Longform
A Test of Mettel
In a year in which Swiss glaciers lost three per cent of their total volume, Alex Roddie returns to an Alpine peak he first climbed a decade before, and finds huge changes. This feature was first published in the August 2019 issue of The Great Outdoors. 2007 ‘My sleeping bag’
Nature notes: this week’s nature and wildlife photography, 28 June 2020
Highlights this week include reed buntings, lesser whitethroats, a contemplative brown hare, and the moorhen chicks. It’s midsummer, and in an average year my photographic mojo hits rock bottom at around this point. Finding decent light for landscape photography involves ridiculously early starts, so I usually don’t bother
The voices of birds: a greening of lockdown
Lockdown has brought many hardships, but for some of us it has created the chance to build a closer relationship with the wildlife all around us. Here’s what lockdown has meant to me. That we live in strange times is so self-evidently true that the phrase itself has become
A Walk in the Woods – hiking Norway’s Jotunheimstien
Alex Roddie discovers a long-distance trail that begins in Oslo city centre, plunging into a forest paradise brimming with wildlife. This feature was first published in The Great Outdoors magazine (2018 Scandinavia Supplement) It isn’t every day that you get to start a long-distance trail from a city centre.
Wild perspectives: a twilight nature encounter at Snipe Dales
One of the last things I did in 2019 was to go for a walk in the woods, and I caught a glimpse of the wild perspectives that govern hidden corners of our world. It was to be a walk in search of some birds to photograph, but it ended
Skills guide: Planning off-path routes
If your hillwalking has mainly been confined to the Peak District or Lakes, it can be daunting to visit a wilder area where there are fewer footpaths. For the first-timer in the Scottish Highlands, here’s how to confidently plan walking routes – even where there are no paths. This feature
A Single Moment: Alpine Bivouac
This feature was first published in Sidetracked magazine, February 2018. Suddenly I’m not sure I want to go through with this, but there’s no chance to go back now. Not unless I want to descend that ridge in the dark. I’ve climbed to the summit of Stockhorn,
Down the Rabbit Hole with James Roddie and Mike Webster
On 10 November 2019, I attended the world premiere of Down the Rabbit Hole, the new film by Mike Webster about my brother James Roddie and his complicated relationship with mental health and the outdoors. From the film’s page at Spiral Out Pictures: Down the Rabbit Hole is the
Summits & Skylarks
After a winter of painful loss, Alex Roddie returned to the hills early in 2018 for a poignant journey over Fairfield and Helvellyn. This feature was first published in the February 2019 issue of The Great Outdoors. In October 2019 it received the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild Award for
The big routes: Langdale Skyline
From thrilling ridges to long-distance endurance-fests, we all like to push the envelope sometimes. Every mountain hit list has its essential big ticks, and for this instalment in our series on the UK’s most famous gnarly routes Alex Roddie revisits old favourites to make a complete horseshoe of the
