This week, I’ve been dipping my toes in the Caribbean waters of the Grenadines. St Vincent and the Grenadines to give its full title – and since St Vincent’s is the main island it seems almost disrespectful not to.

To locals, however, St Vincent’s is Vincy and the whole speckled island flock goes by the name of…

Birds. With one stretch of their wings they can soar and glide through the sky with a majesty and freedom that man (and woman) can still only dream of. They are majestic, magnificent and make driving home for Christmas seem insignificant when compared to their staggering migratory paths.

They also freak me out…

There’s a moment when this seems like the most graceless activity imaginable. Spitting onto someone else’s property and clamping your teeth onto oversized rubber. Then there’s the waddle with the flippers (sorry fins) before a tumble over the edge of the boat into the water…

Today, I sat down to write about The Velvet Revolution and the fall of communism in Prague. It’s a fascinating subject (despite the turgidity of that last sentence) and it will be the lastest instalment of the #IronRoute project.

Hopefully, I’ll make the whole thing sound much more interesting than I just did there.

As a bit of light relief, though…

I’ve arrived in Sydney, a little dazed, a little confused. Apparently that’s jetlag and it’s something to do with circadian rhythms, cortisol surges and melatonin…although right now I can’t quite remember my name and could easily believe that jetlag’s caused by blue-edged tomatoes and overripe watermelon and comes with an easy cure of standing upside [...]

Ouchijuku Village, Japan For some reason, these photos look calm. Yet in reality, a blizzard raged and the muted glow of the snow-plough’s headlights provided just enough light to let me capture this scene: fragile, snow-cloaked candles beneath an otherwise relentless black sky. Sleet assaulted our eyes, abraded our cheeks and hounded our cameras, while [...]

The steam rising out of the drain cover caught my attention first. It was a cold, vengefully cold mid-winter morning in Hungary as I paced along the tarmac, limbs mechanical yet numb, face frozen, eyes rimmed with weather-induced tears.

Everyone was…

This Photo Friday, I bring you Croatia’s Capital at its warm and wintry best. Check out more about the #ironroute over here and watch this space for the words…They’re on their way…

Time, this week, played tricks on me. An illusion: disappearing, twisting, sliding and slipping away… This photo, from the kamakura matsuri or igloo festival in Tohoku, Japan last year, just seemed to fit for this week’s Photo Friday. The region had just recovered from one of the harshest winters on record – and yet none [...]

Dust rose from the ground as the horse thundered past and the sun began its ablutions. It painted pinks and pomegranates, amber, pistachio, charcoal and soft apricot rust across the walls of Petra before calling it a day and turning in for an early night…