San Francisco on Foot

In response to Sepia Saturday's meme of old photos of Glasgow, I thought I'd expand my remit of walking in Lanzarote to that of walking in Spanish founded cities - in this case, San Francisco - because I have a set of photos I took which must count as veteran, if not vintage.  In November 1974, I was a young RAF engineer officer, and got a wonderful chance to go on a 7 week detachment of Vulcan bombers to Australia and Singapore.  It was even more wonderful than I expected, because the separation decided me that Little Nell was the girl for me, a decision I have never regretted in 39 years.  Anyway, back to the meme.  En route in our turboprop Bristol Britannia, we landed at McClellan USAF base near Sacramento, California.  As we had about 18 hours until our onward flight to Hickham Field, the USAF base near Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, a group of us hired a minibus and went on a day trip to San Francisco.

We had about 5 hours in the city, and went on a rapid sightseeing walk, managing to get in most of the famous sights in the process.  Looking back through my old slides 
(taken on my trusty Boots Beirette camera (£8!)
 (photo http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Beier_Beirette_series ) 

 I can see we drove across the Oakland Bay Bridge into town. 

And up Market Street, passing the cable car turntable at the Powell Street intersection. ( I apologize for the blur, but it was point and shoot out of the bus window). This photo was the one that lead me to use the trip based on Alan's crowd theme. The building on the right, which is now GAP, is the Flood Building (http://www.floodbuilding.com) a well-known landmark which, at the time housed the largest Woolworths in the USA - do you remember the logo?

And here it is today

Having parked, we started to explore on foot and cable car.  Below, is a view from Nob Hill down  I think, Leavenworth Street,

towards Fisherman's Wharf,

which hasn't changed much in 40 years (Google Earth view).

From there, we walked to Telegraph Hill,

and climbed the tower.   Facing the camera is my soon to be best man, Dave Osborne.

And here I am looking out towards Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge

probably one of the most spectacular city views I've ever seen. 

Most people will recognise the pointed building below, from countless TV shows,

as the Transamerica Pyramid (http://www.thepyramidcenter.com/) 

Having done a fair amount of walking, we stopped for coffee at the famous Enrico's on Broadway Street in the Tenderloin - one of the locations in Bullitt - now closed.

 Across the road was the Penthouse cinema showing what was then,

a pair of revolutionary films - we didn't have time to catch them (But we did in Honolulu!) 

Here is the Cinema, now a wine bar!

and here is Enrico's today

And here, finally, is your hero, dressed to suit a 1970's America!

To see what other Sepians have made of today's prompt, go to this week's Sepia Saturday.

Caminante Revisited

Sepia Saturday is celebrating its 200th edition this week and Alan has invited all contributors to repost a favourite post . I thought I'd use this one which explains why I chose my blogging name.



This post has been inspired by Sepia Saturday's photo for 13th April of a group of walkers, and my chosen blogging name Caminante, which means, simply, Walker (although it can also mean hobo!).  

Photos of my childhood are rather scarce, as we didn't own a camera, so my parents paid for a photographer, usually on a birthday. This shot looks like I'm about to go for a walk, so probably is the first recording of my hobby.

We spent our honeymoon on Tenerife, during which time we went to Pico Teide, the highest mountain in Spain.  Here I am right at the top. Thew air was pretty thin up there at 12,200 feet, as I realised when my cigarette only stayed alight whilst you drew on it, immediately then going out.  Someone was trying to tell me something, but it took another 3 years and the arrival of our daughter before I gave up!

In 1986/7 I spent 4 months in the Falkland Islands - sensibly some years after the war!  I had a weekend in January of R&R on the oddly named, but beautiful, Carcass Island, As I found, the weather there, in the height of their summer, was normally quite pleasant, although it could snow at any time. Here I am on one of the little hills dotting the island.

I've enjoyed walking all my adult life, and for the last twenty years or so, I've walked several times a month, originally around our home in Salisbury, so I've walked nearly all the footpaths in Wiltshire, Hampshire and Dorset, on my regular Sunday morning jaunts.  The farthest I got (limited by the length of car journey to the start), was West Bay in Dorset, which UK readers will know as Broadchurch from the current detective series. Here's how the murder scene looked in August 2003.

Now we live on Lanzarote, 70 miles off the coast of Western Sahara, it's springtime all year round, so shorts and T shirts are all I need - and a good pair of shoes because the volcanic stone is very harsh.  This photo from last November shows both aspects.

These days, I tend not to walk alone, except on well trodden paths, because, although you are unlikely to get exposure, even a twisted ankle in a spot with no mobile phone reception could be quite a challenge. I'm a member, along with about 90 others of an active walking group here.  Fortunately, we normally only get between 12 and 24 on each walk, otherwise it could get out of hand!  Here they are a week ago, having a breather during a walk around Los Helichos, a range of volcanoes in the north of the island, locally famous for their spring flowers.

This brings me back to the Sepia Saturday prompt, and the contrast between what is seen now and then as suitable attire for hiking.  I can't imagine how uncomfortable they would have been in rain, or blazing sunshine, or indeed on anything but good paved surfaces.  Perhaps it was the fact that walking was involved that was the mystery element!   

To see what others have chosen as their birthday contribution, visit Sepia Saturday's 200th edition.

Caminante

This post has been inspired by Sepia Saturday's photo for 13th April of a group of walkers, and my chosen blogging name Caminante, which means, simply, Walker (although it can also mean hobo!). 

Photos of my childhood are rather scarce, as we didn't own a camera, so my parents paid for a photographer, usually on a birthday. This shot looks like I'm about to go for a walk, so probably is the first recording of my hobby.

We spent our honeymoon on Tenerife, during which time we went to Pico Teide, the highest mountain in Spain.  Here I am right at the top. Thew air was pretty thin up there at 12,200 feet, as I realised when my cigarette only stayed alight whilst you drew on it, immediately then going out.  Someone was trying to tell me something, but it took another 3 years and the arrival of our daughter before I gave up!

In 1986/7 I spent 4 months in the Falkland Islands - sensibly some years after the war!  I had a weekend in January of R&R on the oddly named, but beautiful, Carcass Island, As I found, the weather there, in the height of their summer, was normally quite pleasant, although it could snow at any time. Here I am on one of the little hills dotting the island.

I've enjoyed walking all my adult life, and for the last twenty years or so, I've walked several times a month, originally around our home in Salisbury, so I've walked nearly all the footpaths in Wiltshire, Hampshire and Dorset, on my regular Sunday morning jaunts.  The farthest I got (limited by the length of car journey to the start), was West Bay in Dorset, which UK readers will know as Broadchurch from the current detective series. Here's how the murder scene looked in August 2003.

Now we live on Lanzarote, 70 miles off the coast of Western Sahara, it's springtime all year round, so shorts and T shirts are all I need - and a good pair of shoes because the volcanic stone is very harsh.  This photo from last November shows both aspects.

These days, I tend not to walk alone, except on well trodden paths, because, although you are unlikely to get exposure, even a twisted ankle in a spot with no mobile phone reception could be qite a challenge. I'm a member, along with about 90 others of an active walking group here.  Fortunately, we normally only get between 12 and 24 on each walk, otherwise it could get out of hand!  Here they are a week ago, having a breather during a walk around Los Helichos, a range of volcanoes in the north of the island, locally famous for their spring flowers.

This brings me back to the Sepia Saturday photo below, and the contrast between what is seen now and then as suitable attire for hiking.  I can't imagine how uncomfortable they would have been in rain, or blazing sunshine, or indeed on anything but good paved surfaces.  Perhaps it was the fact that walking was involved that was the mystery element!  Why not see what others have made of the prompt.

Playa Quemada to the Decorated Beach

In the south of Lanzarote is  Los Ajaches National Park, an area of huge glaciated valleys sweeping down from the mountain ridges to the coast.  Whilst the topography is reminiscent of the Welsh mountains, the landscape is completely different, with an almost complete lack of vegetation making it very barren and rocky.  Where the valleys meet the sea, is a series of beaches, separated by high headlands.  A couple of miles south of Playa Quemada, a little village with a black sheltered beach, scattered houses, and a few restaurants, under a cliff forming the southern boundary of a cove, is an extraordinary sight, like an oasis in the desert, a carefully tended walled garden, next to a shrine to the Virgin, dated 1991 and surrounded by artefacts that people have left over the years. I think that every week or so, a family come down the (very scary) track in their ancient truck, and camp out overnight, whilst they carefully tend, and extend the garden.  To date, I've found nothing about it in any publication, but, being on a marked Lanzarote walking route, it is visited almost every day by several hikers. The size and weight of some of the mementoes people have left makes me think that either they returned to leave them, or that they were told in advance - nobody normally walks the mountains carrying a huge chess piece on the off chance!

Here is a link to a 360 degree panorama of the shrine and garden, taken in February 2013 by Paul Boden of  360TurismoVirtual Tours

Panorama of the Decorated Beach

And here are some photos of the shrine and garden

And here is a photo taken by my wife, who blogs as Little Nell, in February 2011, when there was a boat, sadly now destroyed, on the beach. 

I suggest that you start the walk from the little square in Playa Quemada, where there is space to park your car.  When you return from the decorated beach, it's worth walking back to your car along the Quemada beach itself, which has wonderful views across the coast and mountains.

Finally, no walk from Playa Quemada would be complete without a drink and tapas at 7 Islas where Jose and Ana are delightful hosts.

BARRANCO DE TENEGŰIME

It had not rained more than a couple of drops in Lanzarote since December 2011, so everywhere was bone dry, then in the last week of September 2012  up to 44 millimeters of rain fell in some parts of the island.  My home, Playa Blanca, stayed stubbornly arid, with only a pitiful 4 millimeters of rain in the week.  On 27 September, I decided to go to a ravine I knew of, El Barranco de Tenegüime, to look for water and for the first time in three years of walking on Lanzarote, I got my boots muddy!  Not the way I used to walking in winter in Dorset ten years ago, when you felt you had a bucket of mud in each boot, but quite enough.

Studland Dorset, February 2002

Coincidentally, this week's prompt from Sepia Saturday  was about boots, so I thought I'd show how mine got so muddy on a desert island!

Lanzarote is dry, as in pictures of Mars from Curiosity dry. There is no standing water, and there are no streams or rivers, except when it rains, so to experience running water means going out to look for it as soon as there has been a shower.  Normally in Spring, we get about 150 or 200 millimeters of rain, and the whole island turns green.  The following pictures show a ravine which clearly has, in the past, had torrents cascading and carving through the volcanic rock, but so far this this year, it would have been absolutely arid, whereas it should have been a riot of grass, reeds and shrubs. We climbed about 460 metres, and walked about 10 Km in just over two hours, before descending a ridge down through a wind farm to our starting point.

At first the land was flat, and a lake had formed in a field.

 But then the ravine walls closed in, and the river bed became muddy.

As the ravine snaked its way uphill, we came across a succession of waterfalls, which were too high to scale, so we clambered around the rocks in the side of the gorge.

 Muddy boots and scrambling up rocky slopes are, we found, an uneasy combination.

Above the waterfalls, were marshes, surrounded by the terracing built by farmers over the centuries, to take advantage of the relatively damp conditions in the ravine.

Finally the ravine opened out into a valley, and we could see the wind farm above Los Valleys on the horizon.

By this time, I was a little jaded, and relished the chance for a breather!

 After that, it was all downhill, through the spooky wind farm with the really rather noisy blades whooshing over our heads.

Here, going down the final  rocky, muddy slope is Trish, my walking chum, who took all the photos, except this one

And finally we made it back to the car, with our boots transformed.

Tenegüime, Lanzarote, September 2012

The valley was absolutely beautiful, and I will go back in  March, when it should be a blaze of colour with the Spring flowers and foliage.


Why not put your electronic boots on and visit other contributors to Sepia Saturday.

Lanzarote Trees

I've been encouraged by Little Nell to take the plunge and contribute to Sepia Saturday, and since my home of Lanzarote is essentially an offshore bit of the Sahara, this week's theme about trees seemed like plunging in the deep end!  This first picture, of a Dragon Tree on Tenerife, a neighbouring island, qualifies as old, since I took it on honeymoon 36 years ago, and the tree itself is hundreds of years old.

Most of Lanzarote's trees are palms, but there are exceptions, such as this Papaya in a street in Haria.

And this Acacia, clinging to the cliff  over a footpath running a thousand feet above the sea at Famara.

Every Christmas huge "presents" are hung from this huge old fir in the plaza mayor - the town square - of Haria  where they dangle over the heads of the customers in the cafe below.

Sometimes the palms suffer in the strong trade winds, like this one, bowed but not defeated when it was partially uprooted, but which clawed its way back to the vertical - it's not really being supported by my walking group!

 
Sometimes, they are colonised by euphorbias, such as this parasitic growth

  And sometimes they give in, die, and fold over like this one, reminiscent of an elephant's trunk

The weather is not always perfect here, as this rather surreal image of palm trees in the mist (no gorillas though) shows:

One of our friends, on seeing this blog, sent me a photograph of a very old Acacia in his beautiful garden  overlooking Fuerteventura, across the Bocaina Straits

And finally, an artificial Christmas tree in the Marina Rubicon, Playa Blanca. To me, this picture sums up, better than a thousand words, why we live here in Lanzarote!