fionaistravelling

It’s three weeks since my last blog, astute readers may notice. Did you miss me?  I’m still out here travelling but as I said in the last blog, winding down a little and beginning to think about returning to ‘reality’ at home. I’m writing this from my friend Ed’s goat farm at Cape Clear Island again.  I’ll be here for two weeks till it’s time to go back to London for a family occasion and then to Lancashire for my mum’s 92nd (!) birthday. Cape Clear I came here nearly at the beginning of my ‘travelling adventure’ and enjoyed it so much that while I was here I said I’d come back when I was next going to be free, ie now (after the sailing and the klezmer dancing).   Then, after I’d   booked the ferry tickets to come here and made all the arrangements - including booking to attend the Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) services at the Liberal Synagogue in Dublin*, and booking an expensive Airbnb round the corner from the synagogue (seeing as it was my bir...

Hi my dears! I've been away for four months now.... September and October will be pretty much England, Scotland, and back to Ireland .... so the adventure in continental Europe is (for now) coming to an end.  But here I am at the moment, near the small town of Borgholzhausen, in the hamlet of .... well, it's not even really marked! Using the wonderful place location app ' what3words '  (recommended to me by the lovely Ralph Cochrane ) you could find me if you typed in " pressing.shadow.lynched ".    Here are some of the local views that I've been seeing while cycling and walking round here over the last couple of days:  We're not quite sure about the ostrich but he was looking quite photogenic in a field on our bike ride today. So why am I here?  Well, this is the 'spontaneity' thing!!  I read a few travel blogs before I set off and the one thing that I was aware of was that if you make plans, you'll regret them... you shou...

I'm part way into my second week at the Yiddish Summer Weimar, and have finally found a moment to catch up on my blog. So I dragged myself away from the boat eventually (it was hard, this was the view on the last day) and got to Geneva about 36 hours later  (two buses, a train and another bus in Sardinia, then an overnight ferry, a morning stop-off in Marseille, and the luxury of a direct train Marseille to Geneva). The inland journey in Sardinia from Cannigione to Olbia was absolutely GORGEOUS - I didn't have my phone to take pix on the journey (I'm now the proud owner of a new-to-me second hand iphone 6 btw) but you can see a pic of the pretty impressive  rocks at San Pantaleo (for example) here .   We'd seen them from the boat but seeing them up close was fantastic. In Marseille I had morning coffee and lunch at a lovely independent coffee shop: the Cafe L'Ecomotive . It's just down the steps from the main St Charles station, so no need to waste...

Coming up to week 13, half way through my Six Month Travelling Adventure. And here we are, anchored off the island of La Maddelena (the largest island in the archipelago ) today: Tuesday (24 July) – after being holed up on the boat in extreme windy weather for three days (of which more later) It’s been a very lovely, warm sunny day. After lunch we decided to go to the nearby beach.  Jo swam there, and Rae, Steve and I rowed over in the dinghy, taking Jo’s stuff with us. I then put my phone and all my valuables (passport, money, etc) into my brilliant watertight small blue swimming valuables-holder, rolled it up as per the instructions (like I’ve been doing once or twice for the last three or four weeks without any problems), and took it with me for a swim in the sea – which was gorgeous, beautiful, deep, warm and welcoming. And then got back on land , and emptied rather a lot of water out of my suddenly irritatingly NON watertight bag ☹    and that...