“Someday we’ll return here. When the Belfast Child sings again” – Simple Minds. How can you go backpacking in your home country? Is it even possible? You know the towns, you know the roads, you know the local lingo, you can talk your way out of a political argument. But then…I’ve been away a while.…
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Here goes. This is a big one. A big one for me personally. Every single time I hear the mention of Maradona, Norman Whiteside, Jose Batista, Joel Bats etc. I get inspired. The 1986 World Cup Finals in Mexico were my first major childhood memory. Northern Ireland qualified. We punched well above our weight, defying…
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“No regrets, they don’t work” – Robbie Williams Ok so the story goes, in 2001, I started working for the Halifax, which was then a Building Society and later became a bank as part of the Halifax Bank of Scotland. It’s well known in the UK – the Halifax Bank. If you read a story…
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“There’s a bridge to the other side, don’t take your eyes from the prize.”- Dodgy Get ready for it to pour out of me. It feels like some back tracking is needed to my teens and a follow up to last Friday’s Paddy Campbell story. This won’t fill you with wonder or excitement, but it’s something…
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“I, I sometimes lose myself in me, I lose track of timeAnd I can’t see the woods for the trees, you set them alight.Burn the bridges as you’ve gone, I’m too weak to fight yaI’ve got my personal hell to deal with” – D:Ream (Londonderry, 1993) Paddy Campbell and I sang along to it instead…
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The Background to my adventure backpacking in Turkey to Adana This is probably my first ever backpacking adventure that led me by chance to watching my beloved Northern Ireland football team. It was just amazing. Having made my return to Northern Ireland matches after more than four (count them, four) years at the 2-0 defeat…
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Don’t paint yourself a picture of travelling as beaches, hot sun and cocktails please. That’s not backpacking, and in all honesty it’s not reflective of travel as a whole and it’s certainly biased. You’re only seeing the good things. Yes we love the good moments, but on my travels I feel the need to explore…
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It was a return to the familiar border crossings for me earlier in the year as I got the ferry from Belfast to Birkenhead. It’s a great way to get from Northern Ireland to England, and also avoids the hassle of flying, allows you to drive there by car, bring as much as you want…
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I cast my mind to my trip to Suriname in 2011. On the way to meet my friends in Recife, Brazil I had a stopover in a city unknown to me at the time, Fortaleza. It was a four hour layover and I was back in Brazil after the magic of tropical Suriname. It was…
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This is a break from the usual travel and lifestyle posts on here and I’m glad to be finally writing about watching football again, not just on my own site but I’ve done a load of football articles recently, including on UFWC. Football has played a big part in my travels, it’s a MASSIVE part…
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