Nomad Field Notes
The long way round, written down.
Photographs and short stories from cities, coastlines and long train rides.
Currently in PortoEleven hours from Zagreb, and what it costs
The slow train is 34 euros and the fast one does not exist. There is no buffet car, so buy bread and a litre of water at the kiosk on platform two, and sit on the left for the first four hours because that is the side the sun is not on.
Everything between the towns is maize and sunflower and long straight ditches. Twice we stopped for eight minutes at stations with nobody on them. I filled two pages and then just watched, which I think is the better use of the ticket.
Read the full entryThree days of walking the wrong way round a peninsula
The bus drops you at a roundabout with a closed cafe and a sign that points inland, which is how I ended up doing the Arrábida ridge backwards. It cost me a morning and gave me the only empty beach I have found on that coast in four visits.
You walk up through cork oak for an hour and then the whole bay opens at once, flat and absurdly green. There is a fisherman's track down to Portinho that no map marks properly. Take water. The last shop is in Vila Nogueira and it shuts at one.
Read the full entryRecent notes
- A ferry timetable that has not changed since 1994
- Six kiosks worth crossing Belgrade for
- On carrying one bag for eleven weeks
- The village in Alentejo with two names and one bar
- Trieste in the rain is the correct Trieste
- How to sleep sitting up, badly, for nine hours
- Notes on a coastline that keeps moving inland
Ljubljana goes quiet at about half eleven
I like a city best at the point where it stops performing. Around half eleven the bars along Trubarjeva turn their outside lights off one at a time and the river goes completely black, and you can hear the weir from four streets away.
I stayed at a guesthouse on Poljanska for thirty-eight euros with a window onto a courtyard full of bicycles. The woman at the desk drew me a map of where to eat that had one restaurant on it and a note saying "not Fridays".
Read the full entry