1000 miles around Wales, with a donkey 
Last year I was interviewed by the extremely busy adventurer Alastair Humphreys for his website and a book on grand adventures, called Grand Adventures. It’s out this week – I just got my copy in the post, which made a nice change from the rest of this week’s parcels (nipple […]
Last Wednesday was my birthday, and late on Tuesday evening I got a call from Ali, an old friend I caught up with when Chico and I stayed in his woodland on the walk. “There’s a berth on a tall ship, leaving Milford Haven for Liverpool. Breakfast is at 8am […]
A man called Tim is currently camping next to a slightly bemused Chico, in a field full of flowers and sunshine, high above Aberystwyth. This morning there were some vigorous rainstorms and he was lying in his tent reading Celtic prayers, and noticed how many of them mention shelter. “It’s […]
Two years ago today I got the overwhelming honour of seeing a baby born. I was the very first person to see the damp, dark hair of the truly superb little soul who has since become Lois, at 1.40am, in the gentle, dark, womblike surrounds of Lewisham Birth Centre. I […]
So, the magic circle has been completed and the boundary has been paced. Chico and I are perimeteers – we walked around the whole of Wales, and nothing really terrible happened. We are both still alive, healthier and musclier than ever before, both deeply in love with walking, and fairly […]
There I was thinking of us as a bit of a damp, shonky travelling circus – a funny one-liner of an idea that’s persisting beyond its best-before date, as I’m still walking around Wales with a donkey, after months and months and months – when a wonderful friend writes a […]
Turning the southeastern corner of Wales coincided perfectly with the beginning of September – new term, new season, new compass point to follow. The middle of the day is still as blazing hot as some of those heatwave days of July, but the dew is getting heavy and the shadows […]
I’ve got Chico’s passport onboard, getting a bit raggedy and regularly doused in rainwater now, and it has the address where he was born on it. It’s in Rhyl, a town with a bit of a rough reputation on the north coast of Wales, and we happened to be passing […]
May I apologise for the woeful lack of visual aid on this travel blog? It’s rubbish, unforgivable, and entirely Google’s fault, and maybe partly Apple’s. Any time I have a spare bit of phone battery, decent enough internet connection, and a couple of brain cells that haven’t withered in the […]
In London, I live in a narrowboat. One of my neighbours, Jack, who spends happy hours every summer repainting already-perfect paintwork while all of the other boat owners look on with envy from their rusty deathtraps, says, “Ah, narrowboats – the fastest way of slowing down.” I’d say that being […]