A somewhat unusual view of Benidorm, Costa Blanca, taken from the forat (cave tunnel) under the Bernia ridge. We were bivying there ready for an early start on the ridge the next day, and even in late March, the heat of the day was lingering and really amplifying the scents of the spring flowers and rosemary (and the small ruminants which often overnight here as well...). This was a contrast to the previous time we'd been here one February, when the temperature was -5C and we were shivering in down sleeping bags.

Benidorm is the coastal strip running horizontally. On a night like this, even the high rise ghetto full of British drunks (we're extremely sorry for sending them over) looks quite lovely.

#FootpathFriday

#Mountains

#Climbing

Chicken SWAT team available for hire: embassies liberated, strongholds stormed, that general kind of thing. Morally-questionable black ops involving expensive flower bulbs a speciality.

Payment accepted in most currencies, including sweetcorn, rice and good quality mash.

(Training facility not fully completed, but it turns out the answer to "Can you teach chickens to use a spiral staircase?" is no - because they can already do it - and you *don't* need to build one to find out. Hopefully this information will help others.)

Christmas traditions:

The Boxing Day Cold War Steve jigsaw.

If you don't know 'Steve', he's one of the best, most eviscerating satirists on the internet. Whilst he's unashamedly left wing, there are no holy cows and he's as likely (more likely) to tear Starmer apart as any number of Gammons. The jigsaw is an established part of our Christmas and we don't acknowledge the outside world whilst working on it. Meals get skipped.

The jigsaw usually takes three days and an uncertain amount of emotional toll on our relationships. It has begun.

#FootpathFriday

It's under there, I promise. CMD Arete, with Ben Nevis summit on the right.

My son and brother-in-law descending part of the ridge - we'd done an overnight camp just before this point, and were just getting going again after a fairly muzzy awakening. There are times it's a bit of a struggle getting out of a warm sleeping bag, but we still had the summit to ourselves before anyone else turned up.

We tobogganed down the other side to about 500m off Glen Nevis valley floor - possibly the easiest descent I've ever had off The Ben.

Days that don't come along all that often. This was taken in the High Atlas in Morocco, close to Toubkal.

I like Toubkal as a mountain, as it's accessible to a lot of people and is surprisingly isolated from other, higher, peaks - so when you stand on top, nobody else is standing higher than you for several million square kilometres.

But there's no question that it gets busy, with crocodiles of people being guided up the south col. If you step out of the refuge and go the other way, though, there are a number of 4000m peaks on which you're unlikely to see another soul. And if you hit the weather right, this is what you get.

One from the vaults.

Annapurna Base Camp, around 2013. The youngest was five, and made it up there under his own steam (a feat which was mentioned in the Kathmandu Post).

Highlight of the trek was watching the kids skip down the inclines, crushing the dreams of adults coming up the other way.

Second-best part was the 'joyful' attitude of the first-born, demonstrated beautifully on the left of the photo.