Category: Travels

With two weeks to go.

Two weeks from today I will be heading to the airport to take part in the third of my charity treks. For those of you who follow my blog closely you will know that this year the trek is across over 70km of the Grand Canyon over five days. I’ve never been to America and the idea of this being my in is very exciting. It is impossible to not be influenced by American culture and some of my favourite writers are from the States and wrote at length about their love for the country.

I first signed up for a trek because of Kerouac. Although he became fairly problematic as a person and became a troubled, bloated and alcoholic version of his former self. The version of Kerouac featured in on the road was not the man he was by the time the book was eventually published and hippies and beatniks hunted him down seeking some kind of sage. It doesn’t matter what the man was like, his words will be here forever and his thoughts on the great stretches of America he traveled across as well as his spirituality and understanding of the universe are what remain. That’s what I love and that’s what I wanted to gain from traveling and writing in the way I do.

I’ve been preparing myself physically and mentally. I’m eating well. I’m running a couple of times a week and heading out on lonely treks through the Essex countryside with a thermos and some sandwiches trying to spend as much time on my feet as possible. I tend to fall off the routine for the rest of the year but in the run up to a trek I get ready to emerge myself in it completely. I can’t wait to fly out. It’s one of the things I enjoy the most.

October 3, 2015
Poo-ru

This week I have started redrafting my book about my time trekking in Peru. It is between titles at the moment. I was shocked to discover the level of exposure I had given to how poorly I became on my trek. I’m concerned it might be a bit much for a travel journal but wanted to share it and get some feedback now. Here is an excerpt from the Peru Journal…

I awoke sweating in the darkness. Something was terribly wrong. I started to take off layers of clothing. Each direction I moved in made my stomach churn. I had been in such a deep sleep it took a while for me to recognise the symptoms of what I was going through. I unzipped my sleeping bag and lay in my boxer shorts in the mountains trying not to think about it.
Believing makes it so.
I could hear the ache in my guts. I was in a bad way. I worried the noise would wake Matt. I scrambled out of my bed, kicking down the sleeping bag, threw a t-shirt and my trousers on and wandered out into what I took to be approximately four am. The air was cold but felt good against my skin. I was prickly with sweat. My entire being was pulsating. Realising I had left the safety of our womb with just my iPhone for company, I switched the flashlight function on and gave the whole camp a cursory once over with the beam. Not a creature was stirring except for a turd. I walked straight across the camp in search of salvation. Eddie had said the toilet tent was shaped like a rocket. It stood just behind the row of tents and was easy to spot in the half-light. I didn’t fancy my chances given what I figured I was about to expel. I decided to test out the toilet tent in the next field. That way it would be the problem of another group when the sun rose on a new day. I realised I wasn’t in the desert anymore and couldn’t refer to it as the happy room. There was nothing happy about the situation. On the top of a hill were two fixed toilets belonging to the campsite. I opened the door on what looked like a barn from a low-budget Nativity. I was ready to deliver my own immaculate conception. When the iPhone flashlight caught on the stained plastic of the toilet and the brimming activity within I knew it wasn’t to be and continued up to the outhouse-looking motherfucker at the top of the incline. Here I hoped I would find my tranquillity. I opened the door and discovered there was just a hole in the ground with two risen feet shapes above a tray where the goods were to be delivered. The system was filtered by a garden hose running up the hill, under the door and trickling water into the hole. It was a McGyver job at best. I closed the door and lowered my trousers without letting them become victim to the mess of ground-in shit left on the floor. I gagged on the remnants of the last few occupants and then squatted back, trying to make sure I wasn’t about to unload into my own pants and let the bullets fly. The scattergun effect my body returned for the favour of finding somewhere nice and serene for a shit was not natural. It was real horror show. It was both barrels of a shotgun being blasted through an arse. I was a brown Jackson Pollock.

I took a fresh pack of Kleenex from my pocket and started a clean up job equivalent to clearing a dead body from the train tracks with tweezers. There was a carrier bag in the corner full of discarded tissue because when in the mountains, you can’t be flushing shitty toilet paper down the system. It would be an underestimate to call it full. It would have been impossible to fit another tissue in without touching the others. I wondered how much hand sanitiser I had. I worried I would never feel clean again. One sheet at a time was applied to my pulsing anus as I tried to conduct the kind of damage control you wouldn’t wish upon your worst enemy. I was reminded of when Vince and Jules have to clean the dead body out the back of the car in Pulp Fiction. We are talking Tarantino levels of excrement.
When I turned around to inspect my hard work, feeling a refreshing wave of nausea in my throat and creeping sweat on my skin I discovered it hadn’t been the neat departure into the hole I had been hoping for. They had a smaller target when they blew up the Death Star. Here I was shitting on womp rats in my T-16 (niche gag).
There was no way I could leave things in the way my bowels had intended. It was the definition of everywhere. It was almost impressive. I was one Roy Castle short of being a Record Breaker. I knew I was going to have to do a rush clean up job, like a battered spouse attempting to mop up the blood after bludgeoning their partner to death with a household object. With the light in one hand I bent down and picked up the hose supplying the only flow of water in what was fast becoming a tomb dedicated to the memory of my shit. I expected to find mourners outside laying flowers. I started trying to spray down the back wall and pipework I had recently decorated. Each time I moved the hose there was a drop in water pressure and it dribbled out. I yanked a further couple of feet in from wherever the source was and draped it over my head. I was getting desperate. Every second I remained in that shitty outhouse was another second I was about to be discovered. The water, thankfully, started to flow. I cleaned up as best I could in the light I had available, swinging my iPhone torch around the space and then weeping internally, I returned to my tent.
The problem with having the shits of course is that it’s never over. The best comparison would be the death of Michael Myers at the end of every Halloween film made for over twenty years. You know that fucker will return. It doesn’t matter how dead you think the matter is, how final the score, it’s coming back for another sequel.

June 13, 2015
Salford Lads’ Club.

…and with a day to spare in Manchester I found myself setting out on another of my little musical pilgrimages. I once visited Paris to visit Jim Morrison’s grave. I took freelance jobs in Liverpool and London so I could chase the ghost of The Beatles around their hometown and their Studio 2. This time was different. I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour. I was heading to Salford Lads Club without much of a clue about what it meant other than it being immortalised in a photoshoot by The Smiths which became the inside sleeve for The Queen Is Dead.
I later found out it was where The Hollies practiced before they become famous. Allan Clarke and Graham Nash were members. It was in Shameless, The Forsyte Saga, Survivors and The Football League Show. All of these things were cool but I was going because my heart is a cardigan-covered and bespectacled pump in the shape of a spruce of gladioli. I love The Smiths because they mirror exactly how alienated and troubled you want to feel at a certain time in your life.

As a result of the closeness I have with the band, I can forgive anything they have said or done since (yes I’m talking about you Marr’s Money or Mozza groping his own tit during a show).
After forty-something minutes of wandering around with their back catalog making winky water in my ears and Google Maps giving me secret directions so I didn’t look like a soft southern shandy or indeed a vicar in a tutu I headed down Coronation Street which was worringly cobble-free and out in front of my second favourite green door (Bilbo Baggins just has the edge here).

I stood and looked at it and got this intense feeling of being in the same place as someone I deeply admired. I’ve had it before in a number of different ways. I’ve played on a stage The Libertines and Arctic Monkeys played on, I sat in Abbey Road and could have sworn I had George Harrison’s favourite chair (of the 200-odd in attendance) and I once shared a stage with Joe Pasquale.

I gave a cursory Morrissey wail as I stood rooted to the spot, trying to work out if it would reverberate against the brickwork like when people clap at Chichen Itza. Instead, my attempt had an open sesame quality to it and a face appeared from behind it.
‘Did you want to come in and have a look around?’ the old boy asked. I looked around. There wasn’t anyone else around so he must have been talking to me.
‘Is that alright?’ I asked, wondering if he could tell I was a deeply poetic soul and therefore worthy of entrance to the club.
‘Yeah, of course. I suppose you’ll want to see the Smiths room’ he said. I stink-eyed him. What was this?

Inside, it was exactly what you would expect from a lads club. There was a sports hall vibe beyond the grandiose entranceway and tucked off to one side was a little locker room. If I hadn’t sworn myself to a life of asexuality like my hero I would have ejaculated.

Once I had circled around the room and written my love out onto a post it note I headed into the pool hall where I was offered a cup of tea. I bought a t-shirt and became a tourist.
For some reason they weren’t eager to kick me out and offered to show me around upstairs.
From the window you could see the gasworks from Dirty Old Town – “I met my love by the gasworks wall”. They told me about the heritage of artists and musicians who had been in and out of the lads’ club, the relationship they had with it and the history of Salford. It was fascinating. The last point of the tour was when they unlocked their office for me and showed me Morrissey’s uncollected post and a bust of him and Marr created by a local artist.
I finished my tea and thanked everyone there. It had exceeded my expectations and was an incredible place to visit.

April 12, 2015
Grand Canyon Trek 2015.

I just can’t help myself. I have signed up for my third trek in three years, this time heading out to Arizona to walk over 70km of the Grand Canyon in aid of Guide Dogs. As always I am paying for the cost of the trek myself and am asking people to donate to Guide Dogs via my JustGiving page.

I had reservations about signing up this year. The first was that I think I’m going to struggle to get another £500.00 out of you lot, and quite rightly so. It’s a harsh economical climate, only the other day I didn’t have enough to get a coffee and a bagel so had to settle for just the coffee. I’ve put in the first £100.00 myself because I’ve also been doing Dry January and figure this is the amount I’ve saved by not drinking for the month.

I was also unsure about whether doing the Grand Canyon counted as a trek. Then I watched Operation Grand Canyon and realised that they don’t mess around over there. This is some real trekking. This isn’t some helicopter ride over the top of a hole in the Earth, I’m going to be amongst the buzzards and the crows.

I’m excited.

January 25, 2015
Found: one disposable camera.

Whilst in one of my rigorous cleaning sessions through my flat recently I found a disposable camera It had five photos remaining on it. I couldn’t remember exactly when I had last used a disposable but decided it was somewhere around 2010/11 and it should really be processed. Today I went to my local photo shop, where my brother’s girlfriend happens to work, and got a glimpse into my own past. It was like the Blue Peter Time Capsule, except better, because I was in it.

Below are the photos I discovered. There are festivals and holidays, ex-girlfriends and drunken times. It has made me feel very nostalgic.

This photo was taken in the early hours of the morning when planking was all anyone was talking about.

I do not recognise either of these girls.

I believe these are all at Glastonbury.

This is in Brighton. My hair is so big because it is full of secrets.

Pere Le Chaise, Paris.

Arc de Triomphe, Paris.

Alex’s van. 23.11.14

November 23, 2014
Peru: a review.

It has been a week since I got back from Peru.

It feels like I never went away but it also feels as if I was there for a lot longer than the week I was allowed. It was one of the most beautiful countries I have ever visited, the locals were engaging and incredible, the food was delicious (if not slightly disconcerting at times) and I have met people that I will never forget and who I feel developed for knowing. It was really hard at times, maybe harder than the Sahara, not harder, but different.
I suffered a bout of sickness during the hike, which peaked on the second day, the toughest of the four days we were “out in the shit”. Climbing to 4,200 feet with nothing to run on but a Mars bar was a challenge but the sense of achievement I got at the top was worth it. There are more stories and more adventures and they will pour out in time. While I’m on the subject, if you visit, try the roasted guinea pig, it’s delicious.

I owe a debt of thanks to Tom and Hera’a, to Tariq, Elizabeth and everyone else at Action Challenge, to Dr Bob and Dr Poo, to Eddie and the other guides, to the porters and the cooks and once more to the wonderful green team.

I’m not going to write a blow-by-blow account of what went down because I am saving it for the book I am currently writing as part of NaNoWriMo. It will be a follow up to Yallah! Repeated characters and general thoughts and feelings as I get to travel around the globe and see and do these wonderful things with these incredible people.
While I’m on the subject of Yallah! I would like to thank everyone who has downloaded it. During the five days that it was free for the Kindle it got to the number 1 spot in its category which is a first for me. Although The Stamp Collective and Where Did All The Money Go? were well received, they never got to the coveted number one spot. That may have been more to do with the categories they were under but I was completely enthralled and overwhelmed to see it rise through the ranks and momentarily peak above Mark Twain.

I love writing and I do it solely for myself but to receive the responses I have recently is humbling and beautiful so I thank you all.

In the mean time, I must get back to Martin Salinger, who is hovering around Heathrow airport worrying that once more, his bag is going to be considered oversized.

As with the Sahara I have put together a video of my time in Peru:

November 2, 2014

Peru – Day 8.

We take a domestic flight to Lima and connect with our international flight back home.

If you haven't heard from me by this point then please remember to be excellent to one another and that I want to be cremated.

October 25, 2014

Peru – Day 7.

Today, we have a free day to look around Cusco. Optional extras include visiting the Pisac ruins, going white water rafting or relaxing in the city before meeting up in the evening to celebrate our challenge achievement together, well into the night!

October 24, 2014

Peru – Day 6.

We rise early today in time to see the early morning sun lighting up the magnificent Machu Picchu ruins from the ‘Inti Punku’ or ‘Door of the sun’. From here, we descend to the world’s most famous ruins built in the 15th century, where we will have a guided tour. In the afternoon we continue to the town of Aguas Calientes and return by train to Cusco, ready for an early night.

October 23, 2014

Peru – Day 5.

We climb again, passing the Inca ruins of Runcu Raccay and on to the next pass giving us spectacular views of the Vilcabamba range. Walking on a well-preserved Inca pathway, we pass Sayacmarca ruins, allowing plenty of time for a tour of the site. We continue along the ridge, up to the Phuyupatamarca ruins before a steep, downhill Inca staircase brings us into the Cloud Forest and the outstanding site of Winay-Winay, which we explore before heading into our camp.

October 22, 2014