Simon Barnes Author and Journalist

Sacred Combe Safari III What the hell day is it today? There are moments on the Sacred Combe Safaris when even the most harassed and pressured of us becomes time-rich. Sometimes these periods are close to being the best part of the trip: idle hours in a hut which has no luxury but its location:… [Read More]

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Sacred Combe Safari III Day 5 We have all heard a good deal about the loss of biodiversity: but as I keep saying, we are also and crucially losing bioabundance. And though a good sighting of some rare and lovely thing does our hearts good, a glorious sight of biological plenty has the same profound… [Read More]

Sacred Combe Safari III Day 4 And now we walk. We won’t see a vehicle for the next five days.  Walking – walking towards camp — we stopped for tea. As we did so, three elephants, two females and a young male, walked towards us. So we shifted ground and started again. Tea tastes better… [Read More]

Sacred Combe Safari III Day 3 There are moments very dear to the professional safari guide, occasions that showcase both knowledge and skill in the same dramatic moment: so that it seems that the guide himself had personally called the lovely beast into being. Moffat Mwanza was about to have just such a moment as… [Read More]

Sacred Combe Safari III Day 1 Two rivers have flown through my adult life: the Liffey and the Luangwa. I mostly know the Liffey from obsessive rereading of Ulysses; I know the Luangwa from my obsessive need to return to the Luangwa Valley. If a book or a place is deep enough and rich enough… [Read More]

Sacred Combe Safari III Day -1 I had arrived in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia the previous evening, and dined with my old friends Jess and Ade at Flatdogs Camp in great happiness. The following morning, I went into the park with a guide called Byron and had a fine morning: getting my eye to… [Read More]

The cat stuck up a tree is an archetype of suburban life – usually accompanied, at least in cartoons and our imagination, by the entire local fire brigade. Idiot cat! Why don’t you come down the way you got up? The cat is entitled to answer: “Because I’m not a margay!” “What’s that got to… [Read More]

Years ago I interviewed the great thriller writer Peter O’Donnell, creator of the immortal Modesty Blaise. I asked him about Nanny Prendergast — one of his better villains – she’s in The Xanadu Talisman, read it for yourself – and asked: “Where the hell did that idea come from?” Laughing, shaking his head in helpless… [Read More]

Here be dragons. Did anyone ever actually write that on a map in all seriousness? If they didn’t, it’s an idea we needed to invent, because the phrase goes so deep with us. We love the idea of a place so remote and so dangerous that real dragons, breathing fire and sleeping on hoards of… [Read More]

I’ve just started this blog for that fine organisation the World Land Trust. I’m now in my second term as a council member, and have visited many of their projects – and seen some fantastic beasts while I’ve been doing it. Not this one alas, but here is beast number 1 – Geoffroy’s Cat.  There’s… [Read More]

Close observers of this space will have noticed that I haven’t finished my trip yet. I suppose it’s because I can’t bear to leave. In strict fact I’ve been home for a couple of months, but it seems I’ve been avoiding the task of writing my final blog from the Luangwa Valley. But I must… [Read More]

Pterodactyl! You call out the names of birds as you see them and identify them; it’s a kind of politeness. Sometimes they look, sometimes they don’t. This time I certainly had the attention of my audience. They turned their eyes skywards to catch sight of the two monsters that flew overhead and no one contradicted… [Read More]

I’m not blasé, of course I’m not blasé, but at the same time, it’s not my dewy-eyed first time. I’ve been in the Luangwa Valley many times in the last quarter-century and my love of the place is about familiarity, not arrival-shock. I don’t go weak at the knees every time I see an elephant…. [Read More]

Like marriage, the Luangwa Valley isn’t all about bed, but that doesn’t mean bed doesn’t matter. First night out in Chokoko, a bush-camp set in a bend of the sand river of the same name. A whisky at the camp fire and early to bed, but not alone. I took with me the African night…. [Read More]

So we stepped out of the canoe and walked towards the lions. As opposed to away from the lions. And that moment when you reverse common sense always gets to me. At once you are torn in half. Half of you says: well, that can’t be right, can it? But the other half says yeah,… [Read More]

Grownup lions don’t run for fun And six gorgeous lionesses were galloping across the lion-coloured sand in the far side of the Luangwa River. I watched. So did a young male lion on a sandbank nearby. Both of us enthralled. Poor fella. He had picked up some kind of wound or infection: the life of… [Read More]

You’d think that the more time you spend looking at wildlife, and especially, the more time you spend watching wildlife in the same place, the sooner you’d reach capacity. Seen everything, done everything, watched the place dry. But of course, it’s the complete opposite: the more you observe the ordinary, the more capable you become… [Read More]

Luambe is the lost park: the Luangwa Valley’s secret garden. It lies between South Luangwa National Park and North Luangwa National Park in Zambia: a small patch of land I remembered as a place rich and meaningful even by the standards of the Valley. I had seen elands and lions when I was there last:… [Read More]

How strange it always is, that first waking in the Luangwa Valley, those few minutes between sleeping and doing as the first grey light hits the sky. I was in bed but the life outside would not wait: and as always it was like being home and not recognising a soul, like being back in… [Read More]