I first heard of the Julian Alps in the summer of 1975. Driving out of Glenbrittle during a climbing holiday on Skye, I gave a lift to a German girl, a healthy and enthusiastic outdoor sort, who waxed particularly lyrical about the Julians. However, tucked away at the far bottom corner of the Alps, they're not somewhere you're likely to end up by accident. The more obvious attractions of dramatic glacier landcape and soaring alpine peaks were always closer at hand. Yet the Julians attract a special sort of devotee. Many have sung their praises, but none more than the pioneer of climbing in the area, Julius Kugy. With that typical late nineteenth century combination of boundless energy and heady romanticism he set about exploring every corner of the range, setting out his adventures in that special (German) purple prose of the period. Even today he is omnipresent whenever the Julians are written about. His most celebrated dicta, carved in gnarled wood, can be read at the most famous beauty spots in the area.
So it was with eager anticipation that I headed off to join up with Andy and Clara Hartley at their flat in Monfalcone. Only an hour and a half away, the Julians had suddenly become, not a distant secondary range, but the most obvious and convenient option. Once I'd recovered from the previous evening's somewhat hectic drive down from Treviso airport, Andy and I got packed up and set off for Valbruna. Andy, an ardent porer over map and guide-book, had prepared an all-action four days for us, starting with a hike up to the Grego hut. Having completed the (for me) laborious process of getting gear organised, changing clothes, pulling on boots, we set off along a dusty road in the growing heat of the day. We crossed a bridge over a wide, but completely dry river-bed. Of course, no glaciers! Once the spring-melt is over, the flow of water reduces to a mere trickle, disappearing altogether during a dry spell. And we were now in the middle of a heat-wave. As we reached the end of the road, we were relieved to enter a wood of reduced-size deciduous trees as we made the steeper climb up to the hut itself. Suddenly the wood opened up to a little alpine meadow and we were there. We flopped down at one of the tables outside the hut and got out our lunch. Bread, cheese and ham washed down by a mug of Apfelschorle. Andy started to set out his plans for the afternoon. I was feeling strangely listless, more so than could be justified by travel tiredness. Maybe I didn't feel properly a part of what had effectively become a sort of home game for Andy? Perhaps the loss of my mother last autumn had taken away my taste for adventure? Maybe middle age was blunting the edge of my Wanderlust? Suddenly the prospect of an afternoon's mountain climbing seemed a lot less enticing than the potentially blissful indolence of lolling around at the hut. With great patience and tact, Andy coaxed me into at least taking a stroll in the direction of the Jôf di Miezegnot, his projected destination for the afternoon.

No sooner had we set off than the evil spell was broken. The obvious truth was again revealed, that there are few activities that nourish both body and spirit as fully as mountain climbing. Once the body's habitual passivity is overcome, it becomes an eager participant in that experience of the more abundant life, which is surely the true, if unavowed, purpose of mountaineering. A delectable stroll up the mountain path to a bivouac hut set among the ruins of old First War barracks, then on up over broken rocks and scree to the summit. Jôf di Miezgenot confirms the tenet that the best views are to be had from lesser mountains. In the changing afternoon light the limestone walls of the "biggies" to the south took on an increasingly spectacular aspect, inviting comparison with the Dolomites. Yet the Julians retain their own special atmosphere - more intimate, more contained. Looking west, jagged horizon succeeded jagged horizon in a series of infinite nuances of blue and grey. To the east we identified the archetypal profile of Mangart which Andy had climbed the previous autumn. Meanwhile the northern battlements of the Jôf di Montasio seemed to grow increasingly intimidating. Our planned route for the following day would require us to pick a way through that apparently impossible verticality. We began to have second thoughts...

Back at the hut we fraternized with a group of Swedes who were staying the night. From Scania, they had the accents to prove it! We took dinner out on the terrace and enjoyed an evening that will linger long in the memory. Served a delicious meal of salsiccia, polenta and frico (a "deftig" fried cheese thing), we downed a mezzo-litro of wine while we drank in the mountain vision which surrounded us. The beauty of the evening enabled the subtlety of the light to work its effects as the extraordinary mountain architecture was revealed and then re-revealed like some magic-lantern show of the gods. As evening drew on, we gazed at the heavens while the dome of night slowly filled with stars, with even a hint of the Milky Way. Humbled into awkward silence, we went up to bed to the luxury of our own room, reassured that, whatever we did the next day, it wouldn't be something stupid. All we had experienced served only to confirm that life is too precious to be risked in acts of schoolboy bravado...


One of the charms of the Julians is that they sit astride the Italian-Slovene frontier, in fact the highest peak, Triglav, is wholly within Slovenia and is a place almost of pilgrimage to the Slovenes. We weren't going to Triglav, but we were going to Slovenia. Abandoning the idea of the Amalia route on the north wall of Montasio, we returned to the car and headed for the border. Our destination was Mangart. Having climbed it a few months previously, Andy generously agreed to guide me up it by way of an introduction to a via ferrata. Crossing into Slovenia I enjoyed that special frisson of being in a country I had never visited before. Slovenia is not as foreign as it was. A self-confident member of the European Union, it will be joining the Euro next year. And yet, the incomprehensibility of the language and the baffling nature of the signposts conspire to create a sense of the exotic as in a Tintin cartoon.
We paid the toll and nosed up the steep, narrow road to the foot of our mountain. It is an obvious tourist destination, and we were not alone. We got into the queue and arrived at the start of the climb. It very quickly became apparent that our ferrata was a pretty straightforward one. Before too long we emerged on to the summit into what amounted to a crowd of revellers speaking exitedly in a variety of languages! In between eating and admiring the surrounding peaks, we got chatting to a nice Austrian couple who kindly agreed to take our photograph together. We opted to go down by the normal route in order to avoid having to return by the ferrata. This involved a degree of wading through boulder scree where I contrived, humiliatingly and painfully, to fall flat on my face! Nothing more serious than bruised knees and pride. Gazing down the vertical face of the Italian side, one of our newfound Austrian friends described it as a Caspar David Friedrich moment. Just shows how you have to be ready for culture générale at all times!

Back down the valley and across the border, Andy insisted on a minor diversion to a sort of alpine lakeside lido, which encapsulated in some intense Fellini-esque manner the quintessence of Italy on holiday. We took turns plunging into the, literally, azure waters, before treating ourselves to an espresso and setting off to out to our next destination, the Piano Alto di Montasio. Storm clouds were gathering as we arrived and, allowing for my having to return to the car to fetch a replacement film, we made haste to reach the shelter of the Rifugio Brazza before the heavens opened. Racing ahead of Andy, I arrived at the hut just as the hail started to pelt down, only to be greeted by Andy looking like the cat who'd got the cream! He'd taken a short-cut I'd missed, and, in the nick of time, had succeeded in adopting a pose of studied nonchalance to greet my arrival!

It's strange how different the huts can be. I've stayed in worse hotels than the Grego, while the Brazza fell short of the average Scottish bothy! The evening meal consisted of, er, salsiccia and polenta. Not a patch on the previous night's though - no funghi and no rib-sticking frico! After mature reflection as to our next day's programme, we decided to go for the traverse of the Buinz ridge by the Ceria-Merlone route. It is a route "con attrezzatura", i.e. partly via ferrata. It was the "partly" which worried me. What would happen when we ran out of handrail? We didn't have a rope.There was talk of it taking up to ten hours. What about afternoon thunderstorms? Hoary hut denizens spoke of the climb as being seemingly never ending. Parts were apparently horrendously exposed. We agreed, however, to have a look at it.

The next morning we were up and away before 6.30. The path up to the col at the start of the ridge was a thing of true beauty. It elevated us effortlessly to the required height, traversing elegantly across the mountainside to the start of the route. After some initial faffing around, we found the line of steel hawsers and red marks which indicated the route. From then on we were able to follow the climb almost without difficulty, up onto the ridge, which we followed, poised between earth and sky, through breathtaking rock formations and over precipitous escarpments. Groups of ibex with their demonic horns edged surefootedly aside as we passed. We proceeded with a steady rhythm, up, down and over, stopping only briefly for a drink or a bite to eat. Our pride in our own progress was only slightly undermined as we found ourselves overtaken by a guy in running shoes with a dog! The exposed part was definitely exposed and although one was as likely to fall over the precipice as one was to throw oneself off a pavement into the path of an oncoming truck, we were not unimpressed! And then suddenly we found ourselves at a small col with a marked route down off the mountain and it was all over. It was with a certain sense of anti-climax that we picked our way down to the main path and found the beaten track leading to the Rifugio Corsi. As we relaxed from the concentrated attention of the climb, we became aware of the almost miraculous expanses of alpine blooms clinging to the rough slope of scree above a residual snow-field. Arriving at gentler slopes, we dawdled, luxuriating in the afternoon sun and the satisfaction of our own tiredness. And then finally we drifted on to the hut. Subtracting dawdle time, the route had taken us eight hours - respectable by any standards.


The Corsi hut was different again. Beautifully situated, it had the atmosphere of a seventies commune. Love, peace and the comradeship of the hills was in the air. Andy dug up a guitar and gave a rendition of his very seventies repertoire. In the circumstances he could hardly fail. By mountain standards we caroused until late into the night, not getting to bed until after ten o'clock. The next morning we rose at our leisure and, not without a sense of regret, set off back to the Piano Montasio. We walked up to the col separating the two valleys through exquisite hanging gardens of mountain flora. At the summit we lingered, neither of us willing to tear ourselves away from the intimate embrace of the Julian Alps, spread before us in all their rich variety and spectacular glory. Unable to stay longer, we headed down to the tree-line, the larch and the dwarf-pine, on down through ever richer yet infinitely delicate plant-life.
As we walked, we put up hosts of tiny butterflies, which rose in greeting as if sharing with us the joy of being alive. We hit the track leading back to the car. Our short holiday was over, but I felt invigorated, rejuvenated even. This is the real secret of mountaineering which is not to be measured by routes ticked off or graded difficulties overcome. It is, in a sense, a drug, which, working in ways beyond our ordinary ken, feeds us with the elixir of life itself. Can't wait for my next fix!

Went up to Turku to do the Environment informal. The Finns seem to be front-loading their meetings in order to avoid the long cold winter nights. Jetting into the organised, temperature-controlled Finnish summer was a deeply reassuring experience. The sense of thoroughly reflected order which Finland emits is profoundly soothing. The constant interplay of lakes, forests, neatly rectangular buildings, lakes, forests, neatly rectangular buildings is a balm to the restless soul. The honesty, industry and practical resourcefulness of the Finns have promoted them to the top of the Lisbon goals class. Polite, helpful, with a quirky sense of the absurd, Finns are delightfully straight-forward people to deal with. They come out top of the Transparency International guide as the least corrupt country in the world - developing countries take note.
What's the shadow side? There has to be one. One suspects that there must be a repressed wantonness in the Finnish psyche that could cause a man to suddenly snap and start crossing the road before the little green man has fully lit up! To insanely reject the immutable laws of gender equality and refuse point-blank to help with the washing-up! To rush out into the street and scream at the top of his voice "Lordi are shit!"
Something of this vibration is captured in a novel recommended to me by Jari (who else?). My Finnish being sadly below par, I am constrained to read it in Swedish. "Löpgravsvägen", by Kari Hotakainen, tells the tale of a man whose frustrated ambition for ordinary happiness in this life develops into an insane and all-consuming obsession, which translates into reality via his autisitically over-focussed command of the practical. A Finnish Everyman, perhaps? Through the eyes of the hero we are treated to a vision of the small-minded self-righteousness, which is the almost inevitable corollary of a society which attaches such importance to the virtues of order and practicality. Jari says he'll lend me the film they've made of it. He says it's OK, but not as good as the book. I can see why. A book is so much better at conveying inner monologue. A film has to "show" everything, even the invisible.
As for the mission, we were treated to a "Best of Finland" weekend. Ferry trip to an island in the Turku archepelago with an excellent meal in a beautiful wooden building bathed in the special clear light of a nordic summer evening, a trip to Turku castle for a Renaissance dinner and show, which included an extremely talented female singer with an exquisite rendition of a period Italian song, an extended trip round the archipelago with a beer and schnapps meal on board. Some of the summer-houses looked utterly fantastic. It seems their prices are too - if they're for sale at all! Normally they are passed on within families (largely Swedish-speaking, apparently). Carol and I came this way a couple of years ago, when we took the night boat from Turku to Stockholm. Carol was entranced by the archipelago, which seemed like something from a magical other world in the shimmering late evening light. Would a fortnight in a delectable summer house on an island make for a successful holiday? I discussed it with our Italian colleagues. No. Too boring. Too depressing. Not enough action. Maybe, but if you come to Finland, it is surely to open the pores of your soul to receive into yourself a sense of the greatness of surrounding nature. Not to "do" anything, not to notch up another "experience", but to take the time to be. Do we dare? Next year, perhaps.
I don't think I'm revealing any state secrets when I say that the "informal" meeting was a carefully staged affair. Three key-note speakers, the best being Dr. Watson (sic) from the World Bank, who, in the manner of David Bellamy, gave a very interesting talk on the relationship between Energy, Climate Change and Bio-diversity. The take-away message was the overriding need for coordination between different policy areas and the difficulties which arise from the what he called the "silo" mentalities of individual disciplines. Twenty-five member states plus the Commission then took the floor to more or less agree with him. A case of "noyer le poisson", perhaps?
How discouraged should we be by these environmental Cassandras? It may well be that the earth is better able to look after itself than we, in our self-importance, are prepared to admit. Clearly, a balance must be struck between the need for a responsible use of the earth's resources and the requirement that we live our lives free of a self-imposed puritanical guilt. The end of the world has been nigh for many thousands of years. Possibly it may stumble along for a few aeons yet.

"Blood, Sweat and Arrogance" is the title of the latest work of revisionist history by Gordon Corrigan. Carol got it for me as a birthday present, knowing how much I'd enjoyed his previous book, "Mud, Blood and Poppycock". "Mud, Blood and Poppycock" argues that the history of the British contribution to the First World War was effectively hijacked by lefties, war poets and the anti-war lobby, creating what is now the mythical view of the conflict as a criminal waste of life, senselesly protracted by a bunch of incompetent generals. This, Corrigan maintains, is a travesty of the truth. What really happened is that, despite appalling difficulties and set-backs, the British army drew significant lessons from its inevitable mistakes. By the end of the war it was the only allied force in the field capable of defeating the most magnificent fighting force the world had ever seen, the German Imperial Army. By that stage the French army was too exhausted and the American army too inexperienced to offer the same hardened fighting capability as the British. It was they that truly won the war.

"Blood, Sweat and Arrogance" sets out to do a job on the myth of British triumph in the Second World War with special emphasis on the role of Churchill. While acknowledging Churchill's vital contribution to rallying the nation with his matchless oratory, he goes on to catalogue a whole series of potentially catastrophic errors of judgement:

- Churchill's defence-cutting budgets while Chancellor of the Exchequer in the twenties was a significant element in Britain's relative unpreparedness for war in 1939.
-Churchill became Prime Minister after the fiasco of the Norwegian campaign for which he was largely responsible in his capacity as Lord of the Admiralty.
- He was an active hindrance to the generals during the North African campaign through his dangerous attempts at micro-management and his constant insistence on offensive action before troops and equipment were in a state of proper preparedness.
- He was responsible for the futile Greek expedition and the debacle of Crete which his generals had advised against.
- He sacked Wavell and Auchinleck, replacing them with the less competent Montgomery for PR rather than professional reasons.
- He pursued the "Soft Underbelly" policy of advancing through Italy, a costly and wasteful error of judgement.
- He pushed for the Dieppe raid, another tragic and unecessary failure.
- He was a powerful advocate of the bomber offensive on Germany, then ditched Harris when he became politically inconvenient.
- He insisted on maintaining Montgomery in charge of the British forces in Europe, despite his proven inability to work with Eisenhower.

Corrigan also gets to grips with a number of other myths about the British war effort:

- Dunkirk did not consist of a " flotilla of small boats" ferrying the troops across the Channel. There were small boats, but they were largely used to bring people out to larger vessels, not least requisitioned cross-Channel ferries.
- Despite "Blood, Sweat and Tears", a German invasion of Britain was never really on the cards. It would have required not only the prior destruction of the Royal Air force, but also of the Royal Navy which could reasonably have been expected to have tolerated almost any casualties in order to prevent the enemy effecting a landing.
- That the RAF was in fact saved from destruction by the Luftwaffe's decision to stop bombing airfields and radar stations and start bombing cities and towns.
- Montgomery was anything but a military genius. At El Alamein his predecessors had, through earlier defensive battles, left him in a position where he could hardly lose. In fact, his exploitation of his victory was pedestrian in the extreme. British progress on the Caen front after the D-day landings was painfully slow. His one attempt at a brilliant campaign, the Arnhem operation, was badly mismanaged.
- German troops were better trained, better equipped and better led than the British and, most importantly, much more flexible in responding to the challenges of battle.

And so on... Gordon Corrigan is an ex-soldier, which gives him an obvious advantage in understanding the practicalities of warfare. However, some of his laboured explanations of troop dispositions can get a bit wearing. Proper understanding would require a table-top map and the use of flag-markers! A retirement project, perhaps.

What Corrigan really does is collapse the myth which lies at the heart at the British "sense of nationhood". Britain did not win the war. Once Nazi Germany had contrived to find itself at war with Russia, Britain and America, it never had a hope in hell. The war served only to accelerate the end of empire and Britain's loss of prestige and influence in the world. John Bull's sense of racial superiority over Johnny Foreigner is built upon a myth, a self-flattering lie. It was even evident in the recent defeat of the English in the World Cup, as the frustrated master-race vented its collective spleen on the unsportsmanlike, cheating foreigner Ronaldo, who pretty much forced the lilywhite Wayne Rooney to stamp on an opponent's testicles while he was lying on the ground.

Tread carefully, for you are treading on my dreams!

In Paris the other day we went to visit the Musée de l'Orangerie, only recently reopened earlier this year. The prime exhibit is the collection of Monet's paintings of waterlilies, "Les Nymphéas".
We had naively imagined that we would simply drift in and look around at our leisure, but our hearts sank as we spied the queue snaking its way around the Jardin des Tuileries. However, after a moment's hesitation, we got into line and waited our turn under the hot sun. Carol struck up a conversation with a charming English lady, while I went off to get some drinks to fend of dehydration during the long wait to come.
The fact is that the long wait entirely changes the nature of the visit. Instead of the casual but poised breeze through the exhibits we had imagined, we had unintentionally become involved in a sort of aesthetic pilgrimage, a strange Haj to some artistic Mecca. What cultural epiphany were we hoping to experience that could compensate for an irritating and tiring near two hour wait? Does the nature of our artistic gaze change as a result of the degree of discomfort endured in order to experience that vision? More pain, more gain? What impossible unconscious demands are we placing upon Les Nymphéas by turning them into a secular Kaaba?

As it turned out, the waterlilies were beautifully displayed, impeccably top-lighted in a generous circular space, giving ample opportunity to appreciate both the detail of technique and the powerful overall impression created of the vast canvasses hung, as was the artist's original intention, as curved panoramas. Viewed up close, the effect is almost entirely abstract and even from a few metres distance the apparently casual nature of impressionistic technique becomes apparent. A dab of colour here, a flick of the brush there and the viewer is induced into interpreting the paint exactly as the artist intends. It occurs to me that the artist's magical touch with colour and light together with the viewer's instinctive act of interpretation combine to invest the paintings with a sense of enhanced reality - our everyday reality re-revealed to us as living vibration. It seems to me that this must account for the enduring success of the impressionist style. Visit any art gallery around the world and as often as not it is the Impressionists that attract the greatest attention. I can't help feeling that, at some level, this must be because they match our deeply felt need to re-experience our "ordinary" lives as the miracle they actually are. An epiphany in other words.

Quite apart from Les Nymphéas, the Orangerie houses an impressive array of early modern classics, the collection of Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume: Cézanne, Renoir, Derain, Modigliani, Gauguin, Picasso, Rousseau, Sisley, Utrillo, Matisse, Soutine, Van Dongen...One is often torn between a desire to appreciate the paintings from an art history perspective and the feeling that any real work must function independently of context. Actually, at the end of the day, it is the temperament of the artist that decides for you. Because a painting is, willy-nilly, so revealing of the artist's nature, I believe there is a pre-conscious tendency to like or dislike the person. Thus I feel myself drawn to Matisse, while Picasso is difficult to like. Cézanne commands sincere respect without warmth of affection. Modigliani intrigues while irritating. Rousseau charms, but is somehow autistic etc. etc. It would be interesting to read the biographies of the artists without knowing their names to see whether one's reactions match up! Another project to work on...