“You make me feel naked, undressing me with your eyes” – Louise Nurding. I omitted the words “Thirsty Thursdays” from the title only because the title would have been too long and cumbersome, but this was a wild one and it is a Thirsty Thursday post. The Perch Bar is legendary! It is a bar…
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“The tunnel of love might amuse you, Noah’s Ark might confuse you” – Richard Thompson. The idea of this trip overland/oversea/undersea was an amalgamation of factors. Firstly because recently I got so fed up with airlines. Every single trip I have done since 2021 has had at least one flight delay, cancellation or change. In…
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“DON’T STOP LIVING” – High School Graffiti in Toronto, Canada (September 2001). I’ve told this story quite a lot down the years, but things get missed and overlooked that it merits a post of its own, especially now that life finally went fool circle (not full circle) as I finally went back to the “High…
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“Little by little I gave you everything you ever dreamed of” – Noel Gallagher. German supermarket giant LIDL have opened their first ever PUB!! And they have opened it in a place I used to live – Dundonald, Belfast, Northern Ireland (for the record I lived at 24 Fort Road way back in 1999…). Here…
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“Birds go flying at the speed of sound to show you how it all began” – Chris Martin. Nope, I was NOT on the defunct Concorde nor one of Richard Branson’s sky rockets!! I flew from North America to Europe in 4 hours 17 minutes!!! This was the fastest I have EVER done that. I…
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“As the day was dawning, my plane flew away with all the things caught in my mind” – Noel Gallagher. I have now been on over 1,000 flights – a milestone I passed in late 2025. Airline travel is the fastest and often the cheapest, easiest and handiest. It is also the scariest, the highest…
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“We’re from Bournemouth, sunny sunny Bournemouth” – CherriesðŸ’fans. I have backpacked Bournemouth (Dorset, England) almost as many times as I have backpacked Belfast and Bangor! I spent 6 glorious years living in this marvellous seaside town before deciding to emigrate in 2009. I haven’t lived in either England or Northern Ireland since taking that plunge…
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This Is The Next Century: Aftershot (Volume 1) Is Released (January 2024) This Is The Next Century: Aftershot (often just called Aftershot) is a travel-adventure memoir that continues Jonny Blair’s life story on the road after he’d already visited 100 countries — a milestone he reached in his earlier Backpacking Centurion series. 🌠What It…
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For the first time ever, I decided to COMBINE two of my regular feature pages on here for one post only, and that is because this fantastic protein powder counts as both a food and a drink!!! So Thirsty Thursdays now joins Friday’s Featured Food for a one-off special, thanks to Naked Nutrition! After checking…
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“It’s the eye of the tiger, it’s the thrill of the fight” – Survivor. After my first Christmas in Northern Ireland since 2019, I headed out of Belfast on Boxing Day/Saint Stephen’s Day south to Swords/Baile Atha Cliath. Known to the world as Dublin. I had a Dublin to Djibouti hat-trick of flights booked. A…
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