“Don’t tell me it’s not worth fighting for” – Bryan Adams. Tears drained naturally from my eyes when I heard this Bryan Adams song being sung in a bar I once worked in – 21 years later, in a hotel I once stayed in – 31 years earlier. The Heathlands Hotel in East Cliff, Bournemouth,…
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The name of the next station on my Tasmanian tour was “Lower Landing”, I didn’t really like that name actually. It’s a bit false. And the name was totally false. It’s a custom built station for the sake of the Western Wilderness Railway. That took the shine off the stop there, but didn’t take the…
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“Time flies” – Oasis compilation album. Time really does fly. From my first ever radio listen of Oasis in April 1994 on a Radio One session, before finally getting into buying CDs and cassette tapes of Oasis, it has been a wild 31 years. In the early years of Oasis, 1994 to 1998 I owned…
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Well the dream had been realised and that was when I finally landed in Cameroon in March 2024. After wanting and promising to visit it for years, the reality finally came! I went through the Cameroon Online Visa process and landed in Yaounde International Airport and then Douala International Airport. I was ready for football…
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“He was turned to steel in the great magnetic field. When he travelled time for the future of mankind” – Black Sabbath. I started to write this post 2 years ago when I was back backpacking in Birmingham. It’s a city I have visited over 10 times but rarely written about, except maybe a review…
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📚 Backpacking Centurion is a travel memoir series by Northern Irish globetrotter Jonny Blair, chronicling his journey through over 100 countries. It’s not just a collection of travel tales—it’s a deeply personal narrative that blends adventure, emotion, and reflection. 🧠What’s the series about? It traces Jonny’s life from his childhood in Bangor, Northern Ireland,…
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The Backpacking Centurion series is a travel‑memoir trilogy (with a later fourth volume) by Jonny Blair, a Northern Irish writer and globetrotter based in Poland. It chronicles his solo backpacking journey to reach 100 countries, weaving personal history, adventure, and emotional insight along the way. Goodreads+11northernirishmaninpoland.com+11eCampus.com+11 📚 Overview of the Series Volume 1 – Don’t Look…
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Zanzibar is one of those countries that has introduced a mandatory travel insurance. This means to backpack it, you MUST have their travel insurance, not yours, not Jimmy’s and not Sally’s! As a backpacker who hates travel insurance and refuses to pay it, after companies stiched me up so many times two decades ago, it…
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I finally arrived in Comoros in July 2025! It was the third country of my Rainy Summertime tour and my 235th recognised country on this whackpacking odyssey on a ball. What Is Comoros? What are Comoro Islands? It’s actually a bit similar to the whole British Isles, Britain, Great Britain, United Kingdom argument and there…
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As part of my Rainy Summertime tour in 2025, I made The Maldives my first proper port of call. In advance of your visit to The Maldives, you need to get a The Maldives Traveller Declaration form, on that link I have already explained how to get that. This means that tourists visiting The Maldives…
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