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This blog is regularly updated with correction to existing work, notification of new projects and some of my general musings.
| THE CURSE OF THE TRAVEL WRITER | 05/03/10 |
| SPRING MAY WELL be in the air today but whether I will be seeing any of it is another matter.
I'VE JUST TAKEN ON another project to write some articles for PATOIS, a just-launched magazine dedicated to Caribbean culture and lifestyle, which will be great: I'll be able to produce pieces on one of the most interesting regions of the planet. Which also means I'll hopefully be able to share a fair few of my Caribbean travel tips with you right here. BUT THE BLESSING of being "in" abundant work as a travel writer is in many ways also the curse: it means less time actually out there travelling and getting the new experiences so integral to producing new material. And more time with your back to the sun and the window on the outside world, typing away. THEN AGAIN, PERHAPS another rather crucial part of being a freelance writer of any description is the unfettered license to whinge. Some of the most successful artists, be they musicians or painters or authors, have certainly made a name for themselves by getting a good bit of whinging (at a gig venue, on canvas, wherever) right out there in the public eye. It seems I'm headed, for better or worse, down the same road... THOUGHTS/ COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| LOVE IN MOROCCO | 26/02/10 |
| IT WAS WITH REGRET that I realised I'd missed the boat (or rather, the chance to come out with the clichés) with this blog after Valentine's Day. The scope would have been limitless. Romantic weekend breaks, restaurants in London to heighten each of the five senses... it's not hard, after all, to reconcile travel and love in an article. No matter, never say die: here's a snapshot from a trip I did to Morocco back in 2001.
SO MY GUIDE AND I WERE in the Eastern Sahara heatedly (if you'll excuse the pun) arguing over what to do. I'd got him (the guide) cheap so I suppose I couldn't have expected the professionalism another tour outfit might have offered; in fact he'd spent most of the last few days, as we'd journeyed into Morocco's highest sand dunes out to and beyond Erg Cheggi, trying to sell me hashish. THE POINT WAS THAT the little white renault that must have been imported from France in about 1960 judging by the overworked engine and generally battered appearance had overheated. It was kaput and no amount of cajoling could make it function. I was swearing, the guide was swearing and there was no one, not so much as a camel, to hear us. We were stuck in the middle of the desert and it wasn't only the car that was lacking water: so were we. WE'D BEEN THERE ONE, MAYBE TWO hours, and by this point a few camels had admittedly past, a couple even with riders. However our destination before the car broke down had been Marakech and we were somewhere in the vicinity of Merzouga, a sweet ten hour drive away: needless to say the camel traffic was distinctly more localised. THEN A 4X4 DID SHOW up: three men jumped out, confirmed that our car was a write-off and offered me and my guide, Ali, a ride. I was eager to accept; Ali oddly less so but go with them we did. WE DROVE A BUMPY half hour along a road that was actually more akin to a set of jeep tracks through the desert sand than it was a road and arrived at a tiny village consisting of humble stone buildings and one rather lavish villa off to one side, neither of which appeared a great deal closer to our destination. A very smartly dressed man who stood out somewhat for his rather expensive designer sunglasses approached us. I looked questioningly at Ali. "Drug money" he mouthed at me. "Greetings my friend" said the newcomer. Welcome to my town." "Thanks" I said, although town was a marginally exaggerated description of the place. "I am the king of the desert" said the man, offering me an ice-cold Coca Cola which I gratefully accepted. "You want anything here, you come to me" he took me by the arm and showed me the villa, which turned out unsurprisingly to be his, along with an adjoining garage complete with several valuable-looking cars. Food? I’ll get you some. Range Rover? I’ll get you one.” "Thanks” I said, thinking I had struck lucky with this particular lift “but what I need is to get back to Marakech." “Listen, my friend” the man continued. “What do you want? You don’t like Range Rovers, what about another kind of car? A TV perhaps?” “Really” I said “I’d love to but I need to get back to Marakech.” “Marakech, huh?" the man looked a little defeated. "Listen my friend, I have a very important shipment arriving in a few hours. I can’t take you to Marakech.” I TURNED BACK TO ALI, smalltime hashish-dealing guide Ali, down at the “town” payphone talking urgently to someone. It seemed my hopes of a return to civilization rested with him after all. I JUST HOPED HE got it sorted out before the shipment arrived. THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| LONELY PLANET BEST IN TRAVEL 2011 | 17/02/10 |
| LUKEWATERSON.CO.UK belatedly announces its authors latest project: contributing to the coffee table book known as Lonely Planet's Best In Travel. I'm writing some scintillating sections for the book, although of course I can't reveal quite what.
SUFFICE IT TO SAY mouthwatering, uterly unexpected destinations across the globe will be featured/ duly profiled. Business as usual then. THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| THE PROBLEM WITH THE BRITISH DIET | 09/02/10 |
| LET'S FACE IT: most overseas visitors who walk into a hotel in Scotland or England may well be forgiven for thinking they've walked into a culinary apocalypse.
THERE IS A SLOW SPREAD of those nice little farmer's markets and restaurants with celebrity chefs at the helm. And yes it's true: some places in Scotland can do seafood well whilst others in England can, er, dish up a good cut of beef (so long as you ask for it rare when you want it medium-well done). But away from the big cities, and quite often in them, the food leaves a lot to be desired. And you never get free bread. Or a smile from the waitress when your starter comes. SO HAVE YOU EVER wondered WHY this might be? Is it mere ineptitude on the part of the Brits or are our culinary problems linked to our history? The latter, actually. I'm curently writing a feature on the problems cuisine has faced in England and Scotland for Suite101, in fact. Just follow this link: http://www.suite101.com/profile.cfm/ lukewaterson THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| 35,000 WORDS AND COUNTING | 05/02/10 |
| PASSED THE 30,000 MARK with my book and then some. Why is that significant? It's that moment I love: officially halfway to the lower end of an average word count for a novel. Next chapter: set in a Neolithic burial mound on Orkney.
THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| ON JOINING THE HOARDS ON TWITTER | 03/02/10 |
| SO I DECIDED TO JOIN Twitter last week. You can now find me, like you can millions of others, making brief and of course highly excting updates about my life and work.
IT IS HARD TO express sarcasm on a blog but I am afraid my opinions regarding the euphoria over social networking sites are, much like the above paragraph, tinted with sarcasm. I SIGNED UP TO Twitter essentially because one cannot afford to lose out on online promotion, particularly where it comes free. But I don't see the value in it even though I have a slowly increasing band of loyal followers. Why? Because I follow publications and websites I am interested in anyway. I don't need their succinct updates telling me what is on the websites I already browse. I suspect, too, that like many other small "businesses" trying to get recognition, my primary motive for following tweeting companies is really to get them to follow me. I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH editing myself to a sufficient degree to communicate what I need to say on Twitter, too. Editing is healthy, but editing down to 160 characters (the Twitter limit) is downright annoying and often insufficient. IN FACT THE GUARDIAN recently even reported declines in the usage of Twitter (as though that in itself were some monumentous planet changing event). Perhaps people are starting to share my point of view. ALL THESE SOCIAL networking sites tend to me flashes in the pan (people's excitement over Facebook has died and where is myspace these days?). Whilst I believe they are a genuine promotional tool (whilst the flash in the pan lasts anyway) Twitter is basically a slightly different version of facebook and full of people making self-obsessed, unprogressive, useless updates. MUCH LIKE ON Facebook, only mercifully more succinct. ANYWAY, UNTIL THE Twitter cloud of dust does inevitably settle, and if you fancy a new edited way of communicating with the people and organisations you are already in virtual touch with, come along to www.twitter.com. I, for my part, will certainly try to make it as exciting for you all as possible. And as brief. THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| ALTERNATIVE LIMA TO CUZCO ROUTE IN PERU | 02/02/10 |
| IF YOU WANT TO travel overland from Lima to Cuzco and aren't immensely pressured for time, there is a far more fun way to do it than the conventional Gringo Trail via Psco and the Nazca Lines.
FIRST OFF, HEAD to the office of a company like Rey bus (South American Explorers in Lima keep up to tabs with the ever-changing bus departure details in their office at Piura 135, Miraflores) for the ten hour journey to the Central Highland town of La Union. Here you can stop off to hike up to the ancient Inca ruin of Huánuco Viejo. Next day, get a combi (small van/bus) for six hours to Tantamayo, another small village in the Highlands. From here there are more great ancient Inca ruins to check out, with not another soul around (Piruro is a two hour hike; Susupillo is further but you can hire a motorbike to take you). NEXT, TAKE THE EARLY morning bus (rough journey; great scenery) for eight hours to the city of Huánuco. It’s a pleasant, leafy city with good places to stay. From here, buses and taxis take two hours to reach the mining town of Cerro de Pasco. AT THIS RATHER CHILLY SETTLEMENT (altitude 4000 metres plus) you can break your journey with a trip south to see the spectacular Bosque de Piedras (stone forest). From Cerro, buses run to the thriving Andean city of Huancayo. Spend two days here checking out the museums, great restaurants and nearby attractions like the Santa Rosa de Ocapa shrine at Concepción. Incas del Peru (www.incasdelperu.org, Giraldez 691) is a good source of local information. FROM HUANCAYO, YOUR next stop is Ayacucho, a beautiful city that rivals Cuzco for sheer majesty. The road from Huancayo has been partially improved but still takes eight hours and passes some hairy precipices at points (all very exhilarating!). Give yourself some days to look around Ayacucho, check out the churches, maybe throw in a visit to the Wari Ruins above the city and the pretty village of Quinua. WHEN YOU WANT TO LEAVE, head to Pasaje Caceres a few blocks north of the central plaza and get on an early morning (6am) bus to Andahuaylas. This again is a stunning journey, but also quite rough. Buses do go right through to Cuzco but it’s advised to break your journey at Andahuaylas, which you’ll reach mid-afternoon. Buses continue again in the morning to Cuzco, which is only a further ten hours from here. THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| FEATURE WRITER FOR SUITE101 | 15/01/10 |
| I AM PLEASED to report that I have been appointed feature writer for the Eastern Europe travel section of Suite101, one of the world's leading on-line magazines. Having always had a fascination with this part of the world since studying communist history at school (and having travelled extensively in the region since university) I am, needless to say, hugely excited about this.
MY AIM IS TO EXPAND the travel section to give one of the widest and most comprehensive reference points for Eastern European travel anywhere on the web. An ambitious goal, you may think. But it's going to start with a foundation of accurate, engaging information about the region and build from there. A BLOG, WRITTEN BY ME, on all things Eastern European will run alongside the articles to add some extra spice. From now on I will be posting most of my thoughts and advice on travelling to Eastern Europe from from my Suite101 blog: http://www.suite101.com/blog/lukewaterson RIGHT NOW, YOU can already find information on everything from Slovakia's most spectacular castles to the top spas in the Hungarian capital of Budapest on the website. Just follow this link: http://eeuroperussiatravel.suite101.com/ THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| CLOSURE OF THE CALGARY HOTEL | 11/01/10 |
| ISLE OF MULL ENTHUSIASTS will remember the drive well: the single track lane over the loch festooned moor passed the village of Dervaig and, finally, breaking through pine woods to arrive at one of the Scottish island’s best beaches at Calgary.
ALLOWING FOR STOPS to allow roaming Highland cows to saunter by, not to mention the pauses for admiring the view, the drive from Tobermory took well over an hour. It was always decidedly convenient to know that if worst came to worst, top notch accommodation was available within easy walking distance of the beach at the Calgary Hotel. NO MORE. THE DRIVE is still there, and still equally beautiful, but there is no hotel at the end of it. As of 2010, the Calgary Hotel and the wonderful Dovecote Restaurant which went hand in hand will not be operating. THE GOOD NEWS, I am reliably informed, is that the self catering accommodation will still be available from Easter this year. There will be four new apartments (in addition to the existing four). The Carthouse Gallery and Tearoom will still be open too as of Easter (so lovers of those chocolate rock cakes need not despair)! The artistic theme will also extend to the woodland sculpture trail, which will remain open to visitors. FOR FARMHOUSE ACCOMMODATION enquiries use: Calgary.frmhouse@virgin.net FOR GALLERY/TEAROOM enquiries use: www.calgary.co.uk THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| SOUTH AMERICAN TRAINS | 06/01/10 |
| I HAVE BEEN MEANING to write more about South America on this blog for some time, particularly since the latest book I have contributed to, Lonely Planet’s forthcoming guide to Peru (Edition 7), is coming out in April.
SO IT WAS WITH pleasure the other day that I took the opportunity to write an article on South American train travel. Call it a precursor to the book proper, if you like.(click on the my work section to go straight to the piece in question). MY FAVOURITE part of the world and by far my favourite means of travel: what could be better? There is something particularly appealing about train travel in South America, perhaps due to the remoteness of large parts of the continent. Somehow, through the tangles of jungle and some of the highest mountains in the world, human beings have found it possible to build railway lines. And to run trains on them. MY BEST SOUTH AMERICAN train memory? Probably being involved in a business meeting between two dignitaries on the Huancayo to Huancavelica train in the Peruvian highlands back in 2004. We were sitting there drinking hot spicy Andean toddies and these two old men next to us were arguing about whether they should try to get more trains running on the line. I took a sip of my toddy and told them: yes. IT DIDN’T DO MUCH good. The schedule stayed the same as it always had and the line, from 2009 onwards, has remained closed due to repairs and, also, bickering about who (as in which company) should operate the train. THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| CAMIRI FLOATING ROOMS, IQUITOS | 03/01/10 |
| SOMETIMES READING too much about a place before you go there is a bad idea.
SUCH WAS THE CASE when I arrived in Iquitos, Peru’s mad, bad and beautiful jungle city, for the first time. A thousand motocarro (three-wheeled motor taxi) drivers were yelling at me, the mosquitoes were taking advantage of my lack of repellent and all I wanted to do was get right into the heart of the country’s most exciting metropolis (and the world’s largest city not to be connected to the outside world by road) without having to deal with its tatty suburbs. BUT IT WAS THE PLACES I’d read about in Iquitos that turned out to be the biggest anticlimaxes. Over-hyped attractions like the Casa de Fiero and tired old backpacker haunts that didn’t warrant the paragraph dedicated to them in the guidebook. BUT OF COURSE WHAT one should do sometimes is chuck the guidebook away. Get out wandering the streets, eating at the markets, experiencing life the local, untouristy way. And it was during such a wander that I discovered one of the best-kept secrets in the city. And, what was more, it was right at its very epicentre. One block along from the glitz of the Malecon, Pevas is one of those streets awash with hostels and hotels, not to mention a few chic bars. But Pevas ends with a flurry of creaking wooden steps down to a series of boardwalks that lead out over the Rio Amazonas that flanks Iquitos on one side. And at the end of one of these boardwalks, floating on the River Amazon proper, is one of the city’s coolest traveler hang-outs. Camiri Floating Rooms. OWNER MARCEL Bendayan Zagaceta would probably hasten to disagree with me here. His rustic-style hostel here is not reminiscent of most traveler hang-outs, and mainly because it is just the kind of authentic floating dwelling that many Iquitos residents live on. It has little glitz, and no flashy mod cons that seem such an integral part of traveller venues these days. What it does offer is the best view of the Amazon in Iquitos, an owner that knows more about the city than anyone and a taste of local life that is not possible in other city accommodation. THE ROOMS HERE are cosy, wooden and candlelit –with a bar out front serving ice-cold beer and a soon-to-be-launched restaurant. Best of all, no-one else seems to know anything about them, and the prices for a bed here are far less than at other crash pads in the city. Attention is slowly focusing on this new venue, however, including that of El Comerico, Peru’s number one tourism website. The link to the webpage has just been launched, too: www.camiri-travel.blogspot.com. THE DISEASE A LOT of the travel information suffers from is that it is researched either in a lazy way or relies on Internet resources which, if you trace them back, date to information that is often years old. SOMETIMES, YOU need to do things as a traveler that are not part of a rigidly prescribed itinerary. Just sometimes, turn down that street the guidebook doesn’t say too much about and have a look at what is at the end. THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com. |
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| THE STAFFORDSHIRE HOARD | 28/12/09 |
| THE WEEK BEFORE Christmas, and I popped into the British Museum to escape the seasonal shoppers. Not for a complete look round; it is best to tackle such places in small doses. I headed straight up the echoey stops to the very top, where the finds of a certain Terry Herbert, an unemployed metal detector were on display. Yep, the Staffordshire Hoard.
THE WHOLE COLLECTION was not on display (it is being valued) and in any case a description is not the point of this blog entry, although there were some incredible carved sword hilt engravings on view. Not to mention a pretty cool quote about rising up against ones enemies in the name of virtue which I will feature in a later entry. BUT IT GOT ME thinking. In this age where there is a deep underlying sense of there not being anything new to discover on this planet (hence we turn instead to escapism through bland reality TV) it is discoveries like the Staffordshire Hoard which can remind us of the contrary. It’s certainly a belief I firmly have cemented in me as someone who writes about the world’s countries and the places in them. And that belief? That there is always something new under the sun; always a different light that you can shine on anywhere from a seemingly dull London suburb to the sleepy Somerset countryside where I am writing this to, well, any place or any thing on the globe. That there is always a new treasure to dig up to enlighten minds and change how we view history. A GERNERALISATION, maybe, but this time of year is full of clichés and this is one we’d all do well to take on board at the start of a new decade. A hope to cherish and stash away squirrel-like for when the cold or the dark or the news starts to depress us. HAPPY NEW YEAR. THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| SLOW BLOGGING | 23/12/09 |
| SLOW BLOGGING. I hear it is catching on. At least, according to the Guardian it is, and the Guardian can usually be guaranteed to be first on the scene when there is some new, whimsical pursuit to be dramatised).
WELL GREAT. I love the concept of it. The idea of the Internet being used not for some quick injection in the eye of information but a place where people can actually read something of beauty at leisure. BUT WHERE, I would love to know, are the people who have the time? Somewhere in the sun-kissed (or at least, less snow-kissed) Mediterranean, I expect. Well I may try and carve out some time for myself in the New Year to attempt just that. A happy start to a new decade. RIGHT NOW, I AM GOING to do the antethesis of it. I am going to dash to the tube slip-sliding across the icy road and brave the going-home Christmas masses. Alas blog-following faithful, I must now say goodbye. THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| IF I DIE (RUSSIA IN MIDWINTER) | 18/12/09 |
| NOTHING TO GET you in the festive mood like a spot of snow and we, up on our hill above London, got plenty of it this morning. So we built two snowmen which, due to the available props our garden offered us, look more like slightly deranged snow mice, and then I got to work over a bowl of porridge.
THE BEST-LAID PLANS, eh? I got almost immediately sidetracked by a magazine that must have migrated from my parents’ house. My parents subscribe to several feel-good magazines which embrace a time long gone. A time of chestnuts roasting on fires, a time of cheerful children with glowing faces playing with hula hoops in the street, a time of almost perpetual snow. And, this being the festive season and all, this particular magazine featured quite a few snow-themed features. One of which was this poem: IF I DIE I WILL BE REBORN in waves of wild flowers IF I DIE I WILL FLY UP IN CRIES OF CRANE flocks piercing the purple sky. IF I DIE I WILL RETURN IN SEPTEMBER days broken off IN GUSTS OF WIND dispersing burnt pages of my childhood. IF I DIE MY HEART WILL begin to beat again IN RAINY DROPS and peals of thunder. IF I DIE MY PRAYERS WILL sparkle as first snow UPON DARK FIELDS and naked crowns of trees. IF I DIE MY LOOK WILL rise IN THOUSANDS OF eyes of my brothers and sisters SCORCHING AS A suns touch. IF I DIE I WILL BE forever alive. GOOD ISN’T IT? We have Mr Vladimir Zaitsev of Russia to thank for that. And what with the weather outside, what with the cars toiling slowly up the icy hill and the snow all about, I was in the mood suddenly to think of Russia. BECAUSE FOR ME no poem has ever epitomised the Russian landscape as this poem does. There isn’t even a passage from Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy that can create the mood of the lonely Russian steppe, of utter icy isolation, in quite the same way as Zaitsev’s verses. And it got me thinking of the last time I was in Russia. Seven years ago, to celebrate Christmas the Russian Orthodox way (on January 6th). IT ALL CAME BACK to life for me. The train to Moscow from St Petersburg (which works so much better in literature as simply Petersburg). The inch thick ice on the windows. The stops off at those small farming communities and hopeless industrial towns en route. Farmsteads under snow. Conifers under snow. Everything under snow, and so silent. One almost expected a repeat of a scene from Dr. Zhivago, where the train doors are opened and it needs a man with a pick-axe to hack the ice off. In places the Russian landscape of today is little different from one of those 17th century Central European paintings by Brueghel, with all the characters and the animals bowed down by the weight of the elements, by the immensity of the snow. BUT IT IS Zaitsev’s second verse that gets me most of all. Crane flocks piercing the purple sky. That is Russia. The snow and the unending purple winter sky above. THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| THE TURKISH TAKE ON COFFEE | 11/12/09 |
| I LIKE COFFEE. Mainly because I can drink copious amounts of it and still be able to work and function rather like a normal human being. Which is handy when you basically work ten hours a day, seven days a week. I'm not trying to write a sob story here, incidentally. My work happens to also be what I love doing. I'm just saying.
ANYWAY, IT appears that much I love coffee, there is someone who likes it even more. A whole nation of people in fact. That’s right, I’m talking about the Turks. The great, great nation that gave the world (or at least Europe) coffee. Thank you, Turkey. Thank you for keeping me awake, thank you for giving me an excuse to sit in cafes with a paper when I should be working. Turkey got coffee from Syria of course, originally, but it was popularised in Turkey. And there is no one that knows how to knock back caffeine quite like the citizens of Istanbul. IN FACT, DARE IT be said, the good people of Istanbul take the ritual of coffee drinking a little bit too far. They say a cup, for instance, guarantees forty years of friendship. Marital tradition in Turkey used to dictate (and still does) that the bride’s family impress the groom’s my serving them coffee. Good coffee meant the wedding would go smoothly, bad coffee? You guessed it. Anyone who can’t make a decent brew is barely worthy of tying the knot. Sometimes, the bride’s family would even purposely make poor coffee (with salt in!) to deter/ insult the groom’s family. It couldn’t just be a polite refusal, oh no, in Turkey they had to make their feelings clear with caffeine. The Turks even used to watch theatre in coffee houses. HOW DO I KNOW all this? Well, it’s all part of my research for a piece I’ve written recently on Istanbul’s best coffee houses for Suite101.com. Check out the link in the “my work” section. THOUGHTS/ COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| MONTH OF MANY CHANGES | 27/10/09 |
| NO, I’M NOT REFERRING to the autumn colours here: I’ve had (very sadly) no opportunity for such whimsical poetic musings of late.
It’s been a hectic month and having handed in the finished chapters of Lonely Planet Peru the usual issue of what project I’d be working on next began to rear its head. So I’ve devoted most of the last month to try and provide the people that keep asking me with an answer and it could be that I have several answers relatively soon! As well as writing for various websites like Suite101.com (a surprisingly tidy money earner if you guarantee the website hits!), I also wanted to leave the shameless self-publicising nature of my last blog entry up there for as long as possible. The final few improvements to this website are being finalised, so there has been that to arrange as well. Hats off to my website designer Simon Haskell (SMH Designs) who has done a great job. Here’s to being able to muse on things as poetically and whimsically as I wish in the near future! THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| TWO NEW BOOKS COMING OUT! | 12/10/09 |
| I AM PLEASED to announce that my two latest books are coming out this autumn! Moon Scottish Highlands and Moon Edinburgh & Glasgow will be available online respectively from 21st October and 1st November on websites like Amazon.com.
THEY’RE PART of the Moon Spotlight series, which focuses on different regions within a country and aims to give travellers a more in-depth perspective: great for Scotland-bound travellers who are doing a trip to a specific region rather than the country as a whole. IF YOU DO A SEARCH online the cover images and book details have already been released; they’ll be put up on lukewaterson.co.uk soon too. Look out for the shaggy cow gazing out dreamily over the fence (Scottish Highlands) and Edinburgh Castle in the sunshine (Edinburgh & Glasgow). THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| TEN TYPES OF PEOPLE TO GIVE A WIDE BERTH WHEN TRAVELLING | 02/10/09 |
| OK, HERE IS THE OFFICIAL LIST. Compiled from years of unavoidable encounters with just these types of people when on the road, usually in dirty bus terminals or after getting lost in run-down areas of border towns…
1: Hirsute types that approach you in deserted parks or bus stations and want to shake your hand. Ok, lets be fair, they’re not always hirsute. But they usually are. Certainly the most common, persistent and hard-to-get-rid-of type. 2: Groups of generally moustachioed men outside cantinas or other such drinking dens. They’ll have more courage to shout abuse or worse when drunk. There is usually lots of them, and they invariably carry long rusty-looking knives. 3: Tour group touts: if they’re yelling for custom, it means the tour operator they represent is rubbish. That’s a guarantee. 4: Fat grumpy people who like they’re about to plonk down next to you on a long-haul flight. Be aware: this is seven plus hours with them spreading out over 1.5 seats and you squashed into the corner of yours. Even if they’re not grumpy, you certainly will be if they’re still next to you mid-flight. 5: Pirate music sellers of any description: come on, guys, there’s a reason why they’re peddling that battered version of Jacko’s greatest hits for a knock down price and that reason is to pass it off on some naïve-looking traveller. 6: Taxi drivers at airports or transport hubs. A surprising entry in the top ten but remember: you’re likely to be paying a zillion times the price for that “bargain” ride to the town/city centre than if you walked another ten paces outside the airport gates and asked there. 7: The enormous, invariably brusque yet simultaneously sly women who try to sell you dubious-looking market food any time after about eleven in the morning. Regardless of whether they have a desire to flog you gone-off food or are generally trying to give you a taste of the best thing they’re cooking, they’ll have made the food fresh at maybe five that morning. So after all those hours in the heat, rather you than me. 8: Single, older, nearly always male backpackers who look considerably more unkempt than youo and smell terrible. I’m not going to quantify this one. There’s just probably something wrong with them, in my experience. Once, one such type stole all my pasta in a hostel in Denmark. How callous and desperate is that? 9: Hippies who look like they’ve been travelling the world for about thirty-two years. The point with this entry is that you probably won’t have fun with these people. Because they’ll out-trump you on every single travel story you exchange with them and say something like: “Well of course in Afghanistan in 1971 it wasn’t like that.” They’ll also show obvious contempt if you haven’t visited every single local market in a given country. 10: Pretty girls who approach you in town squares across the northern and southern hemispheres, engage you in conversation, chat vaguely about tour companies they represent, show you some rather battered leaflet to back up their story but mysteriously can’t find the tour company office, then latch onto you and expect you to buy them stuff. Meals. Drinks. Sometimes they even expect you to put them up in your hotel room. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| KILLING BATTERIES | 29/09/09 |
| HATS OFF TO this brilliant blog, http://killingbatteries.com.
IT’S WRITTEN by my Lonely Planet colleague Leif Pettersen. I love it particularly for the “Day in the Life of a Travel Writer” video: check this before you get any starry-eyed visions of what travel writing is like, guys! And, come to that, for general whingings on incompetent airlines and weird fellow-travellers. LET’S FACE IT, it’s true. Most of our days are indeed spent, far from going on all-expenses-paid holidays, drinking way too much coffee, not getting out enough, wasting time on random websites. Oh, and then writing blogs about it. |
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| VISIONS OF MOZZARELLA: CILENTO COAST BLUES | 27/09/09 |
| NEVER EVER ever ever ever write about Italian food for two days solid when you’re too broke to be able to go out and console yourself by buying mozzarella or prosciutto. It wouldn’t be quite the same in the supermarket, of course, as on Italy’s Cilento Coast, which makes far and away the country’s best mozzarella (with protected geographical status, like Scotland’s whisky, so no other part of the world can ever hope to equal it in reputation), and a version of prosciutto which isn’t far off the best either. NEVER EVER turn your back on the sunshine for two days and eat copious quantities of bread and marmite whilst compiling paragraphs on sheep’s cheese matured in caves, on white figs stuffed with chestnuts, on mushroom festivals, on where focaccia really came from, in short on all the gourmet delights of this fascinating region of Italy. Which, strangely, is all but by-passed by tourism yet has the best features of all Italy’s touristy regions (yep, deserted sandy beaches, turquoise waters, the wild inland hills, photogenic hill towns and, of course, the afore-mentioned fact that some of Italy’s best (and most under-appreciated) food awaits). BUT I WRESTLED with the beast and the beast was laid to rest. I finished and sated my rumbling belly with some more bread and marmite. THEN I PRESSED save and decided to celebrate by listening (it’s a kind of ritual I have whenever I get news of my next project or finish an old one) to that song by The Trees, you know, Geordie, the one that begins “As I walked out over London Bridge one misty morning early”? Makes me think of embarking on adventures, I guess. So I decided to celebrate by doing that, dashing off a quick section of my novel and go outside to enjoy some of that sunshine I’d been missing. And then the electricity cut off. And more than a one-way ticket to an exotic destination or an interesting angle on a new article, you know what I need, what any travel writer needs, most of all? You guessed it. Electricity. So I spent the next hour on the phone to the powers-controling-London’s-cables-that-be, and ended up doing none of my intended celebrations, just thinking wistfully of Cilento’s buffalo mozzarella and beef tomatoes in a caprese salad by the sea. THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| MOON SCOTLAND HITS THE SHELVES | 25/09/09 |
| ITS OFFICIAL: Moon Scotland is out in UK stores. Available online since January, you can now get a hard copy at stores such as Stanfords (London Covent Garden and Bristol stores; in London, that’s the downstairs floor, folks, with the British travel). Barnes and Noble in the U.S also have plenty of copies. You should also be able to get it in Borders, in the UK and the U.S. but this remains to be seen (as in, they will order it for you but I haven’t seen it gracing the travel section of any of the London branches).
TAKE A LOOK, buy the book and take that trip north of the border you’ve probably always been putting off in favour of the Med (I can tell you now, the best beaches and the best cuisine DO NOT necessarily lie in the latter, far from it). REMEMBER that Moon Scotland is also regularly updated on this blog. Whether an attraction has closed, whether a hotel has become insufferable, whether the Scottish parliament have staged a walk-out (with Megrahi’s recent release the likelihood of this is considerably higher than at any time since the parliament’s formation but still, I would hasten to add, low-ish) or if the land mass has significantly altered, I will endeavour to let you know here ASAP. THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| AWAY IN ITALY | 23/09/09 |
| AS YOU MAY have detected from the last post, blog-readers, I’ve been in Italy for the last week or so (more to come on Italy in the coming weeks). Researching an article on the Amalfi Coast and working on my novel. Neither of which I can say too much about just yet but stay tuned.
I HAD entertained visions of blogging from some sun-baked old hill town, one faded Internet terminal in a gloomy room criss-crossed by lizards and presided over by a supercilious old woman wearing black kind of thing. It only seems fitting a travel writer should try to do such things. THIS VISION was further frustrated by the fact that in the nearest town to where we were staying, in a sweep of fig tree plantations in the middle of nowhere, did indeed boast one such Internet café. BUT IT WAS A four mile walk away and they were four miles which included great beaches and a particularly tempting gelateria (ice cream parlour). Sorry about that... |
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| THE LIQUEFYING OF THE BLOOD | 21/09/09 |
| CAPELLA DI SAN GENNARO, NAPLES, SEPTEMBER 20TH
IT WAS strangely quiet everywhere. THE NIGHT before, there had been fireworks up and down the coast of Calabria, mingling with the lightening of the autumn storms. One of the miracles of the Roman Catholic Church had been performed. The blood of San Gennaro or Saint Janarius, the patron saint of Naples, supposedly retained for over 1750 years since the saint’s estimated death, had done what it nearly always mysteriously did for one day, three times each year. The dried remains, encased in a vial, had liquefied, and the faithful, along with the not-so-faithful and indeed most of Calabria province were partying to celebrate the fact. But the miracle, at this point on the sticky Naples afternoon, was not complete in the eyes of the hundreds of Neopolitans who hadn’t yet seen it with their own eyes or been able to brave yesterday’s crowds. WE WANDERED through the curious mix of city centre streets: peeling crumbling high-rises juxtaposed with spruced-up yellow and pink apartments and the gracious curve of cathedral domes, all set off to the whine of suicidally-driven Vespas. I had never cared for Naples on either of my previous visits. The smell of rubbish piled up along the sides of the streets was nauseating; the washing hung high across the alleyways from the same tatty buildings scrawled with gang graffiti; most of the good bars and cafes were closed. And it was quiet, particularly for an Italian city in the throes of religious fervour. Which made the narrow streets with their boarded-up shop fronts seem at best melancholy, at worst almost sinister. But then we came up Via dei Tribunali and we saw where everyone was gathered. On the steps of the duomo, waiting for re-opening time at four thirty. The doorS scraped back; we filed in. THE cathedral of Naples is lavish even by Italian standards. Frescoes by the Baroque painter Giovanni Lanfranco, whose work graces churches in Rome and Florence, flank the ceilings; one of its chapels boasts brilliant mosaics over one thousand years old. But no-one was looking up at the decoration today. Around three hundred of us crammed into the Capella Di San Gennaro, led by a group of about thirty nuns. Cardinal Arcivescovo was just about to hold the vial aloft. His assistant had to restrain two women who couldn’t bear the pomp and circumstance of the ceremony and just wanted to kiss the relic. Two armed police stood either side of the cardinal to lend support. Twice before, famously, San Gennaro’s blood did not liquefy. 1944 and 1980. The years, respectively, of the eruption of nearby Vesuvius and an earthquake in the city, both of which devastated Naples and caused thousands of deaths. The vial was held up. There was an outbreak of raucous applause. The blood oozed up the side of the glass, liquefied as a shot of Ribena. The miracle had indeed occurred. THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| CALL OF THE REALLY WILD: SCOTLANDS NEW MAMMALS | 12/09/09 |
| MOOSE, BEARS, WOLVES? IS THIS REALLY SCOTTISH WILDLIFE?
THE PROBLEM with (and simultaneously the beauty of) writing a guidebook is how quickly things become outdated. No sooner do I describe Scotlands economic situation than it plummets, no sooner do I mention Woolworth’s as a good place to pick up three-pin adapters than it closes down (would-be adapter buyers should probably head to Argos or a rather handy shop I found right by passport control at Heathrow Terminal 3 which has nothing but in the outside display). It’s usually only these little-but-crucial things that change, of course: Edinburgh stays photogenic, Glasgow stays gritty and continues to pull off “cool” in the best way Scottish cities know how and last time I checked, crowds still weren’t flocking to the Outer Hebrides. But since publication of Moon Scotland, something bizarre but revolutionary has happened in the department of Scottish wildlife. THE unlikely thanks is due to the son of the MFI furniture chain founder, Paul Lister. Mr Lister has a 50,000 acre estate in the Scottish Highlands and had for several years harbored the idea of re-wilding about half of it with the animals that made British wildlife a bit more racy in times gone by than the badgers, foxes and red deer that have been the closest the country has come to Africa’s Big 5 in recent decades: namely boars, moose and, yep, wolves. Not surprisingly Mr Lister had soon amassed a hearty amount of opposition, including most of the local sheep farmers and also the Rambler’s Association. BUT AS MOON Scotland was going to press, moose (recruited from Scandinavia) were once again freely roaming in Scotland for the first time in three thousand years to Mr Listers Alladale Estate near Inverness, in the Southern Highlands. Elk and boar were also present in a fenced-off 500 acre reserve. Ramblers Right to Roam (to walk over open countryside or moorland) was not infringed, as several styles allowed access to these 500 acres, although, at a talk in late 2008 the general manager of the estate admitted few ramblers had exercised that right. AS FOR THE predators Mr Lister wants to reintroduce, watch this space. Bears and wolves cause a tad more controversy than a few moose and require at least a 56,000 acre estate, plus a significantly higher fence (three metres). The Alladale Estate is currently liaising with neighbouring estate owners to get them in on the act. Supporters argue that if the moose can make a comeback after several thousand years, the wolf, which has only been extinct in Scotland since the middle ages, will have less of an ecological impact. In the meantime, you can still catch a glimpse of several species of deer, the comical capercaillie and the rare (in Britain) pine marten on the estate. WHILST I WAS away in South America this summer checking out Amazonian animals, another incredible species reintroduction was made to Scotland. Again it was via Scandinavia and, appropriately (for Tarka the Otter fans) via Devon: beavers. As of May this year, beavers are for the first time in two hundred years again swimming in Argyllshire, in the Sound of Jura. For more information, check out this cute video from May 29th on http:// www.guardian.co.uk/ environment/2009/may/29/beavers- lochs-scotland-endangered- species For the beaver’s sake and for those who go beaver-spotting, I hope they are aware of the Corrywreckan, one of the world’s largest maelstroms, which lies in the same area… THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| KNIGHTON, WALES, 2006 | 12/09/09 |
| AN OLD LADY on a damp April afternoon in a bed and breakfast in Knighton, the half-way point on the Offas Dyke footpath that runs the length of the Welsh-English border, sits me and a few friends down in her florally decorated living room for a strong brew of tea and digestive biscuits and asks us what we all do.
WHAT AN awful moment, and a question destined to recur so inanely often in ones life too. Especially when all one wants is to have a hot shower and find the nearest half-decent pub to toast the highs and lows of the miles tramped that day over a pint or three of Reverend James and a coal fire, to have to indulge the proprietor of ones accommodation with such conversational niceties is far from top of ones priority list. What words we are forced to summon to our lips to justify our existences to date! Words not only to please an elder ladys expectations of what a young, mud-splattered twenty-something should have achieved by this juncture in their lives to date but also to justify oneself to oneself; to trumpet ones achievements without boasting; to understate without self-deprecating. AND WHAT DO I say when it is my turn? “Writer” which, although true, perhaps gives out too vague an impression, an aurora of fancifulness and whimsy without much sense of ones writing being recognised or noteworthy? “Office worker”, for at that time the coffers were so low I had taken to some temporary night work in an eerie press cuttings factory to pay that month’s rent? I say “author”, perhaps because it contains the first six letters of the word “authoritative” and of course this is both how I want what I write to sound and how I want myself to appear (yes, even to an old lady in a rain-swept Welsh border town). Suave, creative, professional, debonair, that kind of thing. AND I SIT there fingers thawing on the scalding china of the tea cup and wait to hear what the old lady will say. I guess what I am hoping for is an exclamation of approval from the old lady (or a raising of her wiry brows and an ooh or an aah), proud smiles on the faces of my friends and in myself, a small but distinct glow of warmth and happiness. “WELL!” THE OLD lady says with a small smile. “In that case, who would like another biscuit?” THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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| MICHAEL MORPURGOS NEW HOUSE | 10/09/09 |
| “A BLUE TIT is bashing away at the bay window in front of me – it’s seen its own reflection for the umpteenth time and is determined, this time round, to peck its impudent rival at the bird feeder out of the picture. Scattered on the floor near my desk are the debris from my latest research trip to Peru – the business cards of Peruvian notables (and not-so-notables), hotel proprietors and tour operators, some battered maps of the Amazon Basin and several notebooks full of almost illegible scrawl. Beyond the window is a gnarled two hundred year-old holly tree that was growing when this area was a huge gypsy encampment, and nearby Norwood and Crystal Palace were, respectively, a hunting estate and a quiet country town. Now of course the London sprawl has consumed all these quirky historic divisions and at the foot of our hill of sleepy, mid- and late-Victorian houses, city suburbs spread away like an outlandish grey sea to the broken spine of city centre high-rises. Only a drab council estate opposite interrupts an otherwise perfect view of Canary Wharf and the Gherkin, looking like a badly-gone-wrong space launch in a vague haze of pollution...”
AROUND THIS point, of course, describing the room in which I do most of my writing, hunched over a laptop with two litres of coffee and a steadily diminishing block of cheese, begins to lose its novelty if, indeed, it had not already. Most people, after all, are probably acquainted with Victorian flats on the outskirts of London or have, at least, passed them in a car. LUCKILY, I AM not trying to be original here, just searching for a way to introduce a blog. Which will, incidentally, serve pretty much any purpose a writer struggling to make ends meet in the strange city of London (and thus continuing a tradition of centuries of writers in the same city doing the same thing) sees fit: from thoughts through to updates on my books. THE IDEA OF writers having a licence to tell all and sundry about any aspect of their personal lives, unless it serves to illuminate a book they have written, a place they have visited or a viewpoint they hold on a particular topic, appals me. We do not want to hear about Gordon Brown brushing his teeth unless, in the process, something happens to him that wouldnt happen in the course of any of us brushing our teeth (like David Miliband breezing in to indulge in a spot of flossing, for example). In fact, as a rule, I like renowned figures to concentrate on the reason they are in the public eye (eg governing a country, excelling at a particular sport) and dispense with details of their personal lives altogether. Sheer self-indulgent monologues can be highly offensive, deeply boring or both. In fact, coming across one in the newspaper recently was what made me want to spend more time writing this blog and less reading the disagreeable views we pay for the privilege of seeing published. ABOUT TWO months ago, in a very idle moment, I picked up the newspaper and flicked through to justify my paying for it. The paper happened to be the Guardian. I imbibed the travel, I scanned the sport and then I came to the review. There was a feature I’d looked at before, on writer’s rooms. This week, it was the turn of Michael Morpurgo, a childrens author I had read eagerly as a twelve year-old and thought very little of since. The idea seemed to be that the Guardian scouted around for moderately successful authors willing to describe the surroundings of the rooms in which they wrote great works of fiction or, indeed, just tell us about the decor which inspires them to get up and scribble every day. What a great ego trip to be invited to indulge in. Well, Michael must have thought, here is proof of my celebrity status. A national newspaper interested in the everyday rituals of my life and wanting to pay for it, too. So we hear about Michael who just cannot focus working at his table, took some advice from Ted Hughes (a feature on whose room might have been more riveting – a pity the Guardian didn’t dream the idea up when he was still alive) and in the end had to build a beautiful thatched cottage on Dartmoor with a Japanese garden to get his day-to-day inspiration. The Guardian must have been pretty chuffed too: it may have even shifted a few more copies off the newsagents’ shelves as a result of featuring Michael’s prime piece of Devon real estate. DONT interpret my sarcasm as a lack of interest in this subject. Indeed, the concept of what a renowned writer’s writerly abode looks like does intrigue me. Or should I say, certain writer’s abodes. I was certainly fascinated, for example, when I visited Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex recently, and learned about the setting in which Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell carried out their artistic endeavours. A lot of other prominent writers and intellectuals (Thackery, Elliot) visited them there: seeing the rooms they had decorated and hearing the stories that related to certain pictures or pieces of furniture offered an insight into what they must have been like as people. Equally, I would love to learn about the set of walls that induced Kafka to write. Or whether Knut Hamsun ever had to endure the leaking barebones tenement his protagonist in Hunger writes from. I imagine there are museums in Prague, or in northern Norway, that could shed some light on this. Again, my motivation for wanting to see their digs would be to glean an insight into the work of a great literary figure, and perhaps a greater understanding of the times in which they wrote. THERE IS NOT, as far as I am aware, a Michael Morpurgo museum. So we have the Guardian to tell us about it instead. However, no-one is getting a literary or historical epiphany from reading about Michael’s housing crisis. Well, then, perhaps the feature is designed to appeal to Michael Morpurgo fans, a link between his fiction and Michael the man in an everyday context being inspired to write that fiction (although I’m not sure how many children read the Guardian, Michael). Not really. Michael doesn’t tell us about how the wood he used to play in as a child in Essex made him dream of the teaming, mist-swathed jungle of his book “King of the Cloud Forests” for example. Perhaps the feature is there to spur other wannabe writers on to greater things (“You too can retire to remotest Dartmoor and have a writing career – I worked at a table like other mortals once but now look at me”). But I doubt it. THE Guardian were probably thinking, in a reality TV-obsessed culture, that if the public can handle Big Brother then a description of a renowned author’s bedroom is bound to go down well. In the property section, it may have done. But in the review? It may interest the folk at the Guardian, typing away at their offices on a lacklustre stretch of railway terminus land near Kings Cross and dreaming of writing meaningful things like books rather than pretentiously filling column space, to portray the countryside as an eccentric place surprisingly full of famous people that are “living the dream”. But such features just serve to make the paper seem tamely celebrity-obsessed. DONT get me wrong. I would probably write about my room too if a newspaper paid me a thousand odd pounds to do so. In fact, in the likely event the Guardian elect not to publish a snippet about my room next week, I’ve included it at the start of this article. But I would probably embroider it significantly if I was writing for a wider audience: throw in some turrets, a moat, a helipad where fellow authors landed daily to exchange ideas and good agent recommendations. The reality just doesn’t sound exciting enough, with or without an advance that enables me to build my dream house on Dartmoor. And even then, I would certainly not expect anyone to care what I wrote. THOUGHTS/COMMENTS? Email Luke at lwaterson@gmail.com |
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