offpeakfang

Liechtensteiner Alps, March 2020 We had originally planned a hiking-through-microstates holiday where we would fly to Ancona, Italy, then go hiking through San Marino. We would then take a sleeper train from Bologna to Salzburg and connect through to Feldkirch, whence we would hike through the whole width of Liechtenstein. That was the plan, until Covid-19 hit Northern Italy and this whole chunk of the journey fell through.  But Liechtenstein and Switzerland were still fine at this point, and I had already booked a day pass for the Swiss railways for the journey, so at the last minute I booked a cheap flight from London to Geneva to spend the day seeing the scenery through Switzerland and Liechtenstein.  Southwold, Suffolk from a light aircraft.  My Saturday morning that week started with leaving home at 7am, and included two local buses, a cross-country flight in a light aircraft, another bus, a train, a rail replacement bus service, the Tube, a visit to the British...

East Anglia is a very flat part of the UK, and Ipswich is accordingly a very flat town - so what are the highest points of the town?  A look at a topographic map of Ipswich and the surrounding area doesn't show very many hills. There's a plateau around RAF Wattisham that curves around to the Newmarket area containing the 136 m Great Wood Hill, the highest point in Suffolk. It lies on the same fold of hills that eventually becomes the Chilterns around London, but Wattisham is well outside the Ipswich town boundary.  Within Ipswich itself, the highest point is at the Park Road / Elsmere Road reservoir and water tower, just at the top of the Constitution Hill road and just north of Christchurch Park. It lies at the great altitude of 57 metres.  57 m, at the base of the water tower. The 1924 water tower is now disused.  It's not much of a mountaineering achievement, but it's at least nice to know that I've cycled up to the top of the town. Water towers form a common pa...