Adventures beyond the front door
When we started The Winding Trail, we knew that we wanted this to be a site where we shared the stories of our adventures in the outdoors, but also some of the people, places and spaces that inspire us. Sitting in a stone cottage overlooking the Atlantic on the Azores, we sketched out some of… Continue reading Outdoor Alternative – Rhoscolyn, Wales
– Bijaya Basic School (mid-build), Aarba Bijaya, Kaski (read about the PTN project here) Here at The Winding Trail we are proud supporters of the Pahar Trust Nepal, a charity that builds safe, durable schools in the mid-western foothills and the far-east of Nepal. As well as school building, the PTN also works on a… Continue reading Ride to the Sun for the Pahar Trust Nepal
It had been a long day exploring the island. We’d travelled east, to the very edge of São Miguel where the rocks look out across the ocean towards a Europe beyond the horizon. These were some of the first communities that settled in the Azores from Portugal, although in this part of the world, settled… Continue reading Time for tea – Gorreana, Azores
At the guesthouse, our landlady ushered us into a wooden room with a view out across the valley to the mountains on the other side. She lowered herself into a chair and carefully began entering our details into a laptop computer. A moment or two later and the printer started into life. ‘Your guest cards,’… Continue reading Cable cars, climate change and loving high places – Valluga, Lechtal Alps
There was a whisper that, lying somewhere in the woods, or deep in one of the gorges and caves created in this rift in the landscape somewhere in the south of Sweden, was a sleeping dragon. It was, they said, very old. As old as the Söderåsen itself. This ridge was created some 150 years… Continue reading Sleeping dragon – Söderåsen National Park
A ghostly photograph found in our collection took us back to a winter visit to Gdańsk and the night we arrived in the Polish city by train from Berlin. How you arrive in a city, and especially the time of year or day, can certainly have a big impact on your first impressions of a… Continue reading Postcard from The Winding Trail 07: Gdańsk
In the car park at Heimbach, as the river waters ran fast beneath the castle walls, we peered through the windscreen as the rain beat down on the car and puddles formed where the asphalt had been misshapen by time and the long reach of thick tree roots beneath the surface. We had known, before… Continue reading Walking in the rain – Heimbach, Eifel
When friends live in different countries it is not always easy to find time to spend together, so when we can capture the moment, we try to make the best of it. This time we met in Lucerne (Luzern) for a weekend by the lake. But while the town was welcoming and friendly, it was… Continue reading Queen of the Mountains – Rigi, Switzerland
As so often is the case when you approach somewhere new, we settled on a simple plan. From Lausanne station we would take the train that travelled east above the shore of Lake Geneva as far as our city pass would allow, and then we would walk home. It would be a walk that took… Continue reading On the terraces – Lavaux, Lake Geneva
On Christmas Eve, twelve months ago, we headed out from the small house overlooking the Atlantic and drove up onto the ridge that makes up the interior of São Jorge island, a landscape of fields divided by volcanic rock walls and the grassy cones of the volcanoes looped by dirt red tracks. We were hoping… Continue reading From the stormy sea to the winding trail
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