Diary
WG’s Christmas Cruise 2025 – Part Five
Friday 2nd January – at sea (mostly) The sea seems to have calmed down overnight. It is still rather windy, but the sea state has changed to moderate, with a long, slow swell, and it [more…]
Travelogue
Diary
WG’s Christmas Cruise 2025 – Part Four
Monday 29th December, Lanzarote I woke up about 05:30 and we were moving very slowly off the coast of Lanzarote. It is still dark and the lights along the coast were twinkling. Much too early [more…]
Geology
Carlisle-Settle-Preston
It’s Wednesday morning around 9:00 and I’m at Carlisle station. AWS didn’t manage to make his proposed rail journey down to Preston because of cancellations. Hongkonger has done rather better. The train at platform 3 [more…]
Diary
WG’s Christmas Cruise 2025 – Part Three
Thursday 25th December, Christmas Day at Sea I started my Christmas Day with the Bing Bong of the ship’s tannoy waking me from my slumbers and the voice of the ship’s Captain apologising for the [more…]
Diary
WG’s Christmas Cruise 2025 – Part Two
Sunday 21st December. Sailing Day. There is no mad rush to do anything this morning. Apple Maps tells me it will take 1 hour and twenty minutes to get to the cruise terminal, and I [more…]
Diary
WG’s Christmas Cruise 2025 – Part One
The Prologue I really enjoyed last year’s trip to the Caribbean but, there is always a but, I had to settle for a standard seat on the TUI Boeing 787. Despite the huge cost of [more…]
Hobbies
Overland to Russia, Part Five
Just off Red Square in Moscow, by a Metro entrance, is a curious little basement exhibit, the Museum of the USSR. The day I visited it, I was almost alone as I viewed the dozen [more…]
Travel
Christmas Postcard From Manchester
Thank you for all your contributions below the line on last week’s article about my dreadful spelling. Turns out I don’t have some bizarre neurological condition after all; rather, I’m just like the rest of [more…]
Authoritarianism
Overland to Russia, Part Four
How popular is Putin really? Before trying to answer this, a bit of background is needed. The political landscape of Russia is not really comparable with, say, Britain or France, where the mechanism of democracy [more…]