Firenze

Last week I was in Florence. More of this another time, perhaps, though it already seems so long ago that I might as well never have been there. I didn’t…

Dust jackets and raincoats

Last week I went to Wigtown, Scotland’s self-styled ‘Town of Books’. It’s only a wee place, but it is in a very pretty part of the world, and its inhabitants…

In a perfect world

‘Knowledge is very important in anarchistic thought. It’s different from other things. If you give someone half a cake, then you only have half left, but if you give them…

The freak show and the circus

In Copenhagen I visited two very different sorts of gardens. 1. The botanic gardens. There is nothing girly about appreciating flowers. This idea is just a symptom of an era…

An adventure

Svalbard may well be the most beautiful place that I’ve ever been to. It is also probably the toughest, and the storm that hit in the early morning of our…

A trowel and a toothbrush

The statues in Trondheim brought to mind a museum that Christian and I found quite by accident in Naxos last year. It was a close afternoon in September, and we…

In the land of the blind

It’s through their works and not their bones that you see the people who have gone before. The old Nidaros cathedral in Trondheim has had all the chequered history you’d…

Forward thinking

I had tired of carrying my snowshoes strapped to the side of my pack, making me stick in doorways and tearing at passers-by with their zig-zag metal claws. Gone are…

Narvik-Trondheim

‘The first time I came to England was in 1950. I had very little money, and they were supposed only to let me stay three days, so I would have…

Travel tales
A return to travel writing
St Olav pilgrim trail
The celebrity pilgrim
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