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Halfway to nowhere. Part 1
The calls of night-jar and owl punctuate the stillness of the hours before dawn. Four in the morning and the man who lights the fires under the hot water boilers has been and gone. I lie, wishing for...
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On the road to nowhere . Part 2.
Eleven o’clock. The heat increasing with every passing minute. I can hardly bear to think of time. There should be another five hours of road before us, but now? God only knows. A stunned-looking...
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It’s somewhere, not nowhere – and we’ve been there. [Part 3 of that road...
The darkness I feared is falling, but we’re no longer straddling that hot, narrow, frightening stretch of road. We’ve driven a few hundred metres. The distance from peril to safety. We hope. Hordes of...
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That road – dejà viewed. Part 4: the journey’s end.
The man who’s driving this long and just-beginning-to-be-winding road has a very soothing manner. On another day I might – just might – find Fegan’s manner too soothing. As in irritatingly slow....
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Forget Rome – if you would valiant be*, I’d go for three Bardseys
It’s all too beautiful. No, I’m not reliving the sixties (‘Itchy-coo Park’, for the benefit of you bright young things), I’m treading a well-worn path, trodden for hundreds of years. In wartime, by men...
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Five have fun in Africa. A lost work by Enid Blyton?
‘Africa 2013. Countdown to the Rains.’ ‘Africa’? Just, ‘Africa’? OK, so it’s a common form of shorthand. But not one you find in Europe. I mean, imagine it, ‘Europe 2013: snow’s on its way. Join us as...
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Harrison Fording in Zambia. (Archaeologists head north, the hard way)
Wet vehicle batteries aren’t good news. As any fule kno. But it’s not always easy to keep them dry. When crossing a river, for example, at a little too fast a pace. It’s our first river – unless you...
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A spot of welding, a leopard and a mission
He’s looking worried. It was meant to be an overnight stop – but there’s no way we’ll fit everything in and reach Kalambo in time to pitch camp by daylight. We have to stay another night, but not at...
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‘To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive’.* Really?
June. Winter in the southern hemisphere. The year 2011. A man walks into the bar – yes I know, I use it too often. But there’s a reason. Besides the fact we’re often in the bar, before you say it. This...
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Where is Potto? And why am I bothered?
Is it a peculiarly British thing? There’s trainspotting, which I could understand when there were gleaming Thomas-style tank engines huffing and puffing and spitting out sparks. It’s harder to see the...
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