Inle Lake - Burma by Bike

After a brief overnight stop in Rangoon, an early morning internal flight, the holiday starts in earnest with three nights in Nyguanshwe a bustling town immediately to the north of the Inle Lake.

Early morning departure

The lake is one of Myanmar's most important tourist attractions and large new developments in the surrounding hills suggest an explosive growth of interest. Perhaps the most iconic attraction are the fisherman on the lake who guide their boats standing up and with a leg wrapped around an oar. The towns around and on the lake are built on stilts and support a population of some 70,000 who make a living from tourism, fishing and agriculture. The agriculture is particularly interesting with tomatoes and other vegetables growing on beds of water hyacinths floating on the lake. The agriculture is relatively recent, only started in the 1960s, and agriculture and population growth is threatening the survival of the lake and the very thing that attracts the tourists. Tourists and products to sustain them are ferried around the lake at great speed in long narrow canoes powered by ancient diesel engines. It's an amazing place but with an uncertain future.

Burma by Bike

In January 2014 we went on our first ever organised cycling tour.  We enjoyed the trip to SW India so much that we decided to repeat the experience in 2015 with a similar trip to Myanmar (Burma). Read on to see if the second trip was as good as the first.

A Circular Walk from Arundel

This is one of my favourite local walks.  If it was a real ale it would be called something like ‘Old Dependable’, I’ve walked it dozens of times, it’s familiar and never disappoints.  It starts and finishes in Arundel, takes you through wooded parkland, crosses the meandering River Arun (twice), traverses classic high chalk downland, and swoops back to Arundel along a lovely dry valley.  It’s just a shade under 19kms long, can be completed in under five hours and is just tough enough to justify a couple of pints or so of genuine real ale in Arundel before returning to Brighton (or wherever).

To be honest it does challenge the number No 2 ‘Walks from Brighton Rule’ (you have to be able to get to and from the walk from Brighton by public transport) as it takes nearly an hour to get there on either bus or train (you can get there nearly as quickly from London).  It’s not that far as crow flies but if you go by train you have to change at Ford and the bus option, the ‘Coastliner 700’ is even less direct.  When I had a car the rule could easily be ignored but no longer.

Circular Walks in the Vall de Boí

Walking in the Vall de Boí is really well organised and most people will find enough to keep busy for 2/3 days within the confines of the valley itself.  Visiting the Romanesque churches provides a series of mini objectives and with bars and restaurants in all the villages there are also plenty of places to stop and relax.

The paths themselves are wonderful. In nearly all cases, they are based on the original inter settlement routes and are as old as the villages themselves.  Designed for pack horses/ponies as well as pack people they are perfectly graded and walking along them is a real pleasure.

Depending on how much time you spend in the churches (they are not that big) you can get around the valley in 9/10 hours. It's a challenge, but not quite as mad as it sounds as the paths are so easy and such a pleasure stopping is a problem.

El Pont de Suert to Boí

The GR11-20 from El Pont de Suert to Boí is an amazing stretch of walking and if the weather is good (and the route needs (deserves) good weather) could be a classic.  Essentially it's a contour walk and spend hours crosses moors that run high  on the side of a valley.  Although the immediate scenery is wonderful, especially in October when mellow autumn colours dominate, it's the views to the west that really grab the attention, particularly Monte Malditos (‘damned mountain’) and its highest peak the Pico Aneto (3404m).  Great views like this however, don't come cheap and working your way up the contour walk involves a climb of over 1,000m. 

It was fine but cloudy when I did it, but bad weather should be avoided.   It's an exposed route, stays up around at 2000m for several hours, and the path is hard to follow without GPS.  

Looking north into the Val de Boí

El Pont de Suert - Circular Walk No 2

After the navigational challenges of the first circular walk out of El Pont de Suert the second is a 'piece of cake'. It's a completely different - less about abandoned villages and decaying trails and more about huge open views, particularly north into the Pyrenees.

El Pont de Suert - Circular Walk No1

This walk is an easy one that, with its delights and frustrations, is a good introduction to walking in northern Spain.  There are signs everywhere of a countryside which used to be a lot busier.   Unfortunately the low usage levels of paths originally used to connect villages which are now abandoned means that some are getting overgrown.  Navigation is occasionally a challenge, particularly when the way marking is less than perfect.

On the face of it, this is a straightforward walk.  Just to the east of  El Pont de Suert is a shallow secluded valley full of small oak trees.  The walk heads out near the valley bottom and returns higher up on its northern side. It follows an old trail connecting ancient villages and farmsteads.