I stumbled upon St Bride’s Church when wandering through narrow alleyways between Temple and Fleet Street. It is a church designed by Sir Christopher Wren, architect of St Paul’s. The interior of the church is strikingly beautiful. The floor is made of black and white squares of marble, surrounded by dark panelled wood. There […]
Gonville & Caius College is one of the oldest Cambridge colleges, founded in 1348. Gonville & Caius sundial, Senate House Passage I had been wanting to see the inside of the college for a while, having walked past the outside for years. So I went for a wander around one sunny lunchtime. There was a […]
Tarr Steps is an ancient packhorse bridge in Exmoor. Made of huge slabs of stone, no-one really knows how old it is, or how it was built, but estimates date back to 1000 BC. The National Park of Exmoor is full of rivers, forest and wildflowers, and spreads across Devon and Somerset. Wild ponies roam the […]
Chhatrapatri Shivaji Terminus (CST) or Victoria Terminus (VT) is the largest railway station in Mumbai. From here one of the world’s greatest railway networks originates, and terminates. Next to the station lie the Central Railway Headquarters, and behind that, Mumbai’s GPO (General Post Office). Opened in 1887 and named after Queen Victoria, the station is […]
The Tour de France runs through Cambridge this year, on one of the stages of the race that is set in Britain. The Tour started in Yorkshire on Saturday 5th July, and today I went out to see the race as it passed through Cambridgeshire. Stage 3 of the Tour de France 2014 started off […]
A couple of summers ago I visited south Cornwall, where we took some beautiful walks along the South West Coast Path. Maintained by the National Trust and spanning 630 miles, the path connects walking trails through Dorset, Devon, Cornwall and Somerset. The coast path follows picturesque and scenic routes along cliff tops and beside beaches […]
The Llechwedd Slate Caverns are an old mining network under the mountains of Snowdonia. The caverns and tunnels are hewn from the solid rock of the mountains. Llechwedd lies in the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, once the largest town in north Wales after Wrexham, but its population fell with the decline of the slate […]
Last July I visited Luxembourg City for the wedding of two friends. It was the first time I had been around in Luxembourg properly rather than just passing through. My friend Tom collected me from the station and we drove past the European Court. I hadn’t been in continental Europe since early summer 2009, and […]
We hung out at Blue Corner, a restaurant on the beach with sun loungers out at the front. You could stay there all day, resting on the sun loungers, going for a walk or a swim, and eating in the restaurant when you get hungry. The seafood in Benaulim is very good. The sun loungers […]
We fly from Delhi to Goa with IndiGo. Arriving in Goa’s airport, some way south of Panjim (Goa’s main city), we take a pre-paid taxi further south to Benaulim, a small and serene fishing village. On the journey south we pass forests of palm trees, fertile fields and unending blue skies. Our driver does not […]
New Delhi We disembark from the rickshaw near Connaught Place, and wander off along the wide, clean streets lined with grand white buildings. The cycle rickshaw ride was fun but none of us are sorry to get off. Coming into New Delhi is like emerging into an entirely different place. There is very little traffic […]
We travel from Agra to Delhi by National Highway – on broad, open, empty expanses of toll road, where our bus can drive fast all the way. On the approach to Delhi we drive through two entirely new cities, being built from the ground up. These are vast developments emerging on the open plain. There […]
The day after visiting the Taj Mahal we go to Agra Fort, a vast red castle strategically located on a meander of the Yamuna river. It is built of red sandstone and dates from the 16th century. Within its broad, high walls are several self-contained palaces, and mosques. You can see the Taj Mahal across […]
I have been in Mumbai for more than three months now, and when I left my brother at the international airport I started feeling homesick. His presence here had thrown me back into a world where it is normal to have all my family and friends around me, and deeper than that – the comforting […]
The road to Agra We travel by bus from Jaipur to Agra. All the guide books and travel advice blogs I have read recommend train travel well above buses, but I cannot understand why. Trains have to be booked in advance, and even then it is quite common for there not to be any tickets […]
My brother and his girlfriend came out to visit me during my stay in India, and for the past two weeks we have been travelling within India. Our first stop was in Jaipur, Rajasthan. We arrived in the evening, having flown from Mumbai. It was 35˚C in Jaipur after 7pm when we landed. From the […]
Bandra has a skywalk, which runs for about 1.8km (1.1miles). It connects Bandra East and West with the station, a series of interconnecting footbridges (or one long one), providing a safe, elevated platform for pedestrians to walk along. The Bandra skywalk was finished in June 2008 and was the first one in Mumbai. There are […]
A photo tour of Haji Ali island tomb and causeway. On the approach to the Dargah. Inside the Haji Ali complex. This is the view upon leaving the tomb. Note the stacks of sandals all around! An empty fountain beside the tomb chamber
Just beyond Mahalakshmi station and over the rail bridge lie the dhobi ghats. These are concrete vats where dhobiwalas wash laundry every day; loads of washing are brought here from all over the city to be soaked and beaten at the dhobi ghats. Mumbai’s dhobi ghat is said to be the largest outdoor laundry in […]
I found a video of driving in Kitengela. The video starts a bit slowly as it begins on the outskirts of town, but gets much more interesting after the first minute. It shows places I used to go to all the time, like Eastmatt – and after 3:00 (and once the truck moves that is […]