Tales from the Trails, Part 2 non-UK Trails
By Ben Bennetts
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About this ebook
Walking is good for you. It provides physical exercise and stimulates the senses. It gets you out and about. You see places that can only be reached on foot. It also has its moments, sometimes funny sometimes dangerous, plus mishaps and other adventures. This series of books is a collection of observations, stories, advice and photographs from the long-distance walks made by the author, and his wife, after retiring in 2007.
Part 1 (2014) covers UK long-distance trails including many UK National Trails.
Part 2 covers long-distance walking outside the UK: the Himalaya Mountains in Nepal and India, the lower Sierra Nevada Mountains in Spain, and along the levadas of Madeira.
Ben Bennetts
After retiring in December 2007 from a busy career as a consultant electronics engineer, I took up walking long-distance trails both in my home country (UK) and in other places such the Himalaya in Nepal, the Sierra Nevada in Spain, and the levadas in Madeira. These activities kept me physically fit. To stay mentally fit, I started a blog (https://ben-bennetts.com) and began writing books. To date (February 2021), I’ve published twenty-one books on topics as diverse as religion, winemaking, an erotic novel (using the pseudonym, J C Pascoe), two storybooks for children, various autobiographies, idiosyncrasies of the English language, long-distance walking, keeping fit as we age, how to create and self-publish either an ebook or a paperback book, a book of cartoons, and a series of blog collections. You can read more about the books on my website, ben-bennetts.com/books. The books are available as e-books on www.smashwords.com and in Amazon’s Kindle Store.Contact me at ben@ben-bennetts.com
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Tales from the Trails, Part 2 non-UK Trails - Ben Bennetts
Tales from the Trails
Part 2: non-UK Trails
Ben Bennetts
Walking is good for you. It provides physical exercise and stimulates the senses. It gets you out and about. You see places that can only be reached on foot. It also has its moments, sometimes funny sometimes dangerous, plus mishaps and other adventures. This book is a collection of observations, stories, advice and photographs from the long-distance walks made by the author, and his wife, after retiring at age 66 in 2007. Part 1, published 2014, covers UK long-distance trails including many UK National Trails. Part 2, published in 2015, covers walks in other countries, notably Nepal, India, Spain, and Madeira.
(^_^)
Copyright © 2015, Ben Bennetts.
Published by Atheos Books at Smashwords
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. The eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please buy an extra copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not buy it, or it was not bought for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and buy your own copy. Thank you for respecting my hard work.
ISBN 978-0-9573218-8-5
Front cover photograph: top of a pass, Annapurna Mountains, Nepal, 2009
Dedication
Mark, Kevin and Helen who, one day, will inherit our boots!
(^_^)
Table of Contents
Introduction
Walking record
2003 – 2011. Various levadas in Madeira
2009. Annapurna/Upper Mustang Valley, Nepal
2010. Ladakh, Northern India
2011. Everest Base Camp, Nepal
2012. Las Alpujarras, Spain
About the author
Other books by Ben Bennetts
Introduction
Preparing to descend from Dingboche, Everest Base Camp trek, 2011.
Introduction to the series
In 2007, when I retired from a busy career as a consulting electronics engineer, I decided it was time to slim down a bit and take up a sport so I started playing golf. It was the most frustrating sport ever! For every good hit, there were at least nineteen lousy hits. I persisted for about a year and then gave up in disgust at myself for not improving beyond the stage where every hole was taking anywhere between five and ten strokes. (I always stopped counting once the number of strokes exceeded ten so my score card never showed more than 180 strokes.)
I enjoyed the walking part of golf however and, like Mark Twain before me (or maybe Harry Wilson, William Gladstone or the Allens?), decided that I should develop the walking interest. I did the research, bought some walking gear, and planned my first multi-day long-distance-path walk – a 64-mile 3-day walk round the coastal path of the UK’s Isle of Wight in September 2008. It rained. I got wet. My boots were new. I got blisters. I ached from unused muscles. But, I enjoyed the walk. I enjoyed stepping out early in the morning and walking the path with virtually no-one else around. I enjoyed the early morning birdsong. I enjoyed the exercise. I enjoyed the ever-changing scenery. I even enjoyed getting soaked the day it rained unmercifully. In fact, I enjoyed the whole experience and vowed that I would do it again, which I did a few weeks later when I embarked on the 100-mile 4-day South Downs Way UK National Trail.
From that point on, I have walked now every year since, covering many miles in the UK and quite a few outside: in Nepal, India, Spain and Madeira. In October 2009, I persuaded my wife Carol to join me on the walks and, nowadays, she always accompanies me.
Often I write up the walk afterwards for the entertainment and enjoyment of family and friends and I had thought just to publish some of these write-ups but, on reflection, I decided there are many so-called travelogues and mine would just add to the pile. Consequently, I elected to extract short commentaries from the write-ups and call them ‘Tales from the Trails’ and here they are. Some tales are short stories about what happened to us on one occasion. Others are observations or advice about the nature of walking long-distance paths. And yet others are just wry or humorous tales. Plus there are photographs of strange or curious things we spotted and there is even a series of cartoons.
Part 1 of Tales from the Trails covers our experiences on walks within the UK. Part 2 covers what happened on walks outside the UK: in Nepal, India, Spain and Madeira.
The tales in each part are in no particular order and dovetail with a series of ‘Seen on the Trail’ photographs showing the strange or curious things I spotted along the trails, or just a lovely view. Enjoy the tales and the photographs.
Introduction to Part 2
Part 2 describes long-distance walking in the Himalaya Mountains in Nepal and India, the lower