By and large, I’m a solo traveller and I think it’s time I started emphasising that a bit more.
Back in the days when I could solo travel, I gravitated towards Iceland, Scandinavia and the Arctic, with occasional visits to places like the Baltic states and eastern Europe but you’ll find plenty of Paris and Switzerland and western Europe here too. Actually, my non-Wessex UK travels are here as well, so come with me to Scotland, London and a few other places around my own country.
Deleting old posts that have never been read and are not doing their job has a definite upside: I get to write them again but better! And so to my adventure snowmobiling on a volcano! This must have been about 2013 and I’d finally given in to the allure of driving a scary tough machine… More Snowmobiling on a volcano
Your average tourist to Iceland will be completely oblivious to Borgarnes, even the ones who pass through it – and maybe stop at its roadhouse – on their long day trip to Snæfellsnes. But Borgarnes is a strong contender for my favourite place in Iceland. It’s a small town on the west coast, the service… More Borgarnes: my favourite town in Iceland
After Monday’s post about enjoying caving, let’s have a lava caving story. In the UK, if you’re going to crawl around in a hole in the ground, it’ll be a limestone one formed by water action. It’ll have a certain smell, similar to petrichor, you might find fossils and it’ll probably have a mixture of… More Lava caving: crawling under an eruption
Back in June 2004, my caving club went on an “expedition” to Ireland. That’s caving-speak for a holiday. I don’t write a lot of caving stuff but I used to spend half my life underground. We chose Ireland mostly because that’s where they’d been the previous year and because there were plenty of caves. In… More A student caving expedition in Ireland
One thing that people ask sometimes about travelling all your own is: When you’re a solo traveller, how do you get photos of yourself? A few years ago, Buzzfeed published an article called We Asked 17 Travel Pros For Their Best Advice on Traveling Solo And Here’s What They Said and I realised this was… More How to get photos of yourself when travelling solo
Back in January, before 2020 really started, I went to London to cross some cathedrals off my list. The list started on April 16th 2019, when the Notre Dame fire made me realise that the great English medieval cathedrals might not be waiting for me to get round to them. Project #BeforeItBurnsDown kind of got… More On top of St Paul’s Cathedral
And so to the conclusion! Having left Odense in the last post, I was now on my way to Aalborg, one of, if not the, northernmost cities in Denmark. I’ll spare you the woes of engineering works and rail replacement buses and unexpected extra changes. I won’t spare you spending the last hour watching Mission… More Backpacking Denmark: 48 hours in Aalborg
When I left this story, I was just getting on a train bound for Odense, my second Danish backpacking destination. It runs anywhere between 1 hour 11 minutes and 1 hour, depending on whether it’s the express or a stopping service. Eight years on, I have no idea which one I jumped on. What I… More Backpacking Denmark: 24 hours in Odense
I’ve tried writing about my mini backpacking trip to Copenhagen, Odense & Aalborg before and somehow it just won’t come out right. So I’m going to have another go. Consider this part one of a trilogy covering my 6 day epic adventure. Welcome to Copenhagen. It was 2012 and Her Majesty was having an extra… More Backpacking Denmark: 48 hours in Copenhagen
I’ll never forget my first visit to the Arctic. I’d spent a couple of days in Trondheim and then I was going to fly north and spend a couple of days in Tromsø. Tromsø is now an old friend. I’ve considered moving there for a few months, maybe even a year. But back in 2011,… More The day I fell in love with the Arctic