On narrow, one-track English, Irish, Scottish, and Orcadian roads, there are passing places: small semi-circular areas cut into the hedge or berm, where one vehicle can pull to the side to allow an on-coming vehicle to pass. There is a gesture of thanks that goes with this — the on-coming driver uncurls the fingers of …
On 22 May, my husband and I said good-bye to our temporary home in Tramore and drove to Dublin, where we spent the night before taking the hovercraft to Wales the following day. We dropped our bags at the B and B and walked into the city center because May 22 also happened to be …
As we are traveling on this sabbatical, we are using a Tom-Tom (GPS, SatNav) to guide us from place to place. It is working just fine and we are – with very few exceptions – getting exactly where we want to go, with a cheerful voice telling us, “In 200 meters, go right around the …
Today we are hovering from Dublin to Holyhead on the next part of our journey. I think of it as ‘sailing’; the ferry company thinks of it as ‘flying’ (presumably since we are not in the water, but over the water.) Since Ireland is our point of departure, I also get to participate in my …
For those of you whose vocation does not include long periods away from a specific location you call home, you may not have had the opportunity to experience the rather remarkable ability you have to create ‘home’ in unfamiliar surroundings. In fact, to create it so effectively that after a few days in a formerly …
What are the material givens and ‘essentials’ of your life, the devices and possessions you take for granted? What is so common to your daily round that you would be startled to live a week, a month, six months, without it? What, for you, comprises ‘normal’? For what do you reach without thinking…and how does …
My priceless son-in-law was due to travel to Nepal sometime around May 12 as part of a geological research team, exploring rock formation and tectonic plate shift in that area of the world. By sheer happenstance he is still safe in the United States while the world watches in horror what happens when one of …
Planning a trip to a familiar part of the world is always a challenge for me. Do I return to places I have seen before, places I have loved for their beauty or their power or their mystery? Or do I seek out new places, new perspectives, new opportunities to fall in love, new experiences …
London has the oldest and most extensive public transportation system in the world – which (in my admittedly biased opinion) is still a delight to use almost 125 years after its inception. However, because of the way earth settles and rises, rivers change course, and soil composition alters over time, not every platform lines up …
After an uneventful flight – except for the peculiar, but now familiar, experience of being folded like strange origami figurines in order to fit in coach seats for nine hours – we arrived in London right on time. It always takes a week or so to get used to new signage (as in, what a …