Iceland is a traveller’s paradise and my 5 days there in 2007 were amazing. Geysirs, lagoons, waterfalls and craters, this is a country for the lover of landscape and countryside rather than your urban city buzz. However my 5 day stay turned into a 6 day stay on a morning where I stupidly and regrettably…
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Thirsty Thursdays today on Don’t Stop Living takes us back to the UK. I spent a year living in London in England and have been back countless times since. So here’s a thirsty Thursdays on all those secret bars in London! I bet you didn’t even know there were secret bars in London. This is…
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Selling ice cream goes down as one of my favourite jobs. I spent 4 summers doing this as one of my jobs. It did seem at one point I would actually prolong my stay in the English seaside town of Bournemouth as I was constantly working and enjoying life there. But one day it all…
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Debrecen is Hungary’s second biggest city but you wouldn’t quite know it – it’s hardly colossal, nor is it instantly mind blowing. It’s shy and peaceful and Hungarian to the core. However, I liked it. Why life ever took me to Debrecen I’ll never know. Most tourists that visit Hungary do Budapest and Balaton and…
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In my ongoing series of World Borders, I aim to provide essential tips for crossing borders and immigration checkpoints all over the world. Today we look at the “border” between Italy and San Marino. Yes, San Marino is a landlocked country which is completely inside Italy. Italy seems to like these types of places as…
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It’s sometimes a cliché in life to “tick off the major sights” but like a lot of other travellers, I do them too. It would also seem a bit ludicrous to end up in Pisa in Italy, without actually visiting the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I was there, 4 years ago to the day, what’s…
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“The telex writers clattered where the gunships once had been” – Donald Walker. In my series of “The Day I…”, I detail random stories from my decade of nomadery. I spent two summers working on ferries (Isle of Wight, Lymington, Poole, Weymouth, Cherbourg, St. Malo, Guernsey, Jersey) and those jobs threw up some very amusing…
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My Working Wednesdays series covers stories from my constantly changing career. For today’s post we head back to January 1998, exactly 15 years ago this week I was working for the local newspaper, the County Down Spectator in Bangor, Northern Ireland. Now obviously writing is something I love doing, so this seemed an obvious job…
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I was once described as a “football nut” and I’m not sure what that entails, but basically I LOVE football. Ever since I saw Norman Whiteside score for Northern Ireland against Algeria in the 1986 World Cup on a black and white TV, I have been a football fan. Firstly I played it – at…
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OK, so in travelling the world, it’s always nice to reflect back to your homeland. Although I was born and bred in Northern Ireland, I also have an affinity with the south of England. I spent 6 years living in Bournemouth, London and Dartford and loved every minute of my time there. Back in the…
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