Blog

• Dear people, you may want to subscribe to a different feed!: The business (basically a CRM database) passed into better hands in 2012. The site remains here for cannibalisation and amusement. Now, howsabout hiring a singing organ-grinder for your event in the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands or Spain?! RSS is here. (09/04/2015)
• Attack of the killer pheasant: With some folk geography and a would-be eggcorn. (30/10/2012)
• Video in Spanish by foreign language students warning against street crime in Barcelona: I thought the reënactments in the second half were rather good. One of the commenters, however, mistook the medium for the message and was seized by an attack of lust. (Via Robbed in Barcelona. Here's one I managed to photograph, in Vilafranca del Penedès.) (24/08/2012)
• Please God let Deutsche Bahn run Spain’s trains: For example, a decade later, Deutsche Bahn continues to offer better Spanish timetable info than Renfe, the data's owner, and in English. (23/08/2012)
• 21 today-ish: A quick pannieregyric to my Agu Sport Quorum canvas udders. (07/08/2012)
• Free walk west from Gatwick to Ockley station, for trains to London and south: Here. More photos some other time. (09/07/2012)
• Creative pyromania: The best way to avoid the repetition of Valencia et al's disastrous forest fires and create walkable woodlands. (03/07/2012)
• Introducing the Gaudí Experience theme park: "The genius, the mysterious, the controversial, the visionary, the innovative, the excesive... The Icon." (15/06/2012)
• Excellent mashup of the visible and the invisible on the Appian way: Robert Kaster & spouse did this, and much, much more, and the resulting book - thanks tender sender! - is thoroughly recommended. (And don't worry: seasoned jaywalkers won't find the first bit anything like as frightening as they did: they're drivers rather than walkers, and I'll bet a really pedantic researcher could dig out something (12/06/2012)
• Beyond spacetime: Dimension inflation in Girona, Spain. (28/05/2012)
• Ring cycle tour crash blossoms: Someone has forwarded mail from Martin Randall Travel offering "Ring cycle tours in Beriln and Seattle", and I guess there'll be a great flowering of this delicious ambiguity as we approach the bicentenary of Wagner's birth. Hardo Wagner makes touring bikes, R&B Wagner make bike racks, and Peter Wagner created the WhymCycle, but none of (24/05/2012)
• Extra Marseille guide needed: We need an extra native-English-speaking guide needed for occasional Marseilles tours with smallish (cruise) groups. You'll need an excellent knowledge of the history and culture of the city, fluent French, and an ability to customise your programme to cater for clients' interests and needs. Where appropriate you will receive training and help with devising satisfactory (20/05/2012)
• Free walk from Girona Airport to Riudellots train station: Filth, urban sprawl, prostitutes: what better way to recover from Ryanair? Here. (13/05/2012)
• Sonnet for Sassoon: Vidal "Bob" Sassoon has kicked his bucket His heaters lie forlorn upon the floor The king of Mayfair perms will mould no more And maidens weep from here to distant Phuket. He never cut no hair in grey Nantucket Those frozen coasts he found a dreadful snore Old Martha's vineyard was a filthy chore So west he rode and muttered "[unclear] Phuket." I (09/05/2012)
• More pics of the free Bournemouth airport walk: Here. (Brickfield is larger than Jacob Armitage's cottage, and Arnwood is between New Milton and Lymington, but use your imagination.) (21/04/2012)
• Ad: Over at the brutal Andalusian money-and-power blog, Ibex Salad, with apologies to Mr Bosch - his brilliant technique and his ability to weave conventional religious narrative into the most tremendous spectacles mean I feel slightly guilty ripping him off. I suppose there's always the possibility that he'll clamber out of the grave and come after (10/04/2012)
• Old China, new Spain?: With a rather nice & interesting group (honest!) from PRC in a train in up-state Gerona: The train stops and is invaded by children in uniform who sit down and start singing militaristic-patriotic songs. I don't know if scouting was banned in China, but their Young Pioneers are not what they were. Check. Coming into Celrà, in (08/04/2012)
• Free route description for 500km cycling tour of mountainous south-central France: Featuring bit of the Cévennes, part of the volcanoes of the Auvergne; the departments of Lozère, Ardèche, Cantal, Lot, Aveyron, and Tarn; and the regions of Languedoc-Roussillon, Rhône-Alpes, Auvergne, and Midi-Pyrénées. (06/04/2012)
• Announcing a 9-day tour of northern Spain’s industrial heritage in September 2012: Being a lengthy and wearisome personal declaration followed by two crucial links and an opera. (09/03/2012)
• A ruined textile workshop on the banks of the Llobregat: A macabre pleasure of the Llobregat valley over the past few years has being able to walk into the factories and workshops of this once great manufacturing zone as they close. The non-fixed assets are worthless, industrial space is not exactly at a premium, so why bother with human or canine vigilantes? Officially on a (08/03/2012)
• Pisa bar fined €1000 for charging Spanish tourist €26 for 3 * (coffee + brioche): Here. Apparently the barman thought the guy was from Barcelona and wanted to make him feel at home. Why on earth was crucifixion along the Appian Way abolished? (26/01/2012)
• Patrick Leigh Fermor on taking a town for the first time: With details of a free, self-guided walk from Schiphol Airport to Amsterdam's red-light district, for you, Sinterklaas, and all others of exceptional holiness. (24/01/2012)
• Free self-guided walk from Barcelona airport to Barcelona: Via the Llobregat delta, the Mercabarna wholesale food market, the Nissan car factory, a lively Sunday clothes market, decaying light industry and remains of slums, and the cemetery and castle of Montjuïc. (02/01/2012)
• Bad Santa vigilante hits crime-ridden Barcelona: In c/ Parlament. Ms Santamaria (geddit) gasped in alarm, but Santa didn't blink. CC for commercial use by MJS. More. (19/12/2011)
• But is that acorn-fed Iberian black pig or shoe leather you’re chomping?: Illicit upgrading of jamón serrano to jamón ibérico de bellota, fraud prevention, and a statistical account of why a pig undergoing free-range fattening needs at least a hectare of oak forest. (01/12/2011)