Mists, mellow fruitfulness, Massachusetts and more...

Definitely autumn today, with drifts of leaves on the deck, a sudden downpour of real rain and blackbirds flailing about in an ungainly manner on a bush covered with bright red berries. The cat has moved into my bed at night now and, in the absence of sun through the window onto her favourite spot during the day, has relocated to sitting at the left thigh of me the mother, which has the added advantage of placing her ears in the warm blast of air from the laptop fan.

The photo was taken one October in the Berkshires, Massachusetts, where Vs of geese were winging south, their honking surprisingly musical. Most of my trips to the US have been taken at that time of year, when everything's looking mellow, there are pumpkins everywhere, and the trees are - in New England especially, of course - brilliantly coloured in the low sun. It's no penance that the temperatures are cooler and sometimes it's cloudy; it's not as though I'm an English office-worker escaping for my annual holidays to get a blast of sunshine on my pale skin and top up last year's melanomas. Coming from somewhere that has, usually (and spectacularly so this year) reliable summer weather, it's quite liberating not to be reliant on good weather when I travel.

But this year I'm heading back to the States and Canada in June, so - summer! Except that the state this time is Alaska, and it's a cruise beginning right up in Seward, and there'll be glaciers. And in Canada it'll be the Rockies, with more glaciers. Layers: that's what it's going to be all about. Anyone who's ever been on a Silversea cruise has had that drummed into them; and this is going to be another one with them, a glorious compensation for having to turn down the offer of a little flit on the Silver Whisper from Wellington to Auckland earlier this year, because I was going to Gore.

But going to Gore got me offered a second trip to Southland, and the Hump Ridge Track which I've written two stories about today; and other lovely places down there. And I'm going to Wellington on Wednesday anyway, to take the train back, an offer that came about on a trip to Hobbiton, and I've referenced hobbits today. It's so satisfying when everything links together like this!

Creeper and a crawler

There are many things that are fun to experience when you're travelling - New York's continuous sirens and whistles, lizards on the ceiling in the Islands, insistent offers of "special price for you" throughout Asia - that would drive you crazy if they happened at home. Today I've decided to put ivy into that category, having spent several sweaty hours trying to make an impression on the long tangled ropes of noxious weed that have been spilling over the fence from our non-gardening neighbour's place, clearly intent on annexing the henrun.

In its Virginia creeper incarnation, though, it's a delight to see on weathered stone walls, setting off the masonry beautifully whether fresh spring green or autumn crimson, and I've enjoyed it in Oxford, Copenhagen, Boston... Here it's in Scotland, tastefully blending with the pink stone of Dalhousie Castle, a 13th century fortress belonging for centuries to the Ramsay family on the banks of the Esk, about 8 miles from central Edinbugh. I stayed here just one night, in a lovely little three-storeyed room in one of the towers, with a view out over striped lawn, huge ancient cedars and various hawks, buzzards, eagles and owls tethered to posts beneath them. It was a classic: we were piped into the lobby on arrival by a doorman in a kilt, there was a secret bar behind false shelves in the library, an actual dungeon, and the staircase was so creaky that stories of historical night-time shenanigans there were actually quite hard to believe.

Various royal personages have slept there, including Edward I the night before defeating William Wallace at Falkirk, where we went the following day to look at the amazing Falkirk Wheel; but more memorable was encountering John Herriot Ramsay, distantly related to the family, out on his motorised reclining bicycle with its trailer of batteries. He button-holed us and told us all about his genealogical connections at quite some length, and regretted that he wasn't wearing his kilt for our delectation. Looking down at him lying there, his knees higher than his waist, all we could think was how immensely grateful we were for his trouser-clips.

People = pigs

Despite being much more plainly named, I reckon Daniel Reese and John Craig were, together, New Zealand's own Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Way down in Southland, tucked away on the coast are the remains of some very big thinking indeed from back early last century when these two men, in the timber business in Marlborough, decided that the Waitutu Forest was going to be the big new thing. Totally undaunted by logistics, they built (or, had Irish immigrant navvies build for them) over 23km of tramway through the bush which had to cross four rivers. Viaducts were the answer, so they built (er, had built) huge structures, the biggest at Percy Burn, 125m long and 36m above the river, strong enough to bear the weight of an 80 tonne log-hauler they imported from North America.

Impressive, considering they were so very far from established centres of commerce - so it was a shame that it all turned to custard, the usable timber less abundant than they'd thought and the demand also smaller: by 1930 it was all over. Now all that's left are the viaducts and the path of the tramway, marked only by the sleepers. At Port Craig, once a bustling little town, there's just a schoolhouse and a collection of rusting relics. That's where we stayed our second night on the Hump Ridge Track, back down at sea level after climbing up to 1000m the previous day, which was a pretty decent workout.

It was much easier, walking along the tramway, despite the treacherous dogspikes that were still embedded in the sleepers, all too easy to trip over - but, churlish to say, it was a bit boring as there was nothing much to look at. I missed the moment of excitement reported by the person walking up ahead, who said he'd surprised a wild pig rooting through the undergrowth and looking very irritable about the cloud of fantails that were twittering and peeping along behind him, scooping up the insects that he'd disturbed. But then, I didn't see a squashed stoat inside any of the scores of traps we walked past either, so that was a plus. There were just lots and lots of birds: tui, bellbirds, fantails, grey warblers, tomtits and robins, all excited to see us - but only because of the insects. How insulting, that despite all that Brunel stuff, to them we were just on a par with the pigs.

In Sir David's footsteps

These photos were taken, and kindly sent to me this morning, by Hannah Adams, an English girl currently working in Canterbury and along on the same kiwi-spotting tour as me on Stewart Island a couple of weeks ago. I'm still kicking myself about not taking my camera - I KNOW!!! - on the walk, as it was raining a bit, I was doubtful of getting anything useful by torchlight, and nervous about the flash - strictly forbidden - going off by accident. So I left it on the boat, and spent the whole time while we watched the three kiwi we found, surrounded by people busy with their cameras and even their phones, seething with frustration and annoyance with myself. I tried to tag along again the next night, but the operator said no. Pft.

All that aside, it was well worth going on the tour, for the thrill of being so close to real wild kiwi behaving normally, in this case probing with their long beaks deep into the sand to catch the sand-hoppers that burrow down there under the rotting seaweed. I was amazed that they went in the full length of their beaks (the longest in the world, in relation to body size) and stupidly was thinking they were in danger of filling their nostrils with sand. But of course they were anyway, totally, because I'd forgotten that the kiwi's nostrils are at the tip of the beak, not the base (which actually makes their beak one of the shortest in the world, if you're pedantic about these things).

With the whoosh of the waves breaking behind us, and the constant clatter of shutters (each one a stab to my heart), I didn't actually notice a sound the kiwi were making that the sainted David Attenborough referred to last night in the first episode of his fascinating TV series 60 years in the Wild. Introducing a clip of himself lying on that very beach in the dark watching a kiwi doing exactly what I'd seen, he mimicked the sneezing that he'd observed as the bird snorted the sand out of its nostrils.

For somewhere that most of the population thinks is so far away (forgetting that the rest of the world thinks that our entire country is impossibly far away) Southland has hosted a steady stream of famous naturalists. My Venture Southland host, Hannah, told me she was lucky enough to have dinner quite recently with Mark Carwardine, whose first trip there a few years ago, with Stephen Fry, involved an encounter with Sirocco the kakapo that the whole world has enjoyed.

Next? Vancouver and Alaska

When people find out what I do, the first question they ask, once they've got the sudden flush of envy out of the way, is How do I arrange my trips? The answer's not straightforward, and their eyes are usually glazing over before I'm finished, so I really need to work on a snappier reply. I suppose it really just boils down to "I ask, or I'm offered".

The latter is the more exciting, just because it's usually unexpected - and that's why I'm addicted to checking my emails, trained like Pavlov's dog by every so often opening one that asks out of the blue if I'd like to go to Easter Island, or Portugal, or on a cruise.Who wouldn't find that thrilling? And well worth trawling through the oceans of spam. Mostly it's an invitation from a PR person or tourism rep to take part in a group famil - usually small, 2 to 6 others along on the trip - but sometimes it's just for me, which in its way is equally rewarding. While it's fun (usually) to be part of a group, it can be more productive sometimes to be on my own, because I interact more with the people I meet. The third variation is when I'm allowed to take a  companion, often when there's a self-drive element, or when it's the kind of experience (like a cruise) that sharing would enhance - not that I haven't rattled round alone in more than one honeymoon suite in my time.

The downside of that kind of trip is that there's little, if any, room to choose where or what - which makes the self-arranged junkets more personally satisfying. They are, though, a whole lot more work - and usually more expensive. Airlines aren't always accommodating, though hotels are, in both senses; and local tourism people are generally pretty helpful with suggestions, contacts and authorisation. It all takes a lot of research, though, emails back and forth, fitting things together, reading timetables, reviews, getting visas perhaps... So I'm very glad to have my own personal in-house travel agent, who likes nothing better than doing all that stuff, writing up the itinerary and building up a file of paperwork. Which leaves it to me - right now, as it happens - to tempt and nag and inveigle my editors to say they'll take the stories that are the basic currency of the whole set of transactions.

Go, Venture Southland!

Further to my whingeing about being weighed down with expensively-produced press packs made of heavy glossy paper presented to me by PR people every time I go away, now I find there's this. On my recent trip down to Southland, an area some dismiss as far away and out of touch, I was given one of these for the first time. The same size as a credit card, and about twice as thick, this is what it turns into when you bend and flick it just so:

It's a flash drive! How nifty is that? Two gigs of files and high-res images, in a slip of plastic I could carry in my wallet if I wanted! So much more preferable to a great wad of brochures and printed-out statistics that make my suitcase a literal burden and an embarrassment, clutter up my workspace at home and (often) never get looked at before eventually being turfed out in a desperate spring-clean, piled up in boxes at the kerb for the recycling truck. (Although that did lead to the novelty of picking a snail-nibbled bit of card out of the front border a couple of days ago and discovering it to be an entry ticket to the viewing deck of the Empire State.) Honestly, would you rather be given one of these clever little devices - or this?

Too hard to choose, today

So, what link do I go with today? The flash floods in Port Louis, Mauritius, that were reported on the news tonight, with scenes of torrents of muddy water sweeping through an underpass, helpless people bobbing along on the surface? Cars piled up on top of each other, human chains across roads running waist-deep in churning water, shuttered shops with water halfway up the doors? Eleven dead, apparently - so far: it's a busy and crowded city, of narrow streets choked with stalls, elegant old buildings as well as flimsy ones, a fort on the hill above and fancy new shopping and eating precincts along the waterfront, where beautiful young people pose and preen.

Or maybe the Earthflight documentary about birds that I watched tonight? This episode was focused on South America, and featured Andean condors, which I saw spiralling up out of the Colca Canyon; and the vultures that sit hunched on rocks above the incredible roaring maelstrom of Iguassu Falls, apparently impervious to the violence and power of the water all around them; and scarlet macaws clustered on clay lick banks along the Amazon, nibbling the dirt for minerals and to offset the toxic effects of the unripe fruit they eat. When I stood in the jungle, watching them, they circled restlessly and perched in the trees, but didn't land on the clay - something was worrying them, and on the programme I learned it could have been an eagle. Or a jaguar.

Perhaps Cotopaxi, which was an answer on QI last night? In Ecuador they claim that it's the world's highest active volcano, and according to Stephen Fry it's higher than Everest - if you're measuring from the centre of the Earth, that is, because the planet is flattened at the poles and bulges at the equator. When I went up to the high paramo for lunch - and delicious canelazo, cinnamon-scented orange tea with rum - at a lodge within sight of the mountain, it was skulking inside cloud and I didn't see it, though the normally more elusive Chimborazo, above, was for once in the clear; but late that night after a long and musical dinner in an Inca-built dining room, on the way to a bath by the fire before bed, Cotopaxi was clear and bright and symmetrical in the moonlight.

Or, prompted by the cover picture on a library book brought into the house today, the Glenfinnan Viaduct? It's a graceful concrete curve of 21 arches in western Scotland, build by Robert McAlpine, 'Concrete Bob', in 1901. It’s still standing strong as the elegant Jacobite train crosses it taking tourists from Fort William to Mallaig - or, in the Harry Potter movies, young witches and wizards to a new term at Hogwarts. I stood knee-deep in wet heather waiting to take a photo of it as it puffed towards me, and regretted, in my cold and soaking jeans, laughing at the Hooray Henry types at breakfast in the hotel that morning in their silly - but actually very sensible - tweed plus-fours.

Or I could just stop skiting, and go to bed.