Walk: Holmwood Station to Leith Hill Tower in Dorking (Surrey)

Went for a walk yesterday in Dorking (Surrey) just south of London with my cousin and nephew. We walked from Holmwood Station to Leith Hill Tower and back. It's around four-and-a-half kilometres each way so around nine kilometres in total. It's not a difficult walk but there are some inclines so take that into account. See here for route details in the Ordnance Survey website.

Getting there

It's just one hour from London Victoria to Holmwood station. But bear in mind that it's an infrequent service so plan ahead. For example on Saturdays the outgoing and incoming train is only once per hour and when I last checked there's no running service on Sundays.

In terms of cost we got a three-person GroupSave off-peak day return ticket for £28.20 which worked out cheaper than getting a standard two adult and one child off-peak day return ticket.

What to pack

If it's raining on the day of your walk or has rained a day or two before your trip it can be muddy so I'd highly recommend getting a pair of waterproof walking shoes. Other than that it's just the normal trekking items to pack: compass, Ordnance Survey Explorer map (the 146 map of Dorking, Box Hill & Reigate is the one your want), waterproof jacket or poncho, and compact prayer mat (which'll nicely double up for you as a picnic mat).

Recommended apps

Hands down the best two apps for navigation for me are the MAP.ME app and the OS Maps app. I use both when I'm out on walks. I use the MAPS.ME one 80% of the time because I like it's simplicity but there are times when I'm not so sure about which way to head and that's when the detail of the OS Maps app comes into play. Be sure to download the area of the walk that you need in both apps ahead of time so that they continue to work even in places when you don't have an internet connection.

6-day trip to Kaghan Valley and Hunza Valley in the north of Pakistan

I completed a 6-day round trip this past week with some members of my family travelling from our home village in Pakistan (situated around 100km south-east of Islamabad) northwards up to Sost. We were supposed to go a further 90km north-east up as far as Khanjereb Pass to touch the Pakistan-China border but we were running tight for time so decided to cut our trip a little short. You can find below some highlights of our trip as well as some tips which you'll find useful if you're planning on doing a similar trip. For pictures see here.

Highlights

• Mountains
• Rivers
• Good organic food and fruits (apricots abound)
• Nice friendly people living pure, simple lives
• Bumpy mountain roads!

Tour operator

We travelled with a Lahore-based tour operator named The Trekkerz. We contacted and got quotes from a number of tour operators ahead of time. All the quotes we got were in the range of 200,000 to 300,000 Pakistani rupees for a 6-day, 5-night, 8-person trip travelling in a new Toyota HiAce Grand Cabin. The price included a driver who doubled up as a tour guide, 3-room hotel accommodation, breakfast and entry to some but not all sites of interest. We decided to travel with The Trekkerz in the end not only because they had good online reviews but because they were the only one to be recommended to us by somebody we knew.

Day-by-day breakdown

Day 1 – We set off early in the morning from our home village (Arha) and arrived at Naran in the evening. We passed Islamabad, Murree, Muzaffarabad and Balakot along the way. We stayed the night at Naran Mountain Chalets.

Day 2 – We did a jeep ride up to Saif-ul-Maluk Lake in the morning and then set off for Hunza Valley. We passed Lulusar Lake, Babusar Top, Chilas and Gilgit along the way. We stayed the night at Hunza Embassy Hotel.

Day 3 – We visited Altit Fort in the morning, did a trek in Hopar Valley down to a glacier in the afternoon and then set off for Sost in the evening. We stayed the night at Sost Embassy Motel.

Day 4 – We made our return back to Hunza Valley passing Passu and stopping for some boating (at Attabad Lake), fruit picking and dried fruit shopping along the way. We stayed the night at Osho Thang Hotel.

Day 5 – We were supposed to proceed down to Naran but the road was blocked due to a local protest and so we had to take the longer road homewards which passes Dasu and Besham City. We stayed the night at Besham Continental Hotel.

Day 6 – We proceeded with our return journey home passing Mansehra and Abbottabad along the way.

Essential items to pack

• Travel sweets or chewing gum to stop you from throwing up because the road sure can get bumpy at times.
• A Chilly's water bottle (or equivalent) and cooler bag which keeps your water and snacks cool in the heat.
• Sunglasses and sun cream.
• A mixture of warm and cool clothes because the weather fluctuates between hot and cold from place to place.
• Pakistan national identity (NADRA) card for swift passage through police checkpoints.

Book Review: Part Reptile – UFC, MMA and Me, by Dan Hardy

I'm a fan of Dan Hardy's pre-fight and post-fight MMA analysis videos and if his autobiography captured only a fraction of that quality I'd have considered my money well spent. Fortunately it delivers. Just like in his videos he articulates himself well and it's clear he has a way with words. He does a brilliant job of intertwining the evolution of the sport with his own career – from fighting in local events for just a few hundred pounds to the big time in the UFC. I enjoyed looking up his old fights as he described them and looking up individuals that he'd mention during the course of the book – from opponents to training partners to coaches to generally influential individuals in the sport. Overall this was a fun read and, for sure, if you're into the analytical side of martial arts you'll enjoy this book.

Below are some quotes from the book:

"Fighters initially trained in the different disciplines separately, but when the lines between striking, wrestling and jiu-jitsu were blurred, the holes in their games became exposed. By training the transitional phases in isolation, it forced those wanting to stay standing to integrate takedown defence into their game, and for those wanting to fight on the mat to take into consideration the striking range which had to be negated to close the distance." 

"I was always keen to highlight and focus on my flaws. In fact, I viewed such introspection as a vital and necessary evil of being a mixed martial artist. Plenty of fighters shy away from such an approach and are content to keep working on their own speciality or what they know they are good at, but my logic was that if I improved on my weaknesses I would remove doubt or worry from my mind and be able to focus on my strengths during a fight." 

"When you are facing a man like Wanderlei Silva, the question within yourself as to whether you really want this is asked long before the bout starts. That's a powerful position for any athlete to hold, but particularly in combat sports. This is a game of psychological as well as physical dominance. Some may find it hard to image that an otherwise warm and friendly character can behave so brutally, but I always felt my profession demanded I be this way. I wasn't trying to earn victories, I was taking them from opponents with violent force. And it was from such means of victory that I drew my confidence and was able to re-enter a cage and do it all over again." 

"I've never been much of a money-chaser, it was always about the competition. That may seem naive of me, and maybe it was in some respects, but I know that while such an approach may have cost me a few quid in the short term, in the long term it opened up doors and provided opportunities that may have otherwise gone to the guys on the circuit willing to accept hard fights for less money." 

"A huge swathe of so-called mixed martial artists were indeed little more than thugs who had done a bit of boxing and drunken street fighting and now wanted the reputation of being a no-holds-barred cage fighter. I was loathe to be lumped in with that subsection and for that reason I never fought on a Cage Rage event. They had great fighters on their cards... but the whole promotion was packaged in such a thuggish manner that it never appealed to me. I was never interested in gaining a tough-guy image. All I wanted was to test myself in a fair fight, in an arena, in a sporting environment." 

"... the traditional air of respect that is still prominent in Japanese life was present in PRIDE, with fans sitting and watching studiously, applauding appreciatively for good exchanges on the ground and recognising astute game-plans when they paid off. It always seemed to me like the Asian audience, more keenly aware of the beauty and intricacies of martial arts, held fighters in a higher regard... The UFC, with its American razzmatazz was a place for sportsmen and entertainers, while PRIDE felt like the home of true warriors." 

"I do enjoy a scrap, and I am sometimes the one to go looking for it, but what I really love more than anything is slick counter-punching. Catching someone cleanly as they move in to knock you out is the most beautiful thing you can do in an Octagon or ring as far as I am concerned. That is the point where fighting can meet art." 

"Very few UFC competitors will reach superstar status on raw talent inside the Octagon alone. We are in the entertainment business, albeit a particularly real, bloody and violent strand of it, and so how you carry yourself in front of the cameras or microphones when the gloves are off can be just as important as when you are kicking someone in the head or choking the consciousness out of them on the canvas. The marketing minds have an expectation that you create and work on a particular image of yourself that you wish to project and, as I enjoy the theatrical aspect to the UFC, I was only too happy to fully embrace that side of the game." 

"I employed a constant filtration process to my learning, and plenty of hours and days of work were immediately discarded, but I always enjoyed the journey. The constant questioning and testing was necessary and I continue doing it today, for it allows me to see everything from a very analytical standpoint. Even within skill-sets that are undoubtedly applicable to an MMA fight, it is important to establish whether they are right for you. Body shape and size, for example, must come into the equation." 

"Our Inside the Octagon series soon became a fan favourite, but I imagine few viewers have any idea of the amount of preparation I do before I allow those segments to be recorded. In advance of breaking down a fight or particular fighter, I spend hours putting myself in the shoes of the protagonists. I'll stand in front of the gym mirror, mimicking their styles and envisioning what their opponent will be thinking and doing. I then flip it round to become the opponent and repeat until I have the best vision of how I believe the fight will go in my mind. I may not get it wholly correct every time, but I don't think there is anyone out there putting in as much effort as I do to be as accurate as possible with their analysis and predictions." 

"... the way forward is to actually look into the past for inspiration. Bruce Lee once said, 'I don't believe in different ways of fighting now. I mean, unless human beings have three arms and three legs, then we will have a different way of fighting. But basically we all have two arms and two legs so that is why I believe there should be only one way of fighting and that is no way'."

Quotes: Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle

Life is short and with an ever growing to-read list it's difficult to come back to a book and give it a second reading but I did just that with Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. It's a real pleasure to read. With this second reading I kept a highlighter to hand and picked off my favourite quotes from the book, which you can found below:

"Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth." 

"My dear doctor, pray accept my apologies. Viewing the matter as an abstract problem, I had forgotten how personal and painful a thing it might be to you..." 

"I never guess. It is a shocking habit – destructive to the logical faculty." 

"I cannot live without brain-work. What else is there to live for?" 

"I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule." 

"You will not apply my precept. How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however impossible, must be the truth?" 

"How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!" 

"No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely. I am going to smoke and to think over this queer business to which my far client has introduced us." 

"... while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician." 

"... white men out there [in India] feel their hearts warm to each other as they never do here at home." 

"... love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgement." 

"'You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.' 'Frequently.' 'How often?' 'Well, some hundreds of times.' 'Then how many are there?' 'How many! I don't know.' 'Quite so. You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.'" 

"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." 

"It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important." 

"Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details."

"I observe that there is a good deal of German music on the programme which is rather more to my taste than Italian or French. It is introspective, and I want to introspect." 

"My dear Doctor, this is a time for observation, not for talk." 

"You have a grand gift of silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion." 

"I had come to an entirely erroneous conclusion, which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it is always to reason from insufficient data." 

"... I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to under-estimate oneself is as much a departure from the truth as to exaggerate one's own powers."

Quote: The Art of Dying, by Bruce Lee

"Like everyone else you want to learn the way to win. But never to accept the way to lose. To accept defeat, to learn to die, is to be liberated from it. Once you accept, you are free to flow and to harmonise. Fluidity is the way to an empty mind. You must free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying."

—Bruce Lee

Book Review: The People vs Tech, by Jamie Bartlett

I thought this was a good book highlighting the dangers of current and future digital technology (e.g. social media applications, the internet of things) and the incredible power that makers of these technologies are beginning to wield. From social media applications designed to cause addiction to targeted advertising designed to sway our votes, it's difficult not to feel a tinge of worry as you read. The author has done a good job of surveying the books and articles in this space and pooling them together. My only problem with the book was that I felt that the author was shoehorning the word "democracy" into the book as many times as possible and, most probably, simply because he had set out to write a book on "how the internet is killing democracy". There were a few places where I agreed with the author and felt that the danger which he was highlighting applied to "democracy" (e.g. election campaigns using data from our social media accounts to sway our votes). However, in other places I thought it was just a danger to governance in general (e.g. jobs being lost to AI) and not specific to democracy.

Book Review: iWoz – Computer Geek to Cult Icon, by Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith

I thought this was a nicely told story of the birth of Apple and the birth of the personal computer interwoven with the personal story of Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak, the creator of the original Apple I and Apple II computers. As an engineer myself and as someone who is pretty much unfamiliar with the details of the Apple origins story I found it inspirational to get into the mind of a real engineer's engineer, to read what it takes to be a real good inventor and creator. I liked the book as a whole but if there's one chapter that really stood out for me it was the first and the impact that Steve's father had on him through exposure to electronics from a really young age. It's a good life lesson that it's not just what we build in terms of electronics and software that's important but also how we teach and inspire the younger generation to succeed us.

Below are some quotes from the book:

"He [my father] never started out by trying to explain from the top down what a resistor is. He started from the beginning, going all the way back to atoms and electrons, neutrons, and protons. He explained what they were and how everything was made from those. I remember we actually spent weeks and weeks talking about different types of atoms and then I learned how electrons can actually flow through things – like wires. Then, finally, he explained to me how the resistors work – not by calculations, because who can do calculations when you're a second grader, but by real common sense pictures and explanations. You see, he gave me classical electronics training from the beginning. For engineers, there's a point in life when you understand things like how a resistor works. Usually it comes much later for people than it did for me. By the fourth grade, I really did understand things like that." 

"But even with all of this – all the lessons and explanations a kid could understand – I want to tell you about the single most important lesson he taught me. Because this is what I have always hung on to, more than even the honesty thing. He drilled into me what it means to be an engineer. What I am talking about is what it means to be an engineer's engineer. A serious engineer. I so clearly remember him telling me that engineering was the highest level of importance you could reach in the world, that someone who could make electrical devices that do something good for people takes society to a new level. He told me that as an engineer, you can change your world and change the way of life for lots and lots of people." 

"... I remember watching all those engineers who just wanted to do the technical side, to just put some chips together so the design worked. But I wanted to put chips together like an artist, better than anyone else could in a way that would be the absolute most usable by humans. That was my goal when I built the first computer, the one that later became the Apple I. It was the first computer to use a keyboard so you could type into it, and the first to use a screen you could look at." 

"We [my and my parents] had discussions about science and truth and honesty, the first discussions of many that formed my values. And what he [my father] told me was, he just wanted things to be testable. He thought that to see if something is true, the most important thing is to run experiments, to see what the truth is, and then you call it real." 

"For me it's the engineering, not the glory, that's really important." 

"Sometimes I think, Man, I lucked out. It seems like I was just pointed in such a lucky direction in life, this early learning of how to do things one tiny little step at a time. I learned not to worry so much about the outcome, but to concentrate on the step I was on and to try and to do it as perfectly as I could when I was doing it. Not everyone gets this in today's engineering community, you know. Throughout my career at Apple and other places, you always find a lot of geeks who try to reach levels without doing the in-between ones first, and it won't work. It never does. That's just cognitive development, plain and simple. You can't teach somebody two cognitive steps above from where you are – and knowing that helped me with my own children as well as with the fifth graders I taught later on. I kept telling them, like a mantra: One step at a time."

"If you read the same things as other and say the same things they say, then you're perceived as intelligent. I'm a bit more independent and radical and consider intelligence the ability to think about matters on your own and ask a lot of skeptical questions to get at the real truth, not just what you're told it is"

"I think most people with day jobs like to do something totally different when they get home. Some people like to come home and watch TV. But my thing was electronics projects. It was my passion and it was my pastime. Working on projects was something I did on my own time to reward myself, even though I wasn't getting rewarded on the outside, with money or other visible signs of success."

"When I look back, I see that all these projects, plus the science projects I did as a kid and all the stuff my dad taught me, were actually threads of knowledge that converged in my design of the first and second Apple computers."

"I wanted to be like my dad, I remember his conversations with me; he would always point out all sides of an issue. I would know what he thought about it, but he would let me come to my own decisions, which very often turned out to be like his. He was a very, very good teacher. So I intended to be that way, too."