June 25th - my family and I visited Skomer Island and had an amazing day with some great photography oportunities.....

​Located less than a mile off the beautiful Pembrokeshire coast, Skomer is truly a wonderful place to visit. Between April and July, Skomer is well known for its puffins, but there is so much more to this National Nature Reserve - including Manx shearwaters, dolphins, seals, razorbills. Shades of pink are added as the weather warms and swathes of red campion cloak the landscape.

Kirkjuvagr Orkney Gin kindly send me a bottle of their excellent Arkh-Angell Storm Strength (57% ABV) Orkney Gin recently to enjoy on my travels so I chose the summer solstice for this.

What better place to review this navy strength gin than at Llyn y Fan Fach (altitude approx. 500m) from where a folklore legend is connected with the lake, known as the "Lady of the Lake" - Llyn y Fan Fach - Wikipedia

For this trip onto the Black Mountain in Carmartnenshire, South Wales, I was joined by two Mountain Leaders: Helen Menhinick and Heather Maling, and our objective was to picnic by the lake before heading off to a much more remote part of the mountain to test a new mountain tent. Helen and I regularly work in this mountainous area teaching navigation and mountain skills and further details can be seen on her website brynwalking.co.uk 

Sat by the lake with Helen and Heather for cocktails and tapas style food was a memorable experience on the longest day and this Arkh-Angell Gin is highly recommended. We took advice from Orkney Distilling who produce the gin and their website www.orkneydistilling.com had suggested a couple of ways to enjoy the gin.

This private course for 360-Expeditions was held at Bryn Heulog, Newtown on June 11th/12th.

​It was a pleasure to have Rolfe Oostra attend the course on a brief flying visit from his home in the Pyrenees as he needed to renew his First Aid certification before flying off to Pakistan for three climbing trips.

Full details of the course can be viewed at https://recfirstaid.net and Rescue Emergency Care was established in 1986 to provide specialist outdoor First Aid Training. To enquire about this course, please contact Helen Menhinick of Menhinick Outdoors Limited - [email protected] or Alan Ward - [email protected]. The course tutor is Alan Ward - International Mountain Leader.

Course feedback:

1. Alan is by far the best First Aid instructor I have met. His style of delivery, mixed with relevant anecdote and thorough knowledge of every topic taught was exceptional. I will recommend this course to all my colleagues.

2. It was a pleasure to see you again mate and you are a maestro at what you do! Great course! Thanks again!

3. The greatest strength of this course is the well experienced Training Provider with lots of anecdotal experience to bring the training to life which was really interactive and engaging.

4. Enjoyed the scenarios to put theory into practice.

​5. The in-depth knowledge and experience of the instructor.