More on Getting Really Lost

Apparently my last post caught some attention because I was quickly accused of being insensitive and arrogant. Surely not someone who knows me.... :-)

I will say at the outset that the story that prompted my post was a tragedy, but I stick to my comments. In fact, I'll go further. There are many other examples where people have relied completely on technology and have suffered the consequences. Around where I live, some snowmobilers have died in avalanches because they behaved as though they were invincible with their powerful machines, avi beacons and avi lungs. Some young hockey players play a very physical game thinking their equipment will protect them, but concussions are on the rise. And people get misdirected and/or lost because they relied entirely on their GPS units.

GPS devices may be marketed as failsafe tools to keep you from getting lost, but experience shows otherwise. It's not insensitive to point this out in the wake of another tragedy and we need to learn some lesson from such events.

I've done a certain amount of traveling on icefields, in the woods and in other, crowded, foreign countries. I always have a map or road atlas of some kind. I almost never use a GPS, although I do have one and have used them on icefield traverses, but NEVER by themselves. This would be a VERY BIG MISTAKE. Besides, maps give you a "big picture" of where you are in relation to other places, something a GPS does not do. One does not need special skills to use a basic road map, although I will admit traveling with a topo map and using a compass takes some practice. It would be a big mistake to go into the woods or cross a featureless icefield and rely only on a GPS.

I will also say that I don't think I've ever been lost. By this I mean in a situation where I was not able to "find" myself and had to wait for someone to rescue me. I have been temporarily confused about exactly where I was and have hiked or driven off in the wrong direction for a short time, but these have been temporary setbacks and it wasn't a GPS that saved me. It was an awareness of where I was in the big picture of the terrain. Watching for terrain features, noting where the sun was, using a compass occasionally, using a map....there are numerous techniques for keeping yourself found.

Unfortunately, too many people think that technology like GPS units make old tools like maps redundant. They are wrong and sadly, some pay the price.

How to Get REALLY Lost

On our way home we heard the story of the couple who managed to get lost in the USA backcountry using their GPS. One report of the story appeared here. The Urban Dictionary was quoted as saying that GPS is used by people who have no idea where they are.... Exactly. The source of the problem in a nutshell. We rely on all this technology and have basically given up making the effort to know where we are. GPS can be a big help occasionally, but it isn't a substitute for using some old-fashioned kinds of equipment: a map, a compass and your head.

UK 2011 - The Final Days

With only 2 full days remaining in the UK Tour 2011, we are almost able to accept that there are really only a couple of things that we can realistically cram into that time.

So, on Sunday, we took the tube part-way to London and then a bus to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. These gardens are more than just patches of shrubs and bushes but have been important botanically in the collecting and growing of representative plant species from around the world. Scientists from Kew are also involved in conservation efforts for endangered plants and ecosystems in several areas of the world.

I remember hearing about Kew back when I was in Biology classes in the early 1970s, so it was nice to finally see the gardens in person.

It took us several hours to wander around exploring Rhododendron Dell, the Azeleas, a couple of large Victorian “glass houses” containing ferns, water lilies and more. It’s a great park-like place and the only down side were the large jets on landing approach to Heathrow passing overhead every minute.

Monday dawned sunny and bright so the main agenda item for the day was to find the James Caird. For those who aren’t up on your early Antarctic explorers, the James Caird was the small boat used by Ernest Shackleton and 5 other crew members to escape when their ship, the Endeavour, was crushed by ice. They sailed this boat 800 miles (1500 km) across the Antarctic Ocean to South Georgia Island where they then had to make a 36-hour trek over mountains and glaciated terrain to the whaling station of Stromness. Then, they had to take a ship back to rescue the rest of the crew (22 of them, I believe) who were nearing starvation on Elephant Island. Not one member of the crew was lost. It’s an amazing story and well worth reading if such things interest you.

Anyhow, the James Caird is now resting at Dulwich College, a private school that Shackleton attended back in the late 1880s. We made our convoluted way to the College (founded in the 1600s by a contemporary of Shakespeare, admits students aged 7 to 18, charges ₤500/term, 3 terms/year, where students wear white shirts, ties and suit jackets…), got our visitors’ passes and spent some time reading the various displays. Very interesting.

The remaining part of the day was spent on the tube, walking across London Bridge, past St James Cathedral, past where Dr Johnson’s house once was on Fleet Street, past the Royal Law Courts and back to our hotel near Heathrow.

Supper at a nearby pub (see comments in a coming post on British cuisine) and getting ready for our flight on Tuesday finished off the day. I have to say that London’s transit system is quite amazing and definitely the ONLY way to get around within the M25 ring road. London, it’s been nice. Very, very busy, but nice.

Heading South

Tuesday was mostly a driving day as we wandered around the backroads, various peninsulas and bays in western Scotland. Extricating ourselves from that part of Scotland wasn’t a quick or direct process. We stopped briefly in Stirling – there was a very large monument to some famous Scottish guy – it’s another history thing, I understand….

Once out of Stirling, it was mostly “dual carriageways” past and south of Edinburgh. We did a repeat night at a nice campsite near the Tweed River and Berwick, at least partly because we knew the place had a microwave so we could have some hot food for a change.

Some distance south of Berwick, we hiked to the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle, located on a small point of land along the coast. Further south was Alnwick Castle, used for some Hogwarts scenes in the first two episodes of Harry Potter. The town itself was another in a long series of quaint English villages, always worth a walk around, so we did.

For another three hours, we drove on busy dual carriageways further south past several medium-sized cities to arrive near Whitby, a small town on the East Coast, noted for it’s connection to Captain Cook, who was born nearby and whose ships were built in Whitby. Our camping for the night was in possibly the first “forest” we’ve been in since we left home. Camping in a pine forest – it was so Canadian!

What followed, in order, I think, was a 3-hour walk along part of the Cleveland Way between Whitby and Robin Hood Bay. Nice enough, but not as nice as other coastal walks we’ve done. Then some driving to get us close to York. Camping with some light showers overnight. In to York first thing in the morning and a couple of hours exploring York Minster – excellent guided tour. Then a 4 ½ hour drive on busy motorways to get us a few miles from Oxford with only 30 minutes sitting in traffic gridlock because of an accident somewhere. Free parking on the outskirts of Oxford with a walk into town center. Exploring Oxford: Museum of the History of Science, Museum of Natural History and various colleges of the University of Oxford. Drive to the Heathrow area, unpack the car at the hotel and figure out how to get the rental car back and then figure out how to get back to the hotel. Only took 2 hours….

Our time here is now definitely at the short end.

The Long Road Home

After nearly 6 weeks in the UK, by May 10 it was time to go home. Thoughts of gardening, splitting wood for next winter and home-cooked meals had started intruding into our holiday bliss. So, after a morning walk around a small neighbourhood near the hotel and across the M4, we packed up and made our way to Heathrow.

Having spent a couple of days figuring out some of the ins and outs of the local bus system, this part was dead easy. Rather than take the Hotel Hoppa bus at ₤4.50 each, we walked a block with our packs to catch the 140 transit bus and used our Oyster cards for the 10-minute ride to Heathrow's Central Bus Station for ₤1.20. We’d been taking this bus for 2 days because it was the easiest way to join the London Underground for our trips into the City.

There were no queues (er… line-ups) at the airport, so check-in was quick, although the Air Canada counter person didn’t know what to do with the Air Canada plastic bag that we’d saved from Edmonton to put our packs in, so I had to do that for her. Likewise, security wasn’t crowded, so by noon, we were airside with nothing to do but wait. Well, eat, shop and wait.

Pushback from the terminal was right on time, there was a short delay waiting for our turn on the runway, and we were off. Unfortunately, although the day was nice enough, there were clouds, and we couldn’t see much of the English countryside. At one point, we were pretty sure we could see the area north of Liverpool and maybe the Isle of Man, but Scotland was buried under cloud. And so it remained for a few hours until western Greenland, when views appeared.

Western Greenland, definitely a land of snow, ice, and glaciers running down to the sea. Not long after, we passed over Baffin Island. Even from 37000 ft we could see the terrain features. Having left at 3:15 pm, we basically chased the sun west so it was 5 pm when we landed in Edmonton where the weather was sunny and warm. All the snow we had seen 6 weeks earlier was gone. Leaves weren’t out, but, hey, it was only May 10 in Alberta….

The drive home the next day was uneventful, if long. The summer road maintenance season was in full swing and we were stopped a few times. We took the route through Kootenay National Park to Cranbrook, Creston and Kootenay Pass, avoiding the ferry because we’d heard of 2-hour waits. The big bonus? Clear skies the whole trip. Not “just” sunshine, but clear air. No haze. Not a cloud in the sky. Warm. What a welcome home. As usual, once we passed Balfour and headed up the Lake, roads were quiet and the scenery went from merely mountain “nice” to magnificent. It was good to be back.

More on the Climate Change Wars

De Smog Blog posted an interesting article on American views on climate change. It illustrates, once again, why we are in trouble and unlikely to find any compromise on this issue - translation: nothing will really get done on this matter....

Scotland - The North

We left Edinburgh on another blue sky day. The drive north was uneventful and quite scenic. The A9 follows the coast pretty well and there were nice views out along the shore. Inland were hills covered in heathers, all brown at this season, but soon to be blooming.

It was quite surprising, given our previous experience further south, how fast we were able to get up nearly to the top of Scotland. In about 3 hours, we drove from Edinburgh to Inverness and in another 2 ½ hours we were in Wick, where we found a nice campground for the night. Arriving in Wick initiated a brief discussion about how to pronounce the name of this small town. One option would be “Wick” and the other could be “ick”. We think that dropping the “w” is a propensity of the English (note: Keswick is pronounced Kessick”….) but we’re not sure what they do in “Auld Reekie”. We’re not sure if we should ask someone or not ;-)

The campgorund was a 10-minute walk from town along the Wick River. It’s all very pretty.

In the morning, we had a relatively short drive to the northern-most part of mainland Scotland – John O’Groats. It was early in the morning and we were the first ones there walking around, enjoying the views of the sea stacks along the coast.

We decided to see if a quick trip to the Orkneys would work, so we hustled the few miles over to Thurso and it’s port of Scrabster and found we had time to get a campsite, set up camp and get somewhat organized. The ferry ride was about 90 minutes, from Scrabster to Stromness, passing the Old Man of Hoy. We had about 90 minutes to walk around Stromness before boarding the ferry for the return trip. Our campsite had a great view out over the bay and off to the islands only a few miles away. I should mention that we also had time in the morning to see some of the Royal Wedding festivities. The woman who ran the campground was originally from Amarillo, TX, so we all had a good chuckle at the pomp and ceremony of the wedding.

The next day, we drove along the north part of Scotland towards the west. Most scenic with the highland heather fields coming down almost to the sea. Some of the nicest beaches we’ve seen on this trip were along this coast as well.

The next day’s travel was more inland, along lochs and streams. By Sunday night, we had passed by Ben Nevis (a bad case of shin splints negated any chance of hiking to the top of that one…) and on to a beautiful campground on the shores of Loch Levin, just outside of Glencoe. It’s almost sounding repetitious to mention it, but the weather, once again, was sunny, clear and warm.

We’re on the countdown to leaving so we’re trying to fit in the last few essentials. The next day’s travels will likely be down to the Mull of Kintyre. Tuesday we head back south into England and the last few days of our visit.