Back home after a marvellous trek to the Annapurna Sanctuary. Many thanks to our sirdar Soraj for gathering such a great team of Sherpas and porters and many thanks to all those on the trip who made it such an unforgettable experience. A great route, perfect weather and a good bunch of people to trek with. Camping in the Sanctuary itself was a great experience with the vast wall of the South Face of Annapurna 1 frowning down on us. As soon as I have a few minutes to spare I’ll upload some of the images from the trek - Machapuchre, the Annapurnas, Dhauligiri, etc.

Meanwhile it’s straight back to a busy lecture season. Many thanks to Mick Tighe for organising a great event last Friday in the Roybridge Village Hall where Richard Else and I did our Sutherland Trail presentation. It was a great night and I just hope the fact that I was still jet-lagged didn’t show to much!

This Friday Richard and I will be previewing our next BBC documentary at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival. We’re in the salubrious surroundings of the Kendal Parish Hall on Friday afternoon at 2pm and we’ll be talking about a long walk through the Isle of Skye. Don’t have a title yet I’m afraid but that gives the gist of it - a backpacking journey from Rubha Huinish on the north tip of the Trotternish ridge of Skye down to Broadford, visiting the Braes, Sligachan, the Cuillin, Bla Bheinn and the lost villages of Boreraig and Suisinish. Hope to see lots of you there.

And next week I’ll have to look out my kilt and fancy gear for a rather special night in Edinburgh. TGO has no less than 8 nominations in the Scottish Periodical Publishers Asociation Annual Awards. Jim Perrin and Roddy Woomble have been nominated as Columnists of the Year; Ed Douglas has been nominated as Features Writer of the Year; The TGO Challenge is up for Brand Extension of the Year; our Sales team of Ronnie Dodd and Louise Jane MacDoinald are up for Sales Team of the Year; our publisher Darren Bruce has been nominated for Publisher of the Year and I’m up (for the fifth year running) for Consumer Magazine Editor of the Year and finally, TGO is up for Consumer Magazine of the Year. Phew…

And finally, many thanks to the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for offering me the Society’s Honorary Fellowship for contributions to geography in Scotland. I’m absolutely thrilled by that and I’ll write more about it later. For the moment I have about a thousand emails to work through and Richard and I have still to put the final touches to our Skye lecture. Hope to see you at one of our talks or book signings…

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