Tomorrow we bid our final farewell to Georgia, crossing into Russia for the big haul eastwards. Georgia has been a blast- not a single rainy night, the only train we encountered was Stalin’s and that wasn’t at midnight, but the country will long remain on my mind as being on a bold journey to break […]
The first country to sample on this leg of our never ending world-by-bike motorcycling traverse has been Azerbaijan. Despite a corrupt road police force the people have been absolutely marvellous – friendly and welcoming – and most humbling, so many have refused to take any money for services rendered. Nobody will accept our ‘keep-the-change’ and […]
In contrast to the rest of Azerbaijan, the capital city Baku is as modern as any city and demonstrates all the glitz befitting an oil kingdom. From the abundance of Maserattis, to the Paris-meets-Dubai architecture, through to the proliferation of restaurants and bars it is difficult to reconcile the Azerbaijan’s capital with the dirt poor […]
Spent too much of today playing cat and mouse games with Azeri cops. Four cars of them in total trying to pick out the tourist amongst the traffic for a misdemeanour they could extract a bribe for. We were down to 20kph at times with one cop car tailgating us and another in front. Their […]
Well it started out like that but ended up being a day of fines. Despite there not being a cloud in the sky Georgian Customs managed to rain on our parade by fining us NZ$500 per bike for “overstaying”. Spread over the 10 months we’d left our bikes parked up in Tbilisi since the end […]
In Dublin’s Fair City … .. where the construction cranes are so pretty. The Irish republic is having a fair economic boom right now, with economic growth on a par with that of China. Difference is that Irish GDP per capita puts it amongst the richest seven countries in the world (as is Norway) – […]
In Dublin now, not long until our return to NZ, having spent 2018 so far pretty much wandering the globe. Hopefully glimpses of summer are starting to appear there so our quest to have a retirement of continuous summers gets off to a good start. We’re not back abroad until we get back on the […]
Built in 1897 as his summer residence on his father’s shooting estate by the owner of one of Lancashire’s satanic textile mills, this example of grotesque late Victorian excess is positioned similarly to Kinloch, Lake Taupo – just off the beach at the head of a sweeping bay. But that’s where the similarity ends. Kinloch […]
Orkney – Nowadays the Shetland’s poorer cousin This archipelago of 70 islands, to the southwest of the Shetlands made up 5/6th of Margaret of Denmark’s dowry – largely because its fertile soils supported more farming than its northern cousin. Today that relative valuation would not hold up, thanks to the discovery of North sea oil […]
So now we’re on the Shetland Isles, ironically these are closer to Norway than they are to Scotland – and we certainly passed a surfeit of oil rigs as we sailed across from Bergen – the Norwegian footprint is quite extensive. Of course that’s been the case for far longer than the discovery of North […]
