Financial Times
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In a nation better known for futuristic cities, a cluster of small villages is clinging to the ancient traditions of thatching
Tom Allan
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Thatcher, writer.
Borderer 🏴 in Devon
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Tom Allan’s Journalist Portfolio
View as a gridBlack Sea breakers: exploring Turkey's ancient surf scene
Financial Times
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On a rocky headland north of Istanbul a lighthouse blinks out a warning, as it has done for more than 160 years. The lighthouse has given its Turkish name - " fener " - to the little fishing village perched on this, the last headland on the European side before the Black Sea pours into the Bosphorus straits.
Country diary: the Cheviots are studded with ghostly patches
The Guardian
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This shoulder of the Cheviot Hills has always been an edge-land. It marks the watershed between the Rule and the Liddel, and the frontier between Scotland and England. Leaving the road, I trudge uphill for two miles through sitka spruce and pine plantation before, with two steps, leaving the firm footing of the forestry track for the uncertain realm of sphagnum.
Country diary: it's a day for making eaves turds and windy bundles
The Guardian
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On either side of the lane, the tall hedge banks stand sodden and between them a field is washing away down the tarmac in a chocolate flood. The ash trees nod and bow in the wind; wood pigeons parachute across the grey sky. For the thatcher, it is not a day to be on a roof.
The plate outdoors: dining and hiking in the Black Forest
Financial Times
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I came to the Black Forest in search of simple pleasures - to walk and to eat. And on a hillside overlooking the village of Baiersbronn, with a winding trail ahead of me and dinner round the corner, it seems I might have found them.
Country diary: foragers search out the fruits of a fortuitous mistake
The Guardian
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A genius, insists Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses, doesn't make mistakes - his errors are the "portals of discovery". Here at Cragbank Wood nature reserve, on the southern fringes of the Scottish Borders, local foragers enjoy the fruits of an arboricultural error that Joyce himself might have relished.
Ultra-swimmer Sarah Thomas aims to be first to cross Channel four times
Financial Times
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When ultra-marathon swimmer Sarah Thomas clambered out of the dark waters of Lake Champlain, on the border of New York state and Vermont, in August 2017, she felt anything was possible.
A local's guide to Berne, Switzerland: 10 top tips
The Guardian
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Taking a dip in the river is a national pastime here, with the River Aare the basis of the city's claim to be Europe's urban swimming capital.
Deep inside the Pushcha, Europe's last primaeval forest | Atlas by Etihad
Atlas
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In a clearing in the forest, splashed with spring violets and patches of evening light, Irina Kashpei is checking her camera traps.
Chernobyl: the wildlife haven created when people left
The Guardian
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It is 5.30am in southern Belarus. A pink moon hangs over flat fields tinged with frost, and as we arrive at the checkpoint on the edge of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, five hours' drive south of the capital, Minsk, a dawn chorus of cranes and hoopoes is in full swing.
Discover Dominica on the Caribbean's longest hiking route
Financial Times
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On the trail of rainforest legend, an explorer’s legacy and the world’s second-biggest hot spring
Papageien-Import nach Brandenburg: Ausgeflogen aus der Karibik
Die Tageszeitung
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Auf Dominica ist eine Papageienart vom Aussterben bedroht. Ein Verein bringt zwei Tiere nach Deutschland. Vogelschützer verlangen den Rückflug.
Proposed Shipping Route Threatens one of Europe's Last Wild Rivers
Earth Island Journal
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Environmental activists and locals are organizing against the project, which would pass through 11 nature reserves
The next steppe: can Kyrgyzstan become an adventure tourism hotspot?
Financial Times
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Through the dust I can see a throng of men on horseback. They press and jostle until one rider bursts clear, swinging a heavy object up to his saddle - the goat carcass which, in the Kyrgyz game of kok-boru, serves as a shaggy, leggy, 50kg ball.
Belarus: Eco-protestors target proposed shipping route through Ukraine and Poland
eurasianet.org
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The aim of the E40 project is an ancient one: to link the Black Sea with the Baltic, creating a navigable passage through Eastern Europe. The 1250-mile channel would run from Kherson in Ukraine, through Belarus, to Gdansk on Poland's Baltic coast - a passage that Viking longships used, in part, on their way to Constantinople to connect with the Silk Road.
Protest gegen Umweltzerstörung : Paddler, die den Prypjat retten
Die Tageszeitung
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Protest gegen Umweltzerstörung E40 heißt das Projekt einer Wasserstraße vom Schwarzen Meer bis zur Ostsee. In Weißrussland sehen Ökologen den Fluss Prypjat bedroht. MINSK/KIEW taz | Über den flachen Ufern des Prypjat in Weißrussland hängen schwere dunkelviolette Sturmwolken.
The ultra-swimmers pushing the sport's boundaries
Financial Times
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Tom Allan joins Lewis Pugh as he bids to swim the length of the English Channel — and talks to others going further still
Country diary: coated with algae, the crab looks like an aquatic Green Man
The Guardian
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The combe above the beach echoes with the calls of chiffchaffs, and cock stonechats flick and churr on the wind-stunted hawthorns that line the footpath. Around the twin radio masts - a 20th-century riposte to Start Point's whitewashed gothic lighthouse - a small flock of swallows cut and swerve.
A 'hut-to-hut' bike tour in the Dolomites
Financial Times
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Using ski lifts, hiking trails and climbers’ refuges, a new trip takes cyclists deep into the mountains
Postcard from...Odessa
Financial Times
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Since the conflict with Russia that began in 2013-14, tourism has dwindled in the city. And yet it still has much to offer visitors
Hiking Georgia's Transcaucasian Trail
The National
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Georgia’s Transcaucasian Trail offers striking landscapes, great food and barely any tourists in sight
Country diary: the thatch is buzzing with sleepy flies
The Guardian
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The low buzz gives them away. The thatched roof I'm working on, perched on a hillside above the pigeon-grey Kingsbridge estuary in Devon, is full of insects...
Georgia: Dam Threatens Traditional Svan Way of Life
eurasianet.org
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On his land in the Svaneti mountains, Zaza Vibliani shows off his family's watermill, set inside a tiny hut underneath a stand of pear trees, driven by the steady flow of a mountain stream...
Sarah Thomas: the woman who swam a century
Financial Times
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Unnoticed and unfeted, a US swimmer is breaking the sport’s boundarie