Despite it being the middle of July, the weather was as dreary as when I had left the UK at the start of this journey in mid-September. A chill wind whipped across the waterfront at Calais, tearing at my hair and hastily-found jumper. The history of the town – British… Continue reading
Reaching the far north of Italy should be the end of my current journey. Fighting in Italy came to an end on 2nd May 1945, a week before the war in Europe finally ended on 8th May. My great uncle celebrated Victory in Europe Day with his Royal Engineer unit… Continue reading
Italy’s eastern border with modern-day Slovenia is not its only frontier to have shifted with time. The country, with its ancient and not-so-ancient empires, always seemed ageless to me, as fixed in boundaries as the island of Great Britain. This is not the case. The modern united Italian state, with… Continue reading
It was time to leave Venice, La Serenissima, the pick-pocketer in chief, the watery city on the edge of the world (or so it can seem) where it’s very easy to spend a lot of money without really realising it. For many, Venice is the end of a journey; journeys… Continue reading
I was really rather dreading my visit to Venice. It was partly 25 year old memories of a dirty, stinking city, and partly the hordes of tourists I expected to find there. If Florence was anything to go by – the queue for the entrance to the famed Duomo stretched… Continue reading
The trains don’t run to San Marino any longer, the world’s oldest and smallest republic, and even if they did my great uncle wouldn’t have needed to get there. Though worrying close to the action for much of 1944, and receiving a bombing that same year that destroyed its only… Continue reading
As I’ve travelled roughly north from Naples to Rome and then Rimini, via a number of smaller towns and cities I’ve noticed there always seems to be something happening in Italy. If it’s not the Republic Day celebrations in Rome, then there’s the Pope giving an open-air mass in Genova… Continue reading
I would say Benevento is a quintessential Italian town, except travel writers are banned from using the word ‘quintessential’ (along with ‘nestled’ and many other over-used phrases) and even after such a short amount of time in Italy I’ve yet to come across a town, village, piazza or street corner… Continue reading
Naples is a city on the edge. At any one time it’s impossible to know if that’s the edge of something great, or the abyss of total catastrophe. I suspect it’s always been like this. Maybe it has something to do with being only a few miles from the gates… Continue reading
Does it feel odd being back in Britain, where everything is familiar and I don’t have to worry about whether the milla tank holds enough water for everyone’s needs until the next full moon*? I’ll be honest. It doesn’t. It almost feels like those five months on a tiny island… Continue reading
