By the time Tony co-founded Lonely Planet Publications in 1973, he already had the travel bug. And ever since, travel and discovery have been at the heart of his life and career.
◄ Rory Maclean – author of numerous travel books including Magic Bus – puts on a magic annual travel festival in the very attractive little Dorset town of Sherborne. I was there for the recent weekend and if I say nice things about the festival perhaps Rory will invite me back for 9-11 April 2027!
Rory and I started the festival with a session of travellers’ tales, including when Rory stayed with Maureen and me in Australia for a week when he was writing Magic Bus. ▼
▲ A festival highlight was Sara Wheeler (no relation!) in conversation with Colin Thubron about her new biography Jan Morris: A Life. Well of both the Morrises, James Morris before he became Jan Morris as well. I met Jan, who died in 2020, on a number of occasions and also paired Jan with Harry’s Bar in Lonely Planet’s In Her Footsteps, a book which matched famous women with places you might have run into them. Harry’s Bar in Venice was certainly the perfect places for Jan (and James) although for James (before he became she) you’d have to say the Everest Base Camp was the iconic location.
Other favourite talks on the weekend included Adam Weymouth talking about his book – magic again – Lone Wolf about how wolves have successfully regenerated their populations in many European countries, even Luxembourg has at least one wolf. The author follows a GPS-collared wolf in Slovenia, thinking its movements would delineate its pack’s territorial limits, since wolves are so protective of their own territory. Instead this particular male wolf set out north out of Slovenia, turns west and crosses mountains in the winter snow in Austria and turns south into Italy in the Dolomites and, not far north of Verona, bumps into a solo female wolf. Well there’s a strange meeting, romance follows and as a result there’s a successful Dolomite wolf pack. What a wonderful story, it almost brings a tear to the eye, this Slovenian wolf travelling for months and over a thousand km, to find romance? Close to Verona? Of course she’s named Juliet. Lone Wolf went on to win the inaugural £10,000 Sherborne Prize for Travel Writing.
◄ I did manage a little sightseeing in Sherborne, apart from the Travel Festival. Of course the wonderful Sherborne Abbey, founded in 750 AD was a highlight. This is the Abbey’s fan vaulted ceiling, dating from 1425 and one of the best examples of its kind.
Another favourite talk was Harbours & Their Masters: Sailing into (Nearly) Every Harbour in Britain & Ireland by Mark Ashley-Miller. Mark sails around the British Isles and Ireland interviewing many of the harbour master – 256 harbour masters, he visited 310 harbours. I was particularly happy that he names St Kilda as his favourite stop on his whole voyage. No, I have not been to St Kilda (go to the Outer Hebrides off Scotland and then keep travelling west), but it’s certainly on my list.
It’s also a star report in Judith Schalansky’s wonderful book Remote Islands. Many of her 50 remote islands are indeed extremely remote and in recent weeks I’ve added two more ticks – Christmas Island and the Cocos Keeling Islands – to my check list, so I have now visited eight of them.
◄ Back to sightseeing, it’s only a short walk to the outskirts of town and the ruins of Sherborne Old Castle, Yes, there’s a Sherborne New Castle as well.
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‘Want to go to Socotra?’ my friend Simon Calder, eccentric travel editor for the London Independent, asked me in May last year. ‘Absolutely,’ I replied. I mean, what self-respecting traveller wouldn’t want to go to Socotra? ‘Right,’ said Simon. ‘Just send £800 a...
A Wakayama University conference on Overtourism – Tourism in Troubled Times – took me to Japan and, on the side, a little exploration of the Kii Peninsula. That’s the finger of Japan pointing south from big city Osaka and cultural centre Kyoto, down to Cape Shionomisa...
I drove up to Shepparton, a town almost exactly 200km (125 miles) almost exactly north of Melbourne in Australia to visit the Shepparton Motor Museum. With a few other interested Melburnians I’ve been kicking around the idea of establishing a Melbourne Transport Museu...
It’s rumoured that Donald Trump is about to add seven countries to his visa hit list. I’ve been to all but one of them, five of them in the last five years. 2018 07 – Belarus – yeah, I know it’s ‘Europe’s last dictatorship’, but I found it thoroughly interesting an...
I flew Qantas flight QF9 Melbourne to London last year and QF10 back. I won’t be doing it again. Flying non-stop for 17+ hours from Perth to London is the first of a number of Qantas ‘Project Sunrise’ flights which could one day link Sydney and Melbourne on the Austra...
If the madman in the White House – you know who I mean – does decide to take out a few Iranian cultural centres I certainly don’t want to provide him with a checklist. UNESCO already has, in that there are 24 World Heritage Sites he could be picking and choosing from....
One of the remarkable things about our world today is that so often people in the street – you and I – seem to be so much smarter than the politicians who govern us. There’s no way we can ignore the effects of climate change, but it seems to take a teenager like Greta...
Of course I posted on my travels throughout the year, including on Vanuatu, Sumba Island in Indonesia, assorted Australia trips like the Torres Strait Islands, Armenia, fjord travel in Norway and Svalbard and polar bears in Norway, the wonderful mosaics of Ravenna in ...
Want to fly down to Adelaide, spend three days on a new luxury train service to Brisbane, fly back home to Melbourne and write a story about it the man from the Daily Telegraph in London enquired? Sure, why not I agreed, although I was somewhat puzzled that they knew ...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013