feels like weeks on end of very wet, dark and dreary days, there’s a glimmer of hope. The sun has finally made a re-appearance with the first sunrise we’ve seen for ages. After weeks of numerous shades of grey it’s nice to see some colour again.

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A Jaunt in the Hills

The weather may have been terrible lately, but the New Year dawned slightly better. I wouldn’t go as far as saying it was nice, but it wasn’t raining and there was a stiff breeze rather than a raging gale. A small window for me to get out in the hills. It looked as though it...

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A Solar Year

The weather has been terrible lately, so much rain and wind every day hat it has barely even gotten light. It’s a good job we have the Christmas decorations up to brighten things up a little. The solar panels haven’t been producing much. The daily yield graph for the past 20 days from my solar...