Charles Davis's Blog
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Apr.13.2013
Guest blog on Books4Spain about walking in Mallorca
As the Mallorcan walking season gets into swing, I find my mind turning to pigs. This may not seem very promising as a premise for a piece about mountains. After all, the appeal of the pig when it comes to the outward bound business is limited.
I...
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Apr.10.2013
Slip of the tongue on the radio today, ‘Smartphobe’ for Smartphone. Seemed like a very good idea. I’m not suggesting wilfully embracing stupidity or shabbiness, though it has been implied in the past that that is the impression I convey. No, what appealed to me was the concept of gathering all one’...
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Apr.02.2013
Yet more guest blogging, this time both on the Stanfords and Viewranger sites . . .
Herman Melville observed that the best places aren’t on any maps. This assertion may seem a little perverse on the site of the world’s most famous map shop, but for many years it was pretty much the case as far as...
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Apr.01.2013
Guest blog on Books4Spain.
The Spanish have an unjustified reputation for being anarchic individualists. They’re certainly anarchic. What other nation could make so much of a concept like Anarcho-syndicalism? But it’s the syndicalism that betrays their true nature. They are not so much...
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Mar.10.2013
Guest blog on Books4Spain
Having spent a large part of the last two decades trailing back and forth across Spain camping wild, I have cultivated a lively appreciation for the Spanish phrase "No pasa nada."
On the face of it, it doesn't sound like a very welcoming term, promising a heavily negative...
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Mar.06.2013
A guest blog on the Stanfords bookshop site
When David Brawn at Discovery Walking Guides suggested I write a walking guide to the Alpujarras, I told him there were too many tourists there. In retrospect, I can see that for a publisher the distant prospect of potential clients wasn’t...
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Mar.01.2013
Mildly aggravated recently to find little white arrows painted on the beach front car-parks that punctuate the coastal path. Before anyone suggests it, the arrows are not there to show grumpy old men the way out of Brittany. No, some bugger’s planning a race and they don’t want their precious...
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Feb.17.2013
Been raining in Brittany . . . for several generations. Feels like that, anyway. Lovely sunny day today so we headed for the Monts d’Arrée. Crossed a peat bog. It got quite lively. Not nearly as many duckboards as I remembered. About halfway across, it occurred to me that it wasn’t necessarily a...
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Feb.03.2013
1. Men lust after women.
2. To stop themselves lusting after women, some men want all women to wear a large black sheet and never go out without a male chaperone.
3. Times are tough, resources are scarce, and large black sheets require a lot of material.
4. A better solution would be for all men to...
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Jan.20.2013
I generally avoid blogging unless I’ve got something to say. Got sod all to say today apart from announcing that I’m experimenting with Kindle. So for my hundredth blog, the ambition is not to entertain or instruct or inform or improve or opine or even have a damn good rant.
I just want you...
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Jan.10.2013
Toward the turn of the last millennium, we moved to Andalucía after more years in Barcelona than I care to remember. I’m reticent about recalling how long we were there because it was long enough to have learned both Catalan and Spanish, yet my Catalan was restricted to puzzling out the directions...
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Dec.27.2012
I have a toothbrush in order to brush my teeth. Toothbrushes are designed for brushing teeth.
I have a food mixer in order to blend my soup. Food mixers are designed for blending food.
I have a kettle in order to heat my water. Kettles are designed for heating water.
I have a gun in order to...
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Dec.19.2012
The following is an extract from my guide to the Cathar Way in Southern France, which will be available in the next few months as a PDF, Kindle book, and in a ground-breaking new format as a Smartphone download, including GPS data, photos and IGN maps. That’s the idea, at least. One slight bugbear...
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Dec.15.2012
Walter Mitty was a small man who peopled his life with big flights of fancy. I'm a big man (6'4" or thereabouts) who peoples his life with small flights of fancy. I realized this the other day when Jeannette made a comment about 'My Friend'. She wasn’t suggesting that I’m a sad old fart who only...
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Nov.07.2012
It was my birthday yesterday. I feel this is something you ought to know. This summer, the kids asked me what were the most important dates in history. I told them, in no uncertain terms, that Charles’ birthday was right up there hovering round the number one slot. They seemed to think I was joking...
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About Charles
Charles Davis was born and educated, and has travelled and worked. He now lives and writes. That has always seemed to me to be enough biography for any writer, but being an avid reader, too, I appreciate that curiosity demands a bit more, so . . . .
Basically...
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Causes Charles Davis Supports
Oxfam, Amnesty International, Greenpeace