Roaming Tales

Avoca, Tasmania; February 2007

In Avoca on the east coast of Tasmania, you might run into fairy penguins - also known as little penguins. When I was there on a family holiday in 2007, we watched them huddling on a little rocky island about 15 metres off shore.

Longyearbyen, Svalbard; August 2006

Up in the Arctic, the traffic warning sign is for polar bears. ‘Gjelder hele Svalbard’ means ‘Valid for all Svalbard’. We did see polar bears too, though thankfully not near the main town of Longyearbyen on the island of Spitsbergen.

Despite the Coca Cola advert, polar bears and penguins do not live side by side. The polar bears would eat the penguins in a heart beat.

Both animals are cool creatures but I know which one I’d rather meet face to face.

This post is part of Photo Friday, a weekly photo blogging feature hosted by Debbie at Delicious Baby. Click here to see all the other submissions this week.

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Vintage clothes, art and stuffed squirrels on Brick Lane and Columbia Road.

Brick Lane, at the eastern edge of the square mile that is the City of London, is one of the most vibrant parts of London. It’s best known for the Indian and Bangladeshi restaurants that line the street and if you go at night you can barely move for the restaurant touts trying to entice you inside with various bribes of free drinks or samosas.

I prefer to get my curry elsewhere - at places such as New Tayyabs, a Pakistani restaurant behind the East London Mosque. And I prefer to visit Brick Lane during the day, especially on a Sunday when the Sunday UpMarket is on in the Old Truman Brewery and Columbia Road Flower Market is on up the road in Bethnal Green.

The Sunday UpMarket has great food - from Japanese to Ethiopian - in one half and secondhand and handmade clothes and other assorted flea market goodies in the other. It’s all under cover, which is perfect when it’s grey and drizzly outside as it so often is in London at this time of year.

As you wander further up the hill, you pass great cafés, famous bagel bakeries from the days when Brick Lane was a Jewish rather than Bangladeshi enclave, cool art galleries and around half a dozen great vintage clothing shops.

As you exit the northern end of Brick Lane and cross Bethnal Green Road, check out the contemporary furniture studio Unto This Last. Their best stuff is made to order as apparently they have had some problems with theft.

From there it’s just a hop, step and a jump to Columbia Road, which hosts a flower market every Sunday. I prefer to go late, around 2pm, when the crowds have died down and the flowers and pot plants are often on sale. This street is also full of funky independent shops. There’s the cupcake bakery Treacle (although cupcakes are not really my thing), a few gardening and homeware shops, and Nelly Duff gallery selling cool limited edition prints to name a few. If you’re still hungry after the Sunday UpMarket, the bagel bakery and cupcake shop, there’s a good Spanish restaurant called Laxeiro and the Royal Oak Pub.

There’s always something new to see in the East End. On my most recent visit, this past weekend, my eye was caught by the window display to a vintage clothing store halfway up Brick Lane, modestly called This Shop Rocks. The window display had two mannequins in dresses, one with a stuffed badger on a lead and one with a stuffed fox. There were also six stuffed squirrels wearing clothing dancing in a circle.

Have I missed something here? Is taxidermy back? Even though I’m sure they’re antique and not freshly stuffed, I actually found it a little disturbing, especially since they were rare, native red squirrels rather than the more common, foreign grey squirrels. They were cute but creepy.

It certainly got my attention but when it came down to it, none of us wanted to go in. Maybe the shop does rock but I might never know.

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In my first post for environmental blog EcoSalon, I write about Cornwall - a stylish choice for an eco-holiday.

I have some exciting news to share - I’m joining EcoSalon as a regular contributor. I’ve been asked to write two posts a week, one on green travel and one on green tech and lifestyle.

My first post is on eco-holidays in Cornwall, looking at walking, food, art and destinations such as the Eden Project. Cornwall is one of my favourite parts of Britain and, as I hope my photos show, an extremely beautiful part of the country. The post was published today and I’m delighted that it’s currently featured as the EcoSalon Daily Favourite right at the top of the site. Please take a look and let me know what you think. Leave a comment either here or on EcoSalon and if you like it, please feel free to share the link with your friends.

The theme of EcoSalon is about going green without sacrificing style and this is something that really strikes a chord with me. Readers who are familiar with this blog and my food blog The Gooseberry Fool might know that I am a passionate environmentalist. However, I also believe that people need inspiration and a reason for hope. We shouldn’t hide from the immensity of the challenge – but if we focus on doom and gloom, we risk generating despair rather than the committed and focused action the planet needs. Despair is just as destructive to the environment as denial.

I’m pleased to be blogging for EcoSalon because the blog is committed to the environment but with an aim to empower and inspire people rather than hector or scare them. There’s enough troubling environmental news out there – the question is what we can do about it.

Lest any fans of Roaming Tales be fretting about the future of this site - never fear! I fully intend to keep my own site and my blogging duties at EcoSalon are as well as, not instead of, what I already do. It’s a paid gig so this properly falls into my day job as a freelance writer.

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Svalbard, Arctic; August 2006

In 2006, for my 30th birthday, I took myself on a holiday to the Arctic. I wanted to see polar bears in their natural habitat while I still could.

I did that and a lot more besides. I took an 11-day boat trip around the Svalbard archipelago in the High Arctic with Aurora Expeditions (booked through World Expeditions). As well as polar bears, I saw walruses, seals, whales, reindeer and a huge variety of birds. I challenged myself to try sea kayaking and this was a highlight of the trip - paddling past glaciers, seals resting on ice floes and enormous bird cliffs.

This photo was taken from the ship. I’m not sure what time of day it was and I can’t tell from looking at the photo either. At this time of year the High Arctic has 24 hours of daylight, with the sun simply moving from one part of the southern sky to another. It’s perpetual twilight – or perhaps dawn. The photo is on sale along with other examples of my art photography at Redbubble - Christmas is coming so feel free to buy a print or a calendar or cards!

I’ve written about my experiences several times since, including reportage about the Russian ship crew for Anyway, a description of Arctic kayaking for Rough Guides Make the Most of Your Time on Earth and a humorous blog-style account of the holiday for Australian Women’s Health. I also have a fact box on Spitsbergen (the biggest island in Svalbard) on the blog.

This is part of Photo Friday, a weekly feature hosted by Debbie at travel blog Delicious Baby. Please click through to see all the other photos submitted by other travel bloggers this week.

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Want to experience Rome as the ancient Romans did? Google Earth offers the closest possible thing - a virtual tour of ancient Rome.

With global environmental concerns at an all time high and a global economy in collapse, there are plenty of good reasons for the rise of virtual travel. It’s not the same as actually going somewhere new but armchair travellers can live vicariously by reading travel books and articles - and, of course, blogs - and watching good travel programming on TV.

Google Earth - which lets you see detailed maps of everywhere on the globe and actual street view of a surprising high number - has long been a friend to travellers. I’ve previously used the tool to take a look at places I’m planning to go and check out places I’ve been. I’ve found it can tell me interesting things about a city from the layout of an ancient fort in Tunisia to the extent of tree cover in my native Sydney versus my current home of London.

Yet virtual travel has always been second best to actual travel - until now. Google has made it possible to do something that you can’t do in real life - go back in time to ancient Rome. You can use Google Earth to see the Colosseum or Circus Maximus in their full glory - gazing on marble floors that no longer exist, and reading the inscriptions. You don’t need a passport or plane ticket or even a TARDIS.

Of course, modern Rome is absolutely a cool city that should rate high on the list of any traveller in real life. But I’m keen to try this too and I’ll report back when I do.

It’s also got me thinking - where and else should Google Earth replicate the Rome project? Perhaps medieval London or the Cambodia of the Khmer kingdoms?

Have you ever used Google Earth to enhance your travel? Have you tried the Google Earth tour of ancient Rome? What should Google do next?

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The inaugural Travel Blog Camp in London hosted around 80 bloggers and travel industry folk - and some heated discussions.

I had planned to attend World Travel Market either yesterday or today but I’ve been bogged down with a feature deadline. I’m working in an office for the rest of the week so it now looks like I won’t make it this year. To be honest, I’m fine with that. I went two years ago and I wore myself out traipsing around the ExCel centre in London Docklands and collected a huge swathe of business cards and brochures that I never looked at again. I don’t tend to plan either my travelling or my travel writing that way - as a writer I look for interesting stories rather than destinations and as a traveller, there’s no shortage of cool places I’d love to go.

I did, however, go to the Travel Blog Camp organised by Darren from Travel Rants last night. I must say I’m hugely impressed by Darren’s efforts and the fact that he even found sponsorship. The event was in a great location - Doggetts bar on South Bank near Blackfriars Bridge, which is a bit of an ugly building outside but has fabulous space inside and views of the river. When I was told he had close to 100 people registered (about 80 actually attended), I was shocked because I didn’t think there were that many serious travel bloggers in the UK.

The reason became clear on the night - it wasn’t just bloggers but also travel industry professionals and PRs who wanted to engage with bloggers and learn all about how they could be using social media in their own businesses. There were about 80 people in total and I met a fair few of them in the social time before and after the speeches, including Heather from Heather on her Travels and James from itravelnet. I mainly went for the networking opportunities but I actually really enjoyed the speeches - and surrounding debate - as well. I took photos but they didn’t turn out as it was really rather dark and I didn’t use a flash - but I did catch a snap of the welcome sign, which amused me greatly for the novel spelling of ‘blog’. (Blame Doggetts, not Darren, for that one!).

Alex Bainbridge, Musings on travel ecommerce

Our first speaker was Alex Bainbridge, a travel industry consultant who blogs at Musings on travel ecommerce. His name is at the top of his blog and this is deliberate. “I believe a blog should be from a personal perspective - there’s no point trying to be better than the news because you can’t be and people aren’t looking for a rehash of the news on a blog,” Alex said in his speech. Do you agree?

For him, blogging is all about hosting great conversations and he admitted he is sometimes guilty of “extreme blogging” to provoke a reaction in the comments section. “I see comments as a bit of currency so if someone writes something really good on their blog I’ll make time to go and comment,” he added. He said he could envisage a time when he might stop blogging if he found somewhere else to have the conversations he craves, though so far he has resisted the allure of Facebook and Twitter.

Karen Bryan, Europe a la Carte

Europe a la Carte is one of the most successful independent travel blogs both in the UK and globally. Karen Bryan is the founder and she has now taken on other writers, turning it into a multi-author blog cum online travel magazine. Karen’s speech was about the different types of travel blogs and what the future holds for each.

Her first category of travel blog is an online personal travel diary. These bloggers keep their sites for the benefit of family and friends, so they have a written record of the trip, and sometimes to showcase themselves as a potential travel writer. They are often hosted for free by platforms such as Wordpress and Blogger or specific travel-themed equivalents such as Travellers Point and Where Are You Now?. Karen believes this category of blog will continue as long as there is enough quality content for the platforms to make money from advertising.

Her next category of blog is an interactive online travel magazine. This includes offerings from big media organisations such as the Guardian’s Travel Blog and also independent sites such as her own or Darren’s Travel Rants. The former will be able to make money from advertising because they are part of a bigger site. However, life has become more difficult for blogs like hers because of Google’s crackdown on text link ads - bloggers that flout Google’s policy can have their page rank reduced to zero, which a deadly effect on traffic. Karen said one opportunity for online travel magazines is to band together as an advertising network with other sites with quality content. She is currently experimenting with Ad Roll to see if this would work for her. This is the first I’ve heard of Ad Roll and it sounds really interesting. Have any of you used it and have you had much success?

The third category, according to Karen, includes marketing blogs by established travel brands. She said this can work “as long ad you realise that a blog is a lot of time and effort - it’s low cost compared with advertising on ITV but you have to keep it up and keep pushing it”.

She bemoaned the fact that posts written with search engine robots in mind often outperformed quality content in terms of traffic. She said she wanted to see more aggregation of quality content within travel blogging. What do you think? Do you agree with Karen’s appraisal?

Molly Flatt, STA Travel Buzz

STA Travel has done something quite brave in social media - and it prompted quite a bit of heated debate last night. The travel agency has employed a social marketing specialist 1000 Heads to create STA Travel Buzz, which is a place for STA’s customers, typically young travellers, to connect on the web. Molly Flatt from 1000 Heads gave the presentation.

Molly says STA does not comment on the site, even when there is negative feedback. She feels this would be intrusive and destroy the atmosphere of the site for users. “The idea of having CEOs monitoring conversations going on and commenting on things is my worst nightmare,” she says. “We’re not their customer service department and it would be a dangerous path to start down.” She defended her stance passionately but many in the audience were aghast at this stance, feeling that users would expect a response. What do you think?

The other initiative 1000 Heads has taken for STA is STA Explorers, where they network and link to the travel blogs of STA customers. She pointed out that this was not a matter of reaching out to established bloggers, it was genuinely a case of encouraging customers to blog. The blogs are on several different platforms, which she hopes will mean a wider readership as some readers only stay within the community of their own platform.

Kevin May, editor of Travolution

Travolution is a business magazine for the online travel industry and it has an attached blog. [Full disclosure: I used to work with Kevin at Media Week and I've written for him at Travolution].

Kevin hosted a conversation rather than giving a speech. He had got hold of the guest list and calculated that 20% of the people in the room were in public relations, so he started off by asking people why they came along. Jane from Thomson Holidays and Sarah from Holiday Rentals both said they were just starting to explore social media, trying to figure out what it was about, what the terms of engagement were, and how they could use it. Charlotte from Lastminute.com said the company had already started to dip its toes into the water, with a presence on Twitter for example.

The second conversation was prompted by a conversation Kevin had with Guido, the Happy Hotelier, on the difference between journalists and bloggers. Kevin’s view is that there is no difference because they’re both just content producers. A few people in the audience suggested differences, such as bloggers’ willingness to link to the outside world and the fact that journalists will ask for input before they write a story, whereas bloggers give right of reply in the comments section. Karen from Europe a la Carte said readers didn’t care whether the work was by a ‘trained journalist’ or a ‘blogger’ as long as they were reading quality content. I also added my 2p worth as I believe that while journalists and bloggers might both be content producers, I thought that was meaningless. Content production is huge category that also includes people like a script writer on Desperate Housewives or producer on Sesame Street. What do you think?

All in all, it was an interesting and worthwhile night. Thanks, Darren, for organising it. I hope I’ve given everyone plenty of food for thought and look forward to a conversation in the comments field.

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Congratulations to BeWILDerwood, Africa’s Eden and Ngong Ping 36O and all the award-winning travel writers.

I have been a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers for about a year now. It’s a professional organisation and you are only eligible to join if you can demonstrate that you are making a living substantially from travel writing, whether that be books or articles. Membership entitles you to have your name listed in the Year Book, which goes out to all members and other industry professionals who pay to receive it, and use of the snazzy new website where you can build a mini-website or network virtually with other members. You also get a membership card and various discounts but I think the biggest benefit is the opportunity to network with other writers and travel professionals at the regular Guild events.

The star event on the Guild calendar, apart from the AGM, is the annual awards dinner. It was hosted last night at the Marriott in Grosvenor Square and it was a great night. We started with a champagne reception with Jersey oysters and then moved into the main room for dinner. The food at awards events can often be a bit rubbish but last night’s meal was really good - it was a collaboration between the Marriott’s restaurant Maze (part of the Gordon Ramsay empire) and the island of Jersey (one of the sponsors), so we had Jersey crab for starters and Jersey vegetables with our lamb for main course, and Jersey cream with our dessert.

There were actually two sets of awards - the Tourism Awards where members vote on the best tourism projects around the world and the Members Awards for travel writing published in the past year. The Tourism Awards were announced before dinner, the Members Awards between starter and main course and then the raffle (to raise money for the Back Up Trust, a spinal injury charity) before dessert.

I’d come along to a Guild meeting a few months ago to hear the nominations for the Tourism Awards and vote on the short list. The final winners were then determined by a vote of the entire membership by post and email. So I was familiar with the nominations but I didn’t know who had actually won until the night. I was really thrilled because all the projects I voted for won their categories! So congratulations to BeWILDerwood in Norfolk for best UK project, Africa’s Eden or Loango National Park in Gabon for best non-UK project, and Ngong Ping 360 in Hong Kong for best global project.

BeWILDerwood

I’m almost tempted to borrow children and take them to BeWILDerwood as the description of this place really captured my imagination. It’s a treetop adventure playground - with treehouses, aerial ropewalks and zipwires, boats and boardwalks - built on 50 acres of woodland and marshland. It’s very eco-friendly - it’s all built from sustainable wood, the entire site is pesticide free, and they’ve planted a lot of trees as well. Among the magical creatures who live there are Mildred, the vegetarian Crocklebog who lives in the Scary Lake, and Swampy a March Boggle. There is nothing modern about BeWILDerwood, although the guy who built it has said he was partly inspired by 90s computer game Myst.

Africa’s Eden

If it weren’t so expensive, I would book my ticket to Loango National Park in Gabon tomorrow. The fact that I can’t is partly the point - they are trying to keep tourism numbers low so that it’s sustainable for the park’s ecology and the wellbeing of the people who live there. Rombout Swanborn, the director of Loango National Park, has said: “We will never have 20 Jeeps around a waterhole shining lights into animals’ eyes.”

The president of Gabon set aside 11% of the country as a national park in 2002 - only tiny Costa Rica has preserved a greater proportion of land. Before then tourism was virtually unknown in Gabon but they began developing the industry at this point with the ethos “ecotourism pays for conservation”. Loango National Park opened in 2007, covering grassland, rivers, forest and mangroves and featuring spectacularly varied wildlife, including whales, elephants, hippos, leopards, reptiles and primates. Visitors are accommodated in the eco-friendly lodge and satellite tented camps and wildlife viewing is small-scale with pirogue trips, forest treks or savannah drives. There are 500 Gabonese in the area with nearly 100 employed as eco-guides etc, while local farmers sell produce to the lodge, and their children attend a new school built by the park.

NgongPing 360

Ngong Ping 360 in Hong Kong combines an existing attraction - the Giant Buddha built by the nearby Po Lin monastery on Landau Island - with a new one. Previously there were so many tourists coming to see the Giant Buddha and the strain on the monastery was too much, with monks spending their whole time providing refreshments. Now Ngong Ping 360 is actually bringing more tourists but they’ve actually managed to reduce the impact on the environment and the monastery. The tourists arrive via a 5.7km cable car skyrail - the world’s longest without a car change - so they didn’t have to build a road through the forest. While tourists can still climb up to see the Buddha, Ngong Ping has also built a Chinese cultural village with dining facilities, which has reduced the burden on the monastery. A win-win situation!

Highly commended

• * Runners-up in the UK category were the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool and Thanet Greeters in Kent.

• * Runners-up in the overseas category were Highland Paradise, Cook Islands and Palazzo Falson, Malta.

• * Runners-up in the Globe Award were Musee de Quai Branly in Paris and the Dinosaur Gallery, Museum of Natural Sciences, in Brussels.

Members Awards

All Guild members are eligible to enter their work for the travel writing awards and entries are judged anonymously. The winning pieces are published in a glossy booklet, which made highly entertaining reading on my Tube ride home at the end of the night. I believe they will also be posted up on the BGTW website at some point as well. Congratulations all!

• * Nicki Gardner for Best Destination Feature under 850 words
• * Alan Hart for Best UK Feature over 850 words
• * Nigel Tisdall for Best European (non-UK) Feature over 850 words
• * Mike Unwin for Best Overseas (non-European) Feature over 850 words
• * Matthew Teller for Best Business/Trade Feature
• * Sarah Woods for Best Transport Feature
• * Will Gray for Best Guidebook Award
• * Rosemary Bailey for Best Narrative Travel Book
• * Tim Richards for Best Radio Feature
• * Carmen Roberts for Best Television Travel Feature
• * Jeremy Hoare for Photograph of the Year
• * Brian Jackman - Runner-Up for Travel Writer of the Year
• * Peter Hughes - Travel Writer of the Year
• * Jim Dunn for Lifetime Achievement Award

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Jerez de la Frontera, Spain; October 2008

Doors are a big deal in Spain. Perhaps it’s the Moorish influence as doors seem to be a central feature of architecture in Morocco and Tunisia as well. We saw beautiful doors everywhere we went in Spain, from Catalonia to Andalucia, from medieval fortresses (or alcazars) to suburban homes. Many of the doors were oversized and very grand and imposing, while others were highly decorated.

This brass door knocker is from an unknown building in Jerez de la Frontera in Andalucia - the home of sherry. The door is otherwise quite simple and I’m pretty sure the knocker is modern, indicating that Spanish door culture is alive and well. I really liked the way it looked - it gave the door personality, especially with the quirky little details such as the ring on the middle finger. [EDITED TO ADD: Read on to the comments to find out more - the best thing about my readers is they're smart and curious and they know things like the fact that this is a "Fatima door" and what that means].

We stopped in Jerez for lunch on our drive from Sevilla to Arcos de la Frontera, one of the White Towns in Andalucia. It was a public holiday so nearly everything was closed. We found Tio Mateo, a café in a leafy square by the library, and the food turned out to be really good - especially the pork in sherry sauce. Then we strolled through the town, admiring the city walls and the cathedral from the outside.

This post is part of Photo Friday hosted by Debbie at DeliciousBaby.

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Barcelona, Spain; October 2008

We spent five days in Barcelona, staying in an apartment about two blocks from La Sagrada Familia (The Sacred Family), the famous cathedral designed by Antoni Gaudi. It’s worth seeing for two reasons. Firstly, the architecture is startlingly original - it really is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The building reminded me of a giant wax sculpture - all melted curves and tapering spires. The classic religious imagery such as the Passion of the Christ and the Nativity is represented but there are also unexpected touches, such as colourful piles of fruit on the tops of columns.

Secondly, the cathedral is not yet finished. At the height of the vogue for cathedral construction - in the Middle Ages and Renaissance era - it took hundreds of years to build a cathedral. Now we can whack up a skyscraper in a matter of months. But it seems cathedrals, especially cathedrals with this level of architectural detail, still take some time. Construction started in 1882 and the roof only went on recently. Things are speeding up now though and the current timetable estimates completion by 2026. Like my friend Jess, I’m definitely keen to go back and check it out!

It’s not often you get to see a cathedral under construction and I found it really interesting to go in the lift to the roof and look down upon all the cranes, and then descend via a stone spiral staircase.. The whole interior is still a workspace as well, with just a walkway for tourists around the edges. Underneath the building is a museum with drawings and plans and plaster work models of various parts of the cathedral - these days, this kind of work is usually done on computer using 3D printing technology, but they are still using the traditional methods.

The cathedral opens at 9am and if you can get there at opening time, you’ll be pleased you did. Most tourists are not that organised so it’s still relatively quiet at that hour but an hour or two later the entry queue is around the block and there’s another long line inside for the lift to the roof.

This post is part of Photo Friday, a weekly blogging event hosted by Debbie at travel blog DeliciousBaby. Check out the other submissions this week and also my photo post on chocolate bull fighting at my food blog The Gooseberry Fool.

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Madrid, Spain; October 2008

This, my friends, is a 17th century painting by Alonso Cano of Saint Bernard receiving the milk of the Virgin Mary. It’s on display at the Prado Museum in Madrid.

When people talk about being “catholic in their tastes”, somehow I don’t think this is quite what they have in mind.*

This post is part of Debbie at DeliciousBaby’s Photo Friday feature - please visit her site to check out all the other contributions. If you enjoyed this post, you might also like my quirky Jesus post from earlier in the week.

* Of course, “catholic” in that phrase refers to the other meaning of “catholic” and not Roman Catholicism.

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