Leaving Buenos Aires I went on a road trip that would have me constantly reaching for my passport like a child into his Christmas stocking as I journeyed through Argentina, Uruguay, Argentina again, Brazil, Paraguay and then returned to Argentina. First was the Argentinian town of Tigre, which sits on the delta of the Rio Plata, meaning one of the key attractions is a boat ride through the delta to explore some of the islands. I had met a local guy, Arturo, in the hostel and he recommended a great little restaurant that I should go to for lunch, and then the next day he was free and so he suggested we have a “tourist day” together. He was a really interesting guy: although he was born in Tigre, he had lived in Germany for many ... read more

September 2012 brought round my 30thbirthday, and I managed to convince 6 mates to spare the cash and the time to head out to Barcelona with me for a long weekend to celebrate. We'd moved a little more upmarket than previous trips, and after a lot of searching seemed to have found an amazing apartment complete with massive roof terrace that would do the trick. On arrival we decided to break up the walk from the metro terminal to the apartment with a quick beer – we'd certainly earned it (!). Thus, about 2 in the afternoon we were discussing as a group how we were in Spain now, and we needed to pace ourselves. People only go out around midnight so we couldn't go hard like English tourists and be tucked up in bed by ... read more

After Dan Gent made the big decision of asking Em to marry him, he then made a crazy request in asking me to be his best man. It was a request I was honoured to accept, and of course along with a host of surely important things that I'd have to do there was one task that stood head and shoulders above all the others – organising the stag do!! After a few early ideas were rejected (apparently a motorcycle trip through Vietnam is just TOO dangerous 6 weeks before a wedding!!), we settled on living life as rock stars for 3 and a half days by hiring a rock band tour bus to take us on a road trip to Amsterdam and Brugges!! The only slight snag was that we were pretending to be a ... read more

My main holiday of 2011 involved beating the November blues by heading off to sunny Mexico for a few weeks. My friend from uni, Julia, had settled in Mexico City with her boyfriend Ruben, and was always keen for people to come out and visit her (and even if she wasn't I kind of invited myself!!) which meant I had friends to stay with in Mexico City as a base for my exploration. I had previously visited D.F. and the Yucatan peninsula on my travels in 2005, so I was hoping to strike out to places new to the north and west. The general plan was to base myself in D.F. at the weeekends when Ruben and Julia were free, and head off during the week on road trips to see more of the country. By ... read more

Boys club was off again on its annual snowboarding trip, but this time the number of Basingstoke originals had dwindled and new recruits Bennett, Diamond and Tommy has swelled the ranks so we were back up to eight people. Given the dire snow reports from around Europe for the whole season, we'd left our booking late and gone for Les Arcs, a high altitude resort stretching up to well over 3,200m with decent snow conditions virtually guaranteed on these upper reaches. The chalet was the now required self catering option, but this time we'd gone for a chalet apartment type vibe, a self contained 8 person chalet within a much larger chalet building with shared communal facilities such as the sauna, steam and swimming pool (which were most welcome at the end of each day!!). Once ... read more