UK South Pembrokeshire: Storms, seals and social distancing "You should see the town," said the cyclist, speaking loudly into his phone in a booming Welsh baritone. "It's full of them, tourists. Spreading it about, I bet." He glanced around as he spoke, checking to make sure everyone could hear him, while adjusting the lycra all-in-one that clung to
Spain The fragile forests of La Gomera Flat surfaces are hard to come by on La Gomera. This pint-sized volcanic isle, the second smallest of the Canary Islands, is shaped like a lemon squeezer, with mountainous spurs radiating out from the centre and deep valleys plunging towards the coast. To get anywhere on the island you usually
Slovenia The Soča Valley: All quiet on the Isonzo Front Northwest Slovenia is one of Europe’s borderlands, a place where the ebb and flow of history has left the landscape littered with the remnants of fallen empires. The Soča Valley changed hands four times during the twentieth century: from Austria-Hungary, to Italy, to the Nazis, then the Yugoslav republic,
Slovenia Kranjska Gora & The Julian Alps It was when the waitress brought out the lard on toast that I knew I was going to like Kranjska Gora. We had arrived on a grey and drizzly day in the Julian Alps, and a TripAdvisor tip-off had directed us down a narrow street to Lačni Kekec [http://www.
Slovenia Bled and Bohinj: A tale of two lakes As the car edged further up the track, by now just two deep ruts in the mud, the bleeping parking sensor reached a crescendo, like a heart monitor on a TV hospital drama. We came to a stop with a sickening clunk, and the engine cut out. For a second
UK Capital Ring Walk: Wimbledon Park to Richmond Bridge The Capital Ring Walk [http://www.tfl.gov.uk/modes/walking/capital-ring] is a 78-mile long circular route around London that passes through many of the capital’s lesser known neighbourhoods, divided into 15 smaller sections. This post follows on from my previous account of Sections 4 and 5, running
Colombia Cartagena de Indias: Journey's end I'm sitting here in London writing this at the end of January. The temperature outside has dropped below freezing, it's dark, and the city is bracing for the first significant snowfall this winter. It's a month since we got back from South America, and our trip already seems like a
Colombia Medellín: Stepping out of the shadows "I remember seeing dead people, bodies in the streets. Sometimes, the bodies were booby-trapped. So when the police went to pick the body up, a grenade went off in their face." We were gathered on the patio of a simple brick house, listening to our guide, Laura, speak about her
Colombia Salento & Jardín: Colombia's colourful countryside As the sun faded and darkness fell, the streets of Salento began to flicker into life. Fairy lights were twinkling overhead, neon palm trees began to glow, and the locals started placing little lanterns along the pavement outside their homes. We had arrived in Salento on the día de las
Colombia Villa de Leyva & Bogotá: A fragile peace Colombia was the eighth and final country on our whistlestop tour of South America, and a place that I'd wanted to visit for a very long time. Tell most people you're going to Colombia, however, and their first question is normally: "Is it safe?" Decades of guerrilla warfare, political instability
Ecuador The Galapagos: A world without humans November was the most action-packed month of our trip to South America, with one unforgettable experience after another. We journeyed deep into the Amazon rainforest [https://www.nothere.co.uk/madidi-national-park/]; we hiked the Inca Trail [https://www.nothere.co.uk/inca-trail-machu-picchu/] to Machu Picchu; and, to top it all,
Peru Lima & Quito: Two capitals in four days Two days isn't really long enough to do justice to a capital city, but that's how long we'd given ourselves in both Lima and Quito, after a fantastic opportunity to visit the Galapagos [https://www.nothere.co.uk/galapagos/] meant that we had to rearrange our itinerary slightly. Lima After
Peru Hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu If our trip to South America was a book, some sort of road trip adventure with a narrative arc, then the Inca Trail would probably be the climactic chapter. That's the way we had both built it up in our heads, the defining moment which the whole trip had been
Peru Cusco: Capital of the Incas Cusco is one of the most beautiful cities that we've visited on our travels around South America. The historic centre was like an open air museum of colonial architecture, a warren of narrow, cobbled streets that all seemed to lead back to the majestic Plaza de Armas. But there was
Bolivia Highs and lows on Lake Titicaca After nearly three weeks of remarkably plain sailing, Bolivia finally caught up with us. I don't know if it was something we ate, the altitude or some combination of the two, but Polly was feeling rotten on the day we left La Paz [https://www.nothere.co.uk/la-paz-el-alto/] for
Bolivia Monkeying around in Madidi National Park Our flight from La Paz [https://www.nothere.co.uk/la-paz-el-alto/] to Rurrenabaque was a surreal experience. After taking off from the airport at El Alto, some 4,000 metres above sea level, we soared close to the snowy peaks of the Andes. Ten minutes or so into the flight,
Bolivia La Paz: The cholita city Our first glimpse of La Paz was breathtaking, and not just because of the altitude. La Paz's airport is situated in the adjoining city of El Alto, perched over 4,000 metres above sea level on the flat expanse of the altiplano. When you reach the edge of El Alto
Bolivia Potosí & Sucre: A tale of two cities Potosí is one of the highest cities in the world, at a lofty 4,067 metres above sea level. As our taxi struggled up one of the city's many steep and narrow streets, the charcoal clouds hanging overhead suddenly fell in on themselves, thunder rippling out as hailstones started pouring
Bolivia Lagoons, llamas and the Salar de Uyuni As the familiar opening bars rang out, Andrés turned to us and grinned. "Música classic!" It was day one of our three day tour from San Pedro de Atacama [https://www.nothere.co.uk/san-pedro-de-atacama/] to the Salar de Uyuni, and six of us were crammed into a jeep bouncing
Chile Spaced out in San Pedro de Atacama There are few places on earth as inhospitable to life as the Atacama Desert. So it follows that there can be few worse places for a bus to break down, miles from the nearest town, some 4,600 metres above sea level. Our journey across the mountains from Argentina to
Argentina The Quebrada de Humahuaca: Argentina's wild north west The Pucará of Tilcara, a hilltop fortress built by the Omaguaca people and later seized by the Incas, is crowned by a rather ugly monument to the archaeologists who rediscovered it in 1908. The monument is a flat-topped pyramid, a structure reminiscent of Mayan constructions in Central America, but which
Argentina Salta: Gateway to the Andes Arriving in Salta, in the mountainous north west of Argentina, felt like a watershed moment in our trip. Up until now we'd mostly been travelling through places that felt culturally and architecturally European, but Salta was like a bridge between this world and the Andean countries that lay ahead of
Argentina Merry in Mendoza "Wow look at those storm drains, they must get a lot of rain here!" On reflection, it was probably one of the sillier things that I've said on this trip. We'd just arrived in Mendoza, the city at the heart of Argentina's most famous wine region, and we'd quickly noticed
Argentina Córdoba: Argentina's surprising second city As we travel around South America, we are gradually coming to appreciate the vastness of this continent. The bus journey from Buenos Aires to Córdoba was our longest so far, 11 hours through a monotonous landscape of pancake-flat farmland and pampas grass. It was only as we approached the outskirts
Argentina Buenos Aires: A capital in crisis On this trip it seems like we keep arriving in countries in the midst of a crisis. The night before we were due to catch the ferry from Uruguay [https://www.nothere.co.uk/colonia-del-sacramento-montevideo/] to Buenos Aires, we found out that a general strike was taking place in Argentina
