Writing
Essays on place, culture and the spaces in between.
A Change of Pace
I am now in Koh Kood and shifting here has been a change of pace. After the bustle of Bangkok, and the constant movement of travelling through Australia, it’s been quietly comforting to spend a couple of weeks in one spot. To wake up without needing to think too far ahead. To let the days arrive as they are.
Unfamiliar Familiarity
Familiar unfamiliarity is often a feature of travel. A trip to New York turns a lifetime of television and film into reality. Manhattan becomes a walking set of “wasn’t this in…” and “isn’t that where…”. Paris and Rome carry a different kind of recognition, the inherited romanticism of the Seine or the Trevi Fountain, places we feel we already know long before we arrive.
Byron Bay
The sun rises above the horizon, spilling gold across the sea and over the hundreds of pilgrims gathered at the Byron lighthouse. A middle-aged Italian man begins singing the opening lines of My Girl. Not an obvious soundtrack for a warm, cloud-free January morning, but a welcome one nonetheless.
Rain…I don’t mind
Usually, a rainy day would put me in a bad mood. Perhaps surprising, given I come from the north of England, but it’s never something one really looks forward to, especially when travelling in the hope of sunny climes.
Unfamiliar Kitchens
Eating out is one of the great joys of travel. I love food and I love trying as broad a range of things as possible while away, ideally local and ideally seasonal. We spend a lot of time planning what and where to eat on our trips to make sure we experience the best and most authentic food a place has to offer.
Trattoria Aldo
We take a left from the busy streets of the market. Catania is as edgy as I recall - the dark grey buildings, narrow streets and looming Mount Etna giving it a totally different feel to the baroque hillside towns of the Val Di Noto, where we have just come from.
A Perfect Entrance
Of late this blog has gotten a little travel heavy and that’s because of course, I am travelling. However, I’m acutely conscious that this is not a travel blog. There’s no intent to unseat Lonely Planet in telling you where to go, what to do, or what to think.
The Long Way to Scaccia
Some foods find you. Others you have to hunt for. Scaccia belonged firmly in the second camp. I first came across it years ago, in a newspaper article I read.
Pandas and Poly Tunnels
Departing town and dodging Fiat Pandas making illegal, yet excruciatingly slow, turns. A BMW fails to stop at a stop sign and I am grateful to be on high alert. Cars sit double parked along the pavement, blocking a lane of traffic. It is apparently fine because the hazard lights are on.
Eerie Erice
We’re driving through the outskirts of Trapani. A rain shower passes over as quickly as it came, a common theme for this part of the north western Sicilian coastline in late November. The windscreen wipers begin to slow and the sun shines bright, glistening off the road.
I mercati di Palermo
Anthony Bourdain once said that the real heart of a place is found in its markets and that if you want to understand a culture, you should go where people shop and eat every day. I have always agreed with him. Whenever I travel somewhere new, the market is my first stop.
Midnight in Sicily
Our plane begins its descent into Palermo. The curve of the bay glows on our left, a soft necklace of lights against the dark water, while the mountains stand brooding around the city.
Nostalgia Without Memory
I’ve recently been watching Jimmy McGovern’s Accused on Netflix. This drama from the early 2010s sees each episode focus on a trial, at court. The crimes committed in each episode vary, but the consistent theme of each challenges the viewer’s perception of morality, versus the law.
The Pink of Passeggiare
If you’ve been wondering about the splash of pink across Passeggiare, here’s the story.
The inspiration comes straight from Italy’s most iconic newspaper: La Gazzetta dello Sport. I didn’t want this to look like just another blog - the choice of pink was deliberate, a nod to something uniquely, unmistakably Italian.
The Last of the Greasy Spoons
There’s something about a full English. I don’t eat them often — the last one I can remember was back in June 2024 - but every so often the craving strikes. This time, it led me to The Moor Cafe in Sheffield city centre, a place I’d never tried before.
Captain Teebs
Tony Soprano once said a nursing home was basically like a hotel in Cap d’Antibes. We put that line to the test with a day split between Cannes and Antibes- one felt like a film set, the other like a place you’d actually want to stay.
Simple Pleasures
The warm morning sun is just rising above Saint-Jean Cap-Ferrat and is starting to glisten on the azure Mediterranean Sea. The bay, littered with yachts and fishing boats, looks perfectly still at this hour.
My favourite place in Kraków
I am lucky enough to have visited Kraków many times now. My wife is Polish and came to university here and whilst her family are not from the city, it’s still not a million miles away and is regularly a port of call for when we visit.
Point & Shoot
As a child, family holidays were punctuated with a questioning of why my mum was taking a long time trying to take a photograph of a Greek Orthodox priest walking down some stairs, or waiting for the right moment, with no people in frame, to photograph a sweeping white sandy beach.
A Welcome
“Passeggiare”. A perfect analogy, for why I’ve decided to do this blog…