I really liked the message on this leaflet and the wider message of the ALP Project, which “aimed to safeguard high alpine habitat, one of the last pristine environments in southern Europe” (see here). Having not seen a single plastic tree tube and next to no litter in something like 300km and 25,000m of ascent…
Category: Lessons from abroad
One of the great pleasures of walking in the Alps are the mountain flowers. I have always got particular enjoyment from seeing plants which are rare in Scotland, like the Alpine Sow Thistle, growing profusely. Until recently the Alpine Sow Thistle was confined to a few inaccessible ledges in the Cairngorms but last year was…
Traditional systems of transhumance, where people move their livestock up hill in summer and then back down in winter, are still fairly widely practised in the Italian Alps, in contrast to Scotland where the summer migration to the shielings ended when large flocks of sheep replaced people. In some ways walking the Grande Traversata delle…
For my first few days walking the Grande Traversata dell Alpe (GTA) – I started from the Nufenenpass on 24th July – it was cloudy, windy and periodically wet, the forests were predominantly composed of conifers and the mountain flowers still out While some flowers were past their best others were in full bloom. As…