'A good traveller has no fixed plans.' Tao Te Chiang
‘Ah, but your land is beautiful’ is the third novel by Alan Paton, the South African author best known for ‘Cry, the Beloved Country.’ Telling tales of apartheid and resistance, the title is an ironic reflection on the perception so often and so blindly voiced by visitors to this country – ‘you live in such […]
Private loss and public pain. Not the same, and not commensurate, but both laying emotional and mental claim. Reminders that we do not control events, that life has a way of breaking through our seemingly ordered universe and seemingly predictable lives. That gratitude and humility fit better with reality than hubris or bravado, that our […]
Aveyron is Rocquefort country, the country where Lacaune sheep crowd together, grazing, on the steepest of green-clad hillsides. We saw these in the valley far below, from the road out of Plaisance, as we made our way to the plateau above en route to Albi. As you will see, I have processed one of these […]
One of the best decisions we made on our trip to Spain was to head off the main road from Sevilla to Ronda, and take a detour through the Parque Natural de la Sierra de Grazalema. The ‘park’ is an area of wild beauty, rugged, steep, sheer, spectacular, dotted with isolated farmsteads and whitewashed pueblos […]
We went for a walk, one evening in Cape Town, along Hout Bay Beach. The sun was flaring out behind the mountain, the sea was calm, and a pale mist enveloped the walkers. Here are two images. For those who are interested, both were shot with the Leica D-Lux.
Here are a few images of the stretch of the Maluti mountains, outside Clarens in the Free State, known as ‘Golden Gate’ for its imposing cliffs and rock formations, which glow golden in the afternoon sunlight. I can’t say any one of these images completely knocks me out, but cumulatively, perhaps, they may give […]
With the Natal Midlands behind us, we headed west, toward the northern Drakensberg, for the final three nights of our holiday meander. We’d booked ourselves a cottage at the Berg House, high on a hillside overlooking the magnificent Amphitheatre in the distance, up a winding dirt road that twisted and climbed and simply called out […]
