Transport
The mode of transport you use on long distance travelling can really enhance your experience. Train travel in particular has its own excitement – pulling out of a city feels so auspicious, as does arrival by train in a new place. Locally, using the services of local buses, trams and metros will help you get the feel of a place. And so you learn to live like a local, and if you’re lucky, you get to meet people too. Systems can be difficult but people are so often helpful – if it’s confusing, someone will help you out. On longer journeys, the use of public transport gives you the opportunity to study the terrain at leisure, you can watch the world pass by as you move through the different areas. Busy towns give way to open fields; mountains and lakes. Stations too are stimulating places. The manic activity of bus and rail stations is great to be part of. What at first seems chaos soon becomes clear. Just sit back and enjoy.
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Ramsgate Tunnels
In these last few days as we allow ourselves to get excited about our prospects of making it to Greece, we enjoy trips to a couple more destinations in England, both of them slightly out of the ordinary. The first of these is Ramsgate Tunnels. The port of Ramsgate, less than 20 miles from our home in Kent, has a rich maritime and wartime history including being, as we have posted before, part of the amazing “little ships” story from WW2. Tucked around the corner from the harbour, hidden now by the new hotel and apartment complex currently under construction which will further enhance the quickly developing seafront, lie the…
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Travel Stories: Under Pressure In Turkey
As I switched on the ignition, dashboard warning lights, instead of fading out after a couple of seconds, stayed shining and winking like an aeroplane cockpit. The first of these said flat tyre. “Not problem, not problem”, said the car hire guy, waving his hands dismissively and pointing me towards the vehicle exit. Even as I walked around studying the four tyres, each with no obvious sign of defect, he continued to bark the same phrase. “Not problem, not problem”. Hire car boss man came over to intervene, helpfully grabbing Google translate on his mobile and pointing to the word “tyre”. I held my palms upwards to show the international…
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Travel Stories: From The Boudoir To The Bosphorus
“Full”, she said sternly from behind her perspex screen. It was one simple word but its implications were huge and I struggled to take it in. “Full”, she repeated, just a little more sternly than the first time. “No, no”, I pleaded, “we must get to Istanbul tonight. We have to…”.. but the stern woman was just shaking her head and looking past me. We hadn’t considered for a single moment that there wouldn’t be room on the boat – after all, how can a large passenger boat crossing the Sea Of Marmara from Bandirma to Istanbul even get close to full capacity? How can there even be such a…
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The Sleepy Shores Of St Mawes
Approaching St Mawes is in one respect just a little bit like approaching a Greek island, in that the very best view you will get all day is the view you get from the ferry as it turns towards the harbour. Of course it is yet another quaint and picturesque location and is great to explore, but there’s no denying that the first view is the best view. The little ferry, which can be caught from either of two quays in Falmouth, is itself a picture of quaint tradition and bobs rather pleasingly over the waves as it crosses between the two headlands. Within Falmouth harbour sits a characteristically grey…
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The Camel Trail: Bicycles, Birds And Beeching
One of the things we find difficult in Cornwall is turning our backs on the magnificent coastline and heading inland, but because our two breaks here will give us a total of 24 Cornwall days in April and May, we feel we can justify one walk away from the sea along the Camel Trail. The Camel Trail is a walking/cycling route following the river upstream from Padstow to Wadebridge, then on through Bodmin to its final point at Wenfordbridge, though today we only walk the 12-mile round trip to Wadebridge and back, by far the trail’s most popular section. The route is more of a favourite with cyclists than with…
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Photographic Memories #19
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 #19: The Sundarbans This photograph is special to us because of the moment it represents, possibly one of the most exciting travel moments of all our experiences to date, capturing an auspicious point in one of our most adventurous journeys. At this stage of our first trip to India, we had now left behind the amazing cities of Delhi, Agra, Varanasi and Kolkata, and were…
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Photographic Memories #18
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 #18: Peace Amongst Madness This photograph is special to us simply because it represents an atypical moment in the crazy city of Marrakech. With its souks buzzing with activity, its streets choked with slow moving traffic and a main square which is amongst the most exciting and lively places in any city on Earth, Marrakech is an onslaught of sight and sound from dawn till…
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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 #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…
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Were We Safe? Take A Look…
Travel isn’t about staying in your comfort zone, sometimes you just have to seize the moment to embrace a new experience. It’s not always about safety belts, health and safety and life jackets. Here’s just a few of those occasions… We spent a whole day like this, sat on a blanket on a roof rack, clinging on to the struts for dear life as Khaled took us to various viewpoints in the desert. All the other similar rides were in the back of a pick up, but not Khaled, he just stuck us on his roof rack and sped across the sand, much to everyone’s amusement. If you’re out in…
