…
Category: Posts
Living With Clive.
EXTRACT: I clung on in my rickshaw as we navigated our way across Chandni Chowk, eventually arriving onto a flowing, but still precarious, boulevard that approached New Delhi. At regular intervals, there were advertising hoardings that hailed the coming week as ‘Delhi’s Police Safety Week’. ‘We want you safe’, the posters proclaimed. Although, like that columnist, who dreamed of a return to Eden, surely this was just a pipe dream. Also, why from my own point of view, couldn’t that very week be Safety Week, goddammit? Why should I have to wait until I was no longer in the country?
I returned to old blighty in the early days of 2000. Completely unexpectedly, in the space of five months, I moved house across the English Midlands, putting roots down in the market town of Shrewsbury. I bought an 18th Century Georgian house in the town centre, in the shadow of the looming spire of Saint Aulkmund’s church, which dominated the skyline. The house was a grade II listed building; A desirable bachelor’s pad, on four levels and physically attached to a pub….
My Pretty Peggy Sue
(A USA meets the UK travel tale)
EXTRACT: ….. An hour later we were stood outside one of Peggy’s favourite refreshment spots and it soon became apparent why.
Unsuitably dressed in mufti, we entered the foyer of the Hilton International hotel.
We caught the lift up to a cafeteria area and took our seats by a window that looked down onto the streets below. Now, this wasn’t something as low lying as say the fifth floor. It was more like the forty-fifth. The views across the Seattle skyline, with all its futuristic illuminations was truly spectacular. It was the daddy of all views, gazing down onto just about every other building in the city and out across the straits of the Puget Sound. Our tour was reaching its end and we had the most impressive seats in the metropolis.
“Oh, the best is yet to come,” Peggy said. Although, I couldn’t see how it could get any more spectacular than this. Then we heard a distant roar….
Book Review: Imperium, Ryszard Kapuscinski
Kapuscinski is a child in 1939, when the Soviets invade eastern Poland. On various occasions, he hides with friends in bushes by railway sidings, observing the deportation of families. His school class size shrinks daily, and then one morning, his teacher is amongst the disappeared. Later, by the side of the tracks, Kapuscinski hears his teacher calling him through the slats of a container wagon. He has been impounded, ready for deportation. It is the last time the young boy sees him……
My Beating Heart – An Orkney Travel Tale
EXTRACT: Orkney Island, Scotland …..The shoreline was now strewn with rubbish; not just newspapers and carrier bags, but rusting tin drums and petrol containers. I walked for a further mile along this stretch, hoping that this threat to Orkney’s natural beauty would soon recede. In the distance I could see a farmhouse at the top of some fields. I stopped by a burnt out car and viewed the building through my binoculars….
theancienthighway.com – in miniscule
The following posts should give you some kind of flavour of the content you can find on theancienthighway.com. They provide a sample – within a few lines, or more – of the nature of writing that is held across our site. We hope that this will encourage you to dive in for a deeper read!
Naturally, much of the material on this website is copyright. However, at the end of each post or page is a PDF button, enabling the printing or saving electronically of all articles held within, for offline reading.
Book Review: The Age of Kali (William Dalrymple)
Modern Classics – Travel literature book review – The Age of Kali , William Dalrymple, 1998.
William Dalrymple’s first book, In Xanadu, assumed classic status in the world of travel literature when it was published in 1990. It was the tale of his swashbuckling and erudite journey across the Middle East, Asia and China, accompanied by two other fresh-faced Cambridge graduates.
He then settled in Delhi for several years, from where he wrote and published an engaging portrait of the place, City of Dijanns. Dalrymple then collected a series of reflections, largely on India, some on Pakistan, which he made the basis for his book, The Age of Kali – Kali is a Hindu god of destruction, which sets the path for much of what follows in his book.
These collections though are not the leftovers from his other works. Deeply troubling and much more than the scholarly works of a former student explorer, they represent a very courageous collection of stories. For these, he has travelled far and wide to talk to those who have challenged the status quo across the Subcontinent’s villages and cities, often getting caught up in a world of violence and corruption.
The Lonely Heart of Darkness – A Moroccan Odyssey.
It is a November evening in 1990 and I am stood in an oak panelled bar in Seville’s Barrio Santa Cruz neighbourhood. The mahogany bar counter is covered in white chalk marks, each dash representing a beer consumed by the patron stood in front of it. There are several rows of customers stood along the length of this counter. Keeping track of which tally relates to each customer is difficult to all but the trained eye. Occasionally a bartender looks up amidst a swirl of tobacco haze and not spotting anyone immediately in front of a set of etchings wipes the slate clean with a damp cloth.
I have travelled down to Seville on the overnight train from Madrid. Breaking my Journey in this large Andalucian city is part of a wider personal mission, one which has always been at the back of my mind since before the start of my footloose Independent travelling days – I am determined to get to Morocco. This part of sub-Saharan Africa has always held a fascination for me ever since, well, boyhood. All those images of desert forts, staccato designed mosques, and teeming souks have stimulated my mind for many a year. Most of all I have always had a burning ambition to make it to what surely has to be its showcase city, Marrakech.
But what lies behind the pulling power of Marrakech? Yes, I’ve always associated it as being part of the hippie trail, flower-power, days. But much more than this, the very sound of the city’s name, and in particular just getting my tongue around its last syllable (with a strong emphasis on the ‘shhh’ bit), well it seemed that no place on earth could have a name like this, without it being extremely exotic. One day, god damn it, I would make it there….
An Addictive Foe – Travelling in Search of a Bat and a Ball.
One June Saturday morning in 2019, I received a random email from Sky Sports. Its author hoped that I was enjoying the cricket World Cup and invited me to sign up to Sky Sports Cricket for a reduced rate of £10 a month. Actually, I didn’t have a clue that the World Cup – already half-way through – was even taking place, so non-existent was my attention to cricket. But it did cast my mind back to an enjoyable two days I spent in 1999, when the same tournament took place, again in England. I was very fortunate, courtesy of an unmentionable wheeze, to have a friend gain me admittance for free to a couple of fixtures that featured a range of international stars.
But these memories had receded to the back of my mind, until that Sky Sport’s email popped up. Well come on, I told myself, it’s only a tenner, and you might even get some satisfaction out of it.
That day, I watched in wonder as Carlos Brathwaite swung his bat for the West Indies, nearly orchestrating a mesmerising come back against the Kiwis. I was staggered at the courage on display. He was like a tenacious whirl wind, who stared adversity in the face and didn’t bat an eye lid.
An Ode to Travel Blogging
“Get your ass off home, right away,” Scott had said, “and set up a travel blog for all your stories.”
We were sat at opposite ends of a bench during Lockdown in the shadows of the ruins of Old Saint Chad’s church in Shrewsbury, England.
I jumped to attention and scuttled off back to my abode, but quite frankly, I hadn’t a clue as to what a travel blog was. I had vague recollections of people I knew setting up an online diary, so that they could pontificate about anything and everything to do with their daily existence, from the best deals they had discovered down at Marks & Spencer’s, to their views on war in Lebanon. But he wasn’t really expecting me to do this, was he? And anyway, I wasn’t sure exactly where Lebanon was…