Nov 2, 2010 |
View from the ferry, Port Askaig, Islay
I’m in Jura with my friend Clutch at the moment. We’re working on a music project that sort of doubles as research, and happens to be somewhere there’s a very good distillery. Ticks all my boxes.
You can follow that project at http://thejuraproject.com. Lots of great pictures and video there.
However, after we arrived, the ferry that brought us over broke down. Still is. So we’re sort of stuck here. Not the end of the world – we’re scheduled to stay here until the weekend, but we had planned on heading over to the neighbouring island of Islay and now we can’t.
I can think of far worse places to be – but chances are we’re going to run out of milk for our tea. There are no supplies coming into the island at the moment. The distillery’s been shut down too.
Ironically, the music project is to raise money to save another ferry – the one from mainland Scotland direct to Jura. But it just goes to show how reliant a small island community like this one is on its connection to the outside world.
Oct 23, 2010 |
A place to sleep
I’ve been travelling a good deal recently, and I’ve decided to do my best to avoid flying within Europe – partly for environmental reasons, but also because I like trains, and I love the journey itself.
I’ve also been making a point of couchsurfing rather than staying in hotels – and while the university research projects I’m working for have budgets that would pay for hotels, I actually prefer staying with strangers. I like meeting new people, hearing new stories, getting a bit of local knowledge and stepping outside of the tourist sphere. Also, the money that would ordinarily be spent on hotels can then be used to pay for more train tickets to more places.
I use Couchsurfing.org to find places to stay, and it’s really great, because it has a recommendation system that lets you see what other people have said about the person you’re going to be sharing a home with temporarily… but I’ve also been using Twitter, which has been really good on this front.
As a result of this ‘ground travel only, no hotels’ policy, I’ve spent some time with an assortment of really fantastic people on my journeys. You should meet some of them…
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