May
2nd,
2018
Hot
and sunny
The
tent is icy in the morning and I am grateful that I haven't camped on
top of any cow pats. There are plenty around me and as I pitched the
tent in the dark it would have been easy to hit one. A local farmer
comes over and chats for a while before asking me to take his
photograph. He does a strange pose and then walks off after
instructing me to close the barbed wire gate on my way off his field.
I
stop in the village to buy some drink and food. Yogurt, juice and a
strange sort of thick set blancmange that is delicious make my
breakfast, which I eat whilst sitting on a stanchion by a large steel
girder bridge over a fast flowing river. A young bull is stuck with
it's head caught in some square meshed fencing. There is no way that
I am going anywhere near it, especially after last week's close
encounter with his Dad! Leaving it to it's fate I am glad to see that
it has managed to get free when I am about a mile away.
The
road is dusty and dry and steep as it goes higher and higher. The
rock formations to my left, a cliff of a soft, eroded conglomerate
reminds me of Meteora in Greece. There the rock has made very tall
stacks upon the top of many are monasteries. These used to be only
accessible by being brought up in a basket tied to a very long rope
but nowadays, as they want the tourist trade, there are steep
pathways and steps. My daughter, Rebecca and I visited some of them
back in 2011. Inside the churches there are fabulous frescoes
depicting the death of saints, strange motivated men who wanted to be
killed in order to show their love of God. Imagine a way of being
killed and it is probably depicted there. Boiled alive? No problem.
Chopped into tiny pieces from the feet up? It's there. Arrows in the
chest, 180! Of course it's there. 101 ways of killing a man, all
depicted graphically and colourfully.
Andean
Tinamous walk across the road in front of me. Andean Flickers sit on
rocks and watch me carefully as I pass. One group of them numbers
eight, the largest flock of a woodpecker species I have ever seen. I
do remember seeing five Green Woodpeckers on one dead gorse bush near
Lyndhurst, New Forest many years ago when I was hitch-hiking and
walking in the area when I was twenty two years old. Strange how bird
memories stick with you.
A
fossil of an ammonite beside the road grabs my attention. I am over
10,000 feet above sea level and this died deep beneath an ocean
hundreds of millions of years ago. I muse about how if the land rose
a centimetre a year then it would be higher than Everest within a
million years.
On
reaching the highest point of the road the views are stupendous. From
here I can see for miles and miles. I can see massive snow-capped
mountains in all directions and an uncountable number of mountain
peaks. A motorcyclist passes and on the back is a dead sheep.
Descending
once more I reach a small village. Asking whether they have a hostel,
I am invited to join a small group of villages for a meal of
potatoes, corn and a lump of some sort of gristly meat. With hot
herbal tea as well I sit and chat with the various village members;
two young men, three old and almost toothless women and an old man
who speaks some English. He tells me that he lived in the US many
years ago, in Ohio. The offer of money for the food is refused and I
say goodbye to the group. There is no hostel and after a few miles of
pushing the bike uphill once more, I find a flat area of grass that
is too perfect for camping to refuse. Once more it is dark by the
time I have erected my tent.
Green
Year list : 184 birds average new birds to list per day : 5.75
birds
Distance
walked, pushed and cycled : 16.14 miles
elevation
: up 1,511 feet, down 1,172 feet
altitude
: 14,500 feet
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