Category: Travel

By Tashy Back

As I sat in a hopeless heap on my floor, surrounded by collapsing piles of clothes, I found myself stuck, once again, on that question which always seems far more important than it should be: what to pack?  I know travelling is supposed to be about exciting new experiences and I fear that my love of roaming around strange countries may appear fraudulent, but clothing has always had a way of dictating how I move through somewhere new. More importantly though, how I feel I am perceived by the people there, with the constant risk of exposing myself immediately as a stereotypically obnoxious tourist as an ever daunting prospect.

Hong Kong, even before arriving, felt like somewhere that might read you quite quickly. The problem was that my wardrobe, unhelpfully, operates in extremes, either geared towards a nippy London winter or summers spent lounging at the beach, with very little in between. It became increasingly clear, as I tried and failed to assemble any sort of convincing outfit, that neither category would quite work. This was confirmed, with some amusement, by friends who had grown up there, who informed me that my usual Durham-coded style of baggy jeans and a half-decent top would not, in fact, cut the mustard. Indeed, nights out came with a far more specific expectation of short skirts and knee-high boots, a dress code which I hadn’t quite accounted for. 

On our train ride from the airport into the city, Hong Kong presented itself to me in all its majesty, angular glass towers packed tightly together, then just behind, steep verdant green hills pushing forward, as if the city and the jungle had never quite agreed where one ends and the other begins. Moving through the island only deepened my impression of Hong Kong as a place of contrasts, as the city shifted abruptly from the compressed intensity of crowded streets where double-decker trams trundle slowly past, and people move quickly but without urgency, caught in the steady hum of city life. Then there are the isolated and deeply rural beaches on the south side of the island, where, as you gaze at the never-ending silver line of the horizon, the city seems to fall away entirely. From neon-lit crowds and late nights that drag on in heat and fervour with voices spilling out from bars onto the street, to sudden pockets of stillness that catch you off guard, a dog nosing along the tide line, a lone figure propped up against the wall smoking, the glow of his lighter briefly lifting his face from the dark, before it all slips back again.

The air in the city felt even heavier than I expected, humid, carrying with it a mix of exhaust fumes, sea salt, a faintly earthy smell, and, drifting in and out, the sharp, sweet trace of incense. At times, the city felt unexpectedly close to England, the sky turning grey, the air thick and unmoving, with a heaviness that hung low over everything. We spent that weekend after our arrival watching the rugby Sevens in a jam-packed stadium, surrounded by noise, not-so-cheap drinks, and a rowdy crowd that buzzed on the edge of disorder. Just a few hours later, I found myself walking down a side street, shutters half down, stray light pooling onto the pavement, the city suddenly smaller and more contained. Then, one night later that week, looking out over the city from the Peak, it shifted for me yet again, lights blurring into streaks of white, amber, and neon blue as the city spread out beneath me, more expansive than it had ever felt from the ground, running on without any clear edge. Within these constant shifts, I began to understand that Hong Kong is a layered island, one that operates with its own unique rhythm. 

It was through my boyfriend, who calls Hong Kong home, that these layers began to take on meaning, because to walk through a place with someone who knows it intimately is to inherit a version of it that is not quite your own. We traced fragments of his childhood: half-forgotten amusement parks, familiar street corners, stories of clambering over corrugated iron fences for afternoon tea taken on silver trays by the derelict swimming pool, these places that meant everything to him and nothing to me, until suddenly they didn’t. I saw the city not just in the present, but as it had been, its past carried in his memory, which was a strangely intimate way of experiencing a new place, and one that made me constantly aware of my position somewhere between observer and participant. There is something slightly surreal about temporarily inhabiting someone else’s home like that.

While wandering the island, we stopped at a small temple near the beach, easy to miss from the road. Inside, it was all red and gold, incense burning slowly in large bronze bowls, ash gathering in soft grey layers, and offerings of bowls of fruit arranged carefully in front of brightly painted figures. As we explored, my boyfriend told me how, as a child, he and his brothers had filmed a homemade ninja film in the square just in front of the temple. It was hard not to picture it as he spoke, a scrappy, ginger-haired boy darting between the benches and trees, sticks clutched like weapons, the whole thing playing out against the same still backdrop. For a moment it felt as though we were transported back a decade with the present still holding the faint outline of what had been.

At the Hong Kong Museum of Art, I came across the work of Wu Guanzhong, who saw Hong Kong as a place where he could “see both the East and the West at the same time,” an idea reflected in his paintings, where Western scenes are rendered through traditional Chinese techniques and familiar forms shift between the two, creating a hybrid art form that links cultures. This convergence between the east and the west still lingers in Hong Kong, even after the handover to China; on one side of the street is a quintessentially British M&S, coolly lit and orderly, and opposite it, a Cantonese dim sum restaurant with plastic stools, worn menus, and steam rising from bamboo baskets. What struck me most, however, was how my friends who had grown up flitting between Hong Kong and England seemed to effortlessly embody this duality as they adjusted how they spoke and presented themselves with an instinctive ease that revealed a lived internationalism.

By the end of my time there, I had stopped thinking about the contents of my suitcase. What stayed with me instead was seeing Hong Kong through the eyes of someone who had always known it, which was, for me, the most revealing and perhaps the most meaningful way to experience it.

Images courtesy of Tashy Back

By Toby Dossett

A week can be an awkward unit of time: too brief to claim familiarity and too indulgent to pretend it changed you. Travel writing had taught me to distrust the “short stay”, to almost apologise for it, to pad it with fact and disguise its thinness with beauty. The Perche region in Normandy, France, resisted this instinct, and I wanted simply to show the week as it was.

On Saturday morning, the bells of the Church of Saint-Sauveur spilled over tiled roofs into the Place de la République, drawing locals and visitors toward the weekly market. I followed the crowd through the stone archway and into the square, where garlic hung in thick, snug bundles and plump, grooved tomatoes blushed against half-timbered façades. Artichoke petals were lilac at the tips and tiny fresh radishes a deep pink. The sun was beginning to press down, and I swallowed the warm air in giant gulps. Stalls meandered across the square; at the far end, books and frames lay on the cobbles beside a pottery stall, crates of records and more antiques. My favourite piece there was a handcrafted rocking horse with a burnt-red saddle. A breeze tried to lift it into motion but only nudged it upwards so it looked permanently on the verge of rearing and bolting down the hill.

L’Église de Saint-Sauveur, a seventeenth-century reconstruction of a fifteenth-century church, sat at the town’s centre and looked down on the market’s slow churn. Inside, subdued light filtered through faded stained glass onto rows of straw-seated chairs. At the far end, the marble altar and tabernacle formed the main decorative focus, while the rest of the interior was restrained and pale. The ceiling lifted gently above the nave, its height felt more in the dark timber of the beams than in empty air, so that the proportions stayed balanced and the atmosphere calm. This calm was anchored by the mixed smell of stone, wax, incense and sudden gusts of cold air – a smell immediately recognisable to anyone who has spent time in old churches elsewhere in Europe. When I left, I stepped out through a curved doorway that felt almost like a portal in itself with the outside light already tracing its frame. On the tower, the most unusual feature was a clock placed deliberately off-centre. I wondered why, as it seemed quietly defiant, and so I was glad I’d noticed it despite the sheets of light layering down in front of it; we don’t look up enough these days.

The oldest house on the square bore the date 1580 carved into its stone, and Rue Ville Close, the oldest street, was lined with half-timbered houses that leaned conspiratorially towards one another. Six antique sundials were scattered across façades in the rest of the town; it would have been easy to spend an afternoon hunting them down one by one. The buildings that held antique shops and small galleries appeared barely altered by their commercial lives. One such shop, Métamorphoses – Bois Métal Lumière – specialised in elaborate door knockers, their faces, animals and abstract whorls made it easy to imagine the elaborate doors they might one day belong to.

From the square I followed the edge of the medieval wall, still mostly intact, and stopped at a plaque explaining how Bellême had once been the seat of a powerful Norman barony. The original arched gateway, the Porche de Bellême, which I had walked through not an hour earlier, still framed the town’s entrance, while fragments of ramparts slid down towards what remained of the old moat. A single swan circled the pond, leaving an oval of ripples that continued to widen, like loops of a gaze. From the bottom of the slope, I could see the houses on the hill bending down to peer into the passing streetcar windows; the whole skyline carouselling past in separate panes of glass.

Later in the week, on Tuesday, we walked through the forest near Belforêt-en-Perche to find the Fontaine de la Herse. The site consisted of two landscaped basins ringed by six sandstone blocks; on two of them, Latin inscriptions translated as “To Aphrodite” and “Consecrated to the lower deities, to Venus, Mars and Mercury”. It was a small Gallo-Roman sanctuary in a clearing, its stones darkened by their time in the water. In the forest, rain nibbled at the leaves and the path softened underfoot. When we stopped by the side of the path, I noticed a heart-shaped patch of moss on a tree, a deer with wings on a waymarker and several stacks of cut logs waiting to be taken away. I wanted to roll the ends of those logs with ink and press them onto a large canvas, to see if I could keep their intricate rings forever if they were only going to be burnt or chomped into chippings. We ended the walk with chips and a beer, a hot, salty round off to all the green and grey.

The next morning, tractors in the neighbouring field pulled us awake. We had coffee in the sun, spooning sugar from the tarnished yellow tin. Louise and I went down to see the horses, (she enjoyed feeding the smaller one green apples) and we managed to free a tiny blackbird from a wire trap. We collected eggs from the chickens, while Pop set up his easel, painting the house from different points in the garden at different times of day, tracking the light like a human sundial. The house itself had old beams and plain corniced walls, and a long, benched dining table in the kitchen that invited chopping and spreading and laying out. Lunch was crisp baguette with slabs of salted butter and a salad of roughly chopped beef tomatoes – tomatoes that tasted briefly, insistently, of having been somewhere else that morning. They were drowned in olive oil, splashed with balsamic, and finished with a generous throw of salt and purple basil snipped from the herb bed by the back door. We ate cantaloupe melon afterwards. In the evening Jérôme scattered thyme onto the fire while he cooked the meat, and we drank wine from Bourgogne while Jacques Brel and “Alexandrie, Alexandra” by Claude François triggered tipsy singing round the table. A dozen lanterns hanging from the nearby trees cast small, steady circles on the floor, encouraging the night to move on inverted wings, aloft.

Mortagne-au-Perche gathered itself around the Église Notre-Dame, with its hexagonal terracotta tiles, pale stone exterior and a square edged with cafés, estate agents and bookshops (many Parisians enjoy long weekends in the region and rent.) We took an early coffee there, watching Thursday’s shoppers move between stalls and neighbours greet one another. Sixteenth-century houses organised themselves beside modest modern buildings without fuss. In one window, model cars and bottles of cognac were lined up in rows and in another, an antique shop was so densely layered that, staring into the glass, I came to see that each item had a label from who it was donated by.

From there, we drove on to La Chapelle-Montligeon to see the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Montligeon, a muted stone structure set against open countryside. Inside, the space was high and white and full of gathered light. Nuns dressed in white moved quietly between the pews, a line of similarly dressed children followed. During our visit, a choir rehearsal filled the nave with children’s voices that rose easily into the vaulted ceiling. I didn’t understand the words, but the sound travelled along the ribs and arches of the building, and it was enough just to sit and listen.

On our last day we drove an hour or so out to Le Mans and climbed up into the Plantagenet City. At the Place des Jacobins market, stalls were packed close together, selling old stamps, enamel pins, waxy paintings and hundreds of second-hand books. Watches and jewellery cases glinted on blue tables, and beautifully carved violins leaned against their cases in the sun. The town hosted a medieval festival each year, but we had just missed it, though we could sense the anticipation for banners to be raised in the following days. We crossed the square and followed the old town’s narrow, colour-beamed streets as they rose towards the cathedral.  Along the way, we spotted a carved doorway depicting Adam and Eve which stood beneath a teal-framed window, where a scruffy dog had wedged its head between the shutters and was almost dribbling down onto the cobbles below. 

Inside Le Mans Cathedral, the great sixteenth-century organ anchored the space; light drifted in and glanced off its pipes so that it looked as though it were in a shimmer of shallow water. In one of the chapels, nine angels backed by red were painted high on the ceiling and we lit candles and thought about our loved ones: each of us held for a minute in our own small pool of light. We spent half an hour or so admiring the space until lunchtime where we ate pizza in the Place de la République. Then my dad led us through the backstreets to find Robert Doisneau’s 1962 photograph of a little girl and her teddy bear; above the arch, a toy bear in the window still stood in for the child frozen in the image. 

(Robert Doisneau’s 1962 photograph) 

We left the Perche region with the sense that we were only just beginning to get our bearings. It had been a rare kind of trip: three generations together, exploring a part of France that was new to all of us, fitting markets and forests and basilicas around shared meals, games of boule and long conversations in the sun. As we drove on towards Rouen, the week sat behind me like a sequence of modest scenes: a swan circling a moat, thyme on a fire, a heart-shaped patch of moss, a bear in a window. On their own, they didn’t seem spectacular enough to hold my attention, but linked together they felt like the start of knowing the Perché – or at least of wanting to know more.

By Sam Unsworth

Recently, I have been pondering my next big travel adventure. Not the classic European raunch, or beachside holiday, something new, different, and exciting. But what is there and where is there to go? I lamented to my parents over the Christmas break, ( a time when you are inevitably squeezed together with many visitors and are well-advised to escape the house as much as possible to avoid the looming cabin fever), that there is simply nothing nowhere new anymore. The misquoted line of Hans Gruber in the hotly debated Christmas film ‘’Die Hard’ reads “And Alexander wept for there were no more worlds left to conquer,”. To me this rings true completely, not to conquer necessarily, but to find and keep a secret. The great travel influences in my life have plied their trade by finding hidden places and revealing them to us through words and screens, encouraging us to find them for ourselves. I find that once I find those secret places, I would be hard pushed to reveal them out of selfish desire to leave them untouched. But I digress, sat around the dinner table as I droned on that everything had been done, gulping down the last of the mulling wine that was meant for the next day, I was challenged and therefore could not simply recite this romantic line without truly thinking about what it was I was saying. 

Now, there are places I want to go, places that can be gone to, and places that other people have been to and documented, which totally undermines my previous annoyance that I was “born in the wrong generation”, as most mopey teenagers are, for exploration. My favourite books are filled with pages of adventures that could not take place today, but I wonder if that is such a bad thing. One of the books I have recommended on the profile page of the magazine (Have a look there, some other great things on there) is Eric Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, which details the author’s journey through Afghanistan to the Hindu Kush mountains to scale the unclimbed peak of Mir Samir. A journey that could not be undertaken today, mainly because the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office advises against all travel to Afghanistan due to the security situation and the danger for travellers in the region. Afghanistan geographically, is one of the most beautiful and culturally rich countries on earth, the graveyard of empire where one king remarked that one could be in a place where it has never and will never snow and within a day’s ride be in a place where it has never stopped. Simply put, with its long history, stunning architecture of the Silk Road (although how much of it is left is another matter), Afghanistan would be at the topbe top of most adventurers’ travel lists. 

However, it is not impossible to get there. Like other avid travellers, my social media is plagued by videos of people having a better time than me in far-off places around the globe, including Afghanistan. People merrily being taxied around the streets of Kabul and riding pedalos on the Band-e Amir Lake seem to portray the country as the place to be for the real adventurers. While wanderlust pulls at me, I am reminded of a conversation I had with a man in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. In the way that you run into the most random people, he happened to live but 10 minutes away from where I grew up and had set out to hitchhike across the globe, from Yorkshire to wherever his end point felt right. As we were both interested in the new places to travel, Afghanistan entered the conversation. What he argued was very convincing. He argued that he refused to travel there as it posed such a moral dilemma that in fulfilling your own desire to see and experience the country, you would be aiding the growth of immoral ideology through participating in the Taliban economy. To say this took the wind out of my sails would perhaps misrepresent my thoughts on the matter. I agreed wholeheartedly and as such have changed my views on the influencers who go to these places to boost interactions on their own platforms.

These influencers, some of whom have also travelled North Korea, seem to act selfishly in a different way than I saw at the beginning. They are seemingly selling an idealised view of a country whilst not appreciating the deep-rooted inequality, repression, and control that characterise these places. 

And so, equipped with this new mindset, I may change my long-held belief that everything has been done. They are “worlds left to conquer” but I believe there is a time and a place for when it is right to push the boundaries and explore beyond perceived limits. I hope that one day I will be able to make it to Afghanistan and find something new, some hidden places, which I would then, if I mature a little bit, want to share with the rest of the world. 

Featured Image: Toby Dossett

By David Bayne-Jardine

In search of a weekend break from the stuffy heat of Bologna, my Erasmus friends and I find ourselves in salt-cured, sun-bleached Monopoli – a small coastal town in one of Italy’s southern and less-travelled regions, Apulia. That morning, mindful of our student budget (and less considerate of our body clocks), we caught a 6 am flight to Bari – the capital of the region – before heading down to Monopoli on a 30-minute train journey. 

 Perched on a boulder on a rocky beach, I dig my fingers into a fresh ciabatta roll, pulling the top and bottom apart to reveal the soft, moss-like interior. Tearing open a packet of mozzarella with my teeth, the milky brine spilling out onto the rock below, I arrange the fresh cheese on the bread. I space out chunks of a bright, fleshy tomato on top before smothering it all in fresh pesto. As I tuck into my beach sandwich, its freshness reminds me of the unequivocal vividness of life in southern Italy; that sensory intensity that makes it feel as if everything is being experienced for the very first time.  

 If Italy resembles a high-heeled boot, then Apulia runs from the lower calf to the bottom of the boot’s high heel, with Monopoli sitting perfectly where the wearer’s heel would be. In fact, just like a heel, Monopoli itself is something of a bridge between top and bottom – it has the basic tourist infrastructure present in the north of Italy, but nevertheless maintains that distinct southern aesthetic of white-washed buildings and a daringly slow pace of life. 

   Gone are the frescoes of Florence, the gondolas of Venice, the snow-capped Alps.  Places like Monopoli are a reminder of how Italy only recently became the country we know today, having been cobbled together in 1861 from wildly different cultures, each with their own languages, landscapes and lifestyles. Whilst tourist numbers are gradually rising in this gem of a town, it remains relatively untouched – according to recent figures it’s the fifth most visited place in Apulia, which itself registers as only the ninth most tourist-heavy region in the country. 

 Hungry after swimming in the crystalline waters, we amble down a bright but narrow street in search of a snack, mistakenly timing our perusal with the daily southern siesta. Scouring the shuttered shopfronts, we eventually stumble upon a small window serving panzerotti to take away. These local delicacies are essentially fried pizza turnovers that are stuffed with tomato, mozzarella and other specialties. We devour these whilst sitting on the old fortified walls, trying not to drip hot tomato sauce on our white shirts as we watch sailboats meander lazily across the horizon. 

   Licking sauce off my fingers, I notice the salt that seems to coat everything in this town, from lips, hair, and forearms to the bleached exteriors of the buildings.  With its advantageous position on the Adriatic Sea, the town historically played an important role in trade and commerce. To this day the sea remains fundamental in the daily lives of the Monopolitani, who take any opportunity to bathe in it, roast themselves on rocks, or enjoy some of the freshest seafood Italy has to offer. 

   Admittedly, there isn’t all that  much for a tourist to do in Monopoli, but leaning into the slow pace of life and appreciating what we usually take for granted is a central tenet of southern Italian philosophy. The town is ideal for a weekend break, or to stop off on your way to see the rest of Apulia and the south. A few days is the perfect amount of time to spend uncovering the town’s quaint churches and shops, lounging on its beaches and getting lost in the narrow, lamp-lit alleys.

   One evening we set up camp in a local bar, sipping Aperol under low-voltage fairy lights that glistened off our jewellery. A harpist plucks away in a nearby piazza, his music underscoring the locals who sit around us, passionately conversing in the thick local dialect that is so far from the straight-laced northern Italian we are used to. With a glass of wine in one hand, they gesticulate with a cigarette in the other, the hot tip of it darting through the night like a firefly. We share a silent joke among the seven of us, broad smiles tugging at our lips. It can’t get much more Italian than this.

Featured Image – David Bayne-Jardine

By Matthew Squire

It all started in Denver, the conclusion of a visit that was supposed to last a week, but quickly turned into two, spent in a small college town north of Boulder surrounded by friends. I’d just finished another summer of work in Northern Michigan, three months spent among dense forest, sleeping in a shuttered cabin and taking my morning bath in the lake, watching the sun rest on top of the trees to my east and the steam rise up off the lapis waves of Torch. 

It felt different this time. I’d spent three weeks of that work in the wilderness of Eastern Alaska, guiding a group of 16-year-old boys in sea kayaking and backpacking, something I could not help but return to in my head as I set up the ropes course for the 24th time that week. I had agreed to run the ropes as part of a bargain for the Alaska trip, and it was taking its toll on me. I needed to get out of the forest.

Denver was new, all I’d heard came from Kerouac, basement jams and midnight rendezvous with all types of women, seemingly replaced by a multi-storey airport and a skyway that led straight to the plains. I was waiting a while, perched atop of my backpack, containing four months’ worth of possessions and camping gear, waiting on a girl to come and pick me up. It was humid, something I hadn’t expected, and I was sweating under my cut-offs and hoodie, feet mercifully free and somewhat hobo-ish in my sandals, all my cares thrown to the wind after the nomadism of the past months. The woods do that to you, they push you to the boundaries of self-care, unshaven and ragtag, a gang of lost boys, pieced together in a technicolour of bare feet and football jerseys. 

She finally arrived and we bundled across the plains at night, with the promise of peaks I couldn’t yet see falling from her lips, stopping only to experience some American culture in the form of a monstrous service station where we stocked up on all kinds of things. After a wonderful piece of car maintenance in the form of duct tape, we headed north, arriving in Fort Collins to the open arms of new friends.

I spent the next week or so sleeping between the backyard and her bed, grateful to be in those arms again, spending my days walking aimlessly around the frontier streets as summer died all around me, hours sitting in front of college bars and the little house on Colter Street. Mornings were spent sat in a beat-up recliner on the front lawn, drinking off my hangovers and watching the freshmen trudge to class in their droves, trying my best to ignore my own return to study in a few weeks’ time. There was something to be done most every night, with frequent trips to the liquor store for yet another case of Miller High Life, a new delicacy I’d acquired since turning 21 in the great country, which served as energy to escape into the backyards of college houses for gatherings aplenty.

Before my trip to Colorado, I had agreed to spend some time in Boulder. Further into the Rockies and some 45 minutes down the road from the new home I’d found in FOCO, I slept on the couch of a friend of Ohioan extraction for a few days before my eventual departure from Union Station on a train bound for Seattle, a decision that was becoming harder and harder to come to terms with. After a short trip around the mountains and a short goodbye, I took up residency on a blown-up mattress in a one room apartment, sick not just from the altitude and resigned to spend my days doomscrolling. I knew I had to go back, and it was with a quick goodbye that I hitched a ride in the back of a truck with a few Carhartt-clad snowboarders back north to the doorstep of the little house on Colter, the door opening to reveal the knowing smile of someone awaiting my return as much as I had awaited hers. 

It ended outside Union Station, my bag at my feet and her face in front of me, an embrace and then she was gone, disappeared into the early morning traffic of downtown Denver as I took my leave between the grand oak doors of the station and headed to my platform. 

What followed was arguably the worst 63 hours of my life, spent hurtling across a continent, with my heart left behind me and only tracks in front of me. My headphones became my most prized possession and I was later informed by Spotify that I had listened to almost two days’ worth of music on my journey, much of it a ‘rolling folk festival’. I was tormented not only by the sounds in my ears, but by what I could see through the scratched-up Perspex to my right, sloping plains, old schoolhouses, naked drifters bathing in rivers, vast forests and grand canyons, taunting me in scale and leading my mind back to the glaciers of Alaska, the forests of Michigan and the warm bed back in Colorado that my body was aching for.

I woke up somewhere in Northern California to a screaming baby, with the sun rising on the Cascades and my legs stiff from being still for some 45 hours of travel prior, the forest was blurry through my morning eyes as I got up to head to the viewing car in search of a coffee and something to eat. We rumbled over the border to Oregon, and I felt somewhat at home in the damp forest of the Pacific Northwest, the railroad facing single-storey homes with broken-down pickups and half-finished choppers in the driveways reminded me of Upper Peninsula Michigan, where people lived apart from society, unbothered by the nation. I dreamed of a future here, me and her, something out of a Neil Young song, racing down the cedarwood highways with her head on my shoulder and her hand in my hair, drinking in one-room bars and playing pool until time was called.

The train trudged closer to Seattle, passing through Portland and into Washington State, Mount Rainier growing ever closer in the canvas of my window, open fields giving way to car dealerships and homeless encampments, a brutal reminder of my return to society after so long apart, dragged kicking and screaming along the tracks back to the land of high-rise and the scream of life, all I wanted was to be screaming at the stars with a beer in my hand and her impression in the grass beside me.

Featured Image – Amtrak

By Edward Clark

After queueing for half an hour, bringing a bit of British tradition to the centre of Athens, we finally reached the entrance to the grounds of the Acropolis. The memory of midday’s sun was already fading in the uncharacteristically temperate afternoon air. I scanned my ticket on my phone and went through the gate.

‘This is a single ticket’ 

After some discussion with the Greek staff, holding up the line behind us, my dad accepted that he’d failed to buy five tickets and had only bought one. Through the fence, we agreed that I’d get our money’s worth and see the temple. I shouted that I’d see them later and so ambled on: alone, phone dead, sun just over the horizon.

Halfway up the trail to the Parthenon itself, I took a break at a bench, and looked up to find what appeared to be a small shrine, half-derelict. I remembered a poem that I studied at A-level. 

‘It was midday, mid-May, pre-tourist sunlight / In the precincts of the god. / The very site of the temple of Asclepius.’ 

Despite the fact that it was neither midday nor mid-May, I felt a sort of connection to Seamus Heaney and a nostalgia for my past self who romanticised the site two years earlier. Completely on my own, I had the opportunity to sit and bask in the sunset,  soaking in a pilgrimage site that had been renowned as a place of healing for hundreds of years. 

It did seem a bit smaller than I’d imagined. ‘The precincts of the god’ had stimulated images of a grand sanctuary in honour of Asclepius and Hygeia, not a small room. But no matter. I sat and focused, enjoyed my solitude – pilgrims to the Parthenon walked past, paying no attention to this seemingly inconsequential structure. 

‘They don’t know what they’re walking past.’ I felt a secret pleasure in being the only person to properly admire the Asclepieion. After ten minutes were up, I stood and read the sign- ‘This sanctuary was one of several Asklepieia in the ancient Greek world’. I’d misremembered the poem. The main site was at Epidaurus, a completely different city. And not one we were planning on going to. I moved on, unfazed: my ten minutes meditation didn’t seem any less spiritual.

Image Credit – Pinterest

By Sam Unsworth

Whilst wandering the streets of Jerez de Frontera last week, I chanced upon the bullfighting ring. While the gate was not open, nor was it the season for the spectacle, I was still intrigued to look around.  A small door broke the yellow walls and inside, an old man sat tampering with a photo frame. I knocked and went inside. At this point it is probably useful to mention that I speak little to no Spanish, and by little in this case I also mean none. Which strangely made this encounter all the more interesting. As I muddled through on Google Translate, I managed to ask for a look around, and what followed was an incredible story of bullfighting. Of bravery and pain, bravado and celebration, but also of cruelty. 

I have never truly had an opinion on the sport of bullfighting. The pictures of matadors dressed immaculately, flourishing a crimson cape, always looked appealing. However, it is difficult to look past what is often not shown in the photos. Stabbing at bulls with hooked barbs in a display of human dominion over beast, does not spark positive notions in the minds of most, myself included. Yet this experience of speaking to this man may have swayed me toward an opinion of tolerance or perhaps, an understanding as to why this sport is such a staple of Spanish culture. 

The ring itself was impressive, a modern-day Colosseum. The yellow sand masked the sprays of blood and the stands packed high, row on row, bearing down on the competitors. I was taken into the ring and the man, who now revealed himself as a former matador, began drifting and swirling in patterns around the arena drawing deep curves in the sand as he deftly manoeuvred his cape and sword. This seemed more like a dance or a ritual than a deadly game. The passion that he held for the games, and the esteem with which he spoke of other bullfighters, impressed the importance of the sport to not only him and his family, but to the community as a whole. 

There is a side however that is rarely seen: the inner workings of the ring. He took me through the swinging doors where bulls would charge through in the May festivals and through a small wooden fence winding our way through a network of hiding places and ratruns before entering a white room. The tiles of the room reflected the hanging bulb in the centre, illuminating the operating theatre. Every time there are bullfights there are injuries, some minor, some major, and some fatal. The host explained all this whilst tracing a scar that ran from his ankle to the top of his calf, the mark of his final bullfight. Moreover, he whipped out his phone and after scrolling YouTube furiously, spun it round to show a video. A matador leaps towards the horns of this bull with muscle and sinew bulging from its flanks. The man lands a stab at the base of the bulls neck, then falls. He scrambles on the floor as the horns of the bull rip his eye out. I stood in shock; the host however simply slowed the video and showed it to me again. It was utterly strange in my mind that this was something this man had devoted his life to. Then he pointed towards a poster on the wall. A matador with his face in his hands, almost modelling a sad clown, with an eyepatch obscuring his right side. This matador was still fighting. 

Despite all this, the host continues to support the establishment of bullfighting, even training his own son and nephews in the art. This is what I found inspiring about the man, that he would see this amount of violence and bloodshed, and yet continue to embrace this culture in order to uphold tradition and not allow this bastion of old Spanish society to be eradicated.

I appreciate that I have not necessarily given a balanced view on bullfighting here, and my account may purely come across as one of admiration. However, I think that you will have a far easier time finding articles that offer a wholly negative view towards these things than what I found in this encounter. This understanding was not something that I think I would have found by looking at a screen, but was found in the weather-beaten face of an old man who still had that thrill of the fight instilled in his eyes, that sense of adventure that never truly leaves you, and I must say it made me think twice about my views on bullfighting.

Featured Image: Sam Unsworth

By Jacob Cordery

“Who owns great works of art?” is a question posed by classicist Mary Beard. It’s a good venture into the flaws of identity politics in a world where things ranging from cuisine to museum exhibits are increasingly appropriated or stolen. In a globalised world it is hard to know who gets to own what, whether words, traditions or objects. Few examples display this better than the Parthenon (or for the traditionalists – Elgin) marbles.

The marbles displayed in the British Museum, taken from Athens, have become the poster child for dismantling Western colonial structures. But this misses the point – the marbles are not colonial spoils of war but always have been, and will continue to be, nationalistic propaganda.

Carved in the 5^th century BCE under Pericles, the marbles the British Museum have are some of the friezes, metopes and pediments that decorated the Parthenon at the peak of Athens’ imperial swagger. Scenes on the stone – like the Centauromachy – man triumphing over beast, civility over barbarism – cast the Athenians as superior and enlightened, most likely in symbolic comparison to their Persian rivals. The marbles are not neutral works of beauty, but obvious declarations of superiority over the East. Athens also subjugated other Greeks within her empire, the Parthenon itself housed the treasures of all the plucky Greek cities that had to pay tribute to Athens – out of obligation, and surprisingly not out of the kindness of their hearts. Ironically, sending them back to Greece would not subvert Western dominance but reinforce it – since they represent the very idea of the civilised West looking down on the rest. If Greece is the cradle of Western civilisation, then the Parthenon marbles are the cherished toys that still get thrown out the cot.

The legal story is equally hazy. In 1801, Lord Elgin, ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, received a firman which now only an Italian translation survives. The text states that “no opposition be made when they wish to take away some pieces of stone with old inscriptions and figures”. Questionable? Yes. Illegal? No. Elgin obtained the marbles from a state which no longer exists, before the state of Greece was conceived. There was Parliamentary concern that Elgin had abused his influence as ambassador, but this was considered mute when it was suggested the French might have taken the marbles if Elgin had not. When Elgin went broke, he sold the marbles to the British Government; Parliament grumbled but voted 82-30 to buy them for £35,000 – half of what Elgin wanted. Crucially, Elgin acquired them as a private citizen, not as a colonial looter.

That distinction matters. If the Museum returned the marbles, it would set a precedent for artefacts originally acquired privately or under grey-zone circumstances, to be returned – the J. Paul Getty Museum, The MET and half the Vatican would theoretically be empty – but where would their exhibits go? For example: take a Roman statue, commissioned by an Italian, made of Egyptian stone from a quarry owned by a Jew, sculpted by a Syrian, then painted by a Greek, all over two-thousand years ago – to which modern country should this return to? Repatriation is not a moral crusade; it is too often a modern projection of national pride upon ancient stone.

It is also different to cases of colonial theft, like the Benin Bronzes, ripped violently from what is now Nigeria through British colonial violence. That is a valid and just argument for their return. The marbles, however, were not looted. Several other museums, well actually seven, hold pieces of the Parthenon – why then is Britain the only villain in this story?

Much of the commotion comes from emotion. The ‘silent sister’ caryatid – one of the six female columns of the Erechtheion temple, that now resides in the British Museum – has been turned into a melodrama about exile and sorrow, and thrown in with the Parthenon marbles, just because it is also from the Acropolis. The sculpture is described either as a “lonely girl” or even a “diva”, trapped in a pseudo-empowering Madonna-whore complex. A solo cabaret by Evi Stamatiou even dramatized the loneliness of the caryatid in England and called for “her” return. In 1950 the British MP Julian Snow argued that the “poor girl” should be given back on the basis that Greece were “trying to create a new conception of democracy”.  It’s a great metaphor, but it is just that. A country with a monarchy that has constitutional power to dissolve democratic processes, cannot claim to reward democracy with marble. There is only one other problem with this – Greece has not actually asked for the sculpture back – the 2000 Greek petition refers only to the “repatriation of the architectural sculptures and structural elements of the Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens”. The caryatid is from the Acropolis, yes, but is “of” the Erechtheion, not the Parthenon. It cannot be allowed to be used as an emotionalised poster-child for the return of the Parthenon marbles. Repatriation deserves logic, not poetry.

Even if Britain wanted to give back the statues, it legally can’t. The British Museum’s Board of Trustees adhere to the British Museum Act of 1963, which restricts “de-accessioning” objects unless they are duplicates or fakes. Both the current British Parliament and the British Museum Board of Trustees are unlikely to back a reform to this act. For the marbles to be returned, the laws of Britain would have to be changed, which is left to quarrelling political parties, lobbyists and the whims of the few MPs that can be bothered to show up to Parliament. However, there is British desire to return the marbles, which takes the form of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles. The Greek government also ought and rejected advice for taking legal action to retrieve the sculptures, preferring a diplomatic approach.

That is not to say that the British Museum is not blameless. An overzealous “cleaning” in 1937-8 stripped away any remaining paint or patina, erasing history in service of a fantasy of Classical purity. And the argument that Greece cannot look after them is no longer valid, the new Acropolis Museum is as impressive as it is accurate, with its more authentic display of the remaining Parthenon marbles. Still, Elgin did not steal nor oppress – he arguably saved what the Ottomans stored gunpowder in, and what Venetian artillery had blown to bits in 1687. Furthermore, the British Museum is free, while the New Acropolis Museum charge €10-20.

Both sides have turned marble into ideology. Greece hide their nationalism with a thin veil of emotional victimhood; while Britain hides behind legal formality. Both claim virtue, but neither face the truth – there are no moral absolutes here, only pride in dubious Italian documents or cabarets that don’t really prove anything.

The debate is pervaded by people who would turn ownership of the marbles into a matter of nationalistic pride. If the marbles go back, it should be through collaboration, not guilt or patriotism. A cultural partnership (such as the Parthenon Partnership) could reflect what both sides say they care about – shared cultural heritage, not competing ownership; although, the minute the marbles set foot on Greek soil, I am sceptical if they will ever leave. Until the day of their demise, the marbles will continue to do what they have always done – reflect the politics, pride and vanity of those who claim to speak for civilisation. 

Featured Image: The Times

By Toby Dossett

Kandy

You arrive in Kandy, porous with travel fever. It’s your first time in Sri Lanka, and you could build temples out of the things you don’t yet know about this pearl of the Indian Ocean. The heavy air is filled with the yawns of dogs and the groans of traffic. It’s 07:15 on a random Tuesday in June and you find yourself in the queue to put your sandals away, before entering the Temple of the Sacred Tooth. You hand a thousand rupees to the attendant with a scribbled white beard, then step inside. The revered Buddhist temple was originally built in the 16th century within the Royal Palace Complex, and shelters what is believed to be the sacred tooth of Gautama Buddha. The stone steps, worn smooth by pilgrims, press history into your soles as incense curls through the courtyard. Milk, rice, and lotus flowers are offered reverentially by those who queue to see the sacred left canine through the golden hatch on the upper floor. It’s said that the tooth carries both spiritual and political power, with guardianship of the relic historically linked to the right to rule over the island. After the hatch closes, you follow the queue downstairs and head back outside into the powdery rain. A class of schoolchildren dressed in white, a cyclist, and two wiser women with umbrellas thread across your field of vision – all squinting as the downpour thickens. You collect your sandals, dart across the temple gardens, and slip into a tuk-tuk with a fleeting silver crown of monsoon mist.

Fifteen minutes from Kandy city lies your next stop: the Royal Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya. 

Established in 1821, under British colonial administration, and spanning more than sixty hectares, the gardens cradle over four thousand species of plants, many of which are endemic. You queue again for a ticket, which costs one two hundred rupees, and follow the main path until it opens into a wide green bordered by tall, lean trees. Sunlight settles like benediction on your skin, and the air hums with chatter as families run across the sloping hill. You notice an elderly couple holding hands on a bench (her head nestled perfectly into the nook of his shoulder) and a central wise tree that stretches its limbs across shaggy grass and toppled rock. Someone has placed stilts to support each branch’s reach; the leaves gleam a grateful, glossy green. You continue down the path and hear the strange screeches of what seems like a migration of birds. There’s no obvious fluttering in the sky, but on closer inspection you see the ornamental dangling of a thousand bats which adorn the canopy like living leaves that sigh and stretch in the afternoon sun.

Sigiriya

You set off early and drive north to Sigiriya, arriving just after eight. The air is still cool when you get out of the car, a slightly indecisive chill makes you wonder if you’ve dressed appropriately. Your driver seems to know everybody here, exchanging itinerant handshakes on his journey to the tourist office. Guarding the building are two extensive ponds brimming with lilac waterlilies that bathe in the water, acting as the perfect mirror of the pale morning. You follow the path into the water gardens and immediately see the large monolithic rock, a burnished orange and grey. The sun is just starting to peek out behind it, turning its jagged outline into a shimmer as if it had just caught alight. In the foreground the gardens stretch in symmetry, and a dusty nosed dog repositions as it agrees to an extra five minutes snooze. The ancient horizontal lines in the brickwork spiral out from the water and are cut through by the path of a white-throated kingfisher, who then perches on the tip of a fading lily. In awe you think, does a precious bird comprehend the language of its wings?

The climb begins through the remnants of the old city, between boulders etched with the faint impressions of ancient steps. You pass through the mouth of what was once a colossal carved lion and ascend the 1,200 perilously perched stairs to the summit. Sigiriya rises nearly two hundred metres above the plains as a massive pillar of granite occupying the valley. From the summit you can see the marvelling remains of King Kasyapa’s fifth century citadel, dating back to between 477-495 AD. Below you can trace the water gardens and then the surrounding landscape which is a mosaic of dry zone forest, rice paddies, and large wetlands. You then descend before the sun climbs too high and the winds grow wilder (you’ve already accidentally swallowed two flies). On the way down, you verge along the rock and up a narrow spiral staircase to access the rock’s overhanging cliff face. Enduring underneath, in muted ochre and coral pigments, are the famous ancient frescoes. 

Kandy to Nuwaria Eliya

You make your way to the station, buy your ticket (knowing you’ll never sit still for long), and find your place among the waiting crowd. Overhead, a crow’s nest tangled in wires squawks, mimicking the loudspeaker as it announces the next departures. You hear the distant toll of temple bells and stand for a second and listen to a city humming in minor chords. A man in white strolls down the platform and, with insouciant steps, crosses the tracks while the train pulls in. For a moment the rails inundate him and the world starts to be mesmerised by lines, sounds, and the texture of your tongue. The sharp crack of a horn, a baby waving from the window, a conductor’s whistle; you are thirsty and dazed. You board the carriage and take a breath. Now everything Kandy has been, its colour, its noise and its slow devotion folds itself away into rolling railway motion as the train departs.

The journey from Kandy to Nuwara Eliya coils four hours through the central highlands, going past waterfalls, veiled green tunnels, and tea fields fluent across the hills and dense forests. You abandon your seat and decide to stand at the open end of the carriage, where wind hurls itself at you and  wraps you tightly before vanishing back off into the hills. You wander carriage by carriage in search of the canteen cart, and hear music drift from ahead: a mix of ‘Rambarini’ on the radio and loud, idiomatic chatter. Hoping for a coffee (or maybe a beer,) you settle yourself down on a wooden bench beside the bar. You’re received by an open window that frames the passing world of small mountain villages that coruscate like an overexposed reel of film, strobing in light through the eucalyptus leaves. 

The train slows down, and the mist thickens as you near the platform. You step down and the altitude bites softly at your lungs, almost two thousand metres above sea level, crisp enough to make your hair lift and your thoughts clear. The town spreads before you as you walk up the main road, presenting facades painted in muted pastels, which prompt the town’s echoing colonial nickname of ‘Little England’. The population here is just under thirty thousand, yet the town brims with abundance that spills from tea leaf markets and roadside shops. 

Horton Plains 

At five in the morning, you leave Nuwara Eliya, when the town still feels half imagined in the dark. The minivan climbs up winding roads until you stop briefly on a copper-coloured ridge to see the slow unfurling of light across the topography. It takes nearly an hour to reach the first checkpoint of Horton Plains National Park; a brick archway marks the entrance, alongside a dark green UNESCO sign noting the park’s establishment in 1988. After paying the entry you drive the final ten minutes through tall dew-covered grass, where the antlers of a young sambar deer survey above the blades before disappearing again. Erroneously thought of as an elk, the sambar is native to the Indian subcontinent and, though red listed as a vulnerable species since 2008, still roams quietly over the central highlands in docile herds.

Boots laced, you begin the nine-and-a-half-kilometre loop clockwise through the silvered grasslands, the air thin and oddly metallic. After a turned descent, you detour five minutes from the trail down to see Baker’s Falls; a collapse of white water crashing across rocks before spilling into the valley below. Twenty minutes later, the path steepens before softly plateauing to reveal an eight hundred and seventy metre drop. Ahead, the subtle geometry of tea plantations expands, and you can make out the pale outline of the Uda Walawe Reservoir. Farther still, through promising quick mercies before the fog arrives, the horizon stretches all the way to the ocean.

Across the remainder of the trail, birds call out forlornly and flit between the lichen-spotted canopy: the Black-naped Monarch, the Grey-headed Canary-flycatcher, and the Yellow-eared Bulbul; amongst some that you can identify with binoculars. Near the end of the hike from above the valley, you watch a movement stir on the fringe of the forest; purple-faced langurs argue in short, impatient bursts. Their monkey sounds are carried into the wind and return the height of the plains to its original equanimity, as if the morning were beginning all over again.

Galle

You head under the main archway and Galle materialises diligently in stone: an old Dutch citadel first built by the Portuguese in 1589. Clinging to the curve of the coast, Galle is shielded by sun-worn ramparts and a series of bastions, surviving after the 2004 tsunami. You find the fort quite quick to walk round and decide to slow down by stepping into an old wooden doorway that marks the entrance of a poorly advertised museum. In the first room, you find a gallery of stamps and old bank notes alongside historic yellowing maps of trade routes, city plans and major roads. The frames catch light from the next room where, resting in tall glass cabinets, is an improbable collection of things. Old spectacles, typewriters, cigarette cases, pistols, delicate necklaces, cameras, fountain pens and porcelain are all housed in separate neat collections, reminding you subtly of the intense Western interference in Sri Lanka. Through the open door at the end of the room, you can then see out across the courtyard where a man with a tarnished magnifying glass inspects a precious gem. He twists it in his hand several times over, puts it down on the desk and then grunts, while another old man smokes a cigarette in a chair with armrests carved into tight wooden spirals. 

You walk the ramparts in the afternoon and think that the sea reflects too much light. So, you scan down to see children swimming in the bay, calling out to one another and jumping in from the edge (hopefully one of the deeper spots,) where the waves aren’t beginning to tumble and crash. Chirping parakeets wheel above the lighthouse, its white body frames the rest of the port in your field of vision alongside a great banyan tree that’s draped heavily with vines. You continue through the streets and arrive at the post office, where a woman in a sapphire sari slides a set of butterfly stamps across the counter. You slip them into your little book in exchange for some coins and carry on in search of a bar to watch the evening from. 

Close

You end your trip in Habaraduwa, a small town a few miles south of Galle that has a panoramic view of the sea with beaches less bustled with fishing boats. Earlier in the day you saw turtles in the breach of the waves and fishermen casting lines from stilts as you walked down the coast. You’re unsure how to end a travel article exactly, you’ve loved expressing the interstices of noticing all those small moments on your journey but are stumped attempting to express any grandiose revelations of your time here. You think how Sri Lanka was such a wonderful adventure, and sitting on a curly piece of driftwood as the sun sets, you write a short poem instead: 

The sea turns to copper
And the horizon is bent
A bow strung with light
Until the evening is spent
The palm fronds scribble
Against the shaken sky
As its hem is sewn shut
By the fish eagles fly
They thread clouds of gold
To crown the stretch of sand
While crashing waves unfold
On Sri Lanka’s southern land

Gallery

Featured Image: Toby Dossett

By Sam Unsworth

Images that have been dominating my small screen in the past few weeks ( for I am publishing this quite a while after these events ) are scenes unfolding in Barcelona, where locals are protesting against the waves of tourists that descend on Europe throughout the summer. From water pistols and red tape to the more intimidating smoke bombs, flares, and verbal abuse, it is clear that locals are thoroughly outraged. While we may laugh at the sight of some unsuspecting holidaymaker, adorned in a bumbag and golf visor, being soaked by an angry resident, we must understand the deeper issues affecting these hotspots — and why they should matter to us.

I am a frequent user of Airbnb and have logged a fair few points on Booking.com, but until now I had not fully appreciated the effect these chains are having on local communities. Protestors were seen holding signs reading “El teu Airbnb era la meva casa” — or “Your Airbnb used to be my home” — which illustrates the root issue. People are being priced out of their own homes, and as they are squeezed from city centres, so too is their culture. How often do we see Irish pubs or an English breakfast headlining streets and menus across Europe to cater to bland palates or one-dimensional interests? In my view, all too often. If locals are pushed away, then truly, what is the point of travel?

To use the Sagrada Família — which is, or will be when it is finally finished, a true wonder of the world — I believe that a traveller must look beyond the building itself to the people who built, designed, and laboured since 1882 to create such beauty. Surely this is the real wonder, and this wonder is under threat, as these are the same people now lining the streets in protest.

Tourism is integral to many areas, and it is a major part of the Spanish economy, making up 15.6% GDP in 2024. This makes it seem strange to expel such a money-making machine from one’s country, yet I think the behaviour of tourists differs so greatly. I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to squirt water at the summer crowds in Oxford or London as they trudge along awkwardly, lining up for a picture with something I see as part of my normality. I could argue that I put up with it, so surely those in Spain can do the same. Yet here, locals are not being excluded from city housing in the same way as those in Barcelona; people do not waltz around in swimsuits, drunkenly singing and causing havoc, nor do they push back against our culture. As such, the culture and fabric of Barcelona and Marbella are being deconstructed in a way dissimilar to that of British tourist cities or towns.

So, the real question is: what can be done? People will still holiday in these places, whether locals are unhappy or not, but can we do something as a collective to make us Brits abroad more bearable? Perhaps by utilising hotels or hostels to a greater extent, travelling to areas beyond the classic cities, and allowing culture to flourish both in city centres and rurally. Let travel open our minds to new things rather than seeking familiarity in foreign lands. More practically — as I was reminded by signs in Croatia recently — dressing appropriately, drinking respectfully, and generally not reinforcing the British holiday stereotype. Tourism can be a wonderful thing if it reinforces cultural appreciation rather than suffocating local traditions. To appreciate the views of locals and respect their space in their own cities may well be the best way to soothe the protests, as we, the tourists, look to understand the fears and worries of local populations.

Featured Image: Honor Adams