Wayback
Embarking at Newhaven and first night at Compiègne
Hydration stop in the Jura
Seeing Mont Blanc fully-white rising above the cliffs, then the immense glaciers and the view along the Valais from the Forclaz made a huge impression on me. It wasn’t my first time in the Alps but it was my first on a motorbike that I’d ridden from London.
My Yam FJ750 was a year old and I set off with new tyres; it was riding great but these were my first attempts at mountain roads and it was a steep learning curve. Although there were frontiers with border police, they didn’t bother with bikers but the currency and language changed.
Pompeii and Vesuvius
Brindisi (I)
My camera stayed stowed for the overnight boat trip from Patras to Brindisi. We slept on the deck outside. Italy seemed so much tidier and lush compared to the parched Peloponnese. Brindisi even had palm trees, our first on this trip.
We next pitched tent outside Pompeii and explored the ruins, very hot. But we were now on a schedule to get back to London for work. Sleeping on the train was cheaper than camping and saved a day so we took overnight trains from Napoli (Naples) to Milano (Milan) and slept on the luggage racks in the corridor, then an early morning train to Brig in Switzerland and pitched tent in a comparatively luxurious campsite that I’d used before in Brig.
More photos: Pompeii - Kandersteg - Paris. Inter Rail 81 pt 3
Acropolis, Athens
Beograd, Yugoslavia
The train journey from Venezia to Athens was overnight; note the working steam locomotive in the engine shed in Beograd (Belgrade) even in 1981. Athens was a culture shock, a bustling business city, not only even hotter, another currency and another language but another alphabet so we had trouble even reading the signs. We stayed in a hostel and found we picked up crabs from the beds but enjoyed a boat trip for a day out to the island of Aegina.
More photos: Athens - Olympia - Kalavita. Inter Rail 81 pt 2
Arrival at Firenze (Florence) railway station (I)
Camping at Koblenz on the river Mosel, then Nürnburg (D)
An Inter Rail ticket gave almost unlimited travel on European railways for a month for the Under 26’s in the days before cheap air travel.
More photos: Kôln - Koblenz - Firenze - Pisa - Sienna - Venezia. Inter Rail 81 pt 1
I enjoyed a week hiking on the Indian Ocean island of La Réunion in November 2008. The hiking in and around volcano craters was spectacular but the climbs were tough. I stayed first at Saint-Gilles-les-Bains, the first couple of days were cloudy in the mountains, eventually I got a hike up from le Maïdo. Then I moved to Cilaos, but had to return early due to an Air France strike.
