There seems to be a publishing equivalent of waiting for buses: I wait weeks for a bit of my work to move from the ‘accepted’ pile, only for two pieces to make it to the ‘published’ pile in a week. However long it takes, it’s great to see my name in print once more, and see my pile of published work slowly but steadily increasing.
Both of the pieces involve bus journeys. The first is a piece I wrote for Bradt’s newly published Bus-Pass Britain Rides Again, describing the journey from central Sheffield into the Peak District to Castleton. The journey fulfills my like for public transport and off-beat travel, for while several million people visit the Peak District each year – many heading for Castleton – very few make use of the available buses but travel by car.
The only way to read it is to get hold of a copy of the book, but if you enjoy travelling around the UK by bus or by car, it’s a worthy purchase to make.
My second piece is published in the free online magazine Sidetracked. It is the story of how I began my Encircle Africa expedition, and you can read it here. Already well received, it describes my facing Africa for the first time, and preparing to board my first buses.
A foretaste for my travelogue Encircle Africa: Around Africa by Public Transport which is getting ever closer to publication as an ebook and paperback, my Sidetracked article also discusses my desire to travel with limited technology (you can get more from a previous blog post too).
That my journey around Africa’s coastline began and ended in Gibraltar makes the piece timely too: with the tangled relations between Britain, Spain, and Gibraltar at the forefront of the public’s minds.
