24 July and Anni and I jumped ona plane to Almaty, Kazakhstan for 15 days of trekking (for Anni) and mountain biking for me in the Tien Shan mountains, criss crossing rivers and borders of Kazak and its neighboring Kyrghizstan. After a day in Almati we headed off to meet up again two weeks later. The photos speak for themselves. For Anni it was trekking, camping, mountains, rain, sun, sleet and snow. For me it was just bloody awesome biking! Camping all th...

Anni took me away as a delayed birthday to Dartmoor for a few days. We struck it lucky and seemed to have landed the only fine weekend so far of 2009 and so managed to get in some good walks and even a run. More importantly was the local pub. Or more specifically the Rugglestone Inn in Widecombe-in-the-moor. Oh yes, tiny, olde pub that has turned itself around with some gourmet food. Top of the menu if you ever get to go must be the IceCream Brulee. It was...

We have been back home for a week now. Unfortunately we have both been living at opposite ends of our apartment, so as not to infect / re-infect eachother as we have both been hit with something nasty. Still, with a week on now, we are back to work tomorrow (Anni returned mid week just gone) at something more than 50%. This last week has been the coldest either of us have ever experienced in the UK. Temperatures dropped to minus 11 degrees and minus 8 degree...

We are back in Damascus for a final night. I have only created this entry for completeness. I like the following quote from Mark Twain (found in my Lonely Planet guide) to sum up the timeless nature of Damascus... "...no recorded event has occurred in the world but Damascus was in existence to receive news of it. Go back as far as you will into the vague past, there was always a Damascus....She has looked upon the dried bones of a thousand empires and...

We hired a taxi for the day to take us from Beirut to Baalbek and then on to Damascus for our final night, before flying back to the UK. Baalbek is in the Bekaa valley, the wine region of Lebanon. Passing through strip towns up the valley, the valley is a wide plain framed between two snow covered mountain ranges. It must be about 20 kilometers across and is clearly the agricultural heartland of Lebanon. The produce looks fantastic with all sorts of ...