Tom Isitt

Post you from a different era (when collar-bones were still intact and hair was BIG).

Description of lavish meal

Starving barefoot Serbian child refugee

Contrasting the WW1 experiences of western journalists and Serbian refugees during the Great Retreat of 1915. Foie Gras and roast duck for the former, starvation and hypothermia for the latter.

The very first sentence of the article uses emotive language to demonise tourists. “Rising numbers of visitors are swamping the locals, making housing scarce, increasing pollution and even emptying churches.”

It’s interesting how the tourists are demonised, not the locals who have turned their own neighbourhoods into B&B wastelands.

I’ve been wondering how those journalists who drank the Adams Kool-Aid back in 2020 feel now. Some of the puff pieces were 🤮

It’s the hi-viz requirement that put me off. How can people admire my ££££ Rapha kit when it’s covered up?

Possibly a WW1 bunker converted into a bivacco. It’s well situated on the reverse slope of Italian positions on Monte Palon (Grappa sector), so quite likely.

Wow, that’s some puff piece by the FT. And complete fantasy. Getting the Emiratis and ex-pats out of their AMGs will only happen if Colnago produce a $300,000 gold-plated, diamond-encrusted C68.

Definitely. And better than sleeping outside…just.

A cold and dingy shelter in the Italian mountains

Bivacco…Italian for “mistake” (to paraphrase a popular saying in the hiking/climbing community).

He wrote a book about how he did all the right things, and everybody else messed it up. But he was let down by several of his generals, and did get a few things right.

Toilet paper bound into an easily portable form 😉

Large assortment of braces, bandages, and medical equipment

The “hiking essentials” they never tell you about.

😂

The Italians launched more than 90 unsuccessful infantry attacks on Col di Lana, before resorting to blowing the top off it with a mine.

I suspect most experienced practitioners are already doing this. We spent a week hiking in the Italian Alps this July and barely saw another person, because we planned it that way.

Bah, and indeed, humbug!

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I’m afraid it will be stuck in US customs until December 😉

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Thunder in The Mountains, available for pre-order

336 pages, full colour, large format paperback, a hefty 454g

It’s available for pre-order on Amazon, so it must be real.

(It’s been six years in the making, and I still can’t quite believe it’s actually a thing)

Pro cyclists sports-washing oppressive regimes

The victim of one of those oppressive regimes

If I wasn’t so busy, I’d try to make a Pro Cycling ethics league table, based on Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth rankings, and the number of ex-dopers employed by the team. We should know what we’re cheering for. Maybe the cycling media could…oh, wait…

Soldiers on a very pointy rock tower.

As observation posts go, this is a belter.

Facebook friend request

Surprising, considering he died 10 years ago. Still, it occasioned a pleasant trip down memory lane. He was an absolute maniac (a common character trait among my dead friends).

Gollum saying what we all think

Enrico Toti built a career on it. That, and lying about his adventures. Getting killed in WW1 elevated him to legendary status.

They are in very poor condition, and unframed, so I doubt a museum would want them. As they were prohibiItionists, I considered offering them offering them to my local pub 😉

The curse of family portraits…you don’t want them on the wall, but you can’t really get rid of them either (heirlooms, and all that). He was a Methodist preacher, she was a vocal Prohibitionist. They would have been rather disappointed to find themselves in my loft.