Shevil Israel - Review

Jerusalem city walls.

Well, what an amazing country.  Fantastically beautiful to walk through, and it is truly amazing to be able to walk along miles of Roman aqueduct, or just randomly turn a corner to find a piece of architecture from Byzantine or Roman times, or further back, right back to stone age cave dwellings.  The people are friendly, and this is a civilised place where nobody tried to beg from me or 'guide' me, and I felt quite safe camped out alone in the middle of nowhere.  Food was good, and I could get a beer most anywhere, the mediterranean climate certainly made a nice change to London at this time of year too.  Not sure I'd want to go there in the summer months mind you.  Of course I did have my issues with security guards in various places, but let's face it these could happen in the UK too - not saying that is exactly a good thing, but it makes it hard to be overly critical, and after all the Israelis have rather more justification than we do.  Certainly I'd advise anybody to visit, and just apply a bit of common sense (not something I myself have in great quantities of course).

Following the blazes down the Carmel cliffs.

What about the INT itself?  Pretty awesome I have to say - this is a superb country to hike through, and clearly thought has gone into making the trail go by many of the most outstanding features, be they geographical or historical.  There are issues of course, I could have done with less clambering over barbed wire - I wonder if Israel has the same sort of right-of-way laws as we have here.  The 'blazes' took a lot of getting used to as well, often I'd get to a junction and see no indication as to the way, or worse, a blaze that was actually a little way down the wrong route - eventually I learned to look more at the way the blaze was painted, than where exactly it was.  I guess, if the INT is an official route maintained by some quasi-governmental agency, such as the Pennine Way is here, then to be honest they're not doing the greatest job.  But if as I rather suspect it is entirely the work of a small group of enthusiasts who dash up and down repainting the blazes every couple of years, then fair play to them, it is a thing of wonder.

Paddling in the Med.

As for my own plan - well, to be honest the distances may have been a bit too much, especially the three twenty-three mile plus days.  I certainly wouldn't want to keep up this sort of pace for the whole six hundred miles!  One particular problem is that at this time of year there aren't really enough hours of daylight for this sort of mileage, so I did end up with many hours of night-hiking.  Not the end of the world, but again not ideal.  Also, there were plenty of places I passed through where I'd have happily have spent an hour or two looking around (or having a beer!), which wasn't really possible given the pace I needed to keep up - this as much as anything would mean I'd be tempted to stick with the guide as and when I come back to do the whole thing.  Still, I made it, still in one piece - time to start planning my next trip :)

Photos of the trip are of course here.