Galicia Coast

Galicia, a mountainous region of Spain with a rugged coastline combining high cliffs (some of the highest in Europe) with beautiful sand beaches.

Great surfing and write up recommended here:

Away from the few populated areas you will find stretches of beach all to yourself, even in summer. Most breaks are beach/point breaks with a few reefs located in the N of Galicia and a good spot, Patos (close to Playa America) in the SW. Exploration will pay off whatever time of year. Climate can be frustrating in Winter especially with high winds and rainfall.

Earn the “Great Outdoors” badge. If this were karate, I’d be a black belt.

Ethiopian Marathon Training

Okay fanatical puritans, it’s time to read about the world’s leading runners, many of them the eminent top of the class from Ethiopia and Kenya.

My favourite piece of advice from Gudisa is ‘When you run the race, just remember that you will not die. So you have to run really very hard!’ Mersha is getting more and more obsessed with me recovering between training.

He wants me to stop working for the last two weeks of my trip and to spend all of my time between training sessions asleep. He keeps repeating the mantra ‘no recovery, no improvement.’ He’s right, of course, but there are limits to how much rest you can deal with.

High altitude training: What could be more enjoyable than sapping the living daylights out of you day after day?

You really can’t run anywhere from his house without encountering lung sapping, imperceptibly steep hills, so most of the running we did was fairly slow. We managed to cover a fair few miles though, fuelled by the near constant eating that comes with Easter celebrations here.

HT @mikerunsawayfromhome

Taj West End

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Impeccable Taj West in Bangalore. Really splendid former colonial private residence owned by a British couple 125 years ago.

Nestled in the midst of 20 acres of magnificent gardens The Taj West End is one of the finest hotels in Bangalore. The Taj West End has welcomed guests for over a century and is more a legend than a hotel.

View the collection

Dolomites

Origin of the name:

The name “Dolomites” is derived from the famous French mineralogist Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu who was the first to describe the rock, dolomite, a type of carbonate rock which is responsible for the characteristic shapes and colour of these mountains; previously they were called the “pale mountains,” and it was only in the early 19th century that the name was Gallicized.

Petra, Jordan

Amazing view of the Jordanian ancient city of Petra, Jordan with fresh snow

Amazing view of the Jordanian ancient city of Petra, Jordan with fresh snow.

UNESCO has described it as “one of the most precious cultural properties of man’s cultural heritage“. Petra was chosen by the BBC as one of “the 40 places you have to add to your all time must-see bucket list”

In October, 1917, T.E Lawrence, as part of a general effort to divert Turkish military resources away from the British invasion of North Africa, led a small force of Syrians and Arabians in defending Petra against a much larger combined force of Turks and Germans.

Lake District

In dramatic fashion the light shines down on Derwentwater, Cumbria

Maps of the Lake District are dotted with terms bestowed by the area’s tenth century A.D. Norse settlers. Thus the district’s famed lakes are often called “tarns,” streams become “becks,” valleys are dubbed “dales,” and clearings are known as “thwaites.”

Tadao Ando

Many of the works of Tadao Ando base their richness in the relationship of the building with light and nature. In that sense, the Church on the Water, designed in 1985 and built in 1988, is one of its most celebrated achievements, in which nature has been involved in the design of the building.

Ando manages to create a microcosm that combines simply but brilliantly concepts on the profane and the sacred, the artificial and the natural, the enclosed and the exposed, the emptiness and the infinity.

Hokkaido near Tomamu, Japan
HT @archdaily

Curtiss C-46

“Miss Piggy”, a Curtiss C-46 Commando which crash landed in November 1979.

The plane was affectionately named because of the sheer abundance of cargo it was able to carry, also at one stage it did have a cargo of pigs.

It came to rest on a rocky cliff after topping a few trees and taking out power lines. Fortunately there were no fatalities but two of the three crew were seriously injured.

HT @bushpilot

Confederate Air Force

Confederate

“An awfully small tail trying to wag an awfully big dog”

No, this isn’t an alternate history scenario involving a rogue time-traveling general from Alabama trying to rewrite the Civil War. There were actual formations of white fighter planes belonging to the CFA flying over Texas.

Back in 1962, SAGA Magazine for Men (long defunct) sent a photographer by the name of Leonard Kamsler to interview the pilots of the CAF and take some photos. SAGA was wholesome by the standards of the time, no blood-drenched tales of lesbian murder, no gross pictures from a nudist camp, just tales of high adventure and war stories. The photographer, Leonard Kamsler, would go on to have an impressive career including work for Disney.

The CAF’s “Rebel Field” was located near what passed for downtown Mercedes back then and the man most responsible for founding the ragtag bunch of pilots and old crop dusters was Floyd Nolen. “Colonel” Nolen. Every man in the unit referred to himself as a colonel to show equality among the pilots. Billy Drawe, another pilot, liked to smoke cigars and drink mint juleps in his cockpit after a flight. Class act.

HT @somethingawful