Fortunately, I get bored. Not the grinding boredom of a rainy Sunday afternoon of childhood, but the boredom of repetition. And so it was, in August last year, that I found myself daydreaming more frequently than ever about The Guyanas, and in particular, French Guyana. Ever since I was young, […]
Riding across Northwestern Spain on local trains is the slow way to travel. Eighty-nine stops. across Spain. Well, eighty-eight actually since boarding the little railways of northern Spain at Hendaye, but the past days have proved to be most instructive. Firstly, it has to be said, was the instruction that […]
Suffice it to say that the Faroe Islands, wonderful in the summer and fall, have a charm throughout the winter, even when the weather may be at its more dramatic, and the days draw short. By December, the sun will rise above the horizon at about nine o’clock, and dip […]
I have to start by saying that I am not given to hyperbole. Understatement may not be my strongest suit, but I try to stay pretty close to the truth, and having said this, I need to explain a lifelong love of The Faroe Islands. In about 1968 or 1969 […]
The Queen Mary’s Medical Centre. Interesting Here’s a funny thing. The medical centre on this ship is on Deck 1, the lowest platform of the vessel. It is a funny deck, being home to pallets of vegetables, bits of engine, mysterious boxes with funny labels, rooms named after “Kensington”, “Chelsea”, […]
Sailing across The Atlantic on the Queen Mary is a great treat. Buffets on board ships are terrific places to observe eccentricity at play, and the Queen Mary is no exception. Unleashed from the constraints of conventional food-pairing, buffet-grazers are free to tickle their taste buds as they fancy. One […]
Just when you think that you have these islands sussed, a headline such as this will appear, and abb another quirk into the fabric that these naugha-Viking islands weave. The Faroe Islands are a touch odd; it is their very eccentricity that attracts and it is their sometimes quirky approach […]
Well, I have been here for twenty-four hours, and that added to the collective wisdom garnered on three previous visits, I feel, bestows expert status. I can assert with little doubt that the weather in the Faroe Islands is not their strongest suit. Today, it was a touch gloomy at […]
A short trip to Hudson Bay Naujaat is a small community in Nunavut, lying on the shore of Repulse Bay, and sitting astride the Arctic Circle I am, it has to be said, fortunate in the amount that I am able to travel, and the extraordinary variation in destinations that […]
Tbilisi is always interesting, and my all-too-brief stay there last week once more conjured up some surprises and ideas. It always does, and suffice it to say that were I to decamp and move to Georgia, a thought that has crossed my mind more than once, I would collapse under […]
It is very easy to become a creature of habit; travelling as I do, I find myself almost searching for patterns, looking for flakes of continuity in an otherwise fairly random life. I am staying currently in the Courtyard Marriott in Tbilisi, my third visit, and other than the murder, […]
There really are few places whose daily peak is at about 0400; in fact, I can’t think of another off hand. However, Tbilisi airport is one of those, and it was my pleasure to have landed there this morning at that God Awful time. Worth it, though, I have to […]