You know what it is like, or maybe you don’t. You get to the season of goodwill ad cheer only to realise that you don’t have a Christmas Party to go to. Once again, Bob and I find ourselves in such a position. (I wonder why?).

So, Bob — as irrepressibly cheery as ever (well he he’s either that or as gloomy as hell) — has decided we will have our own party overnight, somewhere on a wild campsite in the Brecon Beacons.

The highlight of the trip will be a Christmas meal cooked on a series of camping stoves. There will be turkey, brussel spouts and potatoes! And there will be min Christmas Pudding! We will have party hats on top of our wooly headgear. There will be crackers and poppers. The stoves will probably be some ingenious prototypes of new gear that — if you are lucky — will make it to market next year.

What could possibly go wrong?

Now, here’s a thought!

Yesterday I spent the day with a large Care Provider Company who I sometimes do some work with. At one point there was a discussion with some non experts about people with dementia, and particularly the tendency for them to spend a lot of time ‘wandering’.

Of course, folks with dementia are not ‘wandering’. They are involved in a task that is very real to them but they may be trapped in a time zone 10, 20 or 30 years ago. For example, Mable might be seeming to want to always leave the resident’s lounge for no explicable reason. But talk to Mable and you’ll find that she’s off to visit her sister for some important reason, it’s just that the reason might be to do with something that happened 20 years ago!

There was some discussion of a man — let’s call him Bill —who used to have a stressful job as manager. Bill spent much of his life on the road and was always on the go. Now Bill is in residential care and suffering from dementia, but he is still always on the go. Sit him down for breakfast and he will have no interest in it (an appreciation of food is one of the first things to go). Staff working with him found it a real problem to feed him until somebody had the bright idea of feeding him on the move. Now, they follow him around as he ‘travels’ offering him bacon sandwiches as he moves — much as he would have done himself when he was working.

This got me thinking. What will happen when some of us are at that point of our lives? Will we spend our lives in the home out wandering across the big open spaces? Will our frustrations be due to the problems of finding a good wild camp spot in the main corridor? And, no doubt, some of us will be complaining bitterly that the cutlery on the table is far too heavy and bulky! It will take a fine member of staff to decode all of this.

All this suddenly jolted me from my day dreaming in quite a dramatic way. But then I thought about it some more. Perhaps this would be a nice way to go. As my faculties begin to fail I will be living in my own world, But it will probably a world that is high and open, wild and free.

Not a bad way to go that!

I was out for a curry with my Munro Bagging mate Carl the other evening. We soon got talking about hills, and accessing the tops — which way is the bets way up and that kind of thing.

The conversation set off a train of thinking which has been returning all week. Of course, there are some hills that are very straightforward or very simple if you like. The hill offers one overriding experience or one main personality if you like.

Think of Tryfan in North Wales for example. Tryfan can be a great mountain, it offers very much a way-you-see-is-what you get experience. Tryfan is about excitement and exposure. Anyone climbing this mountain for the first time will have had an exhilarating experience. My problem with Tryfan is exactly that. On busy days the is a chain of walkers wanting to scramble up to the Glyders. The air is full of whoops and hollers and screams of joy. These days I usually prefer something quieter. But there is something nice in hearing these screams and realising that people up there are discovering something magical.

Over the A5 from Tryfan is an altogether more interesting range of hills, the Carneddau. From the A5 — and with Tryfan at your back — these hills offer great climbs and scrambles but approach them from the North and the same hills offer a completely different personality.

At 1064 metres (3,490 feet) Carnedd Llewelyn is the king around these parts. It is a great mountain to approach from the A5, from the eastern end of Ogwyn. The climb here is steep and exciting, a great first hill for kids; they get the chance for early use their hands and get scrambling. Most people take in Carnedd Dafydd first. Dafydd is — more often than not – a dark and brooding hill. Often mist will be descending as you head out on the ridge towards Llewelyn. It’s quite a moment when, out of the mist, emerges one of the biggest Cairns you will have ever seen. Hopping over slate and stones you soon find yourself on Llewelyn, ready for the return to the A5. The descent can be just as exciting involving slides down rocks and scrambles climbs back up the the finger ridge; the ride is punctuated by a massive fissure which seems almost designed with the sole purpose give hill walkers an exciting day out.

While this is an exciting circuit the other approaches offer a very different experience. Walk in from Llanfairfechan, on the coast, and you gradually ascend form the coast to the mountains. As you stroll over the hills of Drum and Foel Fras you are gently introduced into the wonder of these mountains with peaks all around, if you are lucky, shimmering in a heat haze. If you are unlucky the rain and the wind will be battering you. There will be no doubt that you are entering mountains but the experience will bean exhilarating one and certainly one to ‘blow away’ any lingering cobwebs! The leisurely walk gradually becomes more exposed and at Foel Gras the paths give way to causeways of stone. Eventually, after several false summits, the batters stones of Llewelyn are reached. From the summit you still have the excitement of the descent but approached from this direction the hill walking experience is a very different one from that offered from the A5.

This is a long and— usually lonely —walk, just the ticket for those times hen you want to be alone with yourself and to sort out all of those things lingering in the mind that — well — need sorting out.

And there is another approach. Travel a little further West along the coast and you’ll be entering the hill from Aber falls. You can simply trot up quiet valleys to the peak of Garnedd Uchaf —  another ‘pile of stones’ as described on the OS maps. There are few tracks marked on the maps here but these paths are well trod and soon deposit you on the top of a hill which shoves in the direction of Llewelyn. But you can vary this even more. Once above Aber you can cut across small valleys, slogging over heather and making you way onto lush grasslands. Here ponies graze for most of the year. In font of you are the hill and to the side the expanse of he Menai Strait and the Island of Anglesey. True enough,you will end up on the path to our mountain but this approach delivers up a completely different hill to anyone with a modicum of imagination.

This is the point of multiple personality hills. They reward regular exploration and only the inquisitive visitor will begin to gain an understanding of the complexity that the hill has to offer.

So, when you’re asked do you not this hill or that what do you say? FOr me the answer is almost certainly, “a little”. Stuck here in the city is nice to know that some of my closet hills are the most complex. They offer me choices for different moods. The hills themselves have different personalities. Yet they are always up for a visit!

After our very unusually warm autumn life here in the UK seems to be getting back to normal and while I like the warmth even I feel something of a sense of relief.

We are nearly in November and I still have home grown tomatoes ripening in the kitchen and there may even be one of two more to pull off the three plants that I have left out in the garden. But out on the hills the normal flow of the seasons has returned.

The autumn leaves have no fallen and trails are adorned with the perfume of newly rotting foliage. The crisp, mulchy, vegetable, smell of cold days in something we take for granted here in the UK but it represents something very special to us. Our soils are made up of fast-rotting vegetation. Travel to Africa or South America and can’t help but be constantly struck by the vivid red of the soil. Here the temperatures are warm and dry and don’t facilitate the quick and damp rotting that temperate gardeners take for granted.

There are down sides of course. For much of the year I have walked locally on trails that have been conscious by their lack of mud. Now a distantly familiar slipping and sliding motion is reminding me that my current pair of Terrocs are probably getting to the point where I should take they lack of tread seriously. With Pacer Poles in my hands I can often close my eyes and think that I am skimming along some range of snow covered hills on skis.

One of the joys of the outdoors here is that we have distinct sights, sounds and scents for each of the seasons. Soon the bitter cold will have its day. But until then the distinct dampness will hold sway.

Tomorrow I think I will take a walk through woods and forests. At this time of the year there is really nothing quite like it.

I am a great follower of the notion of the late Bruce Chatwin, that landscape is made infinitely more interesting by the people that inhabit it. Landscapes are about change. More often than not, humans have had a major impact on the land. But even in the most pristine wilderness the landscape has changed the fortunes and stories of the human race.

The history of the land — and of the peoples that once lived there — are major features of my walks. I’ve walked long routes through Scotland fascinated by the stories of the land, the devastating sadness of Knoydart’s clearances, the great drove roads and the more infamous ones such as the Lairig Ghru where the drovers were more as likely cattle stealers. Mountain ranges are nearly always historic boundaries and barriers. Walk along the Pyrenees ridge and you can hardly avoid the stories of border wars and skirmishes and battles and even great campaigns as you walk along dramatic trails cut into the side of mountains which were once used for dragging down the high oaks that went into the making of the French fleet. A little further East the borderlands of the Alps and the Dolomites provide the backdrop for centurys European intrigue, warfare and political change. Yet walk through the Alps and you cannot totally escape a mode of life that has existed on these high pastures for millennia.

Last week I found myself down at London’s Albert Dock on one of the hottest days of the year. The dock was a huge expanse of water glistening in the sun. Opposite the new headquarters of Newham Council sat London’s City Airport. In the dock itself a party was learning all about kayaking. It was an almost idyllic site and the scale of the docks immense.

I first visited this area in the early 80′s. I had some friends who had bought space in first of the first Wharf developments in Wapping. The area was certainly not salubrious then. The wharf buildings were cold and crumbling and almost inhabited. Nearby streets such as Garnet Street were wind swept collections of poorly built council housings. The overwhelming atmosphere of the area was one of decay.

To wonder East from here — into the lands of the great docks — was like entering another universe. Huge buildings sat alongside huge stretches of water. The area was more or less deserted, a wasteland on a huge scale.

But with a little imagination you could imagine this place as the hub of the world’s trading networks, docks stocked with huge clippers that had arrived from all corners of the globe, wharfs busy with dock workers and sailors of ever race and hew imaginable. It would have been fast and dangerous. There would have been a terrible stench of cargo and stake air. The noises and sounds of the docks would have been more powerful than any heavy metal concert. This was a fascinating area and back then I found every excuse to wonder around it. Occasionally, you can still get a glimpse of this area through the gangster films made in the 60′s and 70′s. Back then the Docklands was a canvas to let your imagination flow.

But that was then. Strolling by the docks today it is almost impossible to conjure up those vivid dreams. There are still references to history in the place name — the Docks themselves and the Customs House — but as I strolled I could find no presentations, plaques or storyboards that focussed on the area’s once proud history. It seems such a shame.

Today the docks look almost like a custom designed playground. There is still much space for development here and tourism will almost certainly grow. It would be nice if visitors — from wherever they come — would be able to spent a little time taking in the story of the past. I’m sure their experience will be all the richer for it.

We should celebrate our developments and not be afraid of modernity. But we should also acknowledge the past. Not only has her past helped shape our future but it informs our plans for the future. We should help people understand and not forget.

Photos taken with an iPhone 4