Category Archives: Travel February 14th was a special day this year: there was a full moon. Across Western countries, the fourteenth was Valentine’s Day, that most romantic celebration of love, or most cynical expression of consumerism, depending on your perspective. In North America, the full moon was the “Snow Moon”, named for the heavy snowfalls February usually brings. In Theravada Buddhist countries, the […]  What an amazing place Bagan must have been in its heyday! “Bagan is a gilded city alive with tinkling bells and the swishing sounds of monks’ robes” – attributed to Marco Polo‘s late-12th-century account. Probably founded in the mid-to-late 9th, the city was the political, economic and cultural capital of the Pagan Empire for 250 years, and would […]  If you grew up in one of the many protectorates or dominions of the British Commonwealth, and are as old as I am, you will remember a world map in the classroom, covered in pink. British Columbia, on the west coast of Canada, was the last bit of pink on the left – before the […]  When do two negatives make a positive? When you are dealing with film – that tricky stuff that used to be in all our cameras. Every so often I come across a forgotten roll in a box somewhere, but I haven’t used it for years. Recently, however, I met a man who still shoots – […]  There are no straight roads in Ireland. The country is dotted with lakes and bogs, and the carriageways meander around them, taking in sites and villages along the way. This makes for charming and unhurried driving – there is no point rushing or trying to get too far in any one day. Of course, this […] |
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