Transport
The mode of transport you use on long distance travelling can really enhance your experience. Train travel in particular has its own excitement – pulling out of a city feels so auspicious, as does arrival by train in a new place. Locally, using the services of local buses, trams and metros will help you get the feel of a place. And so you learn to live like a local, and if you’re lucky, you get to meet people too. Systems can be difficult but people are so often helpful – if it’s confusing, someone will help you out. On longer journeys, the use of public transport gives you the opportunity to study the terrain at leisure, you can watch the world pass by as you move through the different areas. Busy towns give way to open fields; mountains and lakes. Stations too are stimulating places. The manic activity of bus and rail stations is great to be part of. What at first seems chaos soon becomes clear. Just sit back and enjoy.
-
The Camel Trail: Bicycles, Birds And Beeching
One of the things we find difficult in Cornwall is turning our backs on the magnificent coastline and heading inland, but because our two breaks here will give us a total of 24 Cornwall days in April and May, we feel we can justify one walk away from the sea along the Camel Trail. The Camel Trail is a walking/cycling route following the river upstream from Padstow to Wadebridge, then on through Bodmin to its final point at Wenfordbridge, though today we only walk the 12-mile round trip to Wadebridge and back, by far the trail’s most popular section. The route is more of a favourite with cyclists than with…
-
Photographic Memories #19
As every traveller knows, when you look back through old travel photos, many of them trigger wonderful memories. With lockdown incomplete and travel still on hold for a while, we currently have no new adventures to blog; we do though have many such memories… Photo #19: The Sundarbans This photograph is special to us because of the moment it represents, possibly one of the most exciting travel moments of all our experiences to date, capturing an auspicious point in one of our most adventurous journeys. At this stage of our first trip to India, we had now left behind the amazing cities of Delhi, Agra, Varanasi and Kolkata, and were…
-
Photographic Memories #18
As every traveller knows, when you look back through old travel photos, many of them trigger wonderful memories. With lockdown incomplete and travel still on hold for a while, we currently have no new adventures to blog; we do though have many such memories… Photo #18: Peace Amongst Madness This photograph is special to us simply because it represents an atypical moment in the crazy city of Marrakech. With its souks buzzing with activity, its streets choked with slow moving traffic and a main square which is amongst the most exciting and lively places in any city on Earth, Marrakech is an onslaught of sight and sound from dawn till…
-
Travel Stories #1: Bush Routes
“Are you Phil?”. He’d appeared from nowhere in the darkness but his friendly smile was a big relief at such a late hour. The airport at Dar-Es-Salaam is not your standard terminal, with half of the seating area positioned outside of the building and surrounded by concrete, plastic and glass, only a handful of features recognisable as a Terminal. It was somewhere around 2am, we’d disembarked our flight from Istanbul and all other passengers had scattered quickly. Within minutes it was just the two of us milling around the concrete areas, shrouded in deep darkness, the night as silent as the airport itself. I looked at Michaela, the worry in…
-
Photographic Memories #14
As every traveller knows, when you look back through old travel photos, many of them trigger wonderful memories. With lockdown incomplete and travel still on hold for a while, we currently have no new adventures to blog; we do though have many such memories… Photo #14: Clouds and Rails This photograph shows how you don’t always need sunshine for a shot to be atmospheric. For me as an absolute lover of rail travel, in particular rail travel in different countries, just standing on a station platform looking along the empty tracks anticipating the arrival of the train still brings out a boyhood excitement even now. Rainclouds looming low over the…
-
Were We Safe? Take A Look…
Travel isn’t about staying in your comfort zone, sometimes you just have to seize the moment to embrace a new experience. It’s not always about safety belts, health and safety and life jackets. Here’s just a few of those occasions… We spent a whole day like this, sat on a blanket on a roof rack, clinging on to the struts for dear life as Khaled took us to various viewpoints in the desert. All the other similar rides were in the back of a pick up, but not Khaled, he just stuck us on his roof rack and sped across the sand, much to everyone’s amusement. If you’re out in…
-
COVID: Living In The Heart Of The Beast
Kent, England, December 22nd, 2020, and a COVID drama is unfolding right on our doorstep. In the last 48 hours over 40 countries have suspended all flights to and from the UK and our nearer neighbours in Europe have closed all other UK transport routes, following discovery of a new variant of COVID here in England. The source of this new variant, which evidently spreads considerably more rapidly than the parent version, is the county of Kent, which is precisely where we live. Not so long ago, the UK Government decreed that any country with an infection rate of over 20 per 100,000 population was a “dangerous” country: now, districts…
-
Living In Side Turkey
As we approach the end of our sixth week in Turkey we also begin our second week in Side, with a few things moving on. October 29th is Republic Day here, Turkey’s biggest public holiday, commemorating the day in 1923 when Ataturk united this huge nation by declaring the existence of the Republic, although in reality the republic was effectively almost 3 years old by that date. In normal times, Republic Day is a nationwide festival with much celebration, but the Government has this year implemented COVID restrictions so the festivities are mostly restricted to draping of the Turkish flag over buildings and buses. Speaking of COVID, matters have changed…
-
Croatia: The Adventure Begins
The city of Split is said to have first become a major settlement when the Roman emperor Diocletian stood down from his role and retired here in 304AD, the magnificent palace built for him in this stunning bay was therefore effectively his retirement home. We don’t suppose our arrival here on the second trip of our own retirement will create quite such a stir however; in fact, we couldn’t even get into our room. Back home in the UK we are all still being encouraged to avoid unnecessary use of public transport so it’s a cab rather than the customary train which takes us to Gatwick. It costs £80. The…
-
Our Place In The World As The World Collapses
And so we pick up our story from our eviction from Tuan Chau…. For 4 hours we sit at the offices of Halong Tours, at first outside and later, as it chills, inside with the lovely Nhur Minh (aka Julian), who is incredibly sweet and helpful and looks after us for those four hours, from providing water to reassuring chat to organising our driver. Nothing is too much trouble for her. We will never forget these four hours. As we sit here, scared and bewildered, news is changing at an incredible rate as nation after nation take extreme measures to combat the pandemic. Everything is collapsing across the globe and…
