501 Places

I’ve never been one for buying expensive souvenirs from our travels. We travel with backpacks and I tend to be fairly ruthless when it comes to packing; lighter packs make for a more comfortable trip. My wife has no doubt lost count of the number of times I’ve asked “Do you really need to take […]

Having visited London quite literally hundreds of times in recent years and being cursed with a well-documented weak bladder, I’ve often been caught short on my trips around the city. Central London is a haven of presentable and reasonably hygienic toilets and there’s absolutely no reason why you’d ever need to pay any money to […]

Almost every foreign trip is going to involve taking a taxi at some point. It’s also true that wherever you go, there’s a high chance that you’ll step out of at least one taxi knowing that you’ve paid too paid for the ride. Taxi drivers appear to have an exemption from the universal code of […]

1. Hotel shower bottles are designed to be enough for exactly 0.8 showers. 2. You will always get the seat behind the compulsive recliner. 3. Your bag will be first off the conveyor belt on the one occasion you have several hours to waste before your connecting flight. 4. The length of the hotel check-in […]

My wife tells me I always exaggerate (she must have told me this at least a million times). While I’m prone to stretching a point on almost any subject, there’s no doubt that my tallest stories come from travel experiences. It’s an undeniable fact that the exact details of incidents that happened to me when […]

It was a story that led me to Aldeburgh in the first place. I recently read Scapegallows by Carol Birch, a book that follows the life of Margaret Catchpole, a feisty young lady who was twice sentenced to hang and eventually shipped off to Australia. Her true-life account is told in the context of the […]

I looked down from the crest of the hill, heart rate slowly settling after a draining climb in the midday heat. A patchwork of fields spread out into the far distance, with only a church spire and a few distant roofs providing a contrast to the shades of green and yellow so typical of the […]

It’s funny how things turn out sometimes. As this story proves, you should be careful about telling jokes to strangers. Sometimes your most ridiculous fantasies can turn out to be a prophetic glimpse into the future. April 2006. I had just finished business school and, armed with my newly acquired MBA degree, I was taking […]

A shrivelled lady in her seventies, back severely arched and supported in her chair by a pile of cushions, sits just inside the entrance.  There’s a scent that’s hard to place but is reminiscent of a nursing home. “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” We are soon greeted by a lady dressed in an elegant […]

According to the UNWTO (UN World Tourism Organisation) there are now over 1 billion people travelling internationally each year; a number that is expected to increase sharply as more people in India and China acquire the means to go on foreign holidays. In the world of travel and tourism this travel bonanza is being embraced […]