Northern pilgrimages — those walks that feel less like a journey to a holy place and more like a negotiation with eternity. Down south, a pilgrimage is a gentle stroll between tea rooms, the sort of thing you might undertake with a guidebook and sensible shoes. Up here, the guidebook will be soaked within a … Continue reading Pilgrimage North: Where the Wind Remembers Your Name
Category: travel
Strangers on a Train
The premise is diabolical in its elegance: two strangers meet, exchange idle talk, and one proposes a pact so grotesque it seems almost a joke. “You do my murder, I’ll do yours.” A child’s logic, but a murderer’s ingenuity. This was Patricia Highsmith’s debut novel in 1950, and like the serpent in Genesis, she slithered … Continue reading Strangers on a Train
Bogs, Beatrix, and the Bleak Sublime: A Lake District Lament
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a holiday must be in want of a breakdown. And so, with great dramatic flair and the sort of overpacked boot that could clothe a minor Balkan militia, I’m off to the Lake District - a land where Wordsworth wandered lonely as a … Continue reading Bogs, Beatrix, and the Bleak Sublime: A Lake District Lament
Bluebird and the Abyss: On Donald Campbell and the Art of Vanishing
“All men dream: but not equally.” – T. E. Lawrence “The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry I’ve always been haunted by that final film clip: the blue hull slicing across Coniston like a bullet skimming a baptismal font, … Continue reading Bluebird and the Abyss: On Donald Campbell and the Art of Vanishing
The Old Music Hall and Miss Victoria’s Garden
No need to worry, I’m not turning this blog into a travel journal, but.. A reflection on Victoria Hall, Settle – by a sentimental wanderer with a taste for cake and Gothic revivalism Settle, in the UK, as any weary pilgrim of the Dales knows, has more than its fair share of charm. There are … Continue reading The Old Music Hall and Miss Victoria’s Garden
Wording 