Blog

Welcome to my new blog. Catalonia and Beyond will be a chronicle of travel: journeys, days out, time spent away. There’s going to be an emphasis on culture in all forms – places to visit, heritage, food, wine – but it’s not going to be a manual telling you “how to” or a “where to go”. Instead, I aim to provide entertaining accounts of places and things I’ve enjoyed. I hope you enjoy it too.

Bern

We're in Bern (or is it Berne? As a multilingual country so many of its cities have more than one name). And we've come for two concerts with almost no expectations at all. Any exploring is purely incidental to the purpose of our visit. And yet... it's a delight. It's early spring and we seem […]

January 19, 2026

Lascaux

We're in Lascaux - or if not actually there, about as near as we can get. This isn't the actual cave, discovered (or rather rediscovered by modern humans) in 1940, with its walls covered with prehistoric art, it's just a copy. But we're surrounded by dazzling representations of horses and wild cattle and deer and […]

November 24, 2025

Odense

People come to Odense looking for fairy tales. It is, after all, the birthplace of that notable spinner of yarns Hans Christian Andersen, not that we were aware of the fact when we booked our stay here. We had our minds on other things entirely. But now here we are marching through Odense's streets on […]

November 4, 2025

Saving heritage or saving the world?

Imagine a museum in wartime. What if all the exhibits had to be put away for safekeeping? Would it still have a role? What could such a museum do? These are not hypothetical questions. Museums have always had to face the dangers of war, and some, like the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of […]

September 17, 2025

Brasilia

In some cities, history is now. We're touring the dramatic congress building in the Brazilian capital, and the disgust and bewilderment of our guide at events that occurred just over a year before is clear. "They smashed through the doors and came in here," he says. "There was so much destruction. It's still being put […]

August 19, 2025

Orange and Vienne

We're in Orange for a visit to the theatre, but we're already running out of patience. The traffic's terrible and there's nowhere to park in sight. After driving backwards and forwards through the centre, eventually we have to settle for somewhere a fair way out of town. It's hot and blowing a fiery gale. We're […]

August 11, 2025

Reims

Go on! Try to pronounce it (unless you're a native French-speaker, of course)! If you're someone who's learned French as a second or third language, I'm pretty sure you know how it should be pronounced, and also pretty sure that you think if you do pronounce it like that, more than half the world won't […]

Franeker

Canals; neat, gabled brick buildings; a windmill... there appears to be nothing about Franeker, right up here in Friesland, in the northern Netherlands, that makes it anything other than a pleasant little Dutch town. A place for an afternoon stroll and little more. But it was here, in 1774, that local wool-carder Eise Eisinga decided […]

Trier

Some places have more history than they know what to do with and Trier, in the German Moselle valley, on the border with Luxembourg, is one of those cities. If its enormous Roman heritage wasn't enough, it has several medieval churches and a Renaissance and Baroque palace, not to mention the birthplace of a certain […]

Setúbal

We're back in Portugal, this time in a town for which we've had contrasting reports. "Setúbal's my favourite city in Portugal," said one contact, recommending a beach bar. "It's not very nice," said another. "Lots of social problems and full of weirdos." We shall see. For the moment, it seems like a pleasant place, positively […]

Heritage in conflict

Is our heritage telling us the right stories in the right way? This was the underlying question I took away from an interesting conference I attended this week in Barcelona. Organised by the Government of Catalonia, the event focused on the ways in which conflict, and more specifically evidence of conflict, can be turned into […]

Rome (seven snapshots)

The Vatican Museum They call it the Eternal City, but they might just as well talk about the city of eternal confusion. Hard, accurate information is hard to come by in Rome. Which is why we're rushing up towards the Vatican Museum hoping to find the ticket for our time slot instead of taking a […]

La Cremada del Dimoni (Badalona part 3)

We're in a huge crowd of around 30,000 people in Badalona's Rambla. It's dark, and on the beach on the other side of the railway line, which here runs beside the sea, a huge papier maché figure is going up in such roaring flames that the fire service is having to play hoses on it […]

Sant Jordi (Barcelona, part 2)

Imagine your city's busiest street - somewhere you wouldn't normally think of setting foot because it's thronged with tourists. But instead of tasteless souvenir shops and overpriced bar terraces, imagine it full of stalls selling books and flowers. Now imagine it filled with a good-natured procession of people out for a stroll in the sparkling […]

Niudàlia and Berga

We're in the middle of thousands of tulips, but any delusion that we might be in the Netherlands is soon dispelled by the craggy mountain views all round us. We've come to Niudàlia, surely the favourite destination of Catalan Instagrammers judging by the marathon photoshoots going on all around us. Niudàlia was once a hill […]

London (Part 1)

It's just before three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon and we're engaging in a traditional English weekend ritual - a football match. We're in South London, at Selhurst Park, the endearingly haphazard home of Crystal Palace, who are enjoying an unprecedented run of consecutive seasons in the top division of the league. They may be […]

January 20, 2025

Santa Maria de Lluçà

It's a spectacularly bright winter's day and we're headed for one of the best castles in Catalonia. Montesquiu Castle originally dates from the 9th century and was lived in continuously until just 50 years ago. It seems like the ideal place to visit in the no-man's land between Christmas and New Year. We've checked its […]

January 14, 2025

Antwerp

It's relatively easy to write about a place when you love it. The story tells itself and the account of all those enjoyable moments just seems to flow. First impressions seem to suggest that Antwerp could fall into this category. The station seems a little grey but coming out into the large square outside and […]

December 16, 2024

Seville: A Christmas Tale

This seasonal story is something I wrote after a visit to Seville in 2023. While based on a real experience, it is a work of fiction. I'll leave it to you to decide exactly how much - or how little - of it is true. It was quite possibly the worst breakfast I’d ever had: […]

December 10, 2024

Espinelves

We're looking for a Christmas tree and we've come to the right place. Espinelves is the Christmas tree capital of Catalonia, with a special fair lasting more than a week every year. We've chosen a good day to come, though, avoiding the weekends and Spain's unlikely twin December public holidays celebrating the Constitution (6 December) […]

December 6, 2024

France 1993/2023

Sometimes it's not the landmarks you visit, it's the journey itself that's a landmark. 30 years ago, I travelled to France with my younger brother, Julian, in my car. I left behind my then wife and young daughter to take a trip I'd wanted to do since I was a history student, seeing something of […]

November 28, 2024

Salamanca

It's Halloween and we're in the middle of a traffic nightmare. We've arrived in Salamanca at dusk, there appears to be nowhere to park anywhere near our hotel and we're driving round and round in the gathering gloom. I've always been a rather reluctant and nervous driver, and once again I swear that the next […]

November 21, 2024

Sagrada Família (Barcelona, part 1)

I'm standing in a queue in a hot room full of bad-tempered, impatient people, ready to walk through a metal detector. Anyone would think I was waiting to catch a plane, but I'm not. I'm trying to get into what is probably Barcelona's best-known tourist attraction. If I wasn't with my partner and her brother, […]

October 30, 2024

Belo Horizonte

From the air, countries look different from one another. Somehow, they take on a strong identity, with vibrantly different colours, shapes and patterns marking them out from their neighbours. The huge country of Brazil, of course, looks different depending on which part of it you’re seeing. The area around Belo Horizonte, for example – the […]

October 22, 2024

Badalona Museum (Badalona, part 2)

There's something deeply impressive about being able to actually see the roots of the place where you live. In England we know that there were many generations before us but it's not often we can come face to face with the physical remains of the town we call home beyond, perhaps, a medieval church or […]

February 18, 2024

Perpignan

Perpignan is a town of overlapping identities: it's French, it's Catalan and its main tourist attraction is the Palace of the Kings of Mallorca.

February 11, 2024

Santes Creus

Santes Creus is one of the three great Cistercian monasteries of Catalonia and it's a wonderful place to enjoy a calçotada at the local restaurants.

January 28, 2024

Aveiro

Aveiro is a beautiful town south of Porto, in Portugal. It's known for its canals and it's a great place to enjoy local seafood and wine.

January 3, 2024

Olèrdola and Vilafranca del Penedès

Olèrdola is a historic site settled for thousands of years, from the Bronze Age to the medieval period. It's not far from Vilafranca del Penedès, capital of the Penedès wine region.

December 28, 2023

Ripoll

Ripoll is a Catalan town just below the Pyrenees with a fascinating abbey full of history and an interesting Ethnological Museum.

December 17, 2023

Anís del Mono (Badalona, part 1)

This is the first of what will be several posts about Badalona, where I live. This one deals with the landmark Anís del Mono factory beside the beach and the history of the making of anise liqueur.