You'll find me about 11,000 miles away.

Greetings esteemed avid readers! Apologies it has been so long for an update, I have been on the Trans-Siberian Express across Russia, and haven't had reliable access to the Intarwebz and now am in China, the home of the GFWoC aka the Great Firewall of China (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall_of_China), which blocks most things related to Google, the word "blog", the word "proxy", the word "Python 2.6.4" and anything else that I deem to be useful or helpful. So updates to this blog have been very scarce. My apologies again. Today I have found a reliable-ish proxy (I keep getting a "The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading" message every now and then though. It's been a while since I wrote anything, but have been keeping a diary of events that have occurred. Here are a few entries. I also made a video diary of Russia, however, due to the GFWoC, access to YouTube is prohibited and uploading them through a pr...

A few days ago I was thinking about this journey that I am doing; Moscow via Lisbon via Maldova and then through China, and I now sort of wish that I had chosen to go to Russia from Portugal by land. It would have been pretty cool to do a journey like that just with the use of train. I could then be one of those people that can say that they have travelled most of the globe just by land. I could possibly get my own TV show and book series. Michael Palin did. He was already famous, so he had a head start, but he's just an example. Phileas Fog is another person, albeit a fictional character. He went "around the world in 80 days". He's even got his own line of crisps now. Yeah. Circumnavigating the world does definitely have benefits. It would be something quite special to tell people about. That I have gone from the farthest westerly point to the farthest easterly point of one land mass just using ground-based public transport. Living on the outskirts of London and...

It felt like I did a lot of travelling today. I'm in Moscow now. In total it was about 8.5 hours. But I had gone forward by 3 hours, and spent a few hours waiting for a delayed plane after being searched like a terrorist, and all the contents of my backpack unpacked and gone through with a fine tooth comb, and comments about sandals that I had in my backpack as being "too heavy". I have no idea what that meant, and at the time I probably didn't help the searching by Lisbon airport security by replying a sarcastic "uhhh,....yeah". I had a pencil case with me, and the guy doing the searching took every single pen and pencil out, and examined them all! I'm really not sure what he was looking for, as I could have used them as instruments of pain infliction but he allowed me to keep them all. I evetually boarded my flight to Maldova which was hugely delayed for no specific reason, so I got to Maldova and had to get on a bus from the plane, go to the transit a...

T his is Bisto, my parents dog. He's only 7 months old and already looks like a baby bear. He doesn't stay still long enough to take a decent picture of, apart from if he's lying down on the floor looking like a leaping rabbit on its side . Bisto is an Estrela Mountain Dog , a breed of live stock guardian dogs native to this region of Portugal. He's quite playful at the moment and chews pretty much everything.

After spending a few days in West Chester at some friends of mine awesome wedding, there were a few little problems. Entirely to do with the nuances of the English/American dialects. You'd think that as an English speaking nation, it would be pretty straightforward to order a drink in the USA. Like a "gin and bitter lemon". Not much can really go that wrong. Apart from when you ask someone to get you a "gin and bitter lemon" and they return with a what tasted like a triple gin and turned out to be a gin and a "bit of" lemon. Their wedding was absolutely amazing. I feel quite privileged to have been invited and have been able to take part in such a special occasion. And also meet some excellent people, and also have an amazing holiday with my friends. There's loads more photos on Facebook, but here's one of us on the morning of the wedding. I make it sound like the drink "gin and bitter lemon" doesn't exist in the USA. The...

Buttons can cater well for anyone that is a connoisseur of profanities or acronyms. For example this American TV remote complete with an "STB" button (sometimes known as "Shit The Bed"). Probably designed for when you can't decide what to watch, and the only explanation is "Shit The Bed, there is nothing at all to watch on TV".

This is the rough route that I will take to Australia. It's liable to change as it's depenandant on what I feel like doing. I'll try to keep it updated though. The rough journey is London to Portugal, Portugal to Russia (via Moldova), Russia to China, China to Australia.