When I first thought about going on the European Train Odyssey©, all sorts of potential itineraries started floating around in my head. Adding the Greta Thunberg element of trying to do the whole travel thing in a slightly more sustainable way soon put paid to a Scandinavian leg, as there apparently wasn't a way to …
Warsaw
"One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things." That insight, from the American writer Henry Miller, is of course just another way of saying the usual thing that people say about travel - that it broadens the mind. Over the last few years, I've sat down in bars …
London to Warsaw
The first stage of the European Train Odyssey is nearly complete, as I trundle through bucolic Polish countryside at a decent click on Deutsche Bahn's Eurocity EC43 service from Berlin towards Warsaw. Don't worry - that will probably be the last time I make a note of the actual train numbers... By the time I …
Riding The Rails
About 18 months ago, I started this blog by quoting the opening paragraphs of one of my favourite books, John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley”, as a perfect evocation of my desire to be elsewhere. It went like this: “When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was …
To Santiago
The morning after the night before and there was a decidedly odd atmosphere at La Calabaza del Peregrino as people began to stir around 6am. Albergue life requires a certain degree of tolerance, but it was becoming apparent that one or two dormitory denizens might have reached the end of their tether. One of these …
This Woman’s Work
Many years ago, I found myself weekly wallowing in the wonderful words expressed by the venerable Australian writer Clive James in a series of podcasts for the BBC, which covered a multiplicity of subjects, but which largely sought to focus on the overarching benefits of liberal democracy for those of us lucky enough to actually …
A Pilgrim Dinner…or two
After the odd start to the day before with a temporary incarceration in Arcade, my desayuno at Hotel Rúas in Pontevedra was similarly unusual in that it included a drunken floorshow provided by a local couple who had clearly been drinking all night on a Sunday evening and a Monday morning. They were now attempting, …
