What do cultural cities actually give you that other cities don’t? The honest answer is a particular kind of density – of music, architecture, memory, and the layered evidence of how people have organised their…
Rail travel through southern Europe gives you the landscape between the cities as well as the cities themselves – the olive groves and cork oak forests of the Alentejo, the limestone ridges of the Spanish…
In the far north of Scandinavia, the sun disappears for weeks at a time and the landscape becomes something that doesn’t operate by normal rules. The cold is a physical presence rather than a weather…
Some destinations demand military-level planning before you have even packed a suitcase. Cyprus does the opposite. On one relatively compact island, you can land in the morning, settle in quickly, and spend the rest of…
Slovenia is one of those countries people tend to just pass through as part of a longer European journey, sandwiched between Italy, Austria, and Croatia. However, it doesn’t feel any different when you’re on the…
Travelling alone is a type of travel that, even after several experiences, can still feel like the first time. Each solo trip tends to bring similar emotions: anticipation, a certain level of uncertainty, and the…
“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…
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…
I have backpacked through France in 5 different decades and despite not ranking it highly in my favourite countries, there are definitely charms when you take your wandering backpack here. As well as France, I…
There are so many interesting places that I have backpacked through down the years that I will never ever find time to write about them all. In and around the Polish city of Kraków, there…