Hiking
Rest and be thankful on hiking routes
There comes a point on longish hikes when your body, or common sense, tells you it’s time to hit the pause button, to park your bum for a short while to rest legs and back. […]
Search Results for crete
Hiking
Five of my favourite hiking routes
The other day we chewed over our favourite hiking routes; not an easy task as we could compile an encyclopedia of great walking routes we’ve completed over the last decade. After much debating and discarding I settled on this five. […]
Europe
Traditional vegetarian options in European walking destinations
When travelling we occasionally get tired of traditional cuisine in some destinations. This happens when restaurant menus vary little from one to another and mostly involve meat, meat, or meat. When this happens, we are on alert for any local dishes which don’t involve a slab of dead animal. […]
Europe
Swapping package holidays for magical mystery tours
Greece was responsible for a radical rethink regarding how we planned our precious breaks from work. I was Mr Package Holiday arguing that, with only two weeks to spare at a go, I didn’t want […]
Algarve
Where to go warm winter walking in Europe
This is the time of year when there are regular travel articles about warm winter walking. Generally they’ll feature the same handful of locations. […]
Italy
Oltrarno, the other side of the river in Florence
Within about thirty minutes I declare I don’t like Florence; too many tour groups clogging the streets, and the restaurants seem grabby; mediocre-looking places charging way too much for uninspiring food. […]
Food & drink
Tips for using Tripadvisor restaurant reviews
Whatever anyone thinks about the travel advisory giant, Tripadvisor is the best place for finding information about restaurants in any given location. However, there’s a right way to use it and lots of wrong ways. […]
Food & drink
7 steps to culinary enlightenment
If you’re the sort of person who, in culinary terms, likes and dislikes exactly the same things you enjoyed as a child, stop reading. This will be meaningless. On the other hand, if your palate has evolved over the years, then you might want to try this little exercise yourself. […]
Europe
Learning to live with eating seasonal fruit and vegetables
Travelling around rural parts of Europe we regularly spot roadside fruit and veg stalls, a good way of seeing what are the seasonal ‘in things’ in any destination. […]
As we walked out
Walking in Europe with a spring in the step
“Em Abril, águas mil.” There’s a reason for these old proverbs. This is from Portugal, Spain has one almost identical. Incidentally, so has Chile. Even Disney alludes to a feature that April can be known for – “Drip, drip, drop little April shower… ” […]
Hiking
Not all walkers are slow travellers
“I don’t want to read flowery descriptions,” the man smiled, but not really in a friendly way. More in a Wormtongue manner. “I just want walking directions that will tell me how to get from […]
Travel Talk
The deception in travel writing
When you swim in the overcrowded waters of travel writing/blogging on a daily basis, you soon develop the ability to spot the tripwires which have authors, who haven’t visited destinations they write about, falling flat on their faces. […]
Hiking
Stranger things found on walking routes
The Arrabida boots had a rather bizarre aspect to them; they were accompanied by bras. There were also some women’s knickers strewn around the dry grass beneath the tree. […]
Equipment & Accessories
The art of map reading, an essential skill for walkers
It’s funny that something I learnt at an early age – how to direct artillery fire onto an enemy position with pinpoint accuracy – could become an essential part of my working life decades later. […]
Europe
Walking in the past in Dumfries and Galloway
We followed country lanes and cautiously crossed fields populated by curious cows and pudgy-faced Texel sheep to reach an exquisitely beautiful and evocative little spot which was the location of a covenanters’ (Scottish Presbyterians) graveyard. […]