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SKP Guy

@skpguy.bsky.social

Writer, Geographer, Traveller. Human human being

3,074 Followers  |  1,877 Following  |  1,231 Posts  |  Joined: 16.11.2024  |  1.5861

Latest posts by skpguy.bsky.social on Bluesky

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Bird’s eye view of a wildfowl state – At the Falls I thought my first port of call should be the Sioux Falls themselves.  The city grew up around them and now they are protected by an extensive park system along the Sioux River.  While settlement h…

alanpmills.wordpress.com/2017/08/04/b...

06.12.2025 08:00 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Massawa and the Escarpment – Back up the hill Click here to go to the first part of this chapter. I headed back to Chris and Sheila’s where they laid on an early lunch.  I had another swim around the bay.  After a while, I realised that I was…

alanpmillsuk.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/m...

06.12.2025 07:59 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Massawa and the Escarpment – Walk round the islands I woke when the day started.  The bright sun was up in a few minutes and the heat was already beginning to rise when I came off my perch (one last glance around the bay and across the causeway ont…

alanpmillsuk.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/m...

05.12.2025 17:16 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Bird’s eye view of a wildfowl state – The record of the earth Maybe the thought of what is to all intent and purpose like a library of satellite images is not exciting to you, but it should be.  I know I was being all nerdy, but the thought should enter your …

alanpmills.wordpress.com/2017/08/03/b...

05.12.2025 17:16 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Bird’s eye view of a wildfowl state – In the biggest archive of satellite data known EROS Data centre is the location of possibly the largest archive of satellite imagery in the world.  It was built in the early 1970s when satellite imagery was starting to be collected routinely at…

alanpmills.wordpress.com/2017/08/02/b...

05.12.2025 07:21 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Massawa and the Escarpment – Night on the roof When we got back to the house, there was not much else to do except go to sleep.  I had two options.  Either I could go into the air conditioned play room for the girls and sleep among their Barbi…

alanpmillsuk.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/m...

05.12.2025 07:21 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Massawa and The Escarpment – Bizarre walk and dinner We got in the Land Rover (the obligatory white Land Rover) and we drove up to the roundabout.  Two green tanks guarded the causeway in front of us, but they are no longer manned. They are a memori…

alanpmillsuk.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/m...

04.12.2025 16:53 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Bird’s eye view of a wildfowl state – Approaching EROS I saw the sign off for the EROS data centre for the next turning up ahead, and even in the gloom I could tell I was in the right place.  I could see the huge water tower of the complex that had the…

alanpmills.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/b...

04.12.2025 16:52 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Bird’s eye view of a wildfowl state – Cold start Gray had suggested not to rush in on the first day, so I planned to head to the EROS data centre around nine.  One of the reasons I had my car was the centre is in the middle of nowhere, about 10 m…

alanpmills.wordpress.com/2017/07/31/b...

04.12.2025 07:23 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Massawa and the Escarpment – Swimming, Resting and Raining For me it was the noise.  As you draw close to the reef, there is a crackling noise, which continues incessantly.  It is like people breaking loads and loads of kindling ready for a fire.  I asked …

alanpmillsuk.wordpress.com/2014/06/02/m...

04.12.2025 07:22 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Massawa and the Escarpment – Learning to snorkel The compound was made up of a caravan, a portable room and a couple of converted containers .  Chris and Sheila had spent some time in a house, but had eventually settled in the caravan just becau…

alanpmillsuk.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/m...

03.12.2025 17:20 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Bird’s Eye View of a wildfowl state – Delayed Start Only problem was, the week I was due to go, the USA went broke.  Well the Federal Government went broke.  What that meant effectively was that the budget for the next year had not been agreed.  US …

alanpmills.wordpress.com/2017/07/30/b...

03.12.2025 17:19 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Bird’s eye view of a wildfowl state – A geographer’s dream come true. And yet, I went to one place in the States where I came to the conclusion its residents really did have no need to travel further.  At one time they had struggled to make their landscape inhabitabl…

alanpmills.wordpress.com/2017/07/29/b...

03.12.2025 07:24 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Massawa and the Escarpment – across the desert The road was flattening out now as we approached the largest town en route, Ghinda.  The entrance to Ghinda was guarded by a large white church on a small hill, then a long main street marked the c…

alanpmillsuk.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/m...

03.12.2025 07:23 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Massawa and the Escarpment – Down the hill The journey down to Massawa was one of the most fantastic drives you can ever imagine but like many epic trips, it starts in a very ordinary way.  We traversed the southern suburbs of Asmara, throu…

alanpmillsuk.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/m...

02.12.2025 17:01 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Bird’s eye view of a wildfowl state – England’s way north of Greenland” It’s an interesting dichotomy.  I find it amazing that the urban landscape does not change much across the whole US – the road signs, the fire hydrants, the streetlighting, the construc…

alanpmills.wordpress.com/2017/07/28/b...

02.12.2025 17:01 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Bird’s Eye View of Wildfowl State – Scratching the surface I’ve spent a life of travelling but I have limited experience of the USA.  The places so many Brits have on their bucket list in the USA keep on eluding me.  I have passed through JFK airport…

alanpmills.wordpress.com/2017/07/27/b...

02.12.2025 07:39 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Massawa and the Escarpment – Arranging Travel It was an ambition to drop down the escarpment and call in on a friend and colleague who lived in Massawa on the Red Sea coast; Chris Hillman and his family.  I had the honour of meeting him in Cha…

alanpmillsuk.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/m...

02.12.2025 07:38 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Massawa and The Escarpment – Asmara It shocks me now to think how Eritrea and Ethiopia have descended back into a bloody war over the last few years again or a struggling and distrustful peace, over a small piece of disputed territor…

alanpmillsuk.wordpress.com/2014/05/18/m...

01.12.2025 17:05 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Days and Nights of Freetown – Dealing with the challenges Most people were happy to see us.  One or two of the ladies would shout at me to not take photos but most wanted to pose and see the results in the viewfinder.  One or two people wanted to shake my…

alanpmills.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/d...

01.12.2025 17:04 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Days and Nights of Freetown – The Charcoalers We had to park the car at the entrance to the village and then negotiate a marshy stream to end up on the drier higher ground on which most of the settlement had been established.  They were under …

alanpmills.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/d...

01.12.2025 08:00 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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South Africa – everything is all right Click here you want to see the first post  in this chapter Kirsty had taught me the need for patience and lack of speed in safariing.  There is no way you will ever see anything more than a large h…

alanpmillsuk.wordpress.com/2014/05/17/s...

01.12.2025 07:59 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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South Africa -how to keep a giraffe to yourself Further down the road another rogue male elephant went storming past me a hundred feet from the road, then it quietened somewhat.  I did see more antelope, including the massive eland, but generall…

alanpmillsuk.wordpress.com/2014/05/16/s...

30.11.2025 16:33 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Days and Nights of Freetown – The shadow of Ebola I’ve yet to mention the horror of Ebola that hit Sierra Leone about a year after my last visit.  Through all the deaths, the scares, the inhuman but essential ways to isolate, treat and reint…

alanpmills.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/d...

30.11.2025 16:33 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Days and Nights of Freetown – “Nor scatter Kaka Fita-Fata” We saw an example of this as we headed back from the defunct bridge.  A rusted sign was set in amongst the fields near the road.  Put up by the local community it said “Open Defecation is not…

alanpmills.wordpress.com/2017/07/23/d...

30.11.2025 08:07 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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South Africa – Sunrise Safari Next morning after a surprisingly easy sleep, I awoke to a five o’clock alarm, and gathered my pieces together to head for the Bucky .  I thought I would try and beat the rush but first rays of the…

alanpmillsuk.wordpress.com/2014/05/15/s...

30.11.2025 08:07 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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South Africa – Sunset Safari I got checked into Olifant’s, and took a rather nice Rondavel style room, air con and mosquito nets included; how to camp in the bush, eh?  And headed for the shop.  I had intended for weeks to bu…

alanpmillsuk.wordpress.com/2014/05/14/s...

29.11.2025 15:35 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Days and Nights of Freetown- Africa’s infrastructure nightmare. I got as close as I dared and worked out what had happened.  A lorry had been crossing the bridge and had overloaded what was now apparently a much weakened structure.  At a point as far away from …

alanpmills.wordpress.com/2017/07/22/d...

29.11.2025 15:35 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Days and Nights of Freetown – To the collapse I was happy to go – it was somewhere new.  We headed out along the main road out of Freetown to the rest of Sierra Leone.  As I’ve said elsewhere, the Chinese were building another road…

alanpmills.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/d...

28.11.2025 17:23 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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South Africa – The young gun But it was still not true safari – it was a hike.  So one night we clocked off early and with a couple of Robin’s friends who had just survived two long haul flights from the States via London, we …

alanpmillsuk.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/s...

28.11.2025 17:23 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

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