-
Next: A Journey To The Centre Of The Earth
We’ve been back in England for a month now, easily long enough for the feet to get substantially itchy and for the wanderlust to grow. Both Michaela and I are more than ready for our next adventure, bursting at the seams to get cracking again, and the other day I swear I heard our backpacks squealing “lemme out, lemme out” from inside the wardrobe. It’s been great to catch up with family and friends, wonderful to see my beautiful granddaughters, for Michaela to have “Mum time”, great to see Cornwall again and, of course, good to have a few English ales, but it’s travelling that sets us free and as…
- Africa, Belize, Central America, Independent travel, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico, North America, Panama, Photography, Travel Blog, Wildlife
That Was 2022
When we retired at the end of 2019, full of wide eyed enthusiasm about seeing the world and feeling like the entire world was our oyster, we had a vision of what a year would look like. This was of course before we had any inkling that something very nasty was about to escape from China and have something of an impact on those plans. Resourceful as we were in ‘20 and ‘21 (we travelled as much as we could and more than most), 2022 has probably been the first year which really did match the dreams we had at the start. As a year which started in Costa Rica…
-
Vilnius: Stories And Histories
Imagine walking across a bridge in the middle of a capital city and being met with a sign on a shop wall reading “border control”, passing entry instructions to the Republic which include a smile icon, multiple flags with an open palm as the centrepiece, and then finding yourself alongside a wall with the Republic’s constitution detailed in over 40 languages, including such clauses as… “Everyone has the right to die, but this is not an obligation” “Everyone has the right to be happy” “Everyone has the right to be unhappy” “Everyone has the right to have no rights” And concludes with the Republic’s motto… “Do not defeat…do not fight…
-
Wintry Days In Vilnius
The temperature touches minus 7 as we head back to the hotel after our evening meal, frost forming fern patterns on car windscreens and turning pavement puddles into treacherous mini skating rinks. But the air is clean and crisp, the moon is bright and we breathe in the tastes of proper winter for the first time in a long time. By first light next morning the snow is falling and the cobbled streets have a covering of pure white as workers shuffle to offices and factories, huddled inside heavy overcoats and hidden behind hats and scarves. For us this is a bonus: we hadn’t expected to see snow this early…
-
Korinthos: Mad Dogs & Englishmen
“No”, he said rather grumpily, “nothing till August 15th”. This was the response at the first of the three car hire places in Korinthos, and a bit of a worry as our plans for this part of the trip realistically hinge on having a car. Google Maps then takes over in style, first getting us to trudge up multiple hills on the way to the next rental office – “open today 9am to 9pm” – which turns out to be a long deserted empty office by a main road, and then to option 3, where “you have arrived at your destination” brings us to a completely empty stretch of road…
-
The 2021 Obstacle Course Of Travel
Well, as far as we know, we are now on the verge of heading out to Greece, in fact our flight to Thessaloniki is tomorrow morning, Monday 19th. We say “as far as we know” because arrangements for travel are just not as straightforward as they used to be. Let us say first though that Greece is, at the moment, one of the easier destinations, with no quarantine on arrival and no requirement for a negative test as long as you’re fully vaccinated, but there are still a number of hurdles to overcome. First, our original intention of booking only one-way flights was scuppered by the new post Brexit rules…
-
Bring Me Sunshine
Our “best case scenario” for most of this year has been that by mid July, travel restrictions would start to be lifted and we just might be able to get away. We are very excited now that such a scenario is becoming reality – so excited in fact that we have booked our flights to get away for the entire summer. As of July we are now 19 months into our retirement, a retirement which was meant to be endless travel seeing as much of the world as possible but which instead has been…well, we all know the end to that sentence. In the end we were travelling for 148…
-
Island Hopping Croatia: Brač
Some of the inter island ferry services have been scaled back due to an expected drop in visitor numbers during COVID, so to hop from Šolta to Brač we have to go back to Split and on again from there. So it’s an early alarm, the 7:20 bus from Maslinica and the 8am ferry, breakfast in Split harbour and then a second ferry over to Supetar on the island of Brač. Brač a much bigger and more mountainous island than Šolta, in fact the third largest Adriatic island; our next billet means travelling some distance to the south of the island, and we’ve been recommended that the best option for…
-
From Plitvice To The Wonders Of Šibenik
The time will soon come when we run out of superlatives for this country, such is its propensity to thrill, surprise and charm. Day 9, and we leave Mukinje, Plitvice and our host Kristina with heavy heart and head westwards towards the Adriatic and the Dalmatian coast. The lush and dramatic Lake District scenery soon gives way to a spectacular mountainside drive as our road perches on a ledge way above the land below, dropping eventually to the outskirts of Zadar. From here the E8 turns south, now hugging the beautiful coastline for a different type of incredible scenery. We pause for lunch at the ridiculously quaint seaside town of…
-
Plitvice Reflections
By the time we reach our last night in Mukinje, we are 8 days into our tour of Croatia: over those 8 days we have walked, according to Fitbit, a total of 73.19 miles, an average of 9.15 miles per day. Michaela captured some impressive wildlife shots along the way:-
