Do you have a passion for travel and words? Would you like to learn the skills and concepts needed to turn your travel experiences into publishable features for newspapers and magazines? If so, there are still a few places left on my online travel writing course at Cambridge University, starting 26 October 2016.
Contact me, or Cambridge University directly, for further details.
As well as writing about places, I also teach writing about places (see the ‘Academic & Tutoring’ tab on this website for details). Even better, I teach about writing about places in one of the most beautiful places I know: Sicily. So if you would like to come to Sicily, immerse yourself in its beauty and culture and learn how to put your experience into words that newspapers and magazines will want to publish, why not come on my travel-writing holiday? I look forward to seeing you!
On 1 May this year I was invited to address an audience at the RGS (Royal Geographical Society) in London on the theme ‘Discovering Jordan’, for potential travellers to that fascinating country. Founded in 1830, the RGS has funded some of Britain’s most intrepid explorers including Darwin, Livingstone, Stanley, Scott, Shackleton and Hillary, so it was an honour to speak there, alongside Tony Howard who with his partner Di Taylor developed adventure tourism in Jordan. Here’s a photo of us both in action.
Having spent a few consecutive summers exploring Ireland in a campervan in the 1990s at a time before the Good Friday Agreement initiated the peace process in the north of the country, it was great to be back last summer for the Daily Telegraph.
So much had changed: in the 1990s the border between the province, which then was punctuated with checkpoints and watchtowers, is now completely open, and the only hint that we’d crossed between the North and the Republic was the miles turning to kilometres on the road signs.
Our campervan had changed too, but one thing remained the same – the soundtrack to our trip, never more apt than in his own country: the great Van Morrison.
http://youtu.be/gVAnlke_xUY
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I’ve lived in Oxford over 25 years, and have loved it ever since I first visited it as a teenager from my parents’ home in the neighbouring county of Buckinghamshire. So it was a delight to be asked to write a comprehensive guide to the city for the Telegraph, which appeared in 2011 (see this earlier post). The Telegraph asked me to produce a compact version of this guide, which appears here. This was harder than you’d think, as there are so many lovely paces to choose from – and every Oxford resident has their own particular favourites (which might not be the same ones as mine). But as a travel journalist I had to write the guide for visitors rather than residents, which meant missing out a few of my personal favourites that are too far off the beaten track, or difficult to find. Despite this challenge, it was fun seeing my own city through the eyes of a first-time tourist!
In march I travelled to the UAE to write about the history of polo, a game which (probably) originated in the Central Asian Steppes or in Persia (modern-day Iran). From here it migrated to China, Japan and India, where it was adopted by the British and brought back to the UK. When British farmers bought estancias in Argentina the game took off in this already horse-mad country, and in recent years it’s come ‘home’ to the Gulf, where it’s popular amongst the equally horse-mad Emiratis. I was luck enough to attend the Polo Gold Cup in Dubai, which forms the opening of my story…
It was spring last year when I visited Gozo for a few day’s walking its empty coastal paths, exploring its ancient megaliths and ‘chillaxing‘ David-Cameron style at cafés in villages where life has remained pretty much unchanged for aeons. Finally, this weekend, my feature about it appeared in the Sunday Telegraph. Normally I avoid re-reading my published pieces but this time I did – and found myself reliving the trip all over again, longing to return to this beautiful, peaceful island.
One of the more unusual – and uplifting – stories coming out of Palestine is that of its only brewery. Run by Nadim Khoury and his daughter (and apprentice master brewer) Madees, the Taybeh Brewing Company holds its own Oktoberfest each autumn, modelled on the more famous Bavarian one. Here’s my little piece on the festival, and the historic town of Taybeh, in the current edition of TIME.com, with the bottles brought to their New York office specially for the photoshoot. Oh, and I can personally vouch for the quality – and taste – of the beer!
One of my most memorable travel experiences of last year was a day trip from Bergen, Norway, around the Sognefjord area including a breathtaking boat journey on the Nærøyfjord (Narrow Fjord) and equally astonishing train ride on the Flåmsbana, which corkscrewed up and through the mountainside. I wrote about it for TIME Magazine, who now operate a paywall on their website. So if you want to read the whole thing, here it is in PDF format.
As Christmas came, and carol singers all over the Christian world were intoning the well-loved “O Little Town of Bethlehem“, al-Jazeera English published a piece I’d written when I visited Bethlehem earlier in the year. Sadly, the silence, peace and magic of the city as celebrated in the carol is long gone as the town is now sliced in two by the brutally ugly concrete wall that Israel started building in 2002. This wall has cut off ordinary Palestinian Christians, many of whom make their livings from tourism to the wonderful Church of the Hold Sepulchre, from their means to make a living and is slowly choking the life out of the city. In the piece I wrote about the plight of one lady, gift shop owner Claire Anastas, and others affected by the separation wall. The story ends with some rays of hope, as you’ll see.
