A week or so to go before the race day and I am in panic mode - Adrian (and sometimes Chris) kindly went running around the mountain at some ungodly hour in the morning, on multiple mornings, in order to figure out the routes for the 21, 10 and 5km runs... I did not :/ However, inconsiderately, Adrian was leaving to go on holiday and was not going to be there for the big day and I had to know where the routes were so I roped in Chris's help, kindly requested that some of the Tour Guides join us, and we set off an a forced 21km march. It was pretty gruelling, even the tour guides were surprised at our speed - we did it in just over 4 hours having stopped at Emperor's View for a well deserved

So the story goes that Rintintin, a dog adopted by a soldier in France during WW2, learned to limp into the military base in the mornings and would be fed little morsels of meat because the soldiers all felt sorry for him - but it turned out he didn't have a limp, he was just a clever pup. So my cheeky number up there on the left may have some Rintintin in him: Saxon was never overenthused about going for a run and has been known to run back home if I don't watch him, but recently he "develops" a limp half way through my run and so I switch to a walk to help him out. I thought he had a genuine problem but now I think he realises that if he limps I will stop running!! So my running has come t

Watch out Chris Packham, after Autumn Watch, we are bringing you Poo Watch! Who did what? If are a bit squeamish don't read on :/ In the last week we have found 4 big poos on the track towards our sunset spot. Clearly something keeps coming back which implies it is used to using communal latrines. The only animals I know who do this are the genet and the civet whose poos are MUCH smaller than this. The poo is black in colour and has some big almond shaped seeds in it. The pool smells like a dog poo - yup, I stuck a stick in it and smell the it (yummmmm!!)! It is also lacking in fur and has not turned white at all which eliminates hyenas I think. Also, our dogs are not remotely interested in

Fire, fire, fire!! It seems that this year especially, our poor planet is having a tough time with them, with unusually dry spells and hellish temperatures. In Malawi however, and probably in most of Sub-Saharan Africa, there are fires everywhere. And this happens year after year after year with devastating consequences, not least of which are the destruction of hundreds of thousands of saplings. And before someone says that fires are part of the natural cycle of life here, they are not. There are no naturally occuring fires in Malawi. There are no electrical storms as occur in Australia or California, all the fires in Malawi are man-made, either on purpose or accidental but man-made. Malawi

SATURDAY 8TH SEPTEMBER 2018 Keep this date in your diary and come to Zomba to join the fun! As raising funds is not my forte, I thought that maybe a good way to do it would be to organise a running event - after all there are so many runners nowadays, why not take advantage of this?! And so I have, and it has kept me crazy busy for the past few weeks - I have turned into a mini (I am small) dictator and a constant pest for those poor friends of mine who unfortunately for them, volunteered their services! As the name suggests, all the funds will be going towards our tree planting and conservation project Zomba TREEZ. If you have got this far on our website and are not sure what all the fuss a

So there are certain things in life that mere mortals should not have to deal with - not if they want to keep hold of their joie de vivre anyway, and accountancy, is one of them - Tom would add shopping to that list too but I kind of like it. I don't however, know anyone, not one person who enjoys bookkeeping - even those who do it for a living! And so when your bookkeeping system is playing up, can you imagine just how so very frustrating that is? And so I wasted a number of hours of my otherwise very lovely life and threw them in the bin. I will have to continue another day - preferably on a day when help (as professional as I can get) is on hand! Even the illegal loggers don't get me swea