In planning any trip most of us will have a list of must-sees, the sights that drove us to want to visit in the first place. For us, in the case of the Philippines, those sights included the rice terraces, hanging coffins and the tarsiers of Bohol. Our trip was built around these, but that left plenty of room to see much more.
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Robins are the friendliest of our wild birds, or at least they are friendly to us. They are fiercely territorial and will aggressively defend their domain against other robins, but we invade it they seem positively pleased to see us. The little chap above joined us on a recent walk around the London Wetlands Centre.
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Today London is a huge metropolis, but it wasn’t always so, of course. It started as a small Roman settlement on the north bank of the River Thames, Londinium. In 200 AD a wall was built, surrounding and protecting the city. Over the centuries it grew and grew, but that Roman town remained at its heart, the original City of London.
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The colonial city of Vigan is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, for good reason. It is one of the few Spanish colonial towns in the Philippines to remain relatively intact. Its unique architecture fuses native Filipino and Oriental building styles with more typical colonial Spanish features.
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The Kankanaey people of Sagada, an Igorot (mountain) tribe in northern Luzon, follow a unique burial ritual. Rather than placing their coffins in the ground they hang them from cliffs or place them in a cave. They believe that the higher the dead are placed, the closer they are to heaven and the greater the chance of their spirits reaching a higher nature in the afterlife.
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‘That’s my village, Bangaan’, said Conchita, pointing to a cluster of houses among the rice terraces far below where we stood on the terrace of a simple roadside restaurant. Peering down through the drizzling rain I could make out a simple church and rooftops of corrugated metal and thatch.
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Much of Manila is modern, manic and frenetic. While there are sights to be explored these are scattered and separated by long drives in slow-moving traffic. But Intramuros is different. The name means ‘within the walls' or 'inside the walls’, for this is the small historic walled area where the city began.
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Summer temperatures in Death Valley can reach as high as 47 Celsius / 116 Fahrenheit. Even in mid-October, when we visited, daytime highs were in the mid 30s Celsius / 90s Fahrenheit. Nevertheless visitors want to see as much of this amazing landscape as they can, even if that involves taking some risks.
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The great redwoods and sequoias of California are not merely trees; they stand to remind us of the beauty and resilience of nature. They have inspired countless artists, writers and nature lovers. They epitomise strength, survival and the grandeur of the natural world.
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Kings Canyon National Park consists of two areas. One is Grant Grove. Detached from this to the north, separated from it by large tracts of forest and wilderness, is Kings Canyon itself. Like Yosemite this was carved by a massive Ice Age glacier and shares much of its grandeur. But it is a little harder to reach, a little less famous and consequently a lot quieter!
