September 13th - My five summits to conquer, even if scared of heights
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 13 September 2022
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As I traipse across the Pyrenees, I cast my mind back to other adventures hiking and recollect which summits I've enjoyed climbing. Now, I'm not great with heights, wouldn't say I'm an athlete and my hiking kit consists of a pair of 25yr old boots. So this list is for everyone to enjoy the great outdoors with.
This podcast is free, as is my newsletter, which you can find at https://www.independent.co.uk/newsletters
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with the Simon Calder. |
| 0:07.4 | Still walking to Lourde Airport. Yes, I am, but the very pretty way through the French Pyrenees. |
| 0:16.4 | You can hear a garve, a mountain stream. You might be able to hear the cattle and the cowbells up above me. |
| 0:26.4 | Today, I'm going to talk about five summits and a nearly hoping that you might wish to follow in my footsteps. |
| 0:36.7 | Up there five quite remarkable mountains. |
| 0:42.3 | Now, I need to say I am not by any stretch of the imagination a mountaineer. |
| 0:49.3 | I'm terrified of heights just walking across a very scary bridge, no handholds there. |
| 0:57.0 | I'm most definitely not athlete fit and my kit. |
| 1:05.0 | Well, I've got a pair of 25 year old boots on and a charity shop shirt and some shorts and that's it apart from |
| 1:15.1 | a hat and some sunglasses. So I'm not an extraordinary active mountaineer by any stretch of the |
| 1:25.5 | imagination. But let me just take you through these |
| 1:29.4 | opportunities. And the first one is actually really accessible if you're on a package holiday |
| 1:35.1 | to tenor reef and frankly who wouldn't want to be. Tadei, the highest peak in Spain used to be actually |
| 1:47.0 | in the early days of European exploration, regarded as the highest mountain in the world, this extinct volcano sprouting from the island off the coast of Africa. |
| 1:57.0 | Anyway, you need a permit to climb it that's fairly easy to get. |
| 2:01.6 | You then need to get yourself to the foot of the mountain, which is most people just turn up in a rental car. |
| 2:09.6 | Now there is a cable car which runs up there and a awful lot of people, 99% of them will take the cable car to the upper station and walk, |
| 2:20.2 | I think, a couple of hundred feet to the top. So it's very doable like that. But well worth |
| 2:28.4 | walking up there. It's a winding old track. And if you want to save your knees, of course, |
| 2:32.1 | you can simply take the cable car back down |
| 2:35.2 | across on the african continent north africa i'm going to talk about tubka this is the highest |
| 2:44.0 | mountain in north africa about 14,000 feet and you it's only an hour or so south of Marrakesh. So you have a wonderful time |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Independent, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Independent and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.