For reasons that I am still unable to quite explain, I bought an old butcher’s shop in Esperaza, a small market-town in the upper Aude Valley a couple of years ago, and try to get back here as often as possible; it is not exactly simple, living as I do […]
It is nigh on impossible to have a boring time in St. John’s. There is every type of entertainment that one could envision or need, and plenty of folks to meet. Except on the night that Canada won gold. The streets of the city were bare; pubs populated only by […]
This really is a brilliant place. A rock, stuck out in the inclement North Atlantic is hardly a perfect canvas upon which to create a society, but in the traditions of the region, Canada’s most easterly province is a winner. The North Atlantic is home to Celts and Vikings, lost […]
You probably wouldn’t know it, but Iceland has had the most clement winter for years. While Europe has been overwhelmed by snow, rain and generally heavy winter weather, and North America confounded by massive snowfalls and cold, mid-continent temperatures, Iceland has been basking under a warm and comforting winter. A […]
I have been wondering for a while how to approach this subject. I like to write, as you probably realise, as I am on the road; I like to observe, and I enjoy the freedom that” the road” offers; I like to watch people, to engage strangers and to watch […]
Airline points have become the crack cocaine of the travel world. Fly, buy dinner, fill up with gas and you get rewarded with scrip called rather optimistically “Frequent Flyer Miles”. They come in a variety of guises, and like every other currency have extremely variable exchange rates. Oddly, it seems […]
Last evening a colleague and I had an absolutely marvellous meal at a restaurant called Bumbles, close to Victoria station. It is a restaurant with which I have had a glancing aquaintance for some thirty years, and although it has undergone several incarnations, has always been a reliable and innovative […]
Judging from the newspaper headlines this morning, the UK is blanketed in both literal and metaphoric snow. There is a lot of the white stuff; the western county of Devon is apparently stuggling under many centimetres of the stuff, a lot even for a seasoned Canadian, but more interesting is […]
I like Reykjavík, even in January when it doesn’t get light until 10.00, and is dark by 4.30. I have to say, that wandering around the streets, and driving around town, there is no obvious sign of economic doom; that, is all hidden, reflected in the massive number of crushing […]