Related sites

Sites relating to travel, travel writing or travel information

Nomadintent

A travel guide to just about every interesting place in the world, based entirely on first hand travel experience; constantly being updated as I travel on.

Dogon

A travel guide to the Dogon region of Mali; loads of pictures to show what to expect, though not too many though to spoil the excitement.

Dogon travel

A travel guide to the Dogon region of Mali, including practical information on how to get there. 

Dogon guide

A travel guide to the Dogon region of Mali, including practical information on how to get there and recommendations for local guides.  Intended to eventually provide source of local information to support tourist related employment in Dogon.

Saharawise

A travel guide to the Sahara, still under construction.

Ovahe

A travel guide to exotic destinations, named after one the only two beaches on Easter Island.  Still under construction.

Timecube

Somewhere to dump my surrealist fantasy travels; under construction.

My alternative to Orwell's 1984, set in a post-apocalyptic (post collapse of oil dependent Western civilisation), desolate and anonymous future, where we expend almost our entire remaining resources on "security".  The frightening thing about stuff like this, is that reality catches up and sometimes overtakes me, so it is no longer visionary, but a historical record:

"Everyone is involved in the security service one way or another, as an informer, an official, a processor or a gauerleiter, but there is no security".

Socrates the troublemaker

I was born in September in the year 2000, a product of a slightly planned coupling on that brave new millennium eve, when my parents were amongst those who somewhere at the bottom of their subconscious, feared the bugs might get us and that they might as well go out with a bang. 

When they awoke to the boring grey light of January 1^st 2000, they were almost disappointed that their hangovers were as real as any they had previously experienced and were forced to deduce that they were still alive.  Worse than that the world had not come to an end, they realised that they would probably have to pay back their credit card bills for the excessive, but not quite excessive enough, amount of champagne they had indulged in along with half the nation's population.   They also suspected that their moment of irresponsibility may come back to haunt them.  And sure as ……….I did, as luck would have it, on the 13^th day of that fateful month. 

I was not the first millennium baby, nor even in the scheme of things, a particularly memorable one, but they thought I was special and significant so I needed a special, significant name.  Socrates…the troublemaker. 

My father was “something in the City”.  My mother could hardly be described that way.  More, she was nothing in the City, just another cog in the machine of corporate finance and family abuse.  An administrator in a corporation certified to ISO 90001, producing gleaming annual reports on recycled paper, with a mission statement of social responsibility and caring for employees, of empowerment and corporate citizenship and all the other superficialities of exploitation. 

By the time I was five we had moved out of the city.  My mother had given up work following another reorganisation.  She had not actually had a nervous breakdown; the corporation’s employees did not suffer stress; they received counselling to prevent it-it said so in their shiny social report.  But it was a trade-off.  The corporation had to shed jobs to maintain bonus levels for the directors and somebody had to go.  It was her or my father, and the corporation explained the importance of the family as ardently as they had advocated single mother employment incentives only a few years previously.  She accepted her fate in suburbia as readily as my father accepted the prospect of sweaty, cramped and overpriced journeys to the city every working day.

Travel sites

Travel photography and travel writing

This family of sites includes general travel writing, travel photography and extracts from my books in various stages of completion.

Most of the travel writing is a supposedly humorous impression of places I have visited or the delusional ramblings of an ageing traveller, some of the books likewise.  Other books are a more serious attempt to come to terms with the injustice of civilisation or a frustrated rant against the machine.

The photography tends to be rather more "consumer oriented", so may seem a trifle clichéd, though you will also find the occasional arty image or something that just seemed like a good idea at the time.

If you are interested in supporting the completion of any of these or commission other travel related projects or even if you just wish to purchase one of the websites, with or without content, please contact me at the email address at the bottom of the page.