It’s approaching 2am on a relatively mild and cloudless September night. I’m halfway down the side of Pirin Peak, the 2554 meter (8400 ft) summit that forms one of the countless climbs on the 160 kilometre Pirin Ultra Marathon.    I am almost alone. I can see just one solitary headlamp ahead of me through the dark, perhaps a mile away down the mountain. And […]

Spare a thought, if you will, for the newly born Guillemot. It begins its life high above the sea on a rocky cliff-face.  Just weeks after hatching on the cold, wind-swept ledge, the chicks are ushered to the edge… and pushed off.   You can almost hear the mother Guillemot squawking “Fly, my pretties. Fly” as she pushes her offspring over precipice. The narrow ledge, […]

When I first applied for the Hardrock Hundred Endurance Run, the entry process was still somewhat convoluted. Not quite as preposterously convoluted as the still ‘secret’ entry process for the now famous Berkley Marathons but it was still somewhat of a faff. In October each year you had to download and printout a paper form. This needed to be completed in black biro and returned […]

These are difficult days for the Labour Party. For the wing of the party who aren’t natural Corbynisters, they’re doubly difficult. Difficult firstly because we’re heading into an election with a leader and set of policies which we think are stuck in the past. We see a floundering government and a Labour leadership failing to provide a credible alternative. Doubly difficult because this wing of […]

There’s a quote that’s been doing the rounds a lot recently.  It’s generally attributed to George Bernard Shaw. But in this newfound world of fake news, it’s a bad idea to believe anything you hear attributed to anyone. But fake attribution aside, all that really matters is that it was said by someone.  And I repeat it here: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; […]

Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava might have nearly bankrupted the city of Valencia, but I challenge anyone visiting the City of Arts and Science in Valencia not to say… it was worth every billion.  

Have you ever woken from a deep sleep on a flight to be momentarily disorientated?  Briefly unsure where you’re going to or where you’re coming from? You try to narrow things down, but your surroundings don’t give away any clue as to which airline on you’re on. Even the crew fail to give the game away. It can’t just be me that finds airlines have lost so […]

It’s been a long day. You’ve rushed through the overheated airport and found your way to the gate, where your flight is already boarding. You hurry down the jetway and squeeze your bags into the overhead locker; plonk your weary self into your seat and wonder if the seat has got narrower or you’ve got wider.  As you relax, feeling rather chuffed that you’ve made […]

How many times have you sat through a meeting that’s overrun? Worse still a meeting that has overrun but which still hasn’t reached any conclusions? The problem is often blamed on bad chairing. To be sure, too many meetings are badly chaired. But the real problem is that people speak without anything to say.  So meetings roll on without getting anywhere. Meetings are not the […]

As I potter about London on my bike, I often find myself worrying that being a cab driver in the capital can’t be much fun. Stuck behind the wheel of a stuffy London black cab; stuck breathing in the fumes from the cab in front; stuck in traffic and with hundreds of cyclists scooting just inches away from your stationary vehicle can’t be that enjoyable. […]

The first experience many people have of China’s rapidly expanding railway network is ironically not on the railway itself but hovering some three inches above it. The Maglev – or magnetic levitation train – whisks you the 30kms from Pudong International airport to a metro station a stones throw from the city in just eight minutes flat. As the train breathlessly accelerates to 430kms per […]