Search Results for: travel writing

It would have been churlish to have refused his invitation to accompany him on
a trip to ‘forage for hidden treasures’. If the truth be known, I secretly couldn’t resist the novelty of passing time with a bloke called Serge Bastarde.

When John decamps to France to start up as an antiques dealer, he doesn’t count on meeting Serge Bastarde. The lovable rogue and brocanteur offers to teach John the tricks of the trade in return for help in a series of unscrupulous schemes. As the pair trawl through markets and farmhouses, they con hearty lunches from old peasants and get into scrapes with priceless collectibles. Filled with eccentric characters and unlikely adventures, this is a hilarious romp through the real rural France.

Tips and Ideas for Making Your Gap Year Great
Gap years are bursting with possibility, begging to be filled with new experiences and unforgettable moments. But how do you make the most of your time out? This handy guide is packed with exciting and creative ideas that will take you all over the world. Whether you’re in search of a thrilling outdoor activity or a spiritual awakening, here’s how to make it truly memorable.

‘It had been so amazingly hot that I felt myself about to dissolve into a kind of crème brûlée on the road, so I bought some super-power Number 8 suncream. This had the word ‘Bronzante’ on it, and must have contained some dye or other chemical because my knees stayed brown until February.’
Fed up with questions about what he was going to do when he retired, Edward decided to get on his bicycle and ride from Le Havre to the Mediterranean. Armed with a tent and a smattering of French, he struggled in Normandy to get directions from old men tipsy on Calvados by 9 a.m., and hit his stride on the towpath of the Burgundy canal. He explored the mystery of what an ouvrier eats for lunch, and was barred from a swimming pool because his trunks were too decent.
Through the Rhône and down to Provence and the Camargue, Enfield is witty and informative as always.
Edward Enfield lives in Sussex with his wife and writes regularly for The Oldie magazine.

Do you love trains? Do you love adventure? If so, join Tom Chesshyre on his meandering rail journey across Europe from London to Venice.

Escaping the rat race for a few happy weeks, Chesshyre indulges in the freedom of the tracks. From France (dogged by rail worker strikes), through Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland, he travels as far east as Odessa by the Black Sea in Ukraine. With no set plans, simply a desire to let the trains lead the way, he heads back via Hungary, the Balkans and Austria. Along the way he enjoys many an encounter, befriending fellow travellers as well as a conductor or two.

This is a love letter to Europe, written from the trackside.

Travel is the only thing you can buy that makes you richer

Travel opens our minds to the world; it helps us to embrace risk and uncertainty, overcome challenges and understand the people we meet and the places we visit. But what happens when we arrive home? How do our experiences shape us?

The Kindness of Strangers explores what it means to be vulnerable and to be helped by someone we’ve never met before. Someone who could have walked past, but chose not to.

This is a collection of stories by accomplished travellers and adventurous souls like Sarah Outen, Benedict Allen, Ed Stafford and Al Humphreys, who have completed daring journeys through challenging terrain, adventuring from the Calais Jungle to the Amazon, from Land’s End to the Gobi Desert, from New Guinea to Iran and many other places in between. Each has a story to tell of a time when they were vulnerable, when they were in need and a kind stranger came to their rescue.

These are stories that make our hearts grow, stories that will restore our faith in the world and remind us that, despite what the media says, the world isn’t a scary place – rather, it is filled with Kind Strangers just like us.

All royalties go directly to fund Oxfam’s work with refugees.

‘It seemed a terrible shame to meet my end in Iowa; I couldn’t imagine anywhere more disappointing to die. If I were a betting man I’d have reckoned on the most dangerous thing in this state being sheer boredom. The scenery hadn’t changed for weeks and I was slowly dissolving into stimulation-deprived madness. My current predicament, then – attempting to escape through cornfields from a gun-toting alcohol-soaked rancher – was not something I expected.’
Just months after graduating from university, Leon received disastrous news: he had been offered a job. Terrified at the prospect of a life spent behind a desk, without challenge or adventure, he took off to cross America on an overloaded bicycle packed with everything but common sense. Over five months and 6,000 miles, Leon cycled from New York to Seattle and then on to the Mexican border, facing tornadoes, swollen river crossings and one hungry black bear along the way. But he also met kind strangers who offered their food, wisdom, hospitality and even the occasional local history lesson, and learned what happens when you take a chance and follow the scent of adventure.

What would it feel like to be out there alone in that empty vastness? Just before midnight on 24 November 2011, Felicity is left completely alone on the coast of Antarctica. The isolation is instant and devastating. Only three people in the world have crossed Antarctica alone. The first two were men and both Norwegian. At the age of 34, British woman Felicity Aston became the third. Unlike her predecessors, she didn’t use kites or parasails to assist her. Within days, frozen into her facemask and reflecting on what had drawn her to such a place, she was battling desperate weather as she towed her heavy sledges. Every morning she wakes believing she cannot face another day as the expedition becomes a race against time to reach the coast before the last flight out. This gripping and inspirational account of personal endurance shows what you can achieve when you grit your teeth and decide just to get through today in one piece.

Tired of airport security queues, delays and all those extra taxes and charges, Tom Chesshyre embarks on a series of high-speed adventures across the Continent on its fast trains instead. From shiny London St Pancras, Tom travels to places that wouldn’t feature on a standard holiday wish-list, and discovers the hidden delights of mysterious Luxembourg, super-trendy Rotterdam, much-maligned Frankfurt and lovely lakeside Lausanne, via a pop concert in Lille. It’s 186 mph all the way – well, apart from a power cut in the Channel Tunnel on the way to Antwerp. Is our idea of ‘Europe’ changing as its destinations become easier to reach? And what fun can you have at the ends of the lines? Jump on board and find out!

There were five rules of Twitchhiker:
I can only accept offers of travel and accommodation from people on Twitter. I can’t make any travel plans further than three days in advance. I can only spend money on food, drink and anything that might fit in my suitcase. If there is more than one offer, I choose which I take. If there is only one, I have to take it within 48 hours. If I am unable to find a way to move on from a location within 48 hours, the challenge is over and I go home. Bored in the bread aisle of the supermarket one day, Paul Smith wondered how far he could get around the world in 30 days through the goodwill of users of social networking site Twitter. At the mercy of these rules, he set his sights on New Zealand – the opposite point on the planet to his home in Newcastle. All he had to do next was explain the idea to his new wife.
In an adventure wrapped in nonsense and cocooned in daft, he travelled by road, boat, plane and train, slept in five-star luxury and on no-star floors, shmoozed with Hollywood A-listers and was humbled by the generosity of the thousands who followed his journey and determined its course.
@twitchhiker I can send you to Wichita by Greyhound if that’s any good… Sent 10:13 AM Mar 12th
I was more or less in the exact geographical centre of a different continent, and a nameless woman some 4,000 miles east in Dublin was buying me a bus ticket…

Join travel writer Tom Chesshyre in this charming celebration of our favourite green spaces from around the world

People love parks – and more than that, people need parks. We crave greenery, fresh air and birdsong. Whether we’re in Colombia or Korea, America or Australia, urban parks are places where we can find calm amid the chaos. They can also (more often than we may realize) conceal intriguing hidden histories, and can tell us something about modern life in our frenzied world, too.

With fondness and humour, travel writer Tom Chesshyre recalls 50 of his favourite urban parks from across the world, in a love letter to the green escapes that bring us joy in our cities.

‘We-have-a-house-in-the-country?’
Lena nodded solemnly. 
‘Where?’ I almost shouted, briefly rattling the table. ‘No, wait, don’t tell me – it’s Todi in Umbria, right? The old manor house, the one with the lemon groves!’
‘Alt-Globnitz.’
‘Alt-Globnitz?’ Suddenly I felt cold.
‘Alt-Globnitz. It’s a really nice place. You will love it.’
In a desperate attempt to save his relationship with girlfriend Lena and take a break from the world of journalism, Germany correspondent Roger Boyes agrees to make a great escape from the easy urban lifestyle of Berlin and decamp to the countryside. Roger has hopes for southern Italy, but Lena has inherited a run-down old schloss in deepest, darkest Brandenburg.
Needing a form of income, they decide to set up a B & B with a British theme. Enter unhelpful Harry and his Trinidadian chef cousin, a mad Scot to advise them on re-branding Brandenburg, some suicidal frogs and a posse of mad tourists. It all culminates, naturally, in a cricket match between the Brits and the Germans on an old Russian minefield. Farce meets romance in this follow-up to the successful A Year in the Scheisse.

It’s time we celebrated women in adventure

What does “toughness” mean to you? Perhaps it’s being physically fit and mentally resilient. Perhaps it’s doing something no one else has done before. Perhaps it’s breaking down boundaries and proving what you can do, in spite of the naysayers. Perhaps it’s travelling alone, immersing yourself in new cultures and meeting new people. Perhaps it’s running ultramarathons in the blistering heat and beating the competition. Perhaps it’s conquering your fears.

The badass adventurers in this collection are all fearless, intelligent, compassionate and curious about the world – and they all happen to be female. From endurance obstacle races to arctic expeditions, from mountain climbing to wingsuit flying, from horse trekking to swimming the English Channel, they have set the bar high for what women are capable of. Let yourself be inspired by their stories of grit, courage, determination, triumph and heartbreak – you never know, it might lead to something incredible!

Sixteen years after first moving to Catalonia, Richard Guise finally finds time to slow down and explore the back roads by bicycle. With over 400 kilometres of sparkling Mediterranean shoreline and an interior dominated by the Pyrenees, it’s a spectacular journey from wind-blown headlands to the glitzy costas, and from bustling Barcelona to remote hillsides where only wild goats grazing and chirruping cicadas disturb the tranquillity.

Dipping into the unique history of this fiercely independent nation-within-a-nation, he uncovers many of its cultural peculiarities, such as why the sardana dance is not as easy as it looks and what to do in a bugaderia. Chancing upon nudist beaches, ancient Iberian sites and revolutionary road-sweepers, this slow cyclist revels in authentic Catalonia.

… one of the best ways to get to know a country is to take yourself to the less touristy, less obvious destinations. And let’s face it: things don’t get much less touristy than Slough…

As staff travel writer on The Times since 1997, Tom Chesshyre had visited over 80 countries on assignment, and wondered: what is left to be discovered?

He realised that the answer might be very close to home. In a mad adventure that took him from Hull to Hell (actually a rather nice holiday location in the Isles of Scilly), Tom visited secret spots of Unsung Britain in search of the least likely holiday destinations. He got to know the real Coronation Street in Salford, explored Blade Runner Britain in Port Talbot, discovered that everything’s quite green in Milton Keynes, met real-life superheroes and many a suspicious landlady, and watched a football match with celebrity chef Delia Smith in Norwich.

With a light and edgy writing style Tom peels back the skin of the unfashionable underbelly of Britain, and embraces it all with the spirit of discovery.

A chance conversation with her greengrocer about the media’s portrayal of India inspired journalist Justine Hardy to leave London and, following in the footsteps of Rudyard Kipling, spend a year working at The Indian Express in New Delhi. Her new life – with a quirky landlord who turns out to be a former Rajput prince – takes her all over India from polo matches and Assam tea gardens to city slums.

When Samantha Brick’s life started to unravel – her company in liquidation, homeless, penniless and friendless, and on max-strength anti-depressants – it seemed that everything was going wrong. But a chance week away in France led to the most unexpected of all turn-arounds: a whirlwind romance with gun-toting, stubborn and ever-so-macho Pascal. It wasn’t until she moved in to his cottage in the beautiful Lot region in south-west France that she realised how shamefully ill-equipped she was for the country life.

Like Cinderella in reverse, Samantha had to learn to cook, clean, chop wood and keep house, as well as discovering how to be a step-mum to Pascal’s know-it-all ten-year-old son, finding love and happiness along the way.

The woman was one of those irritating expat types who felt she owed it to the world to impart on her all her superior knowledge of life in France. I realised that if I didn’t stop her now, she’d be bending my ear all the way to Bergerac.

‘Actually,’ I said, leaning in toward the woman, ‘I’m planning to integrate my way into the boxers of the first good-looking Frenchman I see. Can’t think of any better way to learn the language myself. You wouldn’t happen to know the French for “fancy a shag?” would you? Voulez-vous coucher avec moi just seems a bit nineteen-seventies these days.’

After one particularly bad day at work, advertising executive and confirmed city girl Melanie Jones decides to give up her old life in search of something new and simpler in South West France. With little knowledge of the country, even less of the language and just the memory of a disastrous school French exchange and a few day trips to Calais, she embarks on her adventure with a suitcase full of optimism and not a little bit of naivety. After all, how different can life in France be?

After a series of adventures with skirt-ripping tractors, handsome twin farmers, celebrity not-quite-beens, unusual toilets and a bonkers ex-pat community, all topped up, of course, with lashings of rosé, Melanie begins to discover that her new life in France isn’t quite what she’d thought it would be.

Between soaring mountains, across arid deserts, parched plains and valleys of fruit orchards and olive groves, down glittering coastlines and along viaducts towering above plunging ravines… there is no better way to see Spain than by train.

Rail enthusiast Tom Chesshyre, author of Slow Trains to Venice, Ticket to Ride and Tales from the Fast Trains, hits the tracks once again to take in the country through carriage windows on a series of clattering rides beyond the popular image of “holiday Spain” (although he stops by in Benidorm and Torremolinos too).

From hidden spots in Catalonia, through the plains of Aragon and across the north coast to Santiago de Compostela, Chesshyre continues his journey via Madrid, the wilds of Extremadura, dusty mining towns, the cathedrals and palaces of Valencia and Granada, and finally to Seville, Andalusia’s beguiling (and hot) capital.

Encounters? Plenty. Mishaps? A lot. Happy Spanish days? All the way.

 heard the rustle again, too close and too real to ignore.  I clutched the flashlight, stuck my head out of the mosquito net… and found myself face-to-face with a jaguar.
Four travelers meet in Bolivia and set off into the heart of the Amazon rainforest to find a hidden tribe and explore places tourists only dream of seeing.  But what begins as the adventure of a lifetime quickly deteriorates into a dangerous nightmare. 
After weeks of wandering in the dense undergrowth the group splits up after disagreements, and Yossi and his friend try to find their own way back without a guide. When a terrible rafting accident separates him from his partner, Yossi is forced to survive for weeks alone against one of the wildest backdrops on the planet. Stranded without a knife, map, or survival training, he must improvise shelter and forage for wild fruit to survive. As his feet begin to rot during raging storms, as he loses all sense of direction, and as he begins to lose all hope, he wonders whether he will make it out of the jungle alive. 
The basis of an upcoming motion picture starring Daniel Radcliffe,”Lost in the Jungle”is the incredible story of friendship and the teachings of nature, survival and human fortitude and a terrifying true account that you won’t be able to put down.

‘At one moment you seem to be in the Lake District; then you could be on the moon; then you are in a wilderness; and then beside a Norwegian fjord.’ When Edward decided to cycle around Ireland, he was enchanted by prehistoric fortresses, rugged landscapes, and landladies who insisted on washing his shirts. He takes you with him on a gentle ride up the west coast, eating enormous breakfasts and fresh fish for supper along the way, and stopping to chat to peat-cutters, fishermen, eccentric tourists and a famous matchmaker. With his trademark dry wit, observant eye and a sense of the absurd, he is the perfect companion for a tour of Ireland’s most beautiful areas from the lakes of Killarney to the idyllic Joyce’s Country, and from the dolmens of Clare to the deserts and neolithic remains of Mayo.

Tibet was not just on the horizon, it capped it. Four thousand metres above this city was a country of stone and ice, and, even though it was officially closed, there was still a way in.

A compelling and unforgettable encounter on the roof of the world… 

Hoping to reach Tibet after a twenty-year obsession, Charlie Carroll travelled to China. Contending with Chinese bureaucracy, unforgiving terrain and sickness-inducing altitude, Charlie experienced twenty-first-century Tibet in all its heartbreaking beauty.

Tibetan-born Lobsang fled the volatile region over the Himalayas, on foot, as a child in 1989. An exile in Nepal, then a student in India, he was called back to Tibet by love. At the end of the road known as the Friendship Highway, he met Charlie and recounted his extraordinary life story, exemplifying the hardship, resilience and hope of modern Tibetan life.

I’d always felt that the real Wales was lying there waiting to be discovered, just off the main road, behind the tea rooms, down the track, up over the hill.

Wanting to explore Wales by bicycle, Richard Guise laid out his map on the kitchen table, identified its four compass points and, using string and jam jars, connected them in a way that he hoped would take him on a satisfyingly serendipitous tour.

Astride Tetley, his trusty steed, he sets off on a 567-mile, 20-day trek that leads him through the Cambrian mountains, to picturesque Victorian towns and alongside the broad curve of Cardigan Bay, discovering seemingly secret cycling routes as he dips into valleys and down quiet lanes. With wry wit and enthusiasm he tells of his grapples with the weather and unwieldy place names, and weaves surprising nuggets of local history and lore into this tale of an intrepid English cyclist in Wales.

When three friends – Paul, Johno and Leigh – clicked ‘buy’ on an iconic London cab, little did they know what they were letting themselves in for. Leaving the Big Smoke in their taxi bound for Sydney, the lads began a 43,000-mile trip that would take them off the beaten track to some of the most dangerous and deadly places on earth. By the time they arrived home, they would manage against all the odds to circumnavigate the globe and break two world records.

From altercations with the Iranian secret police to narrowly escaping the Taliban, the trio’s adventure is filled with hair-raising escapades. Feel the fear, revel in the fun and meet some of the hundred passengers the taxi picked up along the way, as the authors take you on their action-packed journey.

“Tom Chesshyre is the consummate traveller, who makes you want to experience all his adventures and mishaps for yourself.” – Christian Wolmar, author of British Rail: The Making and Breaking of Our Trains

From London via Paris, Naples, Nuremberg, the Swiss Alps, Budapest, Athens and into the furthest corners of Eastern Europe across Romania and Bulgaria, join Tom Chesshyre on his fascinating journey to Istanbul and back

Ever dreamt of dropping everything and adventuring cross-country to the edge of Asia? That’s just what rail enthusiast Tom Chesshyre did, hitting the tracks for a 4,570-mile adventure on 55 rides, shadowing the old Orient Express route.

Interrailing was once the realm of young backpackers setting off to “find themselves” – and for many, it still is. But it’s also a joyful and eco-friendly twenty-first century adventure that’s open to us all, no matter our age or agenda. Dodging striking train drivers in Germany, getting stuck by the Bulgarian-Greek border, and negotiating tricky passport officials in Turkey is all part of the fun in this illuminating and meandering journey around Europe.

Europe by rail awaits. The freedom of the lines awaits. Why not hop on board?