Tag Archives: On The Beaten Track
Sunday Photo 3
This photo was taken in Thessaloniki, Greece in 2006. We had arrived there on the overnight train from Konstantinopoli (Istanbul), the first such journey since my inter-rail days of the late ’80s & early ’90s.
Norway By Train (Part Two)
FOR PART ONE CLICK HERE My second visit in 1992 was with Hamish, the first of what were to become regular overseas trips together. For the start of the trip we were joined by our old school mate Lang with our first new destination being Bergen in Western Norway. After a couple of nights in […]
It’s A Drag…..
I have been skiing twice in my life, once in Bulgaria and once in Romania. My ski style can best be described as unique and I still bear physical and mental scars from the experiences! As both of my alpine adventures took place in Eastern Europe, I included a few paragraphs in my book On […]
Kotor, Montenegro
Lonely Planet has just proclaimed Kotor as the number one worldwide city must see in 2016. I visited in 2007 and indeed can vouch for the fact that the place is amazing. Probably the most convenient way to visit is to fly to Dubrovnik in Croatia and then take a bus ride of around a […]
Angst in Ankara Station Part II
Regular readers of this blog will recall a book extract that I published a couple of days ago about our train journey across Turkey to Syria in 2009. On that trip my travel buddy Hamish was (thankfully only temporarily) separated from his passport for a while at Ankara Station, leading to all sorts of palpitations. In 2014 […]
Angst In Ankara Station Part I – Extract From My Book
The story starts as we were travelling to Syria from Istanbul in May 2009……. Calm Before The Storm We had a 4 hour stopover in the Turkish capital so set off to explore. First we needed coins for the lockers, but were one short. Luckily an upright English teacher called Neil came to our rescue. […]
Moldovan Arrival – An Extract From My Book
To set the scene, Hamish and I had just taken the overnight train from Bucharest to Chisinau…… Disorganised & Disorientated We arrived in the Moldovan capital in what can only be described as a severely groggy state. The hard seats had not given the most comfortable of nights and there had also been people constantly […]
The Railroad in Damascus
I count myself incredibly lucky to have travelled to Syria in 2009. My trip there counts as one of my all time best – little did I know of the horrors that were soon to unfold, as I received an incredibly warm welcome everywhere I visited from the smiling locals. The whole country appeared so […]
Le Tour de France – Stage Seven
TGV France is a pretty big country (about twice the size of the UK), but despite this it is relatively speedy to move around. First of all the population is roughly the same as the UK, which coupled with the French toll road system, means that the roads are quick and comparatively hold-up free. More impressively […]
My Forthcoming Book – Extract Four, On A Train Bound For Yugoslavia
To set the scene, I was on my first inter-rail trip in 1987 aged twenty-two with my mate Poll. Three days into the trip, Poll had lost his passport near Munich and had to be issued an emergency one by the British Consulate, designed to get us home by the most direct route. Undeterred, we […]
