The contents of this blog may not always have direct relevance to my professional offerings. Read on if you wish to find out more about me as a person.
When I moved to Penzance one of the first things I had to eat was, naturally, a pasty. It was huge. Bigger than my head, and I couldn’t finish it. It was from Lavenders, and made here in the town. After that, I noticed the sheer number of establishments which sold pasties. And there began [...]
My good friend Rob Armour Chelu has recently set up a new archaeology consultancy, Armour Heritage. One of Rob’s many specialisms is archaeological advice for renewable energy schemes whose developments may impact upon the historic environment. I have set up the bones (if you’ll pardon the appalling pun) of Rob’s archaeology website, and have chosen [...]
Here are some fun photos taken on my phone from around San Pedro de Atacama. The town is built mainly in adobe, which is effectively a mixture of clay-rich soil, straw, and sand. This is often mixed with stones, and walls are then rendered with a clay slip to finish and protect them. Adobe isn’t [...]
Today we landed back in the UK. Thanks to spotty wifi and utterly excusable holiday-induced laziness, I haven’t managed to blog about every place that we visited in Chile, so I will catch up with a few posts this week. Our visit to see flamingos on the great Atacama Salt Flats and the high altitude [...]
I’m typing this sitting in a pleasant 26C heat by a swimming pool. The UV meter outside the (rather excellent) archaeology museum here in San Pedro de Atacama is recommending people of pale complexions to stay out of the sun. Since I currently resemble something akin to a freckled ghost, I’m doing just that. Some [...]
Imagine a landscape that is so barren, so alien, yet beautiful in its many forms. Shiny rock salt crystals glint and shine as the sun lowers in the sky. Small cave systems, organically shaped by water millennia ago, meander through gorges. This is Valle de la Luna, or Moon Valley, situated in the north of [...]
Santiago is a wonderful city. I would love to go back, and the longer I stayed, the more I liked it. This is not always the case for every place that I have visited, especially huge cities. So what do I like about it? Perhaps it's the slightly crumbly Colonial architecture, with its plant-ridden façades, [...]
This first photo could well be accompanied by the Orb's “Little Fluffy Clouds” as a soundtrack. The skies here are simply incredible. This is the view over Moon Valley. As the sun sets the colours of the landscape change dramatically, framed by equally stunning skies, as the clouds change from white to red, to finally [...]
Today we flew from Santiago to Calama in the north of Chile to continue our adventures. I haven’t had time to finish blogging about Santiago and Valparaiso yet, so expect a few out-of-sequence posts in the next few days. Soon after arriving we went on a tour of Valle de la Luna – Moon Valley [...]
Parts of Santiago de Chile are rather run-down, made worse by the earthquake in 2010. Crumbling buildings and broken walls are de rigeur as they wait their turn for reconstruction or demolition. Artists have helped to add some welcome splashes, and often, riots of colour to the downtown area. Here are some photos to give [...]