The Laugavegur is one of the big walks. It is the most famous trek in Iceland and crosses other worldly landscapes formed by recent volcanos. I did it from north to south and it runs over 80km from Landmannalauger via Thorsmork to Skogar on the coast. I started on the 15 June, the first day the bus ran to Landmannalaugar. I hadn’t booked the huts as I didn’t know whether I’d make it. So I took camping gear. The scenery is sensational and unlike anywhere I’d been before. At this time of the...

This was a culturally sensational trip, yet we only scratched the surface of this ancient empire and ultra modern people’s republic, visiting Shanghai, Hangzhou and Beijing. China is vast and complex – the world’s most populous country, the second largest in land area, with nearly 300 living languages and 7 mega cities with over 10 million inhabitants. We went on our way back from Australia and visited two ex post grad architecural students, Wendy in Hangzhou and Yingying in Beijing. In Sh...

The Mare a Mare Nord traverses Corsica from sea to sea. It’s nearly 100 miles long (152 km), involves nearly 7000 metres of ascent and descent and took me 11 days. I sailed to Ajaccio, the capital of Corsica, on the west coast, and the walk climbed thickly wooded valleys before crossing the GR20 and the mountainous backbone of Corsica at the Col de Vergio. From Corte, the town in the middle of the island, the path follows mule tracks that link isolated hilltop villages all the way to the e...

The Massif Central is a highland in south-central France and historically the region, the Auverne, was a barrier. It was formed by ancient volcanic activity over many ages and was raised by the Alpine and Pyrenean uplifts. The rock is granite and metamorphic and the region contain hundreds of extinct volcanos or Puys. I was unfamiliar with the region and had never considered visiting it until recently, perhaps because it wasn't high or spiky enough in my youth or too agricultural. But the ...

We went Japan to study recovery after the 2011 Tohoku tsunami. This was a major disaster for Japan. For the country most prepared for earthquakes this was a shocking event that will take years and trillions of dollars to repair. Fifteen months after the disaster, when we made our field trip, recovery was already underway. New embankments were being constructed along the coast of the Sendai plain in Miyage Province and debris had been collected into huge sorted piles. But further north, in ...

In 2006, with Emily So, I went to the areas affected by the Pakistan earthquake of 8 October 2005. It changed my life. The aim of for Emily was to ask survivors of the earthquake about their injuries as part of her PhD. My job was to help her design a the survey. We interviewed people in Islamabad responsible for coordinating relief and reconstruction and visited the areas affected by the earthquake. We also drove up the beautiful Kaghan Valley as far as we were able. Understanding some of...

Aconcagua at nearly 7,000 metres is the highest mountain outside Asia From the south it is a hard, dangerous climb. From the north, given good weather, it is relatively easy. In my twenties I read a book about three Polish climbers who in 1934 made their own equipment and climbed it by a new elegant route up the east ridge. It captured my imagination. Over thirty years later I asked a friend to come with me. He pulled out and I found a trekking company on the Internet and booked. Our appro...

The Pennine Way is a tough old walk. It's about 250 miles long (400 km), was the first National trail in England and is one of the most famous long-distance walks. I did it a couple of weeks before I should have, during the Covid pandemic of 2020 when the guidelines encouraged outdoor exercise but advised against overnight stays away from home. There was no accommodation or catering en-route and few shops open. I arranged two poste-restante food drops at post offices in Alston and Hawes at...

"Terra Firma - very large, about which nothing is known", was how Columbus described the mainland of South America. David finds himself on anything but firm ground when he arrives in Venezuela to work for Jordi's uncle Manuel, the Minister of Planning. Jordi's exotic family befriend him - the uncles who chased out the last dictator, the grandfather, too old for deep-sea fishing but still chasing young women at ninety. He finds cliffs to rock climb in the vast coastal range and the empty in...

I first met Maria Ximena when she talked about Cazuca, a barrio to the south west of Bogota and I visited Colombia three times. Working with young architects from the Universidad Piloto and a Women's Foundation we devised plans to improve the neighbourhood. I also describe visits to Cartagena, Santa Marta, Valledupar and the Tayrona National Park where I met and talked to Kogi Indians.

El Autana is a sandstone tepuy or butteabout 400 miles south of Caracas in the Amazon Territory of Venezuela. The first ascent of the Autana was in 1974 by two English, Stephen Platt and David Nott, and two Venezuelans, Wilmer Perez la Riva and Carlos Reyes. We climbed the North Ridge, the left-hand sky-line in the photograph, in 1974. It took us three days and we bivouacked on the route.We abseiled down to the caveswhere wespent a further three nights, exploring the galleries and traversi...

A trip to Thailand to test using satellite imagery to monitor long-term disaster recovery. We had two or three days in the hot and steamy concrete jungle of Bangkok and then spent a week in Ban Nam Khem, a fishing village on the west coast, that had been badly damaged by the tsunami. We had a day off and visited the fabulous ‘James Bond’ island in Phnag Nga Bay Phuket where Roger Moore fought Scaramanga played by Christopher Lee in ‘Man with the Golden Gun’.