Welcome to my travel blog! If you want to read this blog in chronological order from the beginning, click here, and then at the bottom of each post click on the link that is followed by » to get to the next entry.

I’m currently living in Tenerife, soaking up the winter sun, and taking a “well-earned” break from travelling after passing the 40,075km mark (the length of the earth’s equator!) in 19 months without flying. Good times…

I hope you enjoy the read! Let me know what you think.

Monday, September 26th – Saturday, October 15th

My pilgrimage to Fisterra and my time in O Vao had given me a direction. It was time to go, to leave Galicia, to go home to Ireland. It was time for another adventure. And to make it interesting I gave myself the challenge to hitchhike the 2,400 or so kilometres back. My deadline was to be in Cherbourg to catch the October 14th ferry to Rosslare, which I had inadvertently organised last Christmas when the ferry company offered me a ticket for a random date in 2011. It was ambitious, but it would be exciting and give me an oppotunity to see the north coast of Spain and west coast of France.

After probing the nature of faith on the Camino de Santiago, I have realised that hitchhiking is the real test of one’s faith in the goodness of humanity and the power of destiny. As Tom Thumb, the English storyteller I met in The Rainbow and travelled with afterwards, put it: “There’s a very fine line between hitchhiking and standing on the side of the road like an idiot… Your luck can change in moments and you end up believing in one god or another. Probably one with big thumbs… In a world of self-interest and declining resources, hitching rekindles the magic of cooperation.”

Monday, September 19th – Sunday, September 25th

O Vao is a remnant of a settlement in the south-east of Galicia, which was created in the fifties as part of Franco’s ambitious dam-building project. 150 people lived here during construction of the massive dam, but now only a large residency, three smaller houses, a cinema and a church remain after 30 years of dereliction. And there is nobody but me, three Sevillanos, a hyperactive dog and the splendour of nature. And at night, the measureless infinity of stars.

The Way

Wednesday, September 7th

There’s something fatalistic about this spontaneous walking trip, gallantry bordering on foolishness as I walk along boring roads in the outskirts of Vigo that are frequented by reckless drivers; thinking mainly about the things I dislike about this place—the things that are driving me away—as I walk away. Only good memories and vague familiarity are keeping me here at the moment. I wake up at Antía’s apartment, remembering a dream I had many years ago. I think about doing the camino. It’s not a task up to my two-year old shoes. And my broken toe. I am at the proverbial crossroads of life. No, it is a busy 12-way interstate junction. And I just have to get off it and take the nearest dirt track.

Monday, August 28th – Tuesday, September 7th

Road trippin' after the Rainbow

I’m sitting by a camp fire, on a large exposed rock. A trickle of water flows nearby. Tree tops are silhouetted against a clear, sparkly sky. I lie prostrate, content after a food circle of bread, cheese, olives, tahini, tomatoes and walnuts. Someone shouts out: “Cheese connection!”. This is the parlance of the Rainbow Gathering. Just say what you want, followed by the word “connection”. The ten of us share food together up at a disused mill outside Afife on the Portuguese coast.

We all needed an escape connection. We couldn’t stay at Rainbow any longer.

* * * * * * * * *

We found our escape on a sunny Monday afternoon, the day after the Rainbow Gathering officially ended. It came in shape of an old Granduca camper van. It came with the face of Salvador. Both unassuming.

Tuesday, August 2nd – Sunday, August 28th

All together now

Peace. Love. Harmony. Freedom. Community.

They’re all nice ideas. They’re all lovely ideals too. But where might you find them in this modern world that is obsessed with consumerism, speed, mass culture and individualism?

Well, I decided to have a look and found myself attempting to hitch-hike the 170km from Vigo to the beautiful national park of Serra do Gerês in North Portugal. My friend Anita got me started by dropping me off at the border in Valença. I waited maybe an hour and a half until a car pulled up. As soon as the passengers disembarked, I knew they were also looking for same things as me.

Tuesday, July 19th – Monday, August 1st

Four years.

That’s 1461 days. That’s not a length of time where you can blink and miss it.  I arrived back in Galicia and realised that I had spent most of that time outside of Ireland: travelling, living, gallivanting, getting lost. And I don’t have a lot to show for it. That was never the plan.

The Port of Vigo

You know, many people have asked me: “So, what next?” or “When you finish travelling, what will you do?”. Years of Zen Meditation practice has prevented those people from spending long periods of time in hospital recovering from multiple nasal fractures. I used to have a plan, a goal, or some sort of vague vision about where I was headed, if by some sort of circuitous route. I won’t tell you now what that is—or was—because

Tuesday, July 12th – Monday, July 18th

Tent Metropolis

Yeah, that’s right, I’m a big sell-out. A big, fucking sell-out.

I went to a massive, main-stream festival.

And I had a fucking awesome time there.

Take The Arcade Fire, Beirut, Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes, Portishead, The Streets, Primal Scream, James Murphy, Elbow; add in

Tuesday, July 5th – Monday, July 11th

“Ev’rythiiiiiing in its right plaaaaaace…”

I awoke to the apocalyptic sound of Thom Yorke’s paranoic voice wafted in from the distance. Was it Monday morning already? I scrambled around looking for my watch. 7.30a.m. By 8 it would be too hot to stay in the tent, too hot to do anything, actually.

It was over. All over. At least until next year. Finally, exhaustion arrived after a week of elation.

Welcome to Nowhere!

A week in the desert began and ended in disorientation. It began in the middle of the night as we hopped off that little bus to be greeted by hundreds of people, in costume, daubed in lights, or naked, all dancing vigorously to the heavy beats coming from what could only be described as a mobile living-room disco machine. This was beyond what I expected. Whatever it was that I expected evaporated in that instant as I encountered a melange of people off their tits on E, MDMA, LSD, THC, a whole alphabet soup of chemicals in a dramatic dustbowl.

Welcome to Nowhere! This is Europe’s answer to

Thursday, June 23rd

The pull of the four elements is strong within us. The longest day of the year in Galicia is celebrated with great bonfires on the sandy earth that lines that ever-changing frontier with the sea and air. I marked the transition from work to play. It was time to have fun.

Two months of almost indescribable frivolity would follow. Looking back now, I almost don’t believe it all.

Friday, June 24th

Vigo surprised me again by presenting Imaxinasons, a series of free jazz concerts in the city. I strolled downtown with Violeta to attend a performance of Nils Petter Molvær (whom I happened to catch in Oslo last year). Being a trumpeter myself and aficionado of electronic music I eagerly anticipated his pioneering blend of the two. This is not trumpet music: this is an experiment in soundscapes. Circulating, undulating loops seeped into my mind and evoked deep, unsettling fears, traumas and hypnosis in a timeless, spaceless orb of insular, primal, foetal sensations. Everything beyond understanding. I struggled to communicate to Violeta what it all meant to me at the close, but very soon it didn’t matter as we arrived down at Praza da Constitución for an accessible open-air performance by the Neil Cowley Trio where we were treated to humorous, ebullient music from the energetic pianist and his partners. That’s not to say that their music was superficial in comparison with Molvær’s, but rather the sheer power of music in the immediate hit me deep-down on an emotional level. I won’t forget this day anytime soon.

Saturday, July 25th

The plan was to catch a few more jazz concerts, especially that of the Portico Quartet, but someone had the idea of making space cookies (that someone might have been me…) and after a big meal of fajitas and a potent dessert, all those plans fell to the wayside as laughter, mild paranoia and lethargy overcame us. I take the time to apologise now for keeping Antía and Violeta up by talking shit in a rapidly deteriorating Spanish.

Vigo Transforma

Thursday, June 30th – Saturday, July 2nd

After five months living in Vigo, I was once again officially homeless and living the vagrant life – in style! I moved into a friend’s house downtown for a few days and joined him and a French friend, Rennaud for Vigo’s highlight of the year: Vigo Transforma, 3 days of contemporary and not-so-contemporary music down by the port.

Friday, June 16th – Wednesday, June 22nd

I came to Vigo under the premise that I would teach English as a foreign language. And so it was my main occupation in my five months here. However, I was also constantly dubious about this position. For many years I have felt uneasy about the current role of English, the so-called “world language”. Partly, this stemmed from the inherent shame