501 Places

Since I woke up in a contrary mood this morning, I thought I’d have a bit of fun with this post. There are so many posts and articles written about the virtues of travel that I figured I would play Devil’s Advocate and take the opposite view. I mean let’s face it, millions of people [...]

One of our favourite walks in New York was to wander down from our apartment on the Upper East Side and along Madison Avenue towards Midtown. If you’re after some serious people watching, Madison Avenue in the 60s (between 60th and 69th Streets) takes some beating. On these blocks you’ll find many of the top [...]

One year ago today I sat down and nervously wrote my first blog post; 501 Places was born. 309 posts later, I look back on a year’s writing and take a lot of pleasure in seeing how much of my life’s experiences, my thoughts and opinions I’ve managed to capture in these pages. Managing a [...]

Ask a backpacker to reveal the contents of their packs, and the chances are that you will find many of the following: camera (with a multitude of accessories), phone, laptop/netbook, iPod or other music device, DVD player, electronic book reader. There may even be a spare camera. Of course many pieces of kit can serve [...]

Like millions of others I’m counting down the days till the start of the football World Cup in South Africa on June 11th. Once the final 32 qualifying countries were decided, I was looking at the list and thinking of which ones I had visited, which ones where on my immediate to-do list, and which [...]

“Phew, what a scorcher!” This clichéd headline is almost guaranteed to appear in a tabloid sometime during a British summer; usually on the first day that the thermometer hits 25c. Coupled with a picture of bikini-clad middle aged women eating ice cream by the beach, the story will describe how our country is experiencing the [...]

It’s amazing what you can find on the internet. We were reminiscing about our wedding day in South Wales, more than 17 years in the distant past, and I thought I’d look up the West House Hotel in our then home village of Llantwit Major, where we held our wedding reception. And what you do [...]

They are much bigger than a human, with an average body weight many times that of even an obese member of our species. So when faced with a field full of these dopey looking creatures it’s maybe understandable that there is a bit of apprehension. After all, they could inflict severe damage on us if [...]

20 days of British Airways strikes are about to get under way. Even before this disruption, Eyjafjallajökull has reared its ugly head again and shut down much of UK airspace, along with a fair chunk of the skies of western Europe. Air travel has never been so fraught with uncertainty, even at the height of [...]

I’m watching the news from Bangkok with great sadness. I can’t begin to understand the politics and the troubled history behind the anger on the two sides of the dispute, and am not qualified to offer any opinion other than a wish for the fighting to stop quickly and a peaceful resolution to be found. [...]