The natural glass of the Sand Sea is found in a large area stretching from just north of the Gilf Kebir to a few hundred km south of Siwa. The area of highest concentration is small but I’ve found small pieces of glass spread over a long but not wide distance. Mainly the glass is confined to four dune corridors- the ones used by cars storming up from the Gilf to Siwa.

The glass was formed by a giant meteorite hitting the earth it is widely believed.

Dated as being formed 29 million years ago when there was 1000 extra feet of earth/rock covering the earth’s surface; which is why we can’t see the meteorite spot- apparently- though Farouk Al Baz has found a 32 km diameter meteorite spot some hundred km or so south of the main area. This could work- though I doubt if even a comet would blow a hole a 1000 foot deep.

That the glass was formed from a space object is confirmed more or less by the presence of large quantities of iridium and more than a terrestial quota of nickel and other minerals. A massive explosion and impact is needed to make clear glass- if you look at artificial impactites formed by H and A bomb desert tests they look like fulgarite- that nobbly hollow bubbly glassy stuff caused by lightning strikes in sand. To make big lumps of pure glass you’d need the power of a many thousands of H bombs in one spot.

Other mysteries about the sand sea glass: it has no bits of rock adhering- these pure lumps are not found in other tektite sites in Moldovia and Saudi Arabia.

The largest lump found was 57lbs and is in a French Natural History museum. A 10kg lump found by Pat Clayton is in the Cairo Geological Museum- always worth a visit in its dusty shack-like quarters along the Corniche just before Maadi.

I’ve found some 1kg lumps and if you look hard you may too. Someone calculated from the spread of glass that 14 million tons of the stuff would have been generated. You get the feeling that it rises up through the sand over time. Other nice finds include worked pieces of glass- anything from 20,000 to 3000 years old – as Australian Aborigines switched to glass from broken bottles direct from worked stone, it’s hard not to imagine ancient man using glass if he had the chance.

The glass was first mentioned in modern times by traveller Fulgence Fresnel in 1846, though Tutankhamun’s pectoral scarab has been shown to be carved from the stuff, and not from quartz as was thought previously. The scarab, of course, in Egyptian mythology rolls the sun across the sky, so a glass scarab that catches the light kind of fits.

I once was given a piece by Rupert Harding Newman, the last member of the Zerzura club who died only recently. He had collected two big bags of the stuff back in 1935. “I don’t suppose there is any left now,” he said, a little shamefacedly.

Robert Twigger

“It’s over there,” said Dave, “Somewhere.” I scanned the desert horizon. It was midday and the Egyptian landscape was flattened by the overhead sun. In a few minutes, maybe ten, we would be the first people ever to be at that specific point on the earth’s crust. 28N 31E to be precise. 28 00 00 N 31 00 00E to be very precise. There would be no distracting minutes and seconds, just the pure integers of latitude and longitude. The going got tougher, the desert surface gravelly and now stretching uphill. We were climbing up the humpy left side of a wadi, or dry riverbed. There was no vegetation visible anywhere in a 360 degree circle- I scanned hard but saw nothing except low dun grey hills and dry valleys. The only sight that drew the eye was a rock breaking the skyline. We had parked the 4×4 some way back and now I was out of breath, what with the heat and going uphill. Dave strode on manfully, pulling ahead. It was then I suspected, that like Hillary and Tenzing, only one of us would get to that sacred spot first. We both had GPS machines that checked our position but Dave’s was bigger, more authoritative. Plus he had a longer stride than me. It looked like I was about to assume the Tenzing position.

We were only climbing a small hill not a mountain and we weren’t interested at all in the summit. What drew us on was the promise of bagging a confluence point. A confluence point is where a degree line of latitude and longitude meet like 50N 25W or where a whole lot of lines meet like the North or South poles. It has to be a whole number and on land or within sight of land. There are 14,029 out there. There are 11,396 still waiting to be bagged. And Dave and I were after 28N 31E , somewhere in the Egyptian desert between the Nile and the Red Sea.

Only with accurate surveying techniques could the height of mountains and their ‘importance’ be recognized. Everest only became interesting as a summit when we were able to measure it. The current craze for bagging every peak over 8000 metres is a continuation of this artificial exploration activity.

Even more abstract are the North and South poles. Not places in the normal sense- they are defined by a series of numbers- yet they have become the focus of intense interest. But only with the invention of latitude and longitude, the sextant and the accurate clock could these places actually be found.

Unfortunately to be the first to the Pole isn’t possible. And even being the 5000th is a costly and difficult enterprise. Everest can be climbed- if you have £60,000 to hand, otherwise you might consider the attractions of Snowdon or even Ben Nevis- after all, all three have been climbed by many many people before you.

If you want to be first then you have to look elsewhere. And as Roald Amundsen put it, “I cannot see the point in being faster or going a different way. For me there is only being first.” Which is tough advice to follow in a world that, at first sight, seems pretty well explored.

Then in 1996 confluence hunting was invented, thanks to the ubiquity of two new technologies- Global Positioning Satellites and the internet. At last it was possible to visit all those other confluence points apart from the poles. The race was on.

You can go confluence hunting anywhere. But the UK, USA and much of Europe are pretty well ‘pointed out’ There are only 4 confluence points left in the UK and all of those require a boat journey into our chilly coastal waters. In the USA, only Alaska still has points remaining to be claimed. Though, of course, many people enjoy collecting points others have already been to.

But for me, the whole point of pointing, was to be first. The organizing force behind confluence hunting, the Degree Confluence Project tends to play down the competitive aspect of the activity. There are no lists, as you get with twitchers, of who has the most ‘firsts’. This is one of the many good aspects of the Project. Naturally I wanted to know who had the most firsts but was glad that someone had decided not to pander to this cheap desire. There is something out of the ordinary and far sighted about the DCP. The website itself is a model of clarity, emphasizing visiting and making reports from points rather than mere bagging.

I heard about all this from my friend Dave, who works for an oil exploration company in Egypt. Dave was a bit wary when I first started probing about “confluence hunting”. He’s used to people scoffing, or not seeing the point, so to speak. I was like that at first. It seemed nuts to me to spend a lot of time and money just to go to an imaginary spot.

After I visited the DCP website I was converted. Suddenly it seemed like the most exciting thing you could do. I even got anxious that someone would rush out and do all the remaining points in Egypt that very week. What convinced me was the nature and the extent of the reports on the website. Because of the strict reporting procedure required by the degree confluence project, the abstract point becomes real. You have to take a photograph of the scene, plus photos in all the cardinal directions and one of the ‘zeroes’, the screen of the GPS machine that shows you are bang on the criss-cross of latitude and longitude. Then you submit a written account. If you peruse the thousands of reports of visits to confluence points the world over you begin to understand the grandeur of the whole thing. This is an amateur enterprise yet they, or we, will achieve something no government department, NGO, or monolithic UN organization could ever manage- which is- a report, both written and photographic, that covers the entire earth. These visits are self financed, self motivated, but over the coming fifty years every point will be visited- of that I have little doubt. At the equator confluence points are only 100km apart- as you get to the poles they get closer. It is the last great exploration project of the planet- until the next piece of technology comes along.

Grand thoughts for a grand adventure, none of which I was thinking as we rolled out of Cairo at 6.30am on our way to claim my first, and Dave’s 22nd point in Egypt. Dave, usually the model of a taciturn Scot, was surprisingly skittish and cheerful that morning. We all were (his wife and son came along too). There is nothing like the promise of even a small adventure to raise the spirits, that and leaving at the crack of dawn just like going on holiday as a child.

It’s getting harder and harder to find valid alibis, one’s that stand up to more than a cursory examination, alibis to get you away from the remote control and the wide screen telly. I don’t know why we need alibis to get out and about, but we do. I suppose it used to be hunting and making journeys to barter and trade, but you can do all that on the internet now. I know from my own experience that the alibi must convince oneself, even if explaining it to others is somewhat shaming. Once you ‘get’ the idea of confluence hunting there is no better reason out there for going miles and miles, facing hardship and pain, to reach an abstract spot on the earth.

We were unlikely to suffer too much hardship and pain on our expedition. Dave had his company Landcruiser, a heavy duty 4×4 capable of traversing the worst terrain. It was also about as good protection as you could get from the effects of a car accident. The Nile road we were driving along was notorious for accidents, but until you witness one, such information is, at best, at the back of your mind.

About two hundred kilometers south of Cairo, now in the desert, we stopped for coffee. Dave had a flask, which, on an expedition is always better than stopping at a gas station or a café. Expeditions have to be self contained otherwise they become diluted, a bit less of an adventure. Of course brewing your own tea on a hastily contrived campfire is always best but since we had Dave’s flask that would have been uncalled for. Back in the cruiser we drove for about a mile before, with the dawning sense of shock that attends such things, we arrived at a scene of devastating mechanical carnage. A giant twenty wheeler was skewed across the road, water pouring from its punctured radiator. An incredible dent in the front pushed the engine and front wheels back under the cab, as if a giant fist had knocked its teeth in. A man with an anguished expression was still in the cab and several people, including one with a crowbar were trying to break him free. As with any accident I was relieved there were others doing stuff already. I’d been on a first aid course years ago but I’d probably only get in the way. Then, having crept around the twenty wheeler, we drove past a man cradling another man who was either dead or unconscious. Behind were the utterly destroyed remains of an ancient pickup, the windscreen completely smashed. “Do you think he came through that?” asked Dave. A crash seems to instantly age vehicles and this pick-up, old to start with, already looked abandoned for months. The man cradling the injured, or dead, man shouted something to the saloon car in front which hared off. People were already gathering from where it was hard to tell. I had thought we were nowhere. I looked back at the cradled man, gawping but not wanting to. This was not a crash in the JG Ballard sense of the word. Third world crashes are different to those of the first. They are grubby and sad and are symbols of a desperate scrabbling for resources rather than alienated excess. They also exist in a different zone of responsibility. In the third world it is less about recovery and rescue services and more about a brush with eternity. It cuts you quicker and deeper because you know that even if an ambulance gets to the scene the level of medical care is not going to be high. Strangely, after a mile or less we reached a roadside ambulance station and already the saloon car was up the drive and the ambulance men coming out of their building. These ambulance buildings have sprung up recently along the most accident filled roads, but, though better than nothing, they don’t halt the rate at which decrepit trucks and overladen buses ram into each other.

Seeing the crash dampened the mood of the trip considerably. It had all happened very definitely within the space of our coffee break. It could have been us, no doubt all of us were thinking, but no one said, for fear, perhaps, of tempting fate.

The desert stretched either side. Rocky desert. The Sahara east of the Nile is rocky, riven with wadis. The Western desert is smooth by comparison filled with dunes and sand sheets. In a moment, always a highpoint of any desert trip, we at last left the highway and went offroad. Dave made the symbolic gearshift to full-on four wheel drive and rumbled over the gravel plain following the LCD arrow on his GPS.

My own GPS, though good enough, was not a top of the range model. I kept it more or less out of sight. Dave not only had 22 points in Egypt he had also bagged the symbolic ‘best’ point 22N 25E which marked the intersection of the Libyan, Egyptian and Sudanese borders. Dave, though naturally modest, was obviously the man in charge.

We lost sight of the road and headed further into the desert. The point we were aiming for was the most accessible unclaimed confluence left in Egypt, the nearest to any made-up road but still not on a road. Why it had been ignored, or missed, I could only guess was due to the lengthy drive along an accident prone highway. The ground beneath was hard gravel and easy driving, though bumpy. We crested a low hill and saw more ahead. It was hot day, at least thirty degrees, though in the burgeoning sense of excitement I did not notice the heat. The hill got steeper and Dave thought it prudent to park. I then understood another intriguing thing about confluence hunting- what if the point just happens to be halfway up a rock face- or at the bottom of deep gorge? That’s where the challenge and adventure kick in. I lost seconds fiddling with the white balance knob on my camera and Dave was already ahead. He was the kind of expedition member who would consider it a bit wimpy to wait for stragglers so I hurried on, sweating in the noon heat.

Then, all of a sudden, after Dave had wandered around in a large circle, holding his GPS like someone trying to find a better signal on a mobile, he announced we’d arrived. 28N 31E was exactly here. There were no car tracks or footprints where we gingerly lay the two GPSs side by side showing the numbers on the screen. To this tiny spot on earth we were certainly the first confluence hunters, and very likely the first people, to have stood.

It was not a great feeling. It was an odd, different sort of feeling- not an anticlimax exactly, more like the feeling a gasman must feel when he has successfully read a meter right out in the countryside. Dave and I made up for the lack of natural elation by saying such things as, “Well, at least we did it” or “Better than staying home slumped in front of the telly”. It’s hard to imagine one of the great explorers of yore saying these things but who knows?

We took the photographs and everything needed for the report and though I knew once it was written up and made permanent I’d be happy, and though I definitely would go confluencing again, there was something missing. I decided it was a view. And driving rather than walking. I think there should be an elevated category of confluence bagging where you have walked from a bagged site to an unbagged one, unassisted by an internal combustion engine.

As if to emphasise the superfluity of cars we saw three more crashes on the way home. All had occurred sometime before we passed, so we were merely observers, but all were nasty. Two human shapes covered in newspaper lay beside a rolled truck. Trapped on top was the truck’s load of chickens in palm leaf cages, squashed crates of squawking, bloody, dead and damaged birds. We’d stopped commenting on the accidents by then. There was nothing left to say. Dave, as always, drove carefully and we were back in Cairo before nightfall.

I wrote up my ‘report’ with considerable pride. It took on the status of something semi-official, the prose a bit dry, rather dull and careful. Dave was concerned that I had missed his name off- I had, but this was easily remedied. Being named on the report is a bit like sharing authorship of an academic paper- important stuff. You can see it, along with the pictures by typing my name into the search box for degreeconfluenceproject.org. I had my alibi. Already it feels like a real achievement after all.

Dawn Potter

Confluence hunting appeals more to men than women but Dawn is one of those happy to get out there looking for a new point. She started hunting with her boyfriend Phil, who heard about confluence hunting from a radio program whilst driving in his HGV. Dawn has conquered 15 or 16 points, including some abroad. In Rumania Phil but not Dawn was arrested by border police who got one look at his google earth maps and gps and assumed he was an illegal migrant from Moldava. “We all had a good laugh in the end,” said Dawn. Another tricky call was when a point was surrounded by a herd of cattle. First they had to persuade the farmer why they wanted to get into his field and then they had to brave the cattle. Dawn visited the last confluence point left unclaimed on mainland Britain, Blakely Point. This meant a trip by boat accompanied by local press though she did concede, “Most times I go out it’s raining or I get stuck in a muddy bog.” Her job is indoors as a manager so she relishes the chance to get outside. Confluence seeking is something that fits in well with her other hobbies of hiking and camping. “It’s a nice walk at the end of the day. And you always have some kind of adventure.”

Gordon Spence

Visit Gordon Spence’s website and you get some kind of idea of what he’s like. Maths problems, computers and confluence hunting are all interests represented and arguably confluence hunting brings them all together. He is the regional coordinator for the Degree Confluence Project and, in a game that avoids competition, Britain’s top confluence hunter. He’s visited all the sites in the UK- many for the first time. The hardest point in Britain, “logistically” he added, was 55N 3W- This was the Long Pound ammo dump, Europe’s largest, home to depleted uranium missiles and the Lockerbie wreckage. It took Gordon three months to get permission to enter the camp and another three months to get permission to enter the missile store zone where the point actually was. Gordon explains he just “likes being outdoors”. And in Britain every point is outdoors. There are none in London and only one is in a building- a cowshed near Basingstoke. He’s been abroad too- in Texas he was accused of being an Iraqi spy. “But that’s Texans for you.” “I call it wandering with a purpose,” he says, “You know where you are and why you are there.”

Robert Twigger

What was really interesting apart from the 6 or 7 obvious lines of vertebrae was the fact that a) there were so many remains and b) a group of 18 people had walked past them and through and only one person had noticed. Now we knew what to look for we saw dinosaur bones everywhere.

The concept of ‘search image’is well known to paleotologists. They look at pictures and extant examples of fossils before going to find the real thing. You truly do find what you are looking for.

In our case, of course, no one had a camera, so these few words must suffice. Apart from the vertebrae we found tube like lengths of fossil which suggested those tube like fronds found in the ocean. That this area was under the sea several times in the past is indicated everywhere by the seashells and shark’s teeth easily found.

As we looked at the seemingly vegetable fronds we began to doubt our vertebrae. Were they really dinosaur backbones or just more of the sea tubers? That we had found something was not in doubt. But what exactly?

A return visit with a more knowledgeable person is the obvious answer. And taking pictures might help. For me, though, the experience of driving back over the sand, jumping out, and seeing those bones lined up in the sand was enough. It was the essence of discovery- alone in the desert, miles and miles away from anyone or anywhere, free, finding something new, unwritten about, unphotographed. It was an experience I never want to forget.

And both the scorpion, the viper and the viper tracks were all near places with vegetation or visited often by people. In remote, arid conditions you are unlikely to meet these creatures.

Cerastes cerastes- the horned viper is the most widespread deadly snake in Egypt. It prefers rocky areas such as those of the Eastern Desert- East of the Nile- to the more sandy places West of the Nile- if it exists in a sandy area it will be near some kind of vegetation such as a lone acacia or tamarisk bush. They like to lurk near lone trees to catch migrating birds. In very arid places it prefers loose soil to sand.

The sand viper- Cerastes vipera- does not lurk in the lovely arid dunes that are such fun to slide down- it prefers the vegetation dotted dunes close to such oases as Sitra and Nuwamisa on the stretch between Siwa and Bahariya. Sand vipers are less widespread than the horned viper (which sometimes occurs without horns) and are less tolerant of extreme aridity. Both are nocturnal and are more likely to be seen in summer than winter, when they semi- hibernate.

Scorpions, again, prefer rocky places and places where other invertebrates lurk. They leave a six legged track, a bit like a mountain bike track, that can be confused with the far commoner tracks of long legged beetles. My only scorpion was on a discarded eggbox on the Partridge Dunes- a very regularly visited set of dunes, in fact the closest dunes to Cairo.

Caves- traditionally the haunt of scorpions or so we are lead to believe- contain more beetles I think. People regularly sleep in the Djara caves and I’ve never heard of a live scorpion being sighted there.

The general rule is: in places with no vegetation and no soil you can be reasonably relaxed. If there is considerable vegetation and dunes, typically at a well or oasis, keep an eye open for possible sand vipers and their giveaway ‘sidewinder’ type tracks. In the Eastern desert and rocky places with some vegetation or soil watch out for horned vipers. The only one I ever saw was in the main tourist venue of Wadi Digla- five minutes from where I live- it was curled up being watched by a group of ten hikers, unperturbed and dangerous only if trodden on was my guess.

But the book is really about the minute observation of New Zealand, trying to catch it, trying to convey what it is like and what it’s essence is like. It is a daring book- we can all visit New Zealand for the price of a medium quality fridge- it’s easy, like all air travel. But the author erects and ineffable barrier to entry- his eye, his astute feeling for place. It helps that he isn’t a middleclass or even upper or lower class tosser. He is a beach bum with a classical education, the very best sort of traveler.

Exploration is about discovery. The old distinction between some kind of objective accumulation of fact, the province of the old European explorers (now parodied by the bearded worthies of the British Antarctic survey and other instruments of scientific simulation) and the private discovery of self and a new place and self in a new place is now dissolved. I’m not sure why or how this happened but now we are as interested in Ranulph Fiennes toes and how frostbitten they get as we are in any rock samples he may bring back from the south pole. Perhaps we already have too many rock samples.

The author’s book proceeds as a rather exciting exploration of New Zealand which is new to me and new, also, at the time of the journey to Duncan Fallowell. You feel him pushing out further and further each day- living in the now of new experience which is the addictive edge of travel, easily blunted in exploration, as traditionally conceived, by the unpleasantness of the conditions. Then the exploration begins to falter as social arrangements begin to impose themselves. This is part of the author’s policy of complete and transparent honesty which in the main, the 95% main, serves him very well. But I rather wonder that his accidental persona- gay, single, adventurous- which perfectly suits the best traveler persona (lots of chances for strange and interesting and undomestic encounters) becomes tarnished by the revelation that Duncan, like everyone, would prefer a nice Christmas lunch with friendly friends to the opportunity to meditate alone on a rock with a couple of penguins.

Happy times in domestic surroundings- the warm fug of mince pies baking and chardonnay being uncorked (or some more exquisite wine- the author is clearly an expert)- makes for a kind of literary Wilton carpet experience rather than the ancient oriental weave one was expecting. One flips it over and sees a made in England label and the evidence of machine stitching is all too apparent.

You see the author is planning to stay with people (Bernard and Daisy) who he rather likes and who have a rather nice house- but from a narrative point of view we might prefer people he hates, or loves and who live in a bus shelter or a castle on an island. In the end he doesn’t stay with them but their very existence, the fact that they connect with the author beneath the established weft of his tale is, for me, a minor minus. Maybe I just didn’t like the sound of them. In any case this diversion does not impair the book; it is merely an interesting development and a sign, perhaps, of the limiting effect of a philosophy of writing that pushes honesty (ie. self revelation) ahead of narrative qualities. As Duncan’s pal Matt says, “Australia made sense because I was there for work. But this place doesn’t make sense. Why am I here?”
“Because I’m here and Bernard and Daisy are here.”
“Is that it?”

Fallowell’s prose is as always: supple and sly and very very funny at times; he is probably the master at bringing highbrow down to earth with a choice bit of vernacular and no clunks. He makes Martin Amis look somehow old fashioned, trying too hard. You can enjoy this tome for the sentences alone.

Because the author is gay and single and on the prowl the book has a decent amount of sex in it- a lamentable lacuna in most travel books- even Miller’s Collosus of Maroussi has no sex in it, though maybe Miller is a special case and it’s a good thing. Travel books, whatever they pretend, always stand in some kind of relation to fictional tales. This book is a distant relative of all the quest stories ever written and so the author must find something and preferably someone. He does, in a deft way, and then loses them, it is satisfactorily done but it is not the whole point, it’s just a way of tying up the loose ends. The reality of this book is an honest and hugely successful attempt to make you feel you have experienced what the author has experienced, been where he has been. One trusts his eye, his judgement. A wonderful achievement.

Going as Far as I Can
by Duncan Fallowell
Profile Books
£12.99

1. Asking for money is harder than asking for gear. Don’t be greedy and ask for both. Just ask for gear/service assistance.
2. Offering to return the gear after the trip increases the chance of being offered gear.
3. Make a video- even if it’s on your mobile phone and tell them you are making a video. A gear supplier can put that up their site.
4. Have a blog that mentions your sponsors- this site gets over 2000 hits a month so any sponsor- such as Speedway cycles of Alaska are getting exposure all the time.
5. Be inventive. The more firms you contact the more likely you will find a true enthusiast who wants to back you more fully even perhaps with hard cash.
6. Be prepared mentally to do the trip even with zero sponsorship- this puts you in a stronger position when it comes to asking. You don’t sound all needy. It also makes the trip more real in your own mind.
7. Don’t rely on email alone. Use email, phoning and faxing. Faxes are good because they result in a hard copy on someone’s desk. Assume most emails are only glanced at. You have to phone to confirm and enlarge on the project.
8. Have website full of info about your expedition so a potential sponsor can check you out immediately they get your request.
9. Offer to write an article for the website/inflight magazine of an airline to get freeflights. Always ask the marketing director and not a lower down hireling. Check out airlines offering new routes- they are most open to getting publicity.
10. But don’t compromise the success of the expedition because of the lure of lucre from potential sponsors. They are entitled to publicity but not if it means you can’t get the expedition finished.

Most of my expeditions I have paid for myself with only sponsorship adding a tiny fraction to the overall cost. This way I actually went places rather than spent ages waiting for that phonecall. In the end a cheap trip that works is worth ten big ones that don’t.

On the forefoot running front I took myself to Alexandria and pounded the beach at Agamy for several days. I think the conversion is complete. The feeling of freedom when running on your toes compared to the woeful plodding on your heels has made me convinced never to return to the old ways- though I did strain a calf muscle when not fully warmed up. The wise suggest toes beget Achilles injuries and heels cause knee and back pain. As long as you stretch enough and don’t go off cold at 6am I think toes are still safer.

Biking- regular forays up the myriad wadis that surround wadi digla have improved my skills and fitness for going up hills in the heat. Now it is getting into the mid 30s degrees C everyday by 11am so fitness training is as much about heat training as anything else.

This is the last instalment of my fitness program- now I aim to sustain this level until the expedition in December.

r.twigger

I fell asleep in a coffeeshop after imbibing a cocoa and cheese sandwich- I can see big gains on the weight front approaching. Mainly I drink lemon and honey drinks and cocoa- which may have a drip of caffeine in it but its undetectable if it does. I alternate between feeling terrible and feeling proud of myself. Also my memory is creeping back- very weird this- despite my head feeling slow I find I can recall lots of things much better, as if the caffeine was jamming my recall system up somehow. And it is well known that nicotine aids memory and mine definitely got worse after I gave up smoking (but worth it anyday) but now its returning which is a nice bonus.

Day seven and I’m feeling pretty normal now- more relaxed, slower, not feeling like exercise. But hold on- isn’t this supposed to be a fitness program?

Why do it? I wanted to clear my system right out. I wanted to be free of ‘needing’ my caffeine hit before I did anything. I wanted to be free-er. In fact I see a pattern emerging in this fitness lark- it is a stumbling towards freedom.

Why is the ultralight concept the way forward in exploration?

For many reasons, but I will outline a few that occur to me. Firstly exploration, like any outdoor activity, runs the very real risk of being submerged in gear. I love gear as much as the next geek, but I also hate the strangle hold it can wield over you, a strangle hold magnified by gear mags and sites that get free gear to use and then write nice things about it that imply you too must buy it. Top sea kayak explorer Audrey Sutherland- now in her 80s- reckons on making or adapting 90% of her kit- only buying 10%- this is the woman who pioneered inflatable sea kayaking when everyone said inflatables were beach toys. I digress. The main point is, when you are ultralighting you are going as simply as possible so there is no room for excess baggage.

Ultralighting means refining the means of exploration, which in turn, turns up new possibilities for future expeditions. Just as fat tyre bikes have made crossing the Egyptian Great Sand Sea possible (we’ll find out for sure this December) so, too, taking as light a selection of gear changes where you can go and what you see and do when you are there.

Then there are new combinations- the bike/packraft combination could be very intriguing- especially as both are now ridiculously light in weight.

Ultralight exploration also means an exploration of your own capabilities- how inventive are you in devising simple and lightweight alternatives? Somewhat low on the list of great outdoor inventions I must place my own ‘wet shorts’- cut-off over trousers that protect your thighs from all that dumped water sliding off a raincoat. The calf is protected by your gaiters. Then there was the one mess-tin for everything cook and drinking system. Or my current favourite (which I didn’t invent) using windblown ‘tumbleweed’ found during the afternoon section of a desert walk to fire up a volcano kettle to make that first cup of tea. In a place devoid of wood it’s a great feeling to steal fire from a rolling dried up weed.

Inflatable catamarans seem to me to be a way forward in island and seacoast ultralight exploration. I’m thinking a cat that is so light you can carry it on a plane to a remote place where you simply inflate and sail. There are about ten mainly European inflatable cat makers out there. The Czech Easysail is the most intriguing- big enough to take six adults it has actually crossed the Atlantic (though I believe the one used was a tad larger- not totally clear from pix). Though at 96kg it’s getting heavy. The one that looks silliest- and therfore slips best under the radar (I’m talking about getting past busybodies who want to stop you and the more ‘pro’ you look the more attention you will get and the bigger the headache) is the American SeaEagle 14- and at only $1500- a bargain. It also weighs only 40KG. Maybe a more flexible solution is a lashed frame that links two inflatable sea kayaks together. Making is always better than buying- as long as it works.

For our Fatback fat tyre bike exploring I am already thinking of a bodge to make wheeling the bike easier. Maybe some kind of handlebar frame that enables you to wheel the bike without bending down- which is the killer for mega-long wheeling sessions. Also I am thinking ahead to a way of using the bike as a trolley/rickshaw/cart for most of the time and only riding on easy non-sandy surfaces (which must be 50% of the desert). That way you mentally get used to mainly walking and riding is just a bonus. The purpose being – to enable you to carry a 100+ kilos of gear on a pushbike/trike. Mountain triking- now there’s an idea…

Back to the ultralight idea. Why it’s compelling is the way it brings us back to walking. The lighter the gear the more fun the walking and the further you can walk. And walking in my opinion is the essence of exploration. To explore is to walk through a landscape. Not fly over it, not drive through it, not even sail through it- walk through it. The rivers I walked against the current towing a canoe I feel I know. The one’s I shot down I kind of saw like on television. I feel I know the short sections of the Zambezi that I helped line a raft up or portage better than the hundred or more kilometres we shot down having a blast. And when you talk to walkers they know about birds and animals and plants. 4×4ers and whitewater rafters don’t in general- and this isn’t meant to be critical- I enjoy both- it’s just that walking is closer to the nub of it. When I drive in the desert it’s when I stop and start walking around that I feel I am exploring- even if the car got me to that point.

DIY exploring and ultralight exploration intersect at many points- but mainly where cheaper costs are involved. There is less to steal, less to be observed by border policemen, less to go wrong. Ultralight puts you under the radar, into the temporary autonomous zone of travelling. When I took my inflatable beachboat down the Nile I was supposedly breaking the law- but no one interfered- even the police and soldiers waved at me as I went by. They just didn’t ‘see me’- I was too unserious to be taken seriously.

If exploration is about finding freedom in the wilderness or even the quasi-wilderness then ultralight ideas can only benefit it. And the original ultralighters were the 1930s, 40s and 50s explorers Bill Tillman and Eric Shipman- wearing only one set of clothes (each…) and eating and drinking out of a one pint mug. Tillman’s mountain and sailing books are a great reference and inspiration for ultralight exploration today.

The beach at the odious Stella di Mare resort complex is great- long- about 1k from end to furthest end- with clean unstoney sand. The best fun is to be had before 11.30am as the beach is nearly empty- but even on packed Easter Day, one of the busiest of the year, I was doing there-and-back runs every hour or so- must have clocked a good 10km and the strange alchemy of sun, sand, sea and fresh air reversed the normal energy flow, I’ve found this in the mountains too, where, despite the physical exertion you are actually getting charged up by your surroundings. Hottest lunchtime temp: 38 degrees C- but I was swimming and mucking around with the kids in the water so it didn’t really feel that hot- all the runs I did with my tee shirt still wet from swimming- still got sunburnt though despite this precaution.

Oh- why is the resort odious? Too big, too used to dumb tourists, too stupid-rule bound, terrible service- the usual. But the early morning beach is brilliant.

The downside of forefoot running is tight achilles tendons. In the early morning it can be a bit of a killer. I don’t want swollen, tendonitus affected, achilles heels so I am dutifully stretching them out five times each for ten seconds each leaning lower and lower against a wall with the floot flat and toes pointing towards the wall, body and straight leg making the hypotenuese against the floor and wall. Doing this stretching at regular moments all through the day as I fear that twenty years of heel running has left my tendons pretty darn tight.

Knees feel great…so far…forefoot running is so kind to them.

Fitness wise- I can’t think of a better way to train than long beach runs in bare feet- you feel you can keep going forever!