1 – Getting bearings

At the foot of Nevis raring for the off

Nevis

We all met up in Inverness, the majority of the party flying up from London, and I flew up from Italy to Glasgow, overnighted in the city, and got the train up. As we drove to Fort William, all eyes turned to the clock and the skies, and the impending dusk. It was around 4pm, and we were not at Nevis yet. Not that it matters too much, as the 24 hours only start to tick when you begin climbing, but descending Nevis in the dark was not massively palatable. A quick stop for the “before” photo op, then we were off. Nevis is an odd climb; t doesn’t feel like a mountain until you are half way up and the first bit is pleasant hill walking. There were lots of people around, probably quite a few Three Peakers. There was the odd stop for water, snacks, clothing layer adjustments and views. The houses in the valley below rapidly become small specks as we climbed up and up. It was beginning to get dark, and then rain started. Our team of 6 started to get stretched, and it became apparent about 9/10s up, with the gales beginning, and it getting very cold despite being August, that due to a knee injury Chris would have to turn back and begin the long trek down. The rest of the team continued up, to mop up the remaining metres, and I decided to head down too as solo descents of Nevis in the dark are not massively recommended. Near yet far! But a rewarding climb nonetheless. It was a slow descent down, coldness hitting, with head torches casting glows on the rocky path down, with a sheer drop to one side. The end of the descent seemed to go on for ever. The remainder of the team soon caught us up, having summitted, and we continued down together in the dark. Below about 700m it became a nice summer’s night again, with other parties descending too, headtorches flitting along the path and plenty of merry conversation. At the foot, a welcoming pub beckoned. We just made last orders! David got a round of whiskies in, and the pub kindly gave us half a chocolate cake as they had no more use for it! By now it was 11-12pm, and we were all thoroughly soaked. Many of us had discovered that splashproof rather than waterproof would be a more apt description of our clothing. But we were in good spirits, despite the driving rain. Claire, who had kindly agreed to drive us for the trip and did an absolutely phenomenal job of getting us to the moutains *plus* getting us loads of food and water, picked us up, having had to wait the 6 or 7 hours we took to scale the mountain. We were rammed into a 7 seater people carrier, and had to do some serious luggage management to get everyone and their stuff in. As I’d come right from Italy, I had a large holdall which James valiantly agreed to have in the back seat, despite it prodding into him as he tried, along with the rest of us, to sleep on the 5 hour drive from Scotland to the peak district.

A cold and stormy August night on Nevis!

Scaffell

We must have slept, we all thought, as the clock seemed to skip through in big chunks during the night. But it was the sort of sleep where your head lolls forward, and just as you enter the land of nod, yanks up with a sudden start or thumps against the window, and so you start again. Claire did an incredible job getting us there, driving through the night, encountering we later found out, hordes of deer and all manner of night time fauna intent on causing mayhem to passing drivers. At 5am, we got to Scaffell. This was undoubtedly the low point. It was driving rain outside, our clothes were still damp, we’d snatched minutes of sleep, and it was a cold morning. Out we got, unfurling from our seats to take on the morning. Half an hour of getting ready, boots on, a bit of breakfast (Claire got us some pasta too!), drawing on our resolve, nursing sore feet and coaxing legs into life, and we were off.  Scaffell is an odd climb too, not a mountain but a peak and theoretically the easiest one to tick off, but the first 1-2hours of the climb were, for me, quite punishing. The team were getting slightly ahead, and I was flagging and thinking I couldn’t keep the pace. Was it fitness, or lack of energy from lack of dinner? The former would be game over, the latter eminently solveable. Thankfully it was the latter, as I dug out a snickers duo bar, and munched on it, and ten minutes later got my second wind, catching up with the team, and onwards and upwards. We rounded the mountain, the rain still driving, absolutely no one around except us (“where are all the other Three Peakers?”) and after some nifty map reading from Laura and following the piles of rocks laid by past peak conquerers, we found what we assumed was the summit, though as it was a plateau it wasn’t especially clear. But mission accomplished! The descent was good fun, despite slightly achey feet. A few people appeared, venturing out on a Bank Holiday morning. Again the finish line seemed ages away, the last section took a long time. The sun appeared. It was 9.30am, we’d been up and down the mountain in a neat 4 hours, and were back before breakfast! Back at the car, we tucked into the pasta Claire had got us, all pretty contented with the whole thing. The sun was by now fantastic and shining against the heather covered mountain sides, various assorted sheep and pleasant streams. It was time to head off, in good spirits.

Half way up Scaffell Pike

After a night of rain, the sun appears in the morning on Scaffell

Ready for the next mountain

Snowdon

We drove past Manchester, across to North Wales, and enjoyed nice views across the North Wales coast to a massive offshore windfarm, across a bay covered in sea horses. We were clock watching. We weren’t all that tired, as it was nice and bright. We got there by early afternoon. and began the third ascent, taking the  route following the mountain railway, encountering lots of people around for their bank holiday day out. We reached Halfway House at a reasonable time. Snowdon is mostly a gentle climb, but has some mighty steep sections 700-900m up which go on and on. When you get beyond these, it is a pleasant slope with magnificent views over lakes and the lower mountains, this time in the light and sun unlike the torrid night on Nevis. A short hop to the summit, and we’d made it! Time for the “after” photo op, some pictures of us looking like Victorian mountaineers, squinting into the middle distance, then to the highly civilised mountain cafe (which was lacking at both Nevis and Scaffell) for drying out, eating snacks, adding multiple layers for the cold descent down. On the way down  you don’t have the benefit of exertion to keep you warm, but instead constant knee-jarring steps where you have to keep stopping yourself falling downhill. This isn’t tiring but fairly relentless and harsh on weary limbs.  The foot of the mountain was a welcome sight, some of us sprinted for the finish. We’d done it! Happy days. Time for a North Welsh local brew supped in low the setting sun, and off to Betws-y-coed to leave our stuff and quickly get changed and ready at the hostel, before a well deserved dinner!

View from half way up Snowdon

At the top of Wales's highest peak.

Mission accomplished!

Here are some jottings from the Sri Lankan capital.  It it Sunday evening, just about to head into the final month of the placement. Difficult to believe that two months have now passed – they’ve gone incredible quickly.

Tea - the green gold of Sri Lanka

As part of being with my host organisation, I was invited to a trip to the Hill country a couple of weeks back. This was great. We travelled east of Colombo, by van, and the contrast in the scenery is dramatic within a matter of a couple of hours. The climate goes from hot and humid, to dry, a bit colder, and when you get right to the highest parts of the Sri Lanka, just a mite parky. We overnighted in Nuwara Eliya. This is around the highest settlement in Sri Lanka, overlooked by its highest peak. It’s a bit like Wales climate wise. With the more rainfall, and a cooler climate, it is an ideal place to grow all manner of vegetables. It is, therefore, a great place to grow strawberries, and most houses appear to have a plot of land adjacent where all manner of legumous plants are sprouting, such as carrotts and leeks. Vegetables are grown here and sent all over the island.

The Hill Country - Nuwara Eliya - A great climate to grow vegetables

Sri Lanka is heavily dependent on agriculture. That’s why there is a growing debate about the risks that farmers face in Sri Lanka, especially those on low incomes, as risks seems to be increasing.  I’m helping to put together a paper on the potential of one risk management tool, microinsurance, for low income farmers. It’s not a clear cut story. At the moment, insurance isn’t a part to any great extent of the landscape of how risks are faced by farmers. There are a variety of reasons. Probably the main one is affordability. When many farmers face pressing problems of meeting day to day expenditures, such as for food and other essentials, the expense of paying for something which can be seen as relatively nebulous like insurance, which may be paid for but not needed, is for many seen as an unjustifiable expense. However, farmers work in environments where they can lose everything, and where crop damage is a serious risk to livelihood. An unexpected shock can cause households to fall into poverty if they are already near the poverty line. When the downside is this extreme, some might say that all risk management solutions need to be examined.

One way that some farmers cope with the unexpected is to own cattle. It's a flexible risk management solution, and informal methods are likely to be more appropriate in many circumstances. It may provide less scope however to deal with a major one off loss.

Informal schemes, such as communities pulling together to help afflicted families, or families taking emergency loans or dipping into savings where available, are currently the solutions where public support is not available. These solutions may be the most appropriate solutions in many circumstances. However, in some circumstances, they may not be, especially in the event of catatrophic loss, loss affecting many at once, or where savings/ public support are unavailable and loans are only available at high rates of interest. Here, so the argument goes, is where being insured may offer a better solution, for some farmers in certain circumstances.  This is a relatively new area of enquiry for economists, and the potential of this particular risk management solution to serve those on the lowest incomes in a way in a beneficial way is still being explored in different contexts around the world. The paper were doing aims to throw some light on this potential, from a Sri Lankan perspective. To write the paper we are meeting many different stakeholders in insurance provision to low income famers in Sri Lanka to gain their insights (e.g. public sector, rural development organisations and commercial insurers).

And so, its the beginning of week 9 of the placement starting tomorrow. I have more stakeholder interviews to set up, then will begin to collate the insights, and finalise the paper outline. Then it is onto the paper drafting and the iterative process of writing, getting feedback, re-writing and editing. It is going to be  busy – but interesting – concluding four weeks in Colombo!