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Beautiful Places #3: Valbona
Quite some distance before we made it to Valbona, the hair on the back of our neck was starting to stand on end, such was the magnificence of the scenery unfolding around us as we left the major roads and headed northwards towards the Accursed Mountains in northern Albania. The road to Valbona hugs the river as it cuts through the deep gorge, climbing steadily until the canyon opens out to the plateau within which lies the village itself, a village which is both tiny and unassuming, with precious little which you could call civilisation. But its beauty is in its setting. We have visited quite a few mountain village…
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Photographic Memories #17
Photo #17: Cornish Sunset Our last photographic memory featured a sunset, and whilst on that subject we shouldn’t move on without mentioning Cornwall. I have been a regular visitor there for over 40 years now, and still get a feeling of excitement every time we cross the River Tamar and pass the Cornwall boundary sign. Having travelled to many wonderful places around the world, the Camel Estuary, with its heart at Padstow, remains one of our very favourite places on Earth. There’s actually two photos today, in the first you can see the twinkling evening lights of the village of Rock across the estuary dwarfed by the glowing sky, and…
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Harbouring Dreams
As we lose ourselves in reminiscing about previous trips and places visited, 2021 is just starting to take shape and our hopes of resuming our travels are increasing considerably. Our thoughts until recently were that if we make no travel plans until we have each received our dual vaccinations, then we may just be in a position to travel from around the end of July. Developments this week have given further encouragement. I received my first vaccination on Tuesday, Michaela’s is due on Monday, and both of us have appointments for the second dose before the end of May, meaning that allowing the 3-week clearance period after the vaccine would…
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Beautiful Places #2: Puerto Escondido
Those of us fortunate enough to be well travelled regularly have to field the question: “so where is the best place you’ve ever been?” And we all know that it’s an impossible question to answer, you can’t compare a vibrant city with a mountain village, a coastal resort with an ancient palace, or a hedonistic wine region with a spot by the sacred Ganges. However, if pushed for a top five, Puerto Escondido would always be in there, and, moreover, if the question was couched as “where have you been where felt happiest”, we are both very likely to give the same answer. Blessed with a wonderful climate and backed…
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Photographic Memories #16
As every traveller knows, when you look back through old travel photos, many of them trigger wonderful memories. With lockdown incomplete and travel still on hold for a while, we currently have no new adventures to blog; we do though have many such memories… Photo #16: Sunset & Reflection Spectacular sunsets are always popular – there are places across the World which attract an army of camera carrying enthusiasts to capture that special moment as the sun goes down and fills the sky with colour. A great many such places are coastal, of course, but this one was different on both levels: not coastal, and, certainly as far as we…
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Travel Stories #1: Bush Routes
“Are you Phil?”. He’d appeared from nowhere in the darkness but his friendly smile was a big relief at such a late hour. The airport at Dar-Es-Salaam is not your standard terminal, with half of the seating area positioned outside of the building and surrounded by concrete, plastic and glass, only a handful of features recognisable as a Terminal. It was somewhere around 2am, we’d disembarked our flight from Istanbul and all other passengers had scattered quickly. Within minutes it was just the two of us milling around the concrete areas, shrouded in deep darkness, the night as silent as the airport itself. I looked at Michaela, the worry in…
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Photographic Memories #15
As every traveller knows, when you look back through old travel photos, many of them trigger wonderful memories. With lockdown incomplete and travel still on hold for a while, we currently have no new adventures to blog; we do though have many such memories… Photo #15: New Earth This photograph’s claim to fame is that it is the only place we’ve ever visited where we are looking across land which is younger than we are. Salt pans now dominate the panorama as the new land is put to profitable use, but this land simply didn’t exist until 1971, when the cascading lava of the erupting volcano was cooled by the…
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The Turner Contemporary: Are We Philistine?
A 20-minute drive from our home on the Kent coast lies the famed English seaside resort of Margate, once one of the country’s premier coastal destinations and with a reputation somewhat akin to Blackpool and Great Yarmouth. Its heyday as a holiday hotspot has long since passed, and for a couple of decades around the end of the last century, Margate became very run down and a pale shadow of its former self. More recently there have been attempts to restore Margate’s pride, some of which have achieved their objective: Dreamland is back up and running as a theme park (well, it was, pre-COVID), the old town near the harbour…
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Beautiful Places #1: Nong Khiaw
All travellers are finding themselves reminiscing during this travel hiatus. It’s good to reflect on places which were so beautiful they left not just a lasting impression, but also the distinct feeling that you didn’t stay long enough. Here we look back at some of ours. Like many places of incredible beauty, Nong Khiaw isn’t the easiest to get to. In reality the only sensible option is to make a visit to Nong Khiaw whilst based in Luang Prabang, and even then it’s a fairly lengthy bus journey between the two places – bus journeys which can be just a little bit cramped and uncomfortable. Take it from us though,…
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Photographic Memories #14
As every traveller knows, when you look back through old travel photos, many of them trigger wonderful memories. With lockdown incomplete and travel still on hold for a while, we currently have no new adventures to blog; we do though have many such memories… Photo #14: Clouds and Rails This photograph shows how you don’t always need sunshine for a shot to be atmospheric. For me as an absolute lover of rail travel, in particular rail travel in different countries, just standing on a station platform looking along the empty tracks anticipating the arrival of the train still brings out a boyhood excitement even now. Rainclouds looming low over the…
