A diabetic, half-blind nine year old has done it. An eighty-three year old gentleman managed it for the sixth time. A lady tried it, beating a drum for the duration. Even Sir Ian Botham nailed it. Twice. Walking the length of Great Britain from Lands End to John o'Groats isn't as physically challenging as one might think. If these people can do it, then there's hope for everybody. The more I researched, the more I learnt about the variety of people who had completed this end-to-end walk. Others have rambled in the nude (taking five months to complete the journey due to repeatedly getting arrested), ran backwards and even trudged along with a wooden door tied to their back in remembrance of their father who was a carpenter. Walking from Lands End to John o'Groats isn't ... read more

A friend once informed me, after I ordered a pint of tap water in a bar, that I was the tightest person he knew when it came to splashing my cash. My arguments that I was just more careful with my spending fell on deaf ears. In high school I attempted the ‘bed head’ hairstyle several years before it came to prominence. Again friends questioned my behaviour, believing I looked not too dissimilar to a wet toilet brush. There have been many times in life when I feel I’ve been misjudged. Always priding myself on my positive attitude and the ability to look on the bright side of life, it came as a shock when a work colleague recently suggested I was negative and depressing to be around. I wasn’t being negative, just telling the truth ... read more

Due to the manic travelling conditions witnessed during Chinese new year celebrations, up until now I’d bought all my train tickets ahead of schedule. This hadn‘t been possible for my onward journey from Guangzhou to Guilin, where I was hoping to spend new year in the nearby town of Yangshuo, famous for its other-worldly karst landscapes. Thanks to a group of ‘entrepreneurs,’ who bought hundreds of train tickets to re-sell at inflated prices, tickets for travel originating in Guangzhou could only be purchased here, not nationwide. Arriving into Guangzhou, the main train station looked more like a refugee village than the city’s premiere transport hub. On the square outside the entrance thousands of people loitered. Others slept under tents on the hard concrete. Helpers handed out free food, water and chairs. Such images I’d expect in ... read more

In China there is a famous proverb. It says if you visit Huang Shan (Yellow Mountain), there is no need to visit another Chinese mountain. Many tourist destinations in China come with similar bold statements. ‘He who has never been to the Great Wall is not a true man’ is another. Catching the train from Nanjing, I was intrigued to see if there was any truth in these words. Sometimes I wish I would re-evaluate my policy of choosing the cheapest options available every time. Instead of travelling to Huang Shan in comfort and style for a few pence more, the penny-pincher mentality saw me purchasing tickets for possibly the slowest train on the entire rail network. Leaving at 5am in freezing conditions and lacking any heating inside, the 340km distance took over nine hours to ... read more

Hand on heart, if there’s one thing I can say I hate with 100% certainty, it’s Chinese train stations. I swear, if you sent all the rapists and paedophiles to a Chinese train station for a week, they would never re-offend for fear of similar retribution. Even in Chengdu, a place regularly frequented by tourists and independent travellers, I had to face the unenviable task of fighting elbows with elbows to make my way in to the waiting hall. Here I immediately became the number one source of amusement for other commuters. Migrant workers, returning home to their families for the Spring Festival period, sat next to me. Picking their noses, they played with their newly acquired booger like a toddler. Once bored of this act, they blatantly stared at me, as if I was a ... read more