Spain Cartagena: The new new city As something of a compulsive travel planner, it’s not often that I turn up in a city with no idea of what to do when I get there. But Cartagena was the exception to the rule, a place I knew very little about before I arrived. Situated about 20
Spain Palma de Mallorca: Echoes of Islam One of the many misconceptions informing the current debate around migration and the Syrian refugee crisis is the idea that the presence of Islam in western Europe is a new phenomenon. Even a cursory glance at the history books shows that Islam has been an important part of our culture
Travel literature The best travel books that I read in 2015 I’ve been lucky enough to do quite a lot of travelling this year, but the list of places I want to visit only ever seems to get longer. I find that one of the best ways to deal with that feeling of wanderlust is to travel vicariously through the
Poland Gdańsk: The indestructible city I rubbed the sleep from my bleary eyes as our taxi driver, unfeasibly chirpy for six o’clock on a Monday morning, fired yet more questions at us. “What about the basilica, did you go up to the top of the tower?” “Er, no, we didn’t… we saw it,
Portugal A taste of Funchal I glanced absent-mindedly at my phone, as we twenty-first century types tend to do every five minutes, and it caught me a little by surprise. According to the screen, it was Monday 2nd November. I had sort of forgotten, consumed as I was by the sights and sounds of a
Spain La Palma: Fire and water La Palma, one of the lesser known Canary Islands, seems at first glance as if it must be a piece of the Caribbean that’s come loose, a wayward isle that has somehow drifted east across the Atlantic Ocean. There is barely a flat surface to be found on this
Uzbekistan The Tyrant of Tashkent On 25 April 1966, Tashkent was flattened by an earthquake. The city that stands today is largely the creation of the Soviets, who rebuilt the Uzbek capital as a model socialist metropolis; this meant plenty of concrete, but also verdant parks, canalside paths and wide roads designed for ostentatious military
Uzbekistan Samarkand: Timur's town If you’ve only ever heard of one place in Central Asia, it’s probably Samarkand. This ancient city, one of the most important stops on the old Silk Road, once shared the same near-mythical status as Timbuktu and Shangri-La, and became renowned for its fantastical architecture during the reign
Uzbekistan Crossing the Kyzylkum Desert The Kyzylkum Desert is the Central Asia you imagine when you look at a map: vast, inhospitable, empty. Yet a lot of history fills the barren land between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers (better known in the west as the Oxus and the Jaxartes), and crossing the Kyzylkum
Uzbekistan Bukhara: The holiest city you've never heard of I’m not usually superstitious, but I’m pretty sure that the ghost of a tenth century Persian emir cured me of diarrhoea. My stomach had been suffering for a couple of days, the most likely culprit theplov I’d eaten for dinner on our last night in Khiva [https:
Uzbekistan Featured Khiva: In the court of the khan The sun-baked city of Khiva sits between two bleak and inhospitable deserts, the Kyzylkum and the Karakum. As you approach the city limits the rusty brown sand begins to sprout unlikely patches of green, and you find yourself wondering whether it’s an oasis or a mirage that you’ve
Cyprus Nicosia: A city divided I was five years old when the Berlin Wall fell, and in the years since I’ve seen bits of the wall all over Europe: outside the European parliament in Brussels [https://www.nothere.co.uk/bruges-brussels-and-bashar-al-assad/], in a park in Riga [https://www.nothere.co.uk/latvia-christmas-trees-and-castles/], opposite Hoxha’
UK Glastonbury Festival 2015: Dancing on the ceiling Returning to Glastonbury Festival for the first time in eight years, I was filled with both excitement and trepidation. Anyone who attends a festival more than once notices the changes over the years, some gradual and some abrupt, and the default position of most festival-goers eventually becomes “it’s not
Capital Ring Walk Capital Ring Walk: Falconwood to Crystal Palace 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 Section 1, running from Woolwich
Cambodia Cambodia: Beaches and barbed wire After a week bouncing along the bone-rattling roads of landlocked Laos, our first thought on arrival in Cambodia was to head for the beach, so we jumped in a taxi at Phnom Penh airport and strapped ourselves in for the three hour drive to Sihanoukville. The highway to the coast
Responsible travel Climate Change & Travel Part 3: Saving the world > “My son’s studying in the States and I don’t feel great about getting on the plane to visit him, but I’m still going to do it….” She stops. “You know, the reason I don’t like these questions is that it makes it sound as if
Responsible travel Climate Change & Travel Part 2: The lies we tell ourselves Unless you cling to the idea that man-made climate change is a hoax designed to line the pockets of devious scientists, or a natural fluctuation in the earth’s temperature, or whatever diversionary story is currently flavour of the month amongst climate change deniers and their corporate funders, it should
Responsible travel Climate Change & Travel Part 1: The mess we're in > “We look for a split second and then we look away. Or we look but then turn it into a joke (“more signs of the Apocalypse!”). Which is another way of looking away. Or we look but tell ourselves comforting stories about how humans are clever and will come
Capital Ring Walk Capital Ring Walk: Woolwich to Falconwood The Capital Ring Walk [http://www.tfl.gov.uk/modes/walking/capital-ring] is a 78-mile long route around London that links together many of the capital’s lesser known corners, broken up into 15 smaller sections. This post follows on from my previous account of Sections 14 and 15, running
Albania Shkodër: Goodbye Albania Alighting the bus in the centre of Shkodër, our feet had barely touched the pavement before a swarm of taxi drivers was upon us, all shouting the same thing. “Montenegro taxi? Montenegro taxi?” Shkodër is a transiting point for many travellers heading north from [Tirana]( GHOST_URL/welcome-to-tirana/" target=
Belgium Bruges, Brussels and Bashar Al-Assad Belgium enjoys a peculiar place in the British collective imagination, pilloried as a flat and featureless non-country stuffed full of joyless Eurocrats. It’s a divided nation that looks, Janus-like, towards the Netherlands in the north and France to the south, leading to the accusation that it has no real
Capital Ring Walk Capital Ring Walk: Hackney Wick to Woolwich The Capital Ring Walk [http://www.tfl.gov.uk/modes/walking/capital-ring] is a 78-mile long route around London that connects up many of the capital’s lesser known sights, broken up into 15 smaller sections. This post follows on from my previous account of Sections 12 and 13, running
Saint Lucia Saint Lucia: Beyond the beach Gap-toothed, pink-eyed and docile-looking, perhaps dulled by the sun or maybe just stoned, the old man, beaming, offered up his hand for a fist bump. “Welcome to paradise, brother.” It sounds contrived now, but at the time it seemed profound. It was the middle of the day and the atmosphere
UK Kent: In search of England There’s an election on in the UK, in case you hadn’t noticed, and questions of national identity are swirling around like never before, from the resurgent Scottish nationalism of the SNP to the anti-immigration rhetoric of Ukip. On Good Friday we set off from London for a weekend
Capital Ring Walk Capital Ring Walk: Highgate to Hackney Wick It was a sunny, hangover-free Sunday in June when we decided to embark on the Capital Ring Walk [http://www.tfl.gov.uk/modes/walking/capital-ring], a 78-mile long route around London that connects up many of the capital’s lesser known sights. The walk is broken up into 15