We Do Adventure

Last night lightning stopped play. This was both disappointing and encouraging; disappointing because I was just hitting my snowboard stride, powering down the powdery slope in ridiculously poor visibility, but encouraging that the local ski centre didn't want to see its customers fried in a freak drag lift accident. Seeing lightning flash through heavy falling snow was a new experience. We know the prevailing wisdom is don't be on high, exposed places at such times so we headed inside for another hot chocolate. Ranč is our local ski centre. We know it's a mountain but it's easy to think of it as the local hill. It was the combination of questions from my brother and getting a G-Shock watch with an altimeter for my birthday that got me interested in finding out how high this “hill” really is. I took a reading on my watch at the top, I cross referenced it with an accurate (higher) figure from the internet. 1463m. For someone more used to measuring mountains in feet (...

Britain has high-rises. We used to see some of south London's when we took the train into Victoria;, but our town had nothing above about six floors. Mostar has plenty of big buildings; we have a friend who lives at the top of one of them, on the tenth floor. We live much closer to the ground. Sarajevo has bigger buildings, or apartment blocks. Last week we stayed a few days in one of them; at the top, almost. Nineteen floors ups. The apartment itself was great. It had heating, a very welcome change from Mostar's buildings. Inside you'd never really realise how high up you are until you walk onto the balcony, or need to go out somewhere. This video gives you glimpse into both of those scenarios.