Tag Archives: On The Beaten Track

Trains in the East of Europe
You will maybe know of my love of overseas train travel, especially in the east of Europe and you can of course read about my adventures on over 15,000km of track in the region by downloading my ebook on Amazon. Here are a few train pictures from my travels in the region….

Pooh York
On my flight over to New York I watched the wonderful film ‘Goodbye Christopher Robin’. It tells the story of how A.A. Milne, inspired by his son playing with his soft toys in Ashdown Forest in Sussex, wrote the classic Winnie the Pooh books. A footnote at the end of the film’s credits stated that […]

On The Beaten Track – Travels In Eastern Europe Free Sampler Download Link
Now available to download from Lulu Publishing (see Lulu button on the right hand side of this blog) or Amazon as a colour e-book or black & white paperback. Over 500 pages for just over £3 (ebook download) Read the Opening chapters for free by downloading ‘Now Boarding, The Eastern European Express’, from Smashwords. See My Book Extracts […]

Sunday Photo – 8
This picture was taken in January 2003 in Tallinn – a trip we took to celebrate my birthday, which just so happens to be today! We stayed for three nights – first day dull, second day sun & blue skies and third day snow. This meant we retraced our steps twice and got three sets […]

Friday Photo – 7
This photograph was taken in Minsk in 2013. Although Communism has officially ceased in the former Soviets, the attitudes still remain, especially in the older generation. This was never more apparent than when we visited the capital of Belarus where we encountered some of the most unfriendly people ever on our trips, especially in the […]

Georgia On My Mind
A country that is not overly visited from the West, but with so much to offer is Georgia, with its wonderfully cosmopolitan capital of Tbilisi, stunning vineyard-strewn countryside of the Kakheti region and the bizarre Black Sea playground of Batumi, amongst its highlights. Batumi, Black Sea Coast, Georgia The adventurous and time-rich amongst you might like […]

Seedy City
This is a further extract from my book ‘On The Beaten Track – Travels In Eastern Europe’, which chronicles my travels primarily by train in 25 countries in the east of the continent, mostly taken with my regular travel buddy called Hamish. This passage comes from my 2014 visit to Tbilisi, the mighty fine capital […]

Friday Photo 4
This photograph was taken during our visit for Christmas 2003. I absolutely love Prague and never will tire of this view of Charles Bridge, St Vitus Cathedral and the castle in the Mala Strana area of the Czech capital. Let’s drink to Bohemia!

Michael Palin
Today I had the honour of meeting one of my heroes, the charming and unassuming MP. He signed my copy of his book ‘New Europe’ and gratefully/gracefully accepted a copy of my book, which features many of the countries that he went to for his. I was typically tongue-tied in the presence of such greatness – […]