Category Archives: Travel

The C Word

Posted on by David Lloyd

...if my calculations are correct...

People who (unlike me) have made it past the “Big Bang” chapter of A Brief History of Time tell me that, way into the future, we’re heading for a Big Crunch

I’ve got news for them. It’s already happening.

I’m not talking about the moment the Universe will contract in on itself, like some cosmic Rosemary Conley hip and thigh diet.

No. I’m talking of a sinister foreshadowing down here on Earth. Like that moment in a Keanu Reeves disaster movie when he notices a little blip on a seismic read-out and his friends in Government tell him that, if he wants to avoid snarl-ups on the turnpike and panic buying of Wonderbread, he should shut the flip up.
Continue reading →

A Supposedly Fun Thing We’ll All Be Doing Soon

Posted on by David Lloyd

Hey, Martha, is this Liverpool or Dublin? I used my itinerary as a Tena Lady.

Ten years ago, you could still find a cove or a harbour of some sunkissed isle that wasn’t crammed with luxury liners from April to October. No more. Now, they’re so crowded with cruise ships that, from Google Earth, they look less ‘idyllic horseshoe lagoons’, more ‘Ken Dodd’s teeth’. Continue reading →

In Search of Santa

Posted on by David Lloyd

what's the opposite of the Trafford Centre?

A decade ago, Rovaniemi’s corrugated  airport – three and a half hours away from Liverpool – saw little in the way of international flights. Now, in December, it’s better connected than Alan Yentob. And, since they’ve cracked down on his licence-payer funded soirées, arguably a more inviting place hang out.

There has to be a good reason to travel to this straggling industrial town, so far north, at this time of year.

And, according to the ‘Lapland Experience’  brochure,  if you really want to remember a time when images of a white Christmas didn’t automatically include Simon Cowell’s teeth, and when The Guinness Book of Records actually celebrated the highest, fastest and strongest, and not just how many profiteroles Fearne Cotton can squeeze up her nostrils for Comic Relief,  this place is your instant refresher course. Continue reading →

Why Dubai is an un-Sound City

Posted on by David Lloyd
1233942160

Kendal's finest. Apart from me.

Is it right that, in a week when a gay man gets beaten almost to death, a Liverpool music festival is about to prop up the tourist economy of a country which employs a special task force to ‘combat’ homosexuality and other ‘indecent acts’ from taking place in public. A country which sides with Nick Griffin’s stance – that  ‘to see two men kissing in public was ‘creepy’? And that this festival – and its line up (Echo & The Bunnymen, Doves and Super Furry Animals etc) does this all for money?

It’s great to see Liverpool Music Week packing in a selection box of goodies again this year.

They call this shindig The UK’s biggest indoor winter music festival. I guess 390 acts in 80 venues takes some beating. But here’s the thing – the festival’s highlights aren’t the paid-for big ticket items.  The really exciting stuff is – miraculously, and wonderfully – totally free.  The Wild Beasts, Field Music, The Bays, Maps and Grammatics. For zero pence.

Liverpool Sound City, likewise, had lots of great free stuff earlier in the year. But how do festivals like this support themselves? Well, in the case of Sound City, they take their show on the road, to franchise new territories. And that’s when you start to wonder…is there any such thing as a free launch?

Next month sees the people behind the phenomenally successful Sound City take their show on the road. To Dubai. The Emirate where money buys you anything. Except a conscience. Continue reading →

Shangri-La, just outside Stoke

Posted on by David Lloyd
In Skye, no-one can hear the scree

In Skye, no-one can hear the scree

There was a programme on BBC last night – Horizon – which featured a clueless mathematician trying to find himself. In the process, he took three transatlantic flights, two flights to Germany and one to Sweden. And, after his travels, we (and he) were none the wiser.  That’s what’s called a non-event Horizon, I think. Travel didn’t broaden his mind, but it did make his carbon footprint the size of the Ross Ice Shelf. Continue reading →

I Left My Heart in Cowes

Posted on by David Lloyd
Cowes High Street

Cowes High Street

I was on the Isle of Wight last week. It was bloody brilliant. The isle, for many, is like a time capsule, a pickled curio of how we used to live, back in the 50′s or something. Well, I guess that’s how the Tourist Board promote it. I disagree. I do tend to, usually.

I think it’s an experiment in how we should be living in the future. And if so, I can’t wait to get there. Continue reading →

Eastern Promise

Posted on by David Lloyd
Main Square. Tallinn.

Main Square. Tallinn.

Less than an hour ago, at Helsinki airport, I’d paid £3 for my first coffee of the day. Now, a 40-minute hop over the Baltic later, I was parting with 30 pence for cup number two.

I was in Tallinn airport, Estonia’s shiny new international gateway and, despite the hour, the airport bar was doing a brisk trade in pure Estonian vodka – also at pre-war prices. Evidently, if you’re a Finn intent on getting smashed, it’s cheaper to get a return flight to the pub. Continue reading →

The Outer Hebrides

Posted on by David Lloyd
Stornoway. Night

Stornoway. Night

It’s midnight, Saturday in Stornoway.

At the Hebridean club, on the seafront, the makeshift dancefloor is overflowing – the DJ has weaved The Proclaimers’s Five Hundred Miles into a Tiesto remix and the crowd are lapping it up.

Midway through, the lights are snapped back on before the short-sighted siblings can sing another verse. Firedoors are flung open onto the blustery promenade. If there’d have been a carriage in the car park, by now it would be pumpkin-shaped.
Continue reading →

The Maldives: Paradise Lost

Posted on by David Lloyd
The Blue Lagoon

The Blue Lagoon

Throw a stone at a room full of newlyweds and, chances are, it’ll hit a couple who have just come back from the Maldives.

These pancake flat islands are where knee-jerk tourists go. They’re the place you splutter out when asked ‘where would be your dream holiday destination?’ by a regional reporter on a slow news day.
Continue reading →

Spitsbergen

Posted on by David Lloyd
Getting ready for the expedition

Getting ready for the expedition

Like laundry on a final spin I’m thrown around inside a four-by-four with tyres the size of Hampshire. I bite my lip, bang my head, and try to focus on the horizon as I shudder along roads that can only be described as ‘off’.

I’m in a land about halfway between Norway and the top of the world. And my journey’s just begun…

Continue reading →