For the second stage of our South American tour we travelled from Lima, Peru to Quito, Ecuador. We arrived at the old airport, tightly squeezed between the houses. I still have the image of colourful clothes flapping on washing lines at what appeared to be only a few metres from the aircraft wings.

After a day sightseeing in Quito we flew out to the Galapagos to begin our week long cruise.

This is a transcription of the diary I made when travelling to India for the first time. It was 1981 and I had never been outside Europe before. Travelling alone to India and Nepal was a great experience.

I have been to many places around the world since but this journey remains the most memorable. Like most young people at the time I had to travel on a small budget and this undoubtedly meant I got to meet more local people and experience the real hospitality of India than if I had stayed in large hotels and travelled by car.

In November 1993 Andy and I travelled to Syria with a tour organised by Voyages Jules Verne. There were no direct flights to Syria so we flew into and out of Amman, Jordan. Although the tour was only a week long we covered a lot of ground. Our tour guide was a civil engineer and archeologist. He was friendly, enthusiastic and informative, but we did often have to cope with the cold when visiting  sites where some of the earliest writing had been found or where crusades had been fought.

We visited many of the places which have now, sadly become familiar through the daily news reports of destruction, devastation and suffering: Aleppo, Homs, Palmyra and, one of the early casualties, Maalula, where the early Christian monastery was seriously damaged in 2014.

In September 2014 we travelled to South Africa and Swaziland. It was the Webmaster's first holiday for years and it had taken the offer of an African safari to tempt him to renew his passport and put his beloved dogs in kennels for two weeks. But he didn't regret it. Even the grumpy Webmaster managed to smile and enjoy himself without too much moaning and groaning. After considering a range of safaris in East Africa and Namibia we finally decided on the Zululand and Kruger Wildlife tour from the travel company Explore. 

A last minute trip, planned on Saturday started on Wednesday. Louise and I flew to Naples at the beginning of September. The webmaster decided not to accompany us. He stayed at home with his dogs.

Louise was more interested in the fashion, shopping and sun bathing although by September it was already starting to get a bit cool, which thankfully helped me keep the sun worshiping to a minimum although visiting the cultural and historic highlights was somewhat stressful. She trudged around and her eyes were open but the only clue she could see was the fact she didn't collide with anything. She moaned all day at Pompeii and was uncooperative the day we hired the bicycles. She enjoyed our visit to the Catacombs but that, it turned out was because she fancied the guide.

Louise and I spent a week in Santorini during August 2013. By chance we timed it to coincide with the annual festival during which an impressive firework display is used to simulate an eruption of the  Nea Kameni volcano.

We watched the display at close quarters from the deck of a boat. It was one of the highlights of the trip. Another the Volcano Adventure tour we took that included both a guided walking tour up the Nea Kameni volcano with a very knowledgable and informative guide and a chance to swim in the thermal waters of Old Kameni.