After about an hour to an hour and a half of walking, mainly uphill and over terrain littered with stones looking to trip you up at every step and steps so high you nearly have to touch your chin with your knee to climb up them, you come to a little flight of stone steps leading down to a little courtyard and cafe outside which is a welcoming sign offering coffee and snacks. "Thank god, I've arrived," you think, but alas this is just a cruel deception. What made ...

With all the walking I've been doing over the last couple of days and all the weight that must've literally fallen off me (by which I do, of course, mean figuratively before all you grammar heads start sending me postcards), I think I'll be ready to enter Mr Universe when I get back home. Stop sniggering at the back, I realise I made an innuendo. It's what people want, and if people insist on an innuendo or two, I will certainly bend over backwards to give them o...

Have arrived safely in Riomaggiore in the Cinque Terre. First impressions are positive, but I shall have photos tomorrow. After walking all the way up a cliff (I'm not kidding, look the Cinque Terre up on Google) wearing my backpack, getting to the hotel reception and being told that my room was at the bottom back near the station, and then being further told that I am on the top floor of a rickety building with rickety steps, I'm just going to sit in the shower ...

I have never been anywhere more colourful, more delightfully avente garde than Burano. Burano is what happens when you say "get stuffed" to the accepted conventions of society and go mad with a paint brush. At first glance, the island has the feel of a traditional Cornish fishing village, complete with little winding streets leading down to the sea - but there the comparison ends. Not many canals in Cornwall, and I don't think they've seen this much sun since th...

Note: The following entry is taken from my travel journals during a stopover in South Africa in 1995, and parts ot the text have been updated. In general, it still needs editing and is written in a very rough note form. At the time, I was travelling home with my father after a tour of Australia. After the tour finished, we were given a little time to wander around by ourselves,and most of us simply chose to head for the cafeteria for a bite to eat. Dad and I ha...