Welcome to Episode 066 of my “Travel Tales From Beyond The Brochure” podcast.
As a traveller, trains are by far my favourite form of transport. I find them comfortable, I like that I can just get up and walk around if I want to, I get a decent amount of legroom, and I can spend my time looking out the window at the passing scenery, which is invariably far more interesting than what the view out of a plane window. It’s also the only form of transport I can sleep on in my seat, never mind the trains I’ve taken in the ex-Soviet states with flat bunk beds.
It’s probably no surprise to learn then that one of my first travel adventures was very much centred on train travel. Back in 2000, me and my then fiancée Laure (originally a penpal of mine from France) did a trip using an inter-rail ticket around Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. This episode takes an overview of this trip, but also contrasting how travel blogging, the way I travel personally, and travel itself, has changed over the decades since. I talk about a subsequent Inter-Rail trip in my next episode, and about general aspects of backpacking Europe in the episode after.
Topics discussed in this episode are:
- How I’m still injured from Parkrun
- Background to our InterRail trip in the year 2000
- The ongoing issue of booking reservations for Spanish trains
- Why is it so difficult to travel to Santiago de Compostela on Easter Sunday? Ah …
- Watching foreign television
- Do Your Research Part 2: Revolution
- … I can tell you about the food but not about anything else!
- It’s not a scam, it just feels like it (twice)
- Travels ‘Beyond The Brochure’ even in 2000
- Western stereotyping
- The malefits and malefits of film cameras
- Online mapping is a very useful tool
- Gosh! A museum!
- It’s amazing how much we didn’t do; a very fast form of slow travel
- Dial-up internet and a lack of useful websites
You can listen via the feed above, or via Spotify, or on your podcast app of choice. Let me know if it isn’t, by the way, and I’ll see what I can do. In addition, a PDF transcript of this episode is available.
As always, if you have anything to say about the topic, or indeed about my podcasting in general, leave a comment or let me know. I now have a newsletter you can subscribe to, containing extra content, and it’s where I’ll be mentioning future podcast episodes if you want to make your own contribution.
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There are no contributions in this pod. But i have added sound effects!!