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The NSB of Northern Spain – Plentzia, Basque Country

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Because daughter S had the strongest feelings about where we should stay in northern Spain, we left the AirBnb choice up to her. Hence, we ended up in Plentzia (Basque), Plencia (Spanish), a town that I can only describe as the New Smyrna Beach of northern Spain. Those of you from Florida will understand.

Actually, it’s an absolutely lovely small beach town about 30 minutes outside of Bilbao. And it did remind me of NSB – lots of family groups and grandparents escorting their small charges off for a day at the seaside. This was not a place for non-local tourists. We might have heard some French, but ours were practically the only U.S. accents we heard our whole time there.

Getting there was not without mishap. As there were six of us (actually, S took charge of this and ended up with really good fares), we rented two small cars. J, son in law N, and S went off to retrieve them from the airport in San Sebastián, while T, A, and I closed down the Airbnb and moved all our luggage down the three flights. All was going well – except for the fact that all the bridges in San Sebastián were shut for some unknown reason, necessitating many detours for the drivers of the rental cars as they attempted to pick up the rest of the party.

In any event, we were eventually all retrieved, and started the drive to Plentzia. On the way, we stopped at Gatevia, a nice beach town that houses the Balenciaga museum. We watched whole fish being grilled on large, flat, wood burning grills – an old seafaring tradition from when fish was grilled aboard the boats.

Ultimately, we made it to Plentzia where we had to decode Google maps to try to find what appeared to be a very unusual address. I was in the car with N and A – we somehow found ourselves making a hairpin turn down a steep narrow lane where the car got stuck on the high curb as we turned. Undaunted, we continued down the lane only to end up in someone’s front yard, where the very nice owner told us to calm down (“Tranquillo!”) and assured us his directions would take us to the correct location.

The AirBnb was of quirky “farmhouse shabby chic” design and would have been great but for the lack of screens and abundance of mosquitoes. If anyone would like to join me in starting a screen company for Spain, please let me know. I think we’d make a killing.

A nice walk down to the beach at night.

The next day, based on an inaccurate reading of weather reports, we decided should be the hiking and mountain day. We started, however, with N and me making a trip to a very local fish market in a neighboring town. The Turkish (?) fishmonger apparently found us so interesting that he threw multiple free sardines and anchovies into our order.

I was really struck by how different the small towns in Spain were from England. Many of the residences are all apartment buildings, as opposed to semi-detached or detached dwellings, even in the remote areas. I’m sure there’s some interesting social commentary there, but having walked 11 miles today in the Yorkshire Dales (we’re now on the walking portion of this trip) I’m not sure what it is right now!

We finally got on the road in the Citroen and Toyota for what turned out to be quite a long drive into the mountains, and the weather definitely turned for the worse. But it was just a drizzling misting rain. After a series of hairpin turns we reached the Urkiola Preserve, a location chosen by A, who knew her parents wouldn’t be happy unless they’d experienced some of the Basque Country mounting.

The park office was just closing as it was almost 2 p.m. and time for siesta. The park official nonetheless left it open to give us a map and explain where to walk. Given the weather, we opted for the shorter version of the hike. This was a beautiful walk through pollarded beech trees – meaning large limbs cut for ash leaving a somewhat peculiar three pronged shape.

There are three or four “hermitages” on the way up to the church at the top of the mountain, although they seemed more like pilgrimage spots rather than a place a hermit lived. The church was originally built in the 8th/9th century, but has had many incarnations – a main one was in the 1970s by a group of monks. The church has beautiful stained glass windows, themed around vibrantly colored organic flowers and was never fully finished.

From the church we walked to a panoramic overlook, with a spectacular view framed by three large crosses. A number of what might have been tombstones dotted the landscape.

This was an interesting mix of Christian and pagan. Mari, the Lady of a boat, is supposed to live in a cave, looking after Urquiola. She can shape shift from animal to plant to woman.

At the top of the mountain is a nice cafe where we re-joined the 21st century with a drink.

Drove the hour plus back into Plentzia, where we proceeded to create our own version of a Basque fish feast. The most marvelous thing was that we knew we still had several days ahead of us.

The Rain in Spain…and in Hastings

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Except fortunately, it didn’t, in Spain. At least, unless you count a few drizzly moments, which I refuse to do.

From Rye, in East Sussex, we took train and plane to Bilbao, in the Basque Country of Northern Spain. Along the way, we disembarked in Hastings, where it really did rain. To avoid a very long wait for our 7 pm flight from Gatwick we decided to check out Hastings, which turned out to be a singularly unsuccessful pit stop.

This is the only picture I have of Hastings.

We lugged ourselves and all our luggage into the Old Town; we could see the Castle up on the hill and thought about the Battle and 1066 and all that, but that’s about as close as we got to any sights. The beach/boardwalk runs along the front – there were loads of people, but let’s just say the glory was more than faded. It didn’t take us very long to decide to trudge back (in the rain) to the train station.

We finally took off from Gatwick for a short and uneventful flight to Bilbao – except for the part where J’s water bottle (which he had cleverly stowed in the outside pocket of his back pack and placed in the overhead bin) started to leak on everyone below.

We arrived in Bilbao after 10 – there’s an hour time difference for reasons that date back to Franco and WWII – only to find we’d missed the last shuttle to the Holiday Inn Express where we were staying for a night. In any event, a taxi safely delivered us, sans any further mishaps.

After a truly excellent “continental” breakfast – why are coffee machines so much better in Europe? – we managed to take the shuttle to the airport and figure out how to purchase bus tickets to San Sebastián. It turned out the ticket machine was broken, so as always, the answer was “download the app and buy online.” At least J was able to extract my credit card when when in a moment of desperation I pushed it into the only other slot available in the ticket machine – which turned out to be for bills only.

After a longish bus ride, we arrived for more lugging of luggage, and finally made contact with A and son in law N at the Deutsche Bank where we were getting euros. Travelers note – there are two Deutsche banks near the water in San Sebastián.

The major dining experience in this part of Spain is pintxos – basically the Basque word for tapas. A language note – Basque is considered a “language isolate”, not related to any other language. It likely dates back to the indigenous peoples of the area. “X” is pronounced “ch”, similar to the pronunciations you see in the Yucatán.

Pintxos take all forms – mushrooms in rich sauces, small sandwiches, scallops, oxtail, and ubiquitous fried potatoes, to name just a few.

After sampling several for lunch, we made our way to our Airbnb, where daughter S and boyfriend T arrived at almost exactly the same time. They’d been in Biarritz the night before and appeared to have had a more seamless journey than J and I.

The Airbnb was on one of the city’s many pedestrian streets. There are wonderful clothes shops and elegant, balconied apartment buildings edging the avenues, The beach is a long crescent of sand packed with bathers, cliffs on either side of the bay.

As fate would have it, we were in town at the same time as a college friend, C, and his two sons and son in law. They’d been in Pamplona for the running of the bulls (which sounds as gruesome as I had feared) and were staying in Bilbao. In fact, when we arrived in Bilbao we were greeted by numerous men and women all wearing white outfits with red bandanas in honor of the event (C himself had grown a Hemingway-like beard just for the occasion). We were able to rendezvous with him and his son, and enjoyed even more pintxos (by now I had a potato overload), gelato, and a beautiful walk along the beach to see the sunset.

The next day was rainy and dreary. We found a hole in the wall pintxos place that was just as good as the higher end one from the day before, and then ventured off to the Museum to try to learn a little more about Basque culture, although very few explanations were translated into English.

Basque hats – some of the women’s ultimately outlawed; you can speculate why….

We had an absolutely marvelous dinner at a restaurant across the street from the Airbnb – prawns served with heads fully attached, fried peppers, samples of hand pulled dry cider. The star was dessert – a French toast type thing that was stuffed with custard and caramel i Ed, and a Basque Cheesecake with a vanilla sorbet. And a cheeseboard with walnuts in their shells – which led to a walnut cracking competition among certain of our party.

The cracking of the walnuts

By the way, we found Spain unbelievably inexpensive, both for food and drink. A good bottle of wine could easily be found for under 4 euros.

We only had two nights in San Sebastián before our next move – to the beach town of Plentzia, about thirty minutes outside Bilbao. All of us left feeling we needed another night in San Sebastián- but perhaps not anymore patatas bravas!

All Roads Lead to Camber Castle, Rye, England

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We ended up in Rye because J googled “weekend getaways from London.” And thus we found ourselves on a Friday night along with an abundance of other middle aged merry-makers in the excruciatingly quaint town of Rye, a small town in East Sussex.

It’s only 60 miles or so from London, and easily reached by train, one change only, from St. Pancras. Incidentally, if you’ve reached your 60s, the BritRail pass with the senior discount is a beautiful thing. St. Pancras itself is something to behold. The old Victorian train station I remember as the start of our trips up to Sheffield/Rotherham remains in exteriors only. The ticket office is now a high end restaurant, and the entire station is occupied by shops and cafes – more like an airport than anything else.

We arrived in Rye too early to check in, so found a nice cafe – Jempson’s – where I had a “cheese lattice” and J a chicken and mushroom pie. It was only about his 5th small meal of the day.

The AirBnb was down a narrow alleyway close to Landsgate, a 1339 or so guard tower. It had two rooms, separated by very steep stairs and facing the Queens Head pub. Only downside was late night noise from revelers across the street, and a 5 a.m. wake-up call by screeching gulls that apparently save their party time for early morning.

Rye itself is near the English Channel. It used to be on the English Channel (the “Rye Camber”), but over the centuries, storms and reclamation of the bay have resulted in the water silting up, creating huge salt marshes. Seemed very apropos for the swamp part of this blog. There were a plethora of half-timbered buildings, quaint shops and pubs, and women on week-end breaks all wearing summer dresses and straw hats – and shopping.

J and I had a drink in a garden pub, and then went to the very funky Queens Head across the street. Food was cheap and excellent – ranging from roast chicken (me) to Korean kebabs (J). We waited around for the live music, a very over the top cover band that played everything from ZZTop to John Denver, and brought the mostly middle-aged crowd out onto the dance floor.

I was interested in the intellectually challenged young man who seemed to hang out at the pub on a regular basis. The manager let him help out with everything, and he was clearly a fixture (I saw him there the next morning also from our vantage point across the street). It was nice to see how he was an accepted part of the fabric of everyday life.

Our one full day in Rye was reserved for a hike to the Rye Nature Preserve, the, or one of the, largest coastal preserves in the U.K. After some difficulty finding the beginning point, we finally started the hike. Through narrow corridors lined with hedges, into marshy salt marshes – small islands outlined with rushes.

We made our way to the very new Discovery Center where we ate sandwiches. There was one strip of beautiful long sandy beach (Camber Sands) – that then turned into a shingle beach – what seemed like miles of rock beach, consisting of perfectly round stones that angled sharply into the water. It was like walking over stone sand dunes. It was hard going and we soon returned to the trail.

The skies darkened, grey against white, and we pulled out our rain gear just in time. The trail crossed the marshes and then blended into sheep pastures, with lots of stiles and gates. We were a little unsure of our location on our by then battered and wet brochure map….the Camber Castle, set apart atop a slight plateau, never seemed to get any further away.

But finally we ended up with the Brede River on our left and the Brede Locke straight ahead, the end of our 8 or so mile excursion in sight.

On the way back we stopped at the Waterworks Micropub. It’s been everything from waterworks to public toilets. I had a half pint of a local cider, Tenterden. Cider is a big deal here and I’ve never seen so many real, hand pulled ales.

After washing the grime off, we went to a Turkish restaurant on the High Street for dinner. We walked up to and around St. Mary’s, where we found an absolutely lovely pub, Ypres Castle, nestled in its lower walls. Met a very interesting fellow from Manchester who had been living in Rye but was about to move to Belgium. It was his last night in town, but he was nonetheless as welcoming to two tourists as could be.

Actually, everyone we encountered in Rye was remarkably friendly. It seemed to presage good things to come as we got ready for the next leg of our trip – to the Basque Country in Northern Spain.

And So It Begins – A Whirlwind of London

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I actually wrote this aboard a train from Rye (via Hastings) to Gatwick. But, as all good travel blogs must, I have to go several days back to start the Six Month Sabbatical Saga.

After packing some and packing more, J and I journeyed off to Orlando Airport’s Terminal C. It is so much better than A and B it doesn’t bear comparison. I can only liken it to the international vs. domestic terminals at the airport in Dubai. After a very nice preflight snack and drinks at Cask and Larder, we made our way onto our Norse Airlines plane – the new budget airline with flights hundreds of dollars less than their competitors.

The planes are lovely, but they have definitely crammed a lot of seats in them. The middle one on Row 38, which was to be my abode, would have been all right but for the fact that Row 38 had no windows at all. I could see a slight sliver of the sky from the window in front of us, but not sunrise over the Atlantic. Avoid Row 38!

Generously speaking, we might have had a couple of hours sleep.

Landed at Gatwick and took a train to Victoria, underground to Green Park, change to the Piccadilly Line, and on to Russell Square. There’s still a lift there, no escalators, to ascend to the surface. London, or at least parts thereof, is filling up with skyscrapers worthy of one of the Asian capitals of the world but still looking somewhat out of place in what I think of as a human scaled city. There are cranes everywhere. But the parts I remember well, namely Bloomsbury and around the British Museum, are still as I recall.

Every time I come to London I have this eerie sense of familiarity. Perhaps that’s natural given that I was born here – at University of London hospital and within the sound of Bow Bells – and spent my first year plus living in Brunswick Gardens near Kensington.

We checked into the Tavistock Hotel, where we were given a small front room with a view of the square. Despite the lack of sleep, we couldn’t let even a jet lagged day go to waste. After a brief rest, we made our way to the British Library. The old reading room at the British Museum – where my parents spent many hours working on their dissertations both before and after my arrival – is now located there. It’s free admission (as seem to be all the museums here) and well worth a visit. It houses the Magna Carta – there are actually two – a very damaged original one, and the actual charter from a couple of years later, which is in much better condition. There’s a Gutenberg Bible as well, but I was equally interested in the illuminated manuscripts and modern books. Lots of ideas for calligraphy projects to come. I still think I would have been quite happy as a monk whose mission in life was to copy and illustrate books!

An interesting walk back. We went past my mother’s old residence hall at University College (Campbell Hall) which she says still looked the same, and through Brunswick Gardens (the actual gardens, not the street in Kensington where I lived as a baby).

After a drink at the Woolf (as in Virginia) and Whistle Bar at our hotel – the Tavistock Hotel, on the site of a former Woolf residence – we had an Italian meal at the restaurant across the street and collapsed.

Next day – truly an exploration of my origins. We started with coffee and croissant that we ate at Tavistock Gardens (surrounded by pigeons attracted by crusts someone else had left – we felt we needed a sign saying “it wasn’t us” after 30 plus birds arrived). Incidentally, we are finding London very inexpensive compared to the U.S., which is a pleasant surprise. Inspected the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the center of the square and all the benches in memory of those dedicated to peace, socialism, and against nuclear bombs.

Our next stop was the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is where my mother started to go into labor with me in 1961. I’m not sure what that says about either me or her!

Child rearing techniques? No, Achilles and his mother

On our quest to find “Britain 1790-1900” we managed to see every bit of glass at the V&A, plus architectural designs, galleries full of Victorian casts of famous sculptures from around the world, thousands of pounds of Rodin, and ironworks. Finally we realized the staircases up went to different parts of the museum, found the correct one, and located Britain 1900. Starting with the Arts and Crafts movement, we wound our way back in time – an interesting way to view things.

After we were museumed out, we realized we had way too little time to walk to Portobello Market, as was our original plan, and instead wandered around South Kensington, window shopping at all the expensive shops.

After a quick dinner at a local pub we hopped on the underground again to Blackfriars, and crossed the river over the Millenium Bridge to reach the Globe Theatre – the recreation of the Shakespeare’s theater. We were last at these spots in 2000 – the Millenium bridge had just opened and was still bouncing! They had to close it immediately after for repairs. It’s quite sturdy now, and gives a good view of St. Paul’s.

We saw “A Midsummer’s Nights Dream” – interesting production, with nearly all the roles played by women. Best line – “from now on I want to be known as ‘Bo-toom’”. (For you English majors out there. Think Heather “Bou-Kay” in Keeping Up Appearances.) Also “pro-luge” and “epi-luge.”

Next day was a travel day. On to Rye!

St. Pancreas

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way Out of Town

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Does life ever seem as though it’s comprised of a neverending series of events designed to frustrate your ultimate purpose? Or, at the least, to insert various stumbling blocks along the way? And many times it’s the mechanical objects that take on the worst human qualities imaginable in an apparently intentional fashion to stymie whatever you’re trying to accomplish.

As we work our way through the checklist required for the upcoming six months of adventures, consider the following examples:

1. The new oven conspired with the outdoor lighting to malfunction. The oven issue involved a series of beeps at seemingly random times, possibly chirping displeasure over whatever was currently on television – except for the fact they also occurred in the depths of night. After a few hundred dollars and a new computer key pad (who knew ovens had such things) it appears to be somnolent. For the moment. At least the outdoor lighting was a silent malfunction, resulting from cut wires. Thanks, lawn service.

2. The bank that shall remain nameless who does not know how to receive a $10.43 cent payment. We are still battling that one. Who knew it would take over 30 days to release a lien for a home equity loan that hasn’t been in use for years?

3. The car that has decided to have a voice and buzzes out its grievances every time I go over one of our brick roads. This one is on going. I’m just trying to get used to it, and think of it as background percussion.

4. The pond project. A weeks long repair job to repair a leaking pond (that had already killed off our generations of tiny Lake Ivanhoe fish). Finally, a success story. After massive internet research, and several Ace Hardware trips, a product was found. Layers of scraping, vacuuming, epoxying, patching, stop, repeat, and finally we have a pond that appears to hold water. We’ll see. I’m not going out to catch fish in Lake Ivanhoe to transplant to it until the weather has become a bit more tolerable.

I’m sure I could add to the list. But right now my mind is on finishing up work – only 3 days left! Live-in house sitters assembled, S’s cat Boudin is ensconced in the addition as his summer residence, and Kira our own cat has been informed of the upcoming plans. First stop is London, followed by Rye, and then on to San Sebastián, Spain. But who knows what the next few days could hold – funny things always happen on the way out of town.

Marshes of Rhode Island

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As FromSwamptoSummit prepares for the next trip, coming up in July – three weeks in the U.K. with a weeks’ interlude in Northern Spain – how better to get ready than a weekend in coastal Rhode Island, otherwise known as the Farm Coast.

Daughter A and son-in-law N apparently decided to celebrate almost a year of marriage by treating both their aged parental units to a week-end in a lovely, classic New England shingled Airbnb, right at the edge of a salt water marsh. The weekend started, as such things frequently do, with a delayed flight. But at least we were on JetBlue, which is now ensconced in the Orlando airport’s new Terminal C. Somewhat antiseptic, with large soaring walls that could benefit from what at one point would have been called decoration – but this is made up for by the significantly improved food and drink choices over terminals A and B. So there was that, at least.

We arrived almost two hours late at the very pleasant Providence Airport. Small, and some of the best airport bathrooms I’ve experienced. Someday I’m writing a coffee table book called bathrooms around the world. In any event, N’s parents, K and S, picked us up and we hied our way on to the Westporter restaurant in, you guessed it, Westport, where we met up with A and N.

N is finally almost recovered from his horrendous February ski accident (I have spared my readers those details), and we were able to enjoy a long period of sitting on the deck before we could get a table. Delays were clearly the theme of the day. Highlight of the deck experience was when N managed to drop his phone at a completely vertical angle, causing it to make a grand exit between the deck planks onto the ground three feet below. Undeterred, K solved the problem by finding a break in the fencing below the deck and shimmying under to retrieve said phone.

Fortunately, the rest of the evening passed fairly uneventfully.

We awakened the next day to the promise of rain. We managed a short walk around the neighborhood, down to what they call a creek here and I would call a sound side marsh. Two brave souls were in waders fishing for striped bass, looking like something straight out of a movie about rural New England life.

Once the heavens opened, as promised, we were off to the Four Corners complex in Tiverton, a collection of home goods, garden, bakery and gourmet food shops. Our fun stop after that was to Sweet and Salty Farms, a local cheese maker. A and N had ordered cheese and it was sitting out waiting for us at the top of the driveway of their home in a cooler!

After lunch, how better to take advantage of a rainy afternoon in R.I. than to visit one of the “summer cottages,” in Newport. It was the opposite of our cheese pick-up. We selected Doris Duke’s Rough Point as our keyhole into the lives of the rich and famous. She lived there until 1993, and the house is a mixture of the unbelievably opulent and the well lived in. The solarium still has the sofas scarred with marks from her dogs and there’s a microwave in the kitchen. It’s like a time travel trip from the golden age to the jet age. Of particular note, her “quirky” bedroom which features mother of pearl furniture.

Dinner that night was at one of my favorite RI restaurants, The Red Dory, in Tiverton. Usually there’s a beautiful sunset over the ocean, but not so much last night. But the food was as good as ever.

Sunday dawned cloudy, but at least the skies had finished their tantrums. Our trip to South Beach inadvertently turned into a trip toward a bayside walk near Tiverton. It was a working fishing pier with a great stack of rusted iron anchors that looked like a piece of modern sculpture.

This part of RI is not called the Farm Coast for nothing. After miles of small farm after small farm, intersected by sturdy stone walls, we made it to South Beach. The signs all warned the beach was “under repair” and there was “no parking” on either side of the road, but that did nothing to daunt the large number of surfers obliviously leaving their vehicles behind to take advantage of the waves.

On our way to lunch at Evelyn’s Drive In (apparently featured at some point on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives), we drove past White Rock Farms, featuring locally raised beef. Outside of Albania, I can’t think of when we have bought meat at the same location where the animal was born and raised. It’s a seventh generation farm with solar panels and electric vehicles and a commitment to humane farming.

Evelyn’s was nothing less than a feast of fried seafood. A, N and K shared the “two pound seafood platter.” I had a “stuffie” – a Massachusetts/RI specialty that involves a quahog (clam) stuffed and baked with the clam meat, breading and seasonings. J had some of the best fish and chips we’ve had, and there were plenty of little neck clams and clam cakes for the table. Clam cakes must be New England’s answer to the hush puppy – they taste almost exactly the same but for the insertion of clams.

Not sure how we’re going to have any room for the steaks!

Mammoth March in April 2023

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From Swamp to Summit is back! There’s been a long hiatus, not because I haven’t been thinking about you, dear readers, but the flotsam and jetsam of ordinary life has simply gotten in the way. But now I’m close to pulling back the curtain on our plans for 2023 – which begin Independence Day – and no, that’s not a coincidence.

But for immediate purposes – this past Saturday, April 29, was the scene of the Mammoth March. I signed us up, over J’s protestations, in January, telling him that was all I really wanted for my 62nd birthday.

Mammoth March is a sponsored 20 mile hike that you are supposed to finish in 8 hours. Doesn’t sound so bad, right? A 20 minute mile pace? But you have to consider the terrain. It’s Florida jungle, out there in the Charles Bronson forest (see Lost in Florida – Staring Down Charles Bronson); it had rained last week and about two miles were nothing but mud.

Not only that, the night before the event, the sponsors announced it was really 21 miles, and by the way, everyone with a fitness tracker was convinced it was more like 22. The last couple of miles were on an asphalt road, and it was brutal. Shin split city. Not to mention the fact the wind had whipped up, was blowing in our faces, and it was clear the heavens were about to open – which they did, about 10 minutes after I crossed the finish line.

I was going to do the entire damn thing in 8 hours if it killed me. We had met some great folks out there – PAC man and Ken (turns out PAC man and I had a friend in common) and multiple other people who were equally pleasant and fun. There was every age group, gender, body type – pretty hard to be more diverse unless you were a cellular phone ad. And everyone was pulling for everyone else.

Until next time. We could all do a lot worse than model ourselves after folks who just decide they want to walk 21 miles cooperatively with fellow hikers. Ready for the 2024 event.

Mile 20

Lost in Florida- Splitting Up the Oaks

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They were definitely trying to hide it. We had already been driving 45 minutes or so into the development wilds that is east Orange County these days and apparently had zoomed past Clapp-Simms-Duda Road, the very small byway that allegedly was to take us to our hiking destination, the Split Oak Forest Wildlife and Environmental Area. S finally located the turn off on Google maps. Yes, we were a couple of miles beyond.

This state of affairs necessitated a u-turn in front of one of the ubiquitous chain restaurants (Olive Garden, Long Horn, Lime Mexican, you name it, it’s out there on Narcoosee Road). The Ford Explorer begrudgingly obliged, and finally, driving extremely slowly, we found a sharp, unmarked right turn that took us onto Clapp-Simms-Duda, just past a McDonalds.

The entrance to the conservation area speaks the story of Florida. One side of the road featured huge armies of earth moving equipment, preparing to clear land for another one of the big housing developments, some of which bear an unfortunate resemblance to the Soviet era apartment complexes we saw in Russian in 2014. But turn your head to the other side of the road, and it was lined with live oak hammocks, palm trees, and Florida prairie. The armies, though, seemingly advancing inexorably into the last of the wild space.

Is that a bat house?

The trail itself starts across an open field, crosses into some palmetto prairies, and then continues for a few miles of very pleasant shaded walking. J, S, and I are now in serious (well, quasi-serious) training for the Marathon March on April 29, so we were undertaking this adventure with great determination. But despite our attempts to keep our pace up, the long leaf pines and peculiarly shaped oaks were a distraction. Most interesting was a trail spur leading to Lake Hart. True to the guidebook’s description, the trail simply turned into a bed of water that drained into the lake. Most trails stop at lakes, but this one appeared to go right into it.

Ultimately you end up in another open meadow, where there’s a different entrance into the park. An interesting, ancient oak tree dominated the area – we decided it should serve as the namesake split oak since apparently we had missed the real thing.

But after the meadow the real training began. The trail was rutted and wide – we saw two different official Orange County vehicles that were apparently the source of the deep crevices – but the main difficulty was that the trails themselves consisted of inches deep white glistening sand. It was unseasonably warm, and the sun’s reflection added a whole different dimension to the effort of sinking down three inches only to have to pull up again.

As we got toward mile 6, the trail mercifully provided a little bit more shade, encouraging us to recall its very pleasant beginning. We reached the meadow where we’d started. Insect life was everywhere – humming, chirping, buzzing – a veritable cacophony.

Getting back on the road, it was a mere half mile to the encroaching development. The insect symphony was quickly subsumed by the drone of cars and roar of the bulldozers.

More Summits, More Swamps – Welcome 2023

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And welcome 2023! As we leave 2022 in our rear view mirror, the new year is already underway with a vengeance. And what a year this promises to be for FromSwamptoSummit and friends.

It needs to start with seriously getting back into shape – at least the sort of shape that will allow for some regular 15 mile hiking days. To that end, I’m trying to convince J, and our faithful training partners S and M to sign up for something called the Mammoth March.

It’s a serious of hikes held throughout the country – this one is 20 miles to be accomplished in 8 hours and takes place in the Charles H. Bronson State Forest here in Central Florida. We are already familiar with that location – you’ll recall we hiked there in 2020, as recounted in Lost in Florida – Staring Down Charles Bronson (a decent title if I do say so myself). While I think that speed and distance quite doable, it’s definitely going to take some practice. You can see from the below it’s not a straightforward path, and there are a fair amount of saw palmettos and other natural dangers to avoid.

J staring down Charles Bronson

Now, careful readers will have noted the teaser above and will be asking but why the need to train for 15 mile hikes. Well, because the latter half of this year will hold many opportunities for travel – J will be on sabbatical! To take this one step at a time, our plans for July have ranged from Egypt and Morocco to the Shetland Islands….and now we seem to have settled on Edinburgh, a hike through the Yorkshire Dales that includes portions of the Coast to Coast and the Pennine Way, followed by time in London, and then another hike that circumnavigates Guernsey, which is one of the Channel Islands.

The dales hike in particular has some long days, including two 15 milers. It’s time to resurrect the hiking poles and get out there. As I was running errands today I happened by what was once one of the premier malls in Orlando. It can’t even be described as being on death’s doorstep – it’s clearly crossed the threshold. Anchored now by a low end Macys, a Dillard close out store, and some sort of flooring or tile place. I don’t want to end up like that mall – it’s time for some adventure.

While not a mountaintop, I think that the dales can count as a summit and the island of Guernsey as a swamp! Of course, the below isn’t Guernsey; it’s a view of Lake George in New York, taken this past summer.

Wild Card Days in Vermont

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After the family fiesta that was A’s and N’s wedding, and a couple of days of R&R (including a visit to Martha’s Vineyard- more on that later), it was time for our wild card day and night of adventure. In my family we’ve always called those days where you have just a general idea of where you might end up that night wild cards. And sometimes they end up being some of the most fun – or at least the most different.

J had randomly selected from the internet a very small town of 3000 with a historic (and very cheap) inn as our destination. The exact name shall remain unstated, so as to protect the innocent. The inn, dating back well into the 1800s, was grandiosely described as “dominating” the town common, and we envisioned a sort of quaint New England town, with old growth trees and clapboard houses.

This particular wild card day was to take us from the South Coast of Massachusetts all the way up to visit some dear friends in Saratoga Springs, New York. More on that later, also. Somehow we plotted a course that took us through four states – Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Notwithstanding such anonymity, I will mention that on our way there we happened upon The Vermont Country Store. What a treat! I’ve shopped their catalogue for years and the store is a real life version. We spent an hour enjoying trips down memory lane perusing items such as Windsong and Charlie perfumes, Lincoln Logs, and those glass Christmas ornaments that all of us who were children in the 1960s and 70s remember.

We arrived at our destination about mid afternoon. Think Bob Newhart. That is, the second show when he retired to run an inn in a small village in Vermont.

We knew something was amiss when we went to check in. The inn was indeed right at the edge of the fairly small common (could have been described as an unmanicured field with sidewalks), which had buildings only on one of its sides. My favorite shop was the bookstore, which was closed, but a sign in the window specified if you were there to pick up an order you could stop by the nearby CBD store and ask for the owner.

But back to check in. The “lobby” area was right at the front door, a desk area behind which were old fashioned mail boxes and keys hanging nearby for each room. Not particularly high security. After ringing the service bell several times in vain, another guest walked by and wished us good luck. That was not propitious.

Eventually an elderly waitress emerged from the back dining room to see if she could help us. Unable to find our internet reservation- I was becoming more and more surprised these folks were on the internet- she tried to text the official desk clerk. After another delay said desk clerk arrived, managed to check us in, and gave us somewhat rambling directions up a few flights of stairs to our room. She seemed uncertain as to whether we should turn right or left and exactly what floor we were on.

Nonetheless, we found said room – perfectly adequate although the mattress left something to be desired, and the fact there were locked French doors going out to an upstairs porch that only the other rooms could access seemed a bit odd.

We decided it was happy hour and therefore time to explore the local watering holes. Two were listed on the internet – an Irish Pub and some other place, called something like Ye Olde Tap Room, which was our place of choice. On our way out the elderly waitress seemed anxious that we make a dinner reservation so we complied. However, it turned out she actually did not know how to make a reservation on the IPad storing such information, and had to enlist the assistance of her much younger companion server. Another delay.

We marched along by the strip of shops, hunting for the address- which we could not find. Eventually we determined we must have missed it and made a u turn – only to find ourselves back at the inn. It turned out they had a separate address and name for their little hotel bar. It was closed. We opted for the the Irish pub.

The Irish pub was actually quite nice and had a remarkable selection of whiskeys. It was clearly one of the local hangouts and it looked like 10 pm was a late closing night for them.

After a pleasant time imbibing their specialties, J and I felt fortified enough for dinner. It turned out to be served only on the inn’s front porch – the dining room having been closed since Covid – and our elderly waitress appeared to be the only server. While the menu looked rather comprehensive, she first announced a list of things they did not have, which reduced the menu to a series of about five choices. I picked the vegetarian entree, the central feature of which was to be various grains. When it arrived – about an hour and a half later – there were no grains to be had. And, even though we were in Vermont, they were out of maple syrup. So much for the majority of desserts. On the flip side – there was a really good pie, the contents of which I no longer remember.

We awakened the next morning eager to try out the breakfast part of the bed and breakfast experience. It was a bit difficult to locate the breakfast room, as we appeared to be the only guests eating. There was a circle of people in Ye Olde Tap Room who seemed to be holding a 12 step meeting of some sort and they graciously directed us to the right spot.

There was a thermos of coffee with just enough for two cups. Two slices of bread each carefully wrapped in plastic for toast. A slightly brown banana. And a couple of yoghurts. I was hopeful that either we were the only guests or that everyone else had eaten.

Our check out went more smoothly. It was time to hit the road again. And our next destination was a hike up Bromley Mountain via Mad Tom Notch. Somehow very appropriate.