Virtual Tourist – Fergy's Rambles.

I finally make it to Newcastle.

Hello, hello and welcome back again to my apparently endless bout of writing posts which is surprising even me. After such a period of complete apathy and inactivity on the writing front, I must admit that this new burst of enthusiasm has rather taken me by surprise but I’m not complaining, I always did enjoy this before and am doing so once again.

I have no doubt in my mind as to what has prompted this fit of creativity (if indeed you find my rambling discourses here in any way creative) and that is a trip which began on the 19^th of May, 2022, scheduled for four days and which turned into about five weeks over a large swathe of Northern England and was hugely enjoyable, very rewarding and ultimately quite creatively stimulating as my latest flurry of entries here hopefully indicates so please allow me to tell you about it.

My thoughts on this, that and the other.

Hello again folks, thanks so much if you waded your way through the last offering as I know it was a bit of a saga but such is the way I write. My late Mother “gifted” me a Viking middle name to add to my Scottish surname and Irish forename. All these peoples are inherent storytellers and some of it must have filtered down through my genetic inheritance, at least I would like to think so even if I would not count myself amongst the bards or skalds of old. Others say that I just talk too much, which I think is far closer to the truth! I could use a very indelicate expression here but I shall refrain.

Bom Dia, bagels and Beer – Madeira #1.

Hello one and all and welcome back to my humble scribblings here on my blog, good of you to drop in and again a quick mention of my new readers in various parts of the world. According to my WordPress site, where I compose all this nonsense prior to posting on my site, I have now had visits from 45 countries although I only count it as 44 as I am not sure when the European Union became a sovereign nation, much as they might love to be regarded as such.

Regular readers will know that my last offering was a day-trip to Belfast, the city of my birth and I have any amount of similar days out to share with you but I thought I’d mix it up a bit so if you want to know where we are going this time then please read on although I suppose the title is a bit of a spoiler!

Some sad news, the Musicians Union and a few observations.

The days of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday the 6th, 7th and 8th June passed passed fairly unremarkably with me sitting in the back garden reading a succession of good books. My late Mother was a prodigious reader and instilled a love of reading in me. She left an extensive library at home which I still have not managed to wade my way through and my complete inability to walk past a charity shop without checking out the book section means that I have plenty of choice. Continue reading “Some sad news, the Musicians Union and a few observations.”

Last throw of the dice.

The very fact that you are reading this, if indeed anyone is, should be regarded as nothing short of a miracle.

The very fact that you are reading this, if indeed anyone is, should be regarded as nothing short of a miracle. Allow me to explain briefly as I am well aware that verbosity is one of my many failings, most of which I have only recognised relatively recently. Isn’t it funny how the passage of time gives you a much clearer picture of yourself? Continue reading “Last throw of the dice.”

The fun continues.

I have mentioned the “travel Gods” before on this blog which is unusual for an atheist like me and perhaps I am just lucky but I woke up on the morning of 27th March in what we call at home a “garret” room, the garret being basically the attic room where the serving girl lived. My first place away from home was a garret room with a great mate called Kevin (who incidentally taught me the rudiments of whatever culinary skill I may have, he having learnt it in the Merchant Navy) in a similar billet adjacent. I woke up this day with a slanted roof above my head, sunlight coming in the window and looked around to see a room that was certainly much better appointed than my 1979 version but I just got a feeling that the travel gods were on my side that day. Continue reading “The fun continues.”

A great day out.

I woke up in my rather lovely hotel on the morning of the 26th of May, hugely happy about the previous day’s events (if you do not know the full story I would urge you to have a quick wade through the very many previous entries in this journal if you think you can stand it) but to summarise briefly I was in Kempten im Allgau for what I though was to be the last of the Virtual Tourist meets, given birth to by the eponymous website. They were an annual and very well attended event and I was hoping they could continue with TravBuddy friends joining in and that is a theme I shall return to later. TravBuddy was the site that many of us had jumped to when VT was shut down but it has sadly also closed now as well. Continue reading “A great day out.”

I got there at last.

If you have been following this blog from the outset then, firstly, I thank you (not to mention sympathise with you for my inane ramblings) and secondly I will give a very brief explanation for anyone who has stumbled upon this page in search of information about Memmingen or Kempten. I had started off in very early April on what was meant to be a four day trip to visit a friend in the Netherlands and here I was nearly two months later in Bavaria and heading to meet a whole bunch of other dear friends. That is the potted version, the rest is fully explained in earlier blog entries here (and later ones hopefully) if you care to wade through sixty plus of them. Yes, it had gone on that long! Continue reading “I got there at last.”

I get to the other Halifax.

A word of explanation.

For those of you who may have stumbled upon this page accidentally, perhaps searching for information about leisure activities in Yorkshire, specifically in respect of canals, I offer a quick word of explanation here.

Virtually all of the content on the following pages was saved against the best efforts of an evil corporate entity who bought over a great website that I wrote for for 12 years and who are Hell-bent on being the only travel site online and will stop at nothing to do it. As this is my site and the content is meant to be in a more narrative style I shall attempt to edit as appropriate but I make no apologies for the fact that some paragraphs may read like reviews which is what they were originally written as. Certainly, at time of re-writing this here in November 2018 I am sure much of the information is out of date. I have attempted to verify if places mentioned are still functioning and will indicate where not but this is mostly a personal remembrance of a wonderful trip undertaken with great friends in the early Autumn of 2015. Continue reading “I get to the other Halifax.”

First stop on the journey.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is where the fun really starts.

I do hope you have come upon this page by way of the introduction I spent two weeks constructing and which represented the first entries on this brand new website which I have started in spite of a serious case of technical incompetence. Here it is. After those twin disasters I took this rather drastic step as I have had two commercial travel sites (Virtual Tourist and Travbuddy) closed down on me in just over a year and I do not want to achieve a terrible hat-trick so I am going it alone.

The site is predominantly travel themed and this represents my first actual travel blog referring to a wonderful trip I took to Lundy Island and other parts of Devon in the beautiful Southwest of England back in 2013. I have several reasons for choosing this as my start point and I shall explain my thinking here. Continue reading “First stop on the journey.”