501 Places

Imagine coming face to face with this creature? I was calmly munching on my baguette when I turned round and caught sight of this monster lurking in the bushes. Well, I was so shocked I almost dropped my delicious snack. When you’re in France for a day trip you should be prepared for almost anything. [...]

I can spend hours flicking through our picture albums from the last few years. However good our memories might be there are moments that get lost in the mist of time and that are rekindled simply by a glance at an old photo. So while I’ve never really invested in my camera gear (it probably [...]

A few days ago several thousand people (me included) clicked on a random link that appeared on Twitter offering us a chance to find out our ‘Twifficiency’ – it was a pointless but ultimately harmless link, proof if it were ever needed that those on Twitter are by nature a fairly narcissistic bunch. Offer us [...]

This week’s guest post is written by Juan Otero Rionda. I spent several days with Juan on my recent blog trip to Valencia, and during that time he described how he owns and manages a couple of rural guest houses in the beautiful countryside of Asturias in northern Spain. His passion for his home region [...]

Cricket has a hard time selling itself to non-believers. In its original form (test match cricket) a game can last for five days, with each day lasting for around seven hours including breaks. And at the end of those five days? More than 1 in 3 finish as a draw. The game stops when it’s [...]

At every famous place in the world there seems to be one unmissable photo spot: the picture that we know will end up being printed, framed, used as a greeting card or as our desktop. Along with the almost everyone else, I too have made sure to capture those iconic images. But looking through my [...]

It was almost 9 years ago that I stopped frequenting fast food joints. Yet after my first night at the plush SHA Wellness Clinic in southern Spain the thought of a McBreakfast did briefly enter my head. How could this make any sense? We had just spent a night at one of the most luxurious [...]

In the latest guest post on 501 Places, well-known travel blogger Darren Cronian shares with us a love of his native Leeds and offers insider tips for those visiting his home city. For many people, when you mention the city of Leeds, they associate it with being a great place for nightlife and shopping, but [...]

On a recent uneventful long flight I decided to pass time by counting the number of flights I’ve taken in my lifetime (sad, I know). I lost count somewhere over 300 and it would be reasonable to put the number somewhere around the 350 mark (I counted number of take-offs but I could have chosen [...]

We have moved house more times than most. In fact, in a little over 20 years together we’ve lived in or close to six big UK cities (Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester, Cardiff, Bristol and most recently London) as well as a spell in New York. We were, until 2006, proud to say we had not lived [...]