London skyline

Nothing to report

Recent trips to Edinburgh and London have made me realise I saw nothing of the two places. Catching up with friends in the evenings is great, but just occasionally I think I’m going to go wandering by myself to see what interesting thing lurk waiting to be discovered.

Brisbane Courier Mail

A few media pieces

The Return of the Mullet Hunter continues to sell slowly but steadily, and I’m grateful to everyone who’s bought a copy. This is the second of five free days, as well, and quite a few copies are shifting through that too. It’s all been aided by a few bits of media attention that the book…

Screenshot

New year, new website

If you follow my website in an RSS reader, you’ll perhaps not see that my website has had a significant makeover. Over the years I’ve very much changed the way I’ve used my website. It’s no longer a “blog” in the original sense, with a need to follow things chronologically like a diary. If I…

2013 in review

As I reported at the tail end of last year, 2012 was a big year for travel – I visited eight foreign countries in total, the most since 2001. My prediction that 2013 would be quieter on the travel front was correct, but only to an extent. Yes there was no overseas travel, but I…

The Hoja Project

I mentioned in my previous post how I am giving ten percent of my royalties from The Return of the Mullet Hunter to a Tanzanian charity called The Hoja Project. With my first book, I give a cut of royalities to my friend Kieran’s charity aidconvoy.net (with both he and it appearing in the Albanian…

Self-publishing – a reflection

The process leading up to my (traditionally published) first book was a fascinating journey. Discussions with many people on everything from editing to marketing to the cover design, were stimulating and thought-provoking. The whole idea of having your book – from the very broad concept to the minutiae of individual sentences – subjected to such…

Another Edinburgh Night of Adventure

You might recall that I spoke a couple of years ago at a “pecha kucha” evening in Edinburgh called Night of Adventure, which was in aid of the wonderful charity Hope and Homes for Children. You can see my talk from that night on the right. “Pecha kucha” is a daunting presentation format where you…

Passing places

If you’ve grown up anywhere in rural Britain, particularly the Highlands and Islands, you’ll be well familiar with passing place signs on single track roads. They are, I think, one of the most iconic features of Scottish roads. Growing up in the Uists, they were of course everywhere. Judging a passing so you and an…

The road to Scoraig

I hate the word “remote”. It is patronising and culturally biased, because inherent in the use of word “remote” is the rarely added follow-up “…from…”. In other words, somewhere is deemed remote only in the context of another place. And there lies the flaw: because if you swap starting points, it is the other place…

Wandering around

I’ve been trying to get out as much as possible at weekends of late. Uncharacteristically good weather has made it all the more motivating to get out and explore the beautiful surroundings that lie just a short distance away from Inverness. Three recent walks have rendered some half-decent photos. Moray Firth coast at Balintore I…

An email from Alain de Botton

The writer and philosopher Alain de Botton is a well-known commentator on our modern world. He’s written and presented on a vast range of subjects, from art and religion to literature and travel. His work is loved by many, but less so by others, and his Twitter account, in which he tweets thoughts for our…

The Voice of Scotland

Rather excitingly and terrifyingly, I’m the voice of Scotland for the coming week. Well, not quite. I guess I’d better explain. One of the nicer phenomenons (phenomena? Phenomenii?) on Twitter is a number of “national” accounts, where one person from the country in question looks after the Twitter account for a week and (within reason)…

The travels of 2012 and 2013

I realised, on my way back from Luxembourg in November, that I’d been lucky enough to tick off eight foreign countries this year. First up was a work trip to Romania, swiftly followed by our wonderful five-country overland trip through Europe that took in France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and Germany. Then our weekend in Luxembourg…

You’ll have had your tea?

Some weeks back, I came up with a joke I was really proud of. When I tweeted it I got a couple of retweets and comments, and when I’ve told it in person it’s got a lot of laughs. Now, the point of this post is not self-aggrandisement (well, no more than the rest of…

Hike and bike

I was away this weekend past with Nicole and a bunch of friends to do some hillwalking and cycling.  Based near Braemar in the Cairngorms National Park we had two excellent days, both of which involved longish cycles and then Munro-climbing at the end. Our first day saw us tackle Carn Bhac, south of Braemar.…

The death of a coffee shop

In between my two stints in Inverness (second one still going, of  course, with no end in sight – which is no bad thing), I spent eighteen months in Glasgow.  Apart from the rain, pollution, accent, insular attitude, sectarianism, Buckfast, traffic and lack of access to the hills, I really enjoyed it. Glasgow boasts (and…

Dores Beach

It’s been nice, while acclimatising to being back home again after three weeks’ travelling, to remind myself of how lovely Scotland is too.  In the first week back, in between sorting out my photos and blog posts about the big European adventure (they’ll be coming soon, I promise), I’ve been to Gruinard Bay and Dores…