Walks from My Dream

Khaew Waaw Dam

If you stay at My Dream guesthouse you can do 1 and 2 day treks with Nan. These combine off-road driving and walking in the nearby mountains visiting neighbouring Lahu, Akha and Karen villages.


Rice paddies

You don’t need to go on a trek if you wish to explore the beautiful forest area around the guesthouse. There are at least four directions you can walk independently along easy-to-follow dirt roads and mountain paths. The routes can take you through the stunning countryside of tropical rainforest, bamboo and rice paddies, either along the Mae Kok river or up into the mountains. You can easily make up your own half or full day treks if you take your own water and food. I’ve outlined four routes below. If you get up with the sun you may be rewarded with an atmospheric misty morning that characterises images of rural East Asia. In Khaew Waw Dam you can also discover hand-made traditional weaving. Or travel towards Chiang Rai and go for an elephant ride.


Rice 'hay'

Weaving
You can also spend time in Khaew Waw Dam village itself. There are two shops selling snacks and drinks; one also stocking fruit and veg, the other making som tams. Many households weave traditional Karen textiles during the dry season. A Thai woman from Isan called Atitaya and her French husband Thom live right next door to the guesthouse with their family. She also weaves, collecting plants from the surrounding to dye her cotton with natural colours before spinning and weaving the threads. She does this all by hand on a home-made bamboo spinning wheel and loom to produce amazing scarves and bedspreads. She speaks good English and is happy to talk about how she makes her textiles and show her work. Do call round to see if she is there if you stay at My Dream.


Ati weaving

Elephants
A few kilometres down the road back to Chiang Rai is Ban Ruamit Elephant Camp. I don’t know about you but I’m always in two minds about elephant camps and rides. On one hand it seems like an abuse of these wonderful giants, yet on the other the money camps bring in from rides can help to look after the highly endangered Asian elephant. It really depends on the camp as to whether this is abuse or care. Ban Ruamit seems like a good camp. The elephants do have to spend all day in a small riverside area, but by the early evening they are free to wander the nearby jungle until the following morning. The income the camp generates probably does mean that these elephants are being conserved rather than sent down to Bangkok to follow a mahout around the streets. Rides cost 200B or 400B for a half or full hour which includes a trip around the village and down part of the river. You can also buy bananas, sweetcorn and sugar cane to feed the elephants at 20B a bag. There’s the usual tourist tat souvenir stalls and a couple of cafes.


Close encounters of the trunk kind

Walking Route 1 – Hot Spring Refresher
Turn right out of My Dream, join the dirt road back to Chiang Rai passing the shop. After about 250m and just before the road takes a short incline you’ll see a gap in the trees on your right. Take this to the hanging bridge and cross the river. Turn left on the other side and follow the dirt road beside the river. This road is used by pick-ups and motorbikes so you’ll encounter some traffic. The route gives you great views of the river as you walk through bamboo stands, bananas and forest. You’ll pass a Lahu village on your right soon after the bridge. Another 2km brings you to an Akha village, which still has a village swing. A further 2km brings you to the national park where there are natural hot springs you can look at, though these ones are too hot for a dip, toilets and a refreshment stall selling snacks and drinks, as well as instant noodles and eggs they’ll boil for you.


Natural hot springs in national park

About 1km further on brings you to the hot springs you can get into. About 30B buys you entry, 10B use of a towel and 50B a private changing room rather than the small communal one. These are a tourist destination so they have been built up. You have a concrete wall around the spring itself, a small hot pool you can boil eggs in (you buy the eggs from any of the cafes and shops at 20B for five in a basket and after 30 minutes you should have soft-boiled eggs), and a what is effectively an open-air swimming pool at about 37+ oC you can get into. The far end has the hottest water. If you don’t want to walk back you can either hitch a lift on a passing pick-up or pay about 200-300B to get someone to drive you back to the bridge. Just ask for the bridge, Khaew Waw Dam or My Dream.


Boiling eggs

Route 2 – Village Stroll
This time turn right once over the bridge and follow the same dirt road upriver. It passes similar landscape to the hot springs route. After a couple of kilometres you’ll come to another Lahu village. The forest looks impressive and is still part of the national park. You can walk for as long as you like along this road taking in the same sort of views.


Local buffalo

Route 3 – River Jungle
Turn left out of My Dream and walk up to the dirt road next to the other shop with som tams. Turn left here and walk upriver along the road. You’ll be away from the river for the first kilometre or so. You’ll pass an army general’s forest landscape garden and come to rice paddies with buffalos dotted with bamboo drying platforms and shelters. When you reach the fork in the road take the left one. You’ll quickly be surrounded with thick bamboo and forest. This soon drops back down to the river and gives a great forest experience. There are tribal villages further along the road (which also means some traffic).

Route 4 – Mountain Rice Climb


Misty mountain hop

This is my favourite of the four. Take the right hand path at the fork of route 3. You’ll notice that the path becomes partly grassed-over which is because hardly any vehicles use this route except for the occasional person on a motorbike getting to their rice paddies. This is the most tranquil route with the best views. You’ll soon begin to climb steadily. The land rises to your left through forest and bamboo. On your right you overlook the valley of a mountain stream. The valley is quite wide and flat to begin with then narrows. Nearly all of the flat land is terraced into rice paddies dotted with the bamboo shelters, drying stands and occasional houses of the people who work the paddies. You’ll see cleared areas amongst the stalks of harvested rice surrounded by mounds of rive hay. These are threshing floors used to separate the rice from the stalks. There are also buffalo, pigs and geese. After about 2 or 3km you come to a point where you really must turn around for a spectacular view down the valley. It’s even better on a misty morning.


Mountain view

The path winds upwards through more and more picturesque forest and bamboo-clad slopes, the air becoming fresher and fresher, the paddies gradually narrowing, the stream burbling away next to you. Beyond the viewpoint you feel like you’re on a high mountain route. You can basically keep on walking along this path until you need to turn around. You’ll eventually come to some tribal villages if you keep going and should be able to visit one or two and make it back to My Dream before dark depending on your walking speed.


High bridge

Ice Cold in Alexandroupolis

Ordinary times in Greece.



I like visiting ordinary places, the nowhere towns and villages that lie beyond the tour agent's brochures and country visitor guides. They are the places where you have the chance to meet the real country. This is not to say that popular tourist destinations are less real than other places. Real people live in real houses and go about real lives in Barcelona, Amsterdam and Prague for example. But, as a tourist in a tourist honeypot you only experience the country through the prism of tourist activities, tourist restaurants and tourism staff. Your view of your host country is therefore mediated through a protective environment created specifically to give you a good holiday experience and to take your money in return. And why not? If you choose to spend your hard-earned cash to visit a foreign country you wish to have a wow factor, amazing memories and your pleasure well and truly catered for.

But what about the country behind the brochure? The places without the incredible historic sites, national parks, resorts or sublime beaches? I decided to go to just such an ordinary city in Greece - one of the most visited countries in Europe. I would avoid the sun-kissed Aegean islands with their idyllic beaches and the Classical cities of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. Instead I would go somewhere ordinary for a weekend but still travel there as a tourist. So, I chose Alexandrouplis, a port on the Thracian coast nearer to Istanbul than Athens. So far removed from Classical Greece is Alexandrouplis, that its origins date to the late 19th century as a town that grew up around an Ottoman Turkish railway line but only after the area's capture by Russian troops during the Russo-Turkish war.



The legacy of the Russians are wide, straight boulevards that were planned to facilitate troop movements but now provide a wide, open welcoming and modern feel. The lack of narrow widing streets instantly banish any stereotypes of quaint Aegean towns. These streets are not the main attractions of Alex, despite the sales, occasional pavement cafes and baklava bakeries, so let's leave them behind after a diversion to the fantastic Thracian Ethnology Museum. Nor are the small, slightly sruffy beaches littered with discarded cigarette butts, though the coarse sand dotted with marble pebbles and the warm Aegean are welcoming enough when compared to inland England.



What makes Alex a place for a weekend break is the restaurant-lined sea-front promenade. A somewhat busy road during the day, it is transformed into a pedestrian haven at night when bollards prevent cars driving along it towards dark. Alexandrouplians love to promenade in the evenings and take over the road in their droves. From 6 weeks to 90 years old, couples, families and groups saunter along the road to create the most convivial perambulating street party in Europe. The pace is languid, as befits summer night-time temperatures in the high 20s centigrade, yet the atmosphere is bubbles with what can only be termed as glee. Things really get busy after 9 or 10pm when the street becomes difficult to see through the legs, prams and buggies. Stalls selling Middle Eastern jewellery and battery-powered dogs with manic eyes line the sides of the street. Portrait artists set up their easels and wait for subjects to sit themselves in front of the passing gaze and passing interest of thousands of strollers. Trendy open-air bars blast out pumping dance tracks to crowds drinking ice-cold beers and warmly-mixed cocktails.





Apart from walking, almost everyone is out to eat. Every inch of the pavement above the concrete breakwater is packed with tables belonging to restaurants over the road. Alexandrouplis is one of the best and largest outdoor restaurants outside of Thailand. Each venue serves some of the best and freshest meals you can consume anywhere in the world. Menus bulge with a variety of traditional local salads, fish, seafood and meat. Whether creating a meze of small dishes or eating your way through a three-course meal, the wide range of dishes and variety provided by each chef's take on the same dishes will ensure you can happily satisfy your palate without repetition for at least a month.



As a vegetarian, I tried two totally different Greek salads, two totally different cabbage and carrot salads, three totally different types of bread, fried cheese and rocket salad. Each was dressed in the sweetest, lightest, delicious olive oil. What better way to finish a meal than to join the throng and stroll along the prom. The restaurant tables thicken towards the locally iconic lighthouse above the Luna Park fairground, with its fast kart track offering exhilarating rides at 2 euros for 3 minutes. Near here is a baklava bakery for honey-drenched sweets to snack on while walking.



Neither walking or eating are, however, the main occupation of the multitude. While chatter rises into the air in crescendoes, nor is conversation the prime activity. What everyone spends most of their time pursuing is people-watching. Whether walking or sitting, drinking or eating, talking or in silence, each and everyone is looking at their stranger-companions. You are as part of the entertainment as you are being entertained. And what this creates is one of the largest slow-paced festivals of conviviality in the world. That in its own right is enough to recommend Alexandroupolis for a weekend visit, as long as you're able to consider visiting a town without top theatre, without the finest architecture, without world class museums and art galleries, without the best beaches, without the best-preserved ancient monuments. If you can manage with all that then drink in one of the happiest of evening atmospheres with thousands of locals that can be found anywhere.



I stayed in Hotel Park during my stay. Sat on busy Avenue Dimicratis and opposite a small wooded park, it is locally owned and been in the same family for 30 years. The friendly owner speaks good English. All rooms are en-suite with air con and there is a breakfast room and small swimming pool. Rooms are 30 - 40 euros for a single and 60 - 80 euros for a double depending on the season. Alexandroupolis has an airport with connections from Athens and Thessaloniki, is on the Athens to Istanbul rail line and has regular buses to Thessaloniki.

Edale

The start of the Pennine Way is the perfect walking base

Edale and long-distance walking are synonymous in Britain. This small bright green valley hidden amongst the Peak District hills between Sheffield and Manchester is the official start of the southern end of the Pennine Way, the arduous rain-lashed route along the spine of England that ends in Scotland over 268 miles to the north. It is the country's oldest and most famous long-distance footpath that attracts 12,000 sturdy hikers to attempt the full route every year. If setting off for a walk along half of England isn't your idea of a day out in the country don't be put off by Edale. This mecca for walkers has plenty of shorter routes on offer that you can tackle in a day, from steep hikes up wide-open moors to more gentle strolls along the valley. All are doable on a day trip or by staying in one of the valley's many guest houses and campsites.


Grindsbrook

The actual start of the Pennine Way is the Nag's Head Inn, a traditional walker-friendly pub serving real ales and decent meals in the centre of Grindsbrook, Edale's only village. Even if you don't intend to walk all the way to Scotland, you can still down a pint and wander along the easy first few miles or feet of the route, depending on how lazy you're feeling.


The Nag's Head (fr0m www.peak-experience.org.uk)


The first section of the Pennine Way

The first part of the Pennine Way meanders gently through pastures of sheep and cows until Upper Booth, the most distant of Edale's farms less than 2 miles from Grindsbrook. You can rest your feet in the historic gritstone farmyard while savouring an ice cream, tea or coffee served from the barn. It is easy to find your way back to Grindsbrook via Barber Booth, another historic farming settlement. Booths can be found throughout Edale. They are small groups of farms and cottages that are first documented during the reign of Elizabeth I but probably originated after the Norman Conquest of 1066. Each was a cattle ranch cut out of the wooded waste of the damp valley on the edge of settlement.


A typical Edale view

If you feel that staying in the valley is to constraining there are plenty of paths that radiate out like threads in a spider's web from Edale onto the surrounding hills, ridges and moors. Jaggers Clough tempts the more serious hiker beyond the tea and ice creams of Upper Booth. Named after the packhorse men who used to transport Cheshire salt, Yorkshire iron and Derbyshire millstones across the Peak District, Jaggers winds steeply up the hillside towards the iconic Kinder Scout. Today the moorland is all open access land so you can wander at will beyond the farmland. This right to roam was fought for with passion by working class men from the surrounding industrial towns who clashed with the gamekeepers of landed aristocracy across the Peak District moorlands. This fight reached its zenith on Kinder where hundreds of urban ramblers joined together in the Mass Trespass one spring morning in 1932. Kinder was then private land and the trespassers were met with force by gamekeepers and police. Their leaders were arrested and jailed but the Trespass led to the formation of National Parks in England and Wales and ultimately to the Act of 2000 that made all moorland open access. Victory was a long-time coming and it is us today's walker who can reap the benefits.

The moorlands are magnificent at any time of the year. In spring the air is cut by the call of curlews, in June the white cotton grass spreads across bogs in snow-like flurries. But the moors really come alive in August when the miles and miles of heather bursts into vivid purple flowers. Summer is also the best time to catch the comical cackle of the low-flying red grouse.

Once you reach the moors there are many other ways to go than on to Kinder, either following the well-trod paths or going over the rough ground of this open access land, and coming back down to the valley via one of the many streamside paths. A look at a map will show you the dozens and dozens of walking options starting from Grindsbrook or any of the many guest houses and campsites in the valley. You can also find lots of information about walking around Edale and the moors at the excellent National Park Moorland Centre. The Centre is heated from a ground-source heat pump and has an insulating living roof of moorland plants.


The National Park Moorland Centre


Visit in spring for the delight of seeing newborn lambs

You can reach Edale easily for a day out by train. Though the valley appears remote it is less than 20 miles from Sheffield and Manchester and is on the railway line between the two with an hourly train service at present. If you prefer to stay longer to make more of the many footpaths there are plenty of guest houses and campsites to choose from. Stonecroft B&B uses organic ingredients and caters for vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free diets. All of the campsites have fairly basic facilities with shower and toilet blocks in converted farm buildings. Google maps has a list of campsites. Accommodation can get full during weekends and holidays so it is worth booking or at least calling ahead if you're heading out spontaneously to take advantage of a weekend of good weather. Certainly, the weather can make or break a walking weekend in Edale whether or not you're setting off on the first leg of the Pennine Way or simply ambling around between booths.