GeoActive 2008

Satellite picture from Flickr

Photographs from the BBC - click on the picture below for more.

Last Sunday, just before dusk, the evening sun sliced the landscape in half. I’m no photographer but my camera managed to catch these, which don’t quite reflect the impact of the live picture.

Six Maasai warriors have travelled from their remote rural village in Tanzania to the UK to run the Flora London Marathon.
The aim is to raise enough money to provide the village with clean water. This will cost between £20,000 and £60,000.

Last week it was spring scenes - now it’s back to winter scenes.

GeoActive has not been all that active recently, so I thought I’d upload these nice spring pictures!

Oil tanker runs aground off Shetland

A tanker carrying 85,000 tonnes of crude oil has run aground in hurricane force winds off the Shetland Islands. For the full story from BBC click on the picture.

This is rare in the UK. Helvellyn, which I have climbed (well, walked up) many times in all sorts of conditions, is basically out of bounds at the moment. Striding Edge (pictured below) is a beautiful feature and great fun to cross, especially when visibility is down to a couple of feet! For more from BBC click on the picture.

A Happy New Year to all. Here are some photos to kick it off.

Rajesh Badiani snapped this aerial view of Mount Kilimanjaro. Source BBC.

Khartoum, Sudan: A gigantic cloud of dust known as “Haboob” advances over the city on 29 April 2007. These seasonal type of monsoons can reach a height of 3000 feet and can change the landscape in the few hours they last. Source: Guardian Unlimited.

Dhaka, Bangladesh: A large numbers of pitchers and buckets are kept in an queue for collecting drinking water supplied by soldiers on 25 June 2007. Access to drinking water is a regular problem in central areas in the city. Photograph: Abir Abdullah/EPA. Source: Guardian Unlimited.

. . . unless you happen to be caught up in them. There’s one across a large part of the mid-west right now. Click on the picture for more images and information from the BBC.