El Autana is a sandstone tepuy or butteabout 400 miles south of Caracas in the Amazon Territory of Venezuela. The first ascent of the Autana was in 1974 by two English, Stephen Platt and David Nott, and two Venezuelans, Wilmer Perez la Riva and Carlos Reyes. We climbed the North Ridge, the left-hand sky-line in the photograph, in 1974. It took us three days and we bivouacked on the route.We abseiled down to the caveswhere wespent a further three nights, exploring the galleries and traversi...

We went Japan to study recovery after the 2011 Tohoku tsunami. This was a major disaster for Japan. For the country most prepared for earthquakes this was a shocking event that will take years and trillions of dollars to repair. Fifteen months after the disaster, when we made our field trip, recovery was already underway. New embankments were being constructed along the coast of the Sendai plain in Miyage Province and debris had been collected into huge sorted piles. But further north, in ...

The city of Van on the Silk Road in eastern Anatolia, Turkey. It was hit by an earthquake on Sunday 23 October 2011. People were killed and many more made homeless. I went there a year later to see how well the city is recovering. Scharlie, my wife, came for the first week in Izmir where we stayed with Bahar, a former PhD student of mine, and her parents. With the help of a guide, Harun, I visited Van and Ergiş, which had suffered severe damage, and interviewed local Governors, urban plann...

The GR20 is one of the great walks of Europe, comparable in length to the Tour of Mont Blanc and similar in quality to the Cuillen Ridge on Skye. It runs across Corsica northwest to southeast. It crosses jagged peaks, that are snow covered for much of the year. It is over a hundred and thirty miles long, involves over 25,000 metres of ascent and descent and takes nearly two weeks. It is divided into two sections by a small gauge railway that crosses the GR20 at Vizzavona. We walked the nor...

I went to Kyrgyzstan to investigate using remote sensing to map hazards. We ran a scenario planning game in Bishkek with Emergency personnel from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Our host takes us to a night club. It’s in a vast concert bunker. We toast each other unmercifully with vodka shots until encouraged onto the dance floor where we dance with a group of attractive young girls they call the ‘jet-set’. We went for a walk in the snow covered Tien Shan and walked up the Ala Acha gorge. We wa...

We went to St Petersburg in 2009 for a an EU project about heritage tourism. The May weather was marvellous and we stayed in a nice hotel next to the Fontanka River in walking distance of Nevsky Prospect. The high spot of our trip was a private tour of the Impressionist paintings in the Hermitage and Russian art in the Russian Museum. The Hermitage Museum, founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great is spectacular – lavish, ornate with the most impressive collection of art. The collections occu...

The Laugavegur is one of the big walks. It is the most famous trek in Iceland and crosses other worldly landscapes formed by recent volcanos. I did it from north to south and it runs over 80km from Landmannalauger via Thorsmork to Skogar on the coast. I started on the 15 June, the first day the bus ran to Landmannalaugar. I hadn’t booked the huts as I didn’t know whether I’d make it. So I took camping gear. The scenery is sensational and unlike anywhere I’d been before. At this time of the...

The Mare a Mare Nord traverses Corsica from sea to sea. It’s nearly 100 miles long (152 km), involves nearly 7000 metres of ascent and descent and took me 11 days. I sailed to Ajaccio, the capital of Corsica, on the west coast, and the walk climbed thickly wooded valleys before crossing the GR20 and the mountainous backbone of Corsica at the Col de Vergio. From Corte, the town in the middle of the island, the path follows mule tracks that link isolated hilltop villages all the way to the e...

In the summer of 2004 we went climbing with Dimitri in the Valle Garrafano in the Apuane Alps, a limestone area famous for its Carrara marble. Dimitri had been a tenant of ours in Cambridge when he had a sabbatical working in the University Library. We returned the following summer and were whisked off again to the rocky valleys of Italy’s far northwest. We climbed in the Valle Maira and Valle Gesso in the Maritime Alps, Then we drove further north to the Valle dell’Orco in the Graian Alps...

I first met Maria Ximena when she talked about Cazuca, a barrio to the south west of Bogota and I visited Colombia three times. Working with young architects from the Universidad Piloto and a Women's Foundation we devised plans to improve the neighbourhood. I also describe visits to Cartagena, Santa Marta, Valledupar and the Tayrona National Park where I met and talked to Kogi Indians.

Aconcagua at nearly 7,000 metres is the highest mountain outside Asia From the south it is a hard, dangerous climb. From the north, given good weather, it is relatively easy. In my twenties I read a book about three Polish climbers who in 1934 made their own equipment and climbed it by a new elegant route up the east ridge. It captured my imagination. Over thirty years later I asked a friend to come with me. He pulled out and I found a trekking company on the Internet and booked. Our appro...

Ilu Tepuy is the most northerly tepuy or sandstone spire in the Roraima chain of mountains in South-East venezuela close to the Brazilian and Guyana Borders. This is an account of the first ascent in October 1981.