When going into a combat situations most troops arm themselves with a weapon or two. Assault rifle here, flare or two there and even a couple of grenades ready to pull the pin on should the need arise. To my knowledge however, no soldier has ever been stood in front of his commander and told to carry, and have ready to deploy at ALL TIMES, that most reliable of weapons: emergency bread. 'RIGHT', said Violeta as she handed over bikes to a friend and I in Bran. ‘The first thing

In the Spring of 2024 it was fair to say that the cow poo had somewhat hit the wind turbine in my neck of the woods. One of my closest...

Absolutely ravenous and not exactly smelling as fresh as a daisy I stared blankly at the food in the petrol station chiller cabinet in front of me. I was trying to pull off the air of a clean and polite trans-Korean cyclist in front of the freshly scrubbed till operator but I’m not sure he was buying it. In fact, as he kept darting in and out of the back room, I’m pretty sure he was either gasping for breath or checking his box of air freshener and calculating just how much h

Any tour operator worth his salt will tell a cyclist pedaling the 633km from Seoul to Busan to give Daegu an extremely wide berth....

In early March, after a long cold winter, a couple of friends and I were in dire need of some winter sun. And so we decided to go for a short but tropical cycling break. To Dartmoor.   And boy, what a break it was. It broke our legs, it broke our backs and pretty much broke our desire to ever climb 1,484 feet in the hammering rain ever again. But did it break us? Let's take a look through the square window (with windscreen wipers) shall we?    Dartmoor in March is a land for

As a general rule, it is better if pilots don’t get lost. For a start, it’s not that easy to pull over, crank down the window and ask for directions. Secondly, last time I looked there weren’t petrol pumps in the sky so extra miles isn’t always a good thing. And finally, its generally more relaxing for passengers to get where they wanted to go in the first place. If however, you find yourself in the situation that I was in, 5,000 feet up in the air in a tiny Cessna, 70 minute

If you look on Letting Agency websites targeting students there are often sections with tips on how to room share with strangers. Useful pointers like, ‘respect your housemates’, ‘agree on a bathroom timetable’ and ‘schedule time for yourself in shared space’ are carefully listed out. And very useful they are too (well, actually, I think they’re a) pretty obvious and b) pretty stupid). However, if you look up on Google, ‘how to room-share successfully with a frog’ it will com

It is a well-known fact that the Indian Ocean is home to some serious big hitters when it comes to tropical islands. The Maldives, Mauritius and Seychelles are as famous as they are beautiful, and let’s not forget about exotic old Zanzibar. However, if you asked me if I could chose any island to go to in the Indian Ocean (and yes, I’ve  stayed on all of the above) then I would chose the Mafia Islands. Every. Single. Time. Why? Well, for a start, have you heard of the Mafia Is

‘Yeah, I think we should split up’ This delightful curveball came hurtling in from left-field, or should I say left-tent from the man who at 29 years old, I thought I was going to spend a fairly large proportion of the rest of my life with. BAM. Bloody brilliant. Not. I was at the time, standing in a large tent at the foot of the Mahale Mountains. Precisely 5,363 miles from home and in the middle of a research trip for a new program which I’d stuck my neck on the line for. An