A Jump with a View

We'd waited for our cable car and managed to get to the top of a small mountain overlooking Lago Maggiore on one side, Mont Blanc on the other. It was beautiful - the air was fresh and the horizon had a haze over it that made everything look softer.

Looking out at the view reminded me of the time I went to Mont Blanc. We took the train part of the way up the mountain and walked around. We wandered, I had a wee in a draughty squat (truly an eye-opening experience) and then we went back down the mountain.

I love the mountains.

I really love the mountains.

I would much prefer to go to the mountains than to the beach. There's something special and wonderful about being high up and looking at the pristine world below. The air is fresh and there's so much of it too: it's freeing (pretentious, but true).

I've always wanted to do proper mountaineering. Bear Grylls took Miranda Hart up to the Alps for a couple of days trekking - I would write and star in a sitcom just to be able to do that! But alas all I've managed is a stroll around about a third of the way up Mont Blanc, and even then I took the train.

So even though it's totally inadequate, about four years later when I found myself eye-balling Mont Blanc from afar, I thought I'd do the next best thing for me, and take a jumping picture...

Soft Walk to Horizon

Lago Maggiore, Italy, 2009

Stresa-d Out

A couple of posts ago I talked about perspective - getting some perspective in terms of the people I spent a mere month of my life with, and also getting some perspective in my jumping photos so that it was obvious I was jumping and not crouching next to a tiny Italian flag.

This is true of the next picture in my jumping album: you'll see that it looks like I'm a giant on top of a Borromean Island in the middle of Lake Maggiore. This would be unlikely and again, it's just an interesting perspective which is currently winning the battle against common sense in my blog 2-0.

So, like my previous post, I'm in Stresa on Lake Maggiore. Feeling rather invincible, I decided to have another go at jumping as I'd managed to escape unscathed from my previous escapade and I quite like tempting fate. Ultimately I was killing time with my family before we went up on a cable car to above the lake.

I hate killing time. I'd already taken pictures with all the exercise signs along the waterfront. Firstly I never saw anyone else attempting them, and secondly I'm always up for a bit of ritual embarrassment. There were several signs with suggestions for different exercises every few yards. What a waste of money...

Anyway, I'd completed them all with varying degrees of hilarity, and we had about half an hour before we had to get the cable car. We didn't want to be late so there was no point venturing into town for a browse. The only option was to kill time.

Now I don't wait well. Waiting stresses me out. My only alternative was clear: take some jumping photos.

How to Ruin a Beautiful Photograph

Stresa, Italy, 2009

It Started as a Good Idea...

When you're sitting in hospital in plaster up to your eyeballs and dosed on morphine; in those hazy moments of silence you do think 'well it started as a good idea...' A plan fraught with complications is usually pursued if the end product is worth it, so much so that the risks really are worth taking. Sometimes, however, these things don't happen, and they're just plain stupid.

Sometimes I think that about my jumping photos. I see a brilliant spot to jump off, but it's only after I think that I may have been jumping off something a little dangerous, or in front of something a little dangerous...

Take the picture in Florence, for example. I was jumping off a wall (with a hefty drop on one side). One slight miscalculation and I was looking at broken bones and a stay in a hospital that could probably learn a lot from the NHS. All that in the name of jumping. Is it really worth it?

That was my first thought when I saw today's jumping picture. I'd forgotten about it for the mostpart. If I remember one, it's a different one - the next one in the series.

What can possibly go wrong?

Stresa, Italy, 2009

I was struck by the fact I didn't have a great deal of ground clearance and it looks like I'm about to smack my knees on the concrete wall, that or end up in the lake. I don't think about things like that when I jump because I'm confident enough in my jumping ability to be able to take off and land without doing myself too much of an injury.

But the camera never lies and sometimes shows me how close I get to just plain stupid.

Getting Some Perspective

My language course finished and I moved on to a family holiday in the north west of Italy - Lago Maggiore, Swiss Alps and plenty of sunshine. It was beautiful - absolutely breathtakingly wonderful. We spent about three weeks there in total - 3/4 of what I'd spent in Camerino on my language course.

To be honest the experiences were much the same - lots of sightseeing, lots of driving around, lots of wonderful Italian food, lots of great company and that was that. My time in Camerino has just been succinctly swallowed up and rendered no more special than any other time spent in a foreign clime.

Perspective indeed.

But still, more than two years later, I still keep in touch from the people on my language course. Admittedly as the years creep by the number is reducing, but the fact that I'm still in touch with anyone after spending an isolated month with them one summer is quite frankly miraculous.

A different perspective indeed.

This takes us nicely to my next jumping picture, taken on a walk I went on with my family from the villa where we were staying.

Crouching or Jumping?

Domodossola, Italy, 2009

One of my friends from my language course picked up on this picture and said it looked like I wasn't jumping, but crouching next to a teent tiny Italian flag: two persepctives.

I can dismiss the language course as just another month of my life in Italy, or I can remember it as one of the best months of my life: two perspectives.