Birdfair 2015 Last weekend I mingled with the birding world at the UK’s annual Birdfair. Marketed as the Glastonbury for birders I was curious to see what it was all about: I’ve donned my wellies many a time for Glasto and I’m passionate about the...
Homes with Wheels: my life in camper vans. It’s been six months now that we have been living in our truck camper. Our adventure in Shetland last month set me thinking about my previous campers: how those different vehicles have shaped my travels and my...
Take the train, not a plane. I’d spent most of the night acutely aware of every bump in the rails, every bridge, every station; it was the beginning of a very long rail journey that would ultimately take me to Vietnam and the train...
Our Demountable Camper Home So, here is our new nomadic home: it’s tiny but it is everything we want from life! If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll have seen my old home on wheels, well this is something very different indeed! This...
My Top 3 bucket List Destinations A competition to win a trip next winter to experience the Northern Lights from the Arctic Circle is absolutely something I have to enter! After my dip into Nordic Europe over the winter I have become obsessed with returning,...
In a previous post I explained my somewhat strange reasons for learning Finnish and I thought it would be a good idea to share some of the techniques I’ve found that are helping me learn this difficult and fascinating language. >> I have written an...
“Why?” This has been the blanket response by all when I’ve mentioned that I’m learning Finnish. Why would I learn a difficult language that is only spoken by around 5 million people in a country where English is widespread: it is pointless. They have a...
I learnt my lesson a few years back: pack light, travel happy! I’ve gone into more detail about the whys and hows in my previous post reviewing my well-used, well-loved Osprey Ozone 36 wheeled pack, but basically: the smaller the bag, the easier and less...
I’m a backpacker at heart: I take dusty trains across far off landscapes, I dash through metro stations, walk along ancient cobbled streets looking for tucked away accommodation, ride questionable buses on questionable roads, I stay in dorms, in hostels! I didn’t think I could work...
A new year has begun, and I thought I’d share with you a few of my favourite travel photographs from 2014. Twelve photos for twelve adventure-filled months. To fill you with wanderlust and inspiration. Hoi An, Vietnam Such a picturesque town, historic Hoi An never fails...
One of the greatest joys of travel is being able to taste authentic food around the world. To discover new and exciting dishes as well as identifying where some more familiar ones originate. As a vegetarian I do tend to plan ahead to a certain degree,...
Late last week we said goodbye to our sweet home on wheels: Juan the Van. Time, and rust, had caught up with him and we took the decision to scrap him as there were to many niggling and costly problems. We have been living nomadically...
Post Travel Depression, Going home after any trip is hard, the longer the adventure, the more traumatic the return. I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately, discussing it with a friends who have recently returned or are soon too. It seems to be...
How to do the Temples of Angkor Arriving as an independent traveller into Siem Reap can be a little overwhelming when it comes to visiting all the temples of Angkor. I mean, well, there’s so many off them, where do you start? A little pre-planning...
I couldn’t have written my recently posted overland Istanbul to Cairo memoirs without my travel journal, I simply would not have remembered many of the details. This is especially true for long-term travel adventures, where the extraordinary and exotic are daily occurrences and your brain...
I’ve always been fascinated by birds of prey, the predators of the avian world. The thrill of seeing a sparrowhawk dart across the garden or a kestrel hovering over the fields when I was younger left me dreaming of one day seeing an eagle or...
