Went over to Ireland during the August bank holiday weekend to meet my friend, Julie. We started off in Dublin, went up to Newgrange, drove down to Cork and across to the SE corner, all in a weekend. Photos are in the gallery.

Just had a long weekend of white water sports in Slovenia. This is where the Soca River is, an excellent mixture of grade 3-5 rapids for a range of activities. Since it's a glacial river, it's absolutely freezing which is a good reason not to fall in.

We had a kiwi guide - you can't get away from Antipodeans in Europe!

First-up was a session of night kayaking with an amazing view of the stars. A nice sedated introduction to the trip.

Next was a morning whitewater kayak session which brought back memories of the Avon Descent as we navigated a series of rapids. The more difficult grade 4-5 rapids were negotiated in a white water raft.

A canyoning session took a few hours and the highlight was abseiling a 30-metre high waterfall which finished with falling 10 metres off the end of the rope into the freezing rock pool below.

The scariest/most exciting part of the trip was "hydrospeeding". This is a combination of body-boarding and kayaking, with a modified body board and flippers. So basically people go down huge rapids head-first through large stoppers and attempting to avoid the whirlpools. We had a couple of guides in kayaks showing us the correct lines through the rapids. Our route was through deep canyon for a few hours and there was no exit routes so once we started we had to continue all the way through some very exciting rapids.

A few photos from the trip are in the elly.net.au gallery.

Slovenia has become more accessible after becoming more politically stable over the past few years and I can thoroughly recommend it. Almost as good as New Zealand!

I'm currently in the process of migrating my web host provider which means that this site is being updated as I type. Hopefully it won't take too long, and it'll be bigger and better soon.

Watch this space!

2006 is here, and I''m currently fulfulling a "one mountain a week" policy, no matter what the weather. Plenty to choose from around Cheltenham :-) . Another new year''s resolution - update this website more often.

I joined in with another Mountaineering Club trip, this time up to the Lake District. We stayed in the Swiss Alpine Club hut at Patterdale, found here on Google maps.

The Lake District is absolutely stunning, topped off by some very nice traditional English pubs scattered throughout the valleys. On Saturday, we had a scramble up the St Sunday Crag towards Helvellyn. But a nice arctic gale came in, literally blasting us off the ridge to the valley below. We found plenty of ice waterfalls and frozen lakes lower down, all this in the steadily increasing snow and sleet. A few photos in the photo gallery. A few hours later, we dried ourselves out back at the hut before heading to one of the local pubs to try out the local ales.

Sunday was spent up near Mungrisdale. The weather was different on Sunday - it rained all day instead of part of the day but less wind meant we managed another scramble up high before descending to a tarn and then down for a hot drink in another local pub.

Despite the weather, a terrific weekend, and I can''t wait to see what it''s like when the clouds are away. 'here\nphoto gallery'