Category: Travel
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BOATING IN BANGLADESH
DECEMBER 2025 Bangladesh might not be most people’s first choice of holiday destination, but then most people have never heard of a Masked Finfoot. This bizarre bird, looking like a cross between a duck and a grebe, used to be widespread across south-east Asia and relatively easy to see. Now, as a result of…
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BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
September 2025 It feels slightly anachronistic to be showing my passport at a land border in Europe. With most countries now in the free travel Schengen Area, border formalities on the continent are largely a thing of the past. Still, here I am at the Croatian checkpoint standing in the hot mid-morning sun and…
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CROATIA’S DALMATIAN COAST
September 2025 It would be a massive understatement to say a lot has happened here since my previous visit. I’m in Croatia, and last time I was here it was 1990 and it was still part of Yugoslavia. As young, carefree backpackers, we were mostly ignorant of Yugoslavian politics and had no idea that…
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WHALES AND WINDBIRDS IN MADEIRA
May 2025 The Portuguese island of Madeira strikes you as a remarkable place before your plane has even landed. Forming the tip of an oceanic volcano, the main island is steep and mountainous. This leaves very little flat land to work with, so Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport is a marvel of engineering with the…
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WHAT LARKS! SOUTH AFRICAN MEGA-BIRDING
NOVEMBER 2024 For those of my generation, growing up in 70s and 80s Britain, South Africa will forever be associated with the dark days of apartheid. Never far from the TV news, this was the era of protests outside the embassy in Trafalgar Square, boycotts of Sun City and Cape apples, necklacing, and “Free…
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TAIWAN BIRDING DIARY 2024 – Part 2: Lowland Birding
26th April 2024 We left the mountains of Dasyueshan and Wushe with 29 of Taiwan’s 32 endemic birds under our belts. These are the birds that are found only in Taiwan and nowhere else in the world. With the slightly alarming earth tremors and the relentless rain hopefully behind us, we descended back into…
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TAIWAN BIRDING DIARY 2024 – Part 1: Mountain Birding
Following a few days in Taipei, my main reason for visiting Taiwan was to join a birding group and travel around the rest of the island searching for Taiwan’s unique wildlife. Taiwan is classified by Birdlife International as an Endemic Bird Area which, at the time of writing, hosts 32 endemic bird species (in…
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TAIWAN DIARY 2024 – TAIPEI
DAY ONE – 18th APRIL 2024 Taiwan is often in the news these days. Usually because of the ongoing friction with China, but recently also due to the magnitude 7.4 earthquake that hit the city of Hualien on 3rd April 2024. This was Taiwan’s strongest earthquake for twenty-five years and, when I first heard…
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A SHORT TRIP TO KUWAIT
NOVEMBER 2023 Visiting Kuwait was mostly about ticking a new country off the list. I had a few days of annual leave to use before the end of the year and an air miles account that they were threatening to close due to lack of activity. Kuwait was the nearest destination outside of Europe…
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WALKING TO SLOVAKIA
VIENNA AND BRATISLAVA – part 2 of 2 Day Four – 20th May 2023 This morning it is hot and sunny as I catch a train to Marchegg, a small Austrian town near the Slovakian border. The journey takes less than an hour across flat arable land and from the window I see a…
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HAMSTER HUNTING IN VIENNA
VIENNA AND BRATISLAVA – part 1 of 2 The wild hamsters of Vienna have become tiny wildlife celebrities in recent years, especially since featuring in David Attenborough’s Seven Worlds, One Planet series in 2019. The European Hamster (or Black-bellied Hamster) is a different species from the domestic hamsters kept as pets – these are…
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NEITHER HERE NOR THERE – Book Review
NEITHER HERE NOR THERE: TRAVELS IN EUROPE Bill Bryson (1991) If you have any interest at all in travel writing then Bill Bryson will already be familiar to you. He is one of the most popular and recognisable authors in the genre, and in Neither Here Nor There he turns his eye towards continental…
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THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD – Book Review
“The weirdest bird’s-nesting expedition that has ever been or ever will be.” Apsley Cherry-Garrard The “worst journey” referred to in the title was a kind of side quest to Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated 1910-1913 voyage to the South Pole aboard the Terra Nova. Published in 1922, it was written by the wonderfully named…
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ARCTIC ENCOUNTERS – part 3 of 3
ARCTIC OCEAN 9th – 12th March 2023 I have to catch the boat early this morning, so I miss out on the buffet breakfast. It’s a shame as this hotel, as well as the usual buffet items, serves a selection of fish, and I’m enjoying the novelty of having toast with salmon, herring and…
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ARCTIC ENCOUNTERS – part 2 of 3
NORWAY’S VARANGER FJORD 6th – 8th March 2023 I wake up to a morning that is bright and sunny, but still cold at -20°c (-4°F). I hear that I’ve chosen a good week to come here as the previous week was snowy and windy and the roads were blocked. There are four onward buses to…
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ARCTIC ENCOUNTERS – part 1 of 3
NORTHERN FINLAND 2nd – 5th March 2023 This isn’t my first trip to the Arctic. In 2019 I rode the Inlandsbanan, a slow summer train that runs through the centre of Sweden and stops as it crosses the Arctic Circle so that we could step down and take photos before continuing on to Gällivare at…
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TREASURE HUNTING IN LIVERPOOL
The week between Christmas and New Year is a strange time. With a bit of forethought it can be a fun and productive period of eclectic activities, or it can be wasted in front of the TV eating festive junk food and drinking weird drinks that you wouldn’t allow into your house at any…
Vole Explosion 