Bean Abroad Travel Blog

13/06/2020

Bristol at night from a few years back, in the news this week for all the right reasons.

Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past few weeks you will have noticed there are some things happening around the world. It has caused me to reassess my understanding of the history of white supremacy and my active, if unwitting, continuation of that history. I have been reading a lot over the past couple of weeks (especially Black and British by the fantastic David Olusoga, I cannot recommend this highly enough) and have been trying to come up with some personal commitments that I can do. To that end on this blog you will see in future more posts:

1 - Highlighting slavery and black history in posts where relevant including book recommendations.

2 - Pointing out and actively promoting BIPOC members of the outdoors/conservation community and the engineering world.

3 - Challenging my own history (particularly Bristol University and its roots in slave money).

Over the coming weeks I will do a specific post on each of these in more detail once I have done more research and also to try and not dilute black voices right now by spam posting.

I am by no means an expert on this (on the scale of educated to expert I have just started kindergarten) but I would encourage you all to think of ways you can personally do things to help combat systemic racism, privately or publicly. I have and will continue to do things privately that are not relevant to the usual content of this blog so I have kept that separate but I would encourage you all to DO something. Actions are important.

Thoughts on the above are more than welcome, let's get the conversation going 🙂.

02/06/2020

My problem too

31/05/2020

Portraits of a city from life before lockdown.
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A beautiful pastel wall in a side street near Holland Park. Originally the grounds of a fancy house called Cope Castle it was the private playground of a fancy man (the Chancellor of the Exchequer if you want to be precise) during the reign of James I. Later on another fancy man (the Earl of Holland) inherited it through his wife and promptly named it after himself because that's what being an influencer meant in the 17th century. It was subsequently bombed to hell by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz and now has peacocks and a Japanese garden because why the hell not?
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15/05/2020

Portraits of a city from life before lockdown.
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An architectural detail in soft pastel hues near my office (a place that is starting to seem like a distant memory). It used to inject a bit of colour into grey escapes from the dullness of the office. I find it amazing how a small dab of colour can transform a façade.
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11/05/2020

Portraits of a city from life before lockdown, before hiding.....
Tower blocks near the Barbican in London. Sometimes it is just nice to look at nice things on a sunny day, a dull facade saved from obscurity by a lick of paint and a brash attitude. ....
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21/04/2020

One of the nameless muses of a photographer on board a train in Sri Lanka.
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One of the main virtues of train travel is the time it gives you to think and if that is too much effort then it at least gives you something to stare at to take your mind off things.
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The Sri Lankan interior on the train line between Kandy and Ella is one that provides more eye candy (sorry) than one could hope for but the people around me were muse enough. Plus JD didn't want to do the whole leaning out of the train on the bend with his eyes closed thing that seems to be standard for photos on these trains (and strikes me as a thoroughly impractical way to travel).

15/04/2020

Continuing my love affair with trains here is an unedited shot taken as we snaked our way along the southwest coast of Sri Lanka.

I would wax lyrical about how incredible the views were and how emotional and enlightening an experience it was but I was too busy chatting to some people we met on the train so missed all the good bits and got off having had a wonderful conversation but having not seen one of the major scenic routes in the country.

The train journey from the Portuguese colonial city of Galle to the commercial capital of Colombo takes arounds three hours and runs along the coast past palm fringed beaches with golden sands and with the Indian Ocean seemingly within arms reach, apparently. I have no idea, I was having a lovely conversation but facing away from the sea so you'll have to take the word of Lonely Planet instead.

13/04/2020

Having actually found my photos from my trip to Sri Lanka a couple of years ago I thought that they might be slightly more interesting to look at whilst locked in our houses so here is one of many that I took of our train journeys around the country.

One of the major visible legacies of colonialism in Sri Lanka the railways were originally constructed to transport tea and coffee to the commercial capital Colombo from the inland hill country where the crops were grown.

Sri Lanka has experienced a massive economic bounceback after nearly three decades of civil war and the devastating 2004 tsunami and the railways have adapted to suit, now shuttling people around the country as opposed to goods as highways and industrial output have boomed.

Personally I think train travel is one of the best ways to get around and see a country and this was no exception. The views were definitely not too bad, I'd possibly even go so far as to say they were pretty alright but that might be conveying too much excitement. Either way I would recommend a trip on Sri Lankan Railways.
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10/04/2020

In the words of Akon, I'm locked up, they won't let me out, so I thought it was about time I actually started posting some photos again.

Now is the time of armchair travelling so I'll be (hopefully) doing more regular posts from old trips to keep you guys from tearing your hair out with boredom. This little one is from a trip in my own city to the Tate Britain that I did with my parents when they visited.

Constructed on the site of the old Millbank Prison by the Thames at the request of sugar merchant Henry Tate it opened its doors to the public in 1897. One of the largest museums in the UK it houses an expansive collection of British art from 1500 onwards but in a classic me move I was more interested in the building itself. This spectacular wall, titled Drawing for Free Thinking, was painted in 2011 by David Tremlett and I spent what can only be considered an unsociable amount of time staring at it entranced by the bright, contrasting colours.

16/08/2019

One of the local water points we assessed in our survey. Unfortunately this particular point was too far away from the community we were working with to provide any cost-effective and practical solution to the water supply problem. The trough around the base allowed animals, both domesticated and wild, to drink without contaminating the water supply proper.
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That was a lesson we we tried to incorporate into our design, to reduce human-wildlife conflict by designing water facilities for both the villagers and the animals that they were competing over scant water supplies. Elephants in particular are thirsty beasts, capable of consuming up to 40l of water per day and this has brought them into conflict with the Maasai communities, breaking pipes and destroying infrastructure.
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Whilst African elephant populations are slowly growing they are still listed as vulnerable by the IUCN and minimising the risk of elephants and people coming to harm was one of our major goals.
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28/07/2019

Midday in the Rift Valley, things are getting rather warm. The car provides some shade but this is not an ideal place for a breakdown. Luckily help is on the way (in a 4 x 4 that doesn't try to cross the water at the widest part).
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The Kenya Lake system provides an important stopping point for vast numbers of Migratory birds as they travel on the Asian - East African Flyway from South Africa and Madagascar to Siberia and Alaska. Lake Magadi is the southernmost lake in the system and we frequently saw flocks of flamingoes wading around in the shallow waters.
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These critical layover points along East Africa are under threat, largely from changes in land use that reduce the wetland areas as well as human pressure on these sensitive environments.
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21/07/2019

Whilst this might look like a reliable source of water this lake is not drinkable. Lake Magadi is the southernmost of the great salt lakes in Kenya. Situated in the Rift Valley the lake is surrounded by a series of lagoons fed by subterranean hot springs with surface temperatures of up to 85 degrees centigrade.
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Despite these extremes of salinity and temperature there are creatures that live in this inhospitable wilderness. A single species of fish survives in the cooler lakeside pools and at certain times of the year thousands of pink flamingos can be seen wading through the shallow waters.
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This dramatic landscape formed the backdrop to our daily commute out to speak to the various communities that call this arid region home. Several Maasai villages are scattered around the surrounding hills and plains and it was our job to identify any existing and potential sources of fresh water. Maps and geological information for the area were sparse so our desk study was limited and we soon discovered that the greatest source of information were the local communities.
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14/07/2019

Day one of trying to be professional on an expedition: getting into hot water (of the literal volcanic kind) and getting stuck.

Whilst we were there ostensibly to deal with water issues this was one water issue that we were thoroughly under-prepared for and we gathered a small crowd during the three hour wait to get picked up.

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09/07/2019

From one water issue to another, this time half a world away. With my work I was fortunate enough to get out on site in Kenya and conduct a feasibility study for supplying a rural Maasai community with water.

Due to a changing climate the river that used to supply the village had dried up. What little water remained running underground was being transported to the community via an unreliable pipeline that was intermittently broken by elephants grown bold by regional drought. A colleague and I went to assess the feasibility of different options for a stable water supply.

This is the first in a series of photographs from that trip. Here the water bottle of a passing Maasai boy lies in stark contrast to the barren bed of the drying salt lake where our car had gotten stuck.

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30/06/2019

The lighthouse on Eilean Musdile. Constructed in 1833 it contrasts with the background when seen from any direction and was one of the last manned lighthouses in the area until it was automated in 1965. For us it signalled a return to dry land and home as we passed it on the final journey back into Oban. It was a week of astonishing beauty and meditative simplicity; without phone signal drifting lazily around one of Scotland's magnificent islands. The unbridled joy of encountering true wildlife, particularly spending an hour in the puffin colony, was tempered by the stark reality of finding plastic debris on beaches inaccessible by land. I have left the sea behind me and returned to my city life but have made a couple of small changes to my lifestyle to help our aquatic friends in some small measure. What do you reckon you could change?

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23/06/2019

Sailing with Sail Britain up the Sound of Mull. If any shot encapsulated the meditative qualities of the ocean it is this. Feet dangling over the rails, wind stroking your hair and the sun beating down on your face, these are the moments that make being on a boat pure joy. Perhaps I was feeling this way because we had just set off from Tobermory and I was enjoying the effects of the distillery tour, or perhaps there is something about reconnecting with the ocean that is inherently worthwhile. Either way, whiskey or waves, I was pretty bloody happy.
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16/06/2019

If anybody ever asks why I love being on a boat this photo will give some idea. This was the view from the hill overlooking our anchorage on the first night with in the Sound of Iona (with the famous Iona Abbey in the background if you squint really hard and do some creative imagining). Tradition has it that the monastery was founded by the monk Columba who had fled his native Ireland after a minor disagreement over a book that escalated somewhat unexpectedly into a full blown civil war, as you do. Basically Columba was copying some religious texts but being the absolute top pious lad that he was he wanted to keep the copy for himself. This was considered far too cheeky for the monks he studied under and they were all like "nah mate nah" . The king waded in and was like "this is all bare bants but hand the book back" to which Columba responded "u wot m8? r u mad?" and then raised an army against the king. Many unnecessary deaths later Columba was feeling somewhat guilty and decided to the decent thing by running away to Scotland, building an Abbey in the middle of nowhere and never bothering anybody ever again. Iona also has an amazingly named beach called the Bay at the Back of the Ocean (I'm not making this up) so named because it is the final landfall before the Americas. Image credit to my mate James from , if I tried to copy this and claim it as my own who knows how it might turn out.
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11/06/2019

Without wishing to be too smug (spoiler alert) it is evenings like these that make life seem just that little bit worth it. A foraged meal of fresh mussels, the largest I've ever laid eyes on, some chilled wine and this as an evening view. Even a lovely French couple passed by to say hello. Smug as hell and I'm not even ashamed.
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09/06/2019

Happy World Ocean Day (for yesterday)! I was a little ill after a dodgy curry so missed the boat (sorry, I'll see myself out). One good news story from the sea is the return of the razorbill. A hundred years ago razorbills were hunted for eggs, feathers and meat but in 1917 they were protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the population rebounded. Razorbills are monogamous and come to land only to breed, laying one egg a year and taking equal time incubating and feeding their young between male and female. In the UK sadly they are near threatened and populations are decreasing again but action worked previously and I'm hopeful it will again. Check out the RSPB website for local campaigns and the Our Planet website for wider things that you can do to help protect the oceans.

02/06/2019

The dignified grandee of the ocean in all its finery, or the court jester? Either way sadly as with a large number of seabirds the population of puffins are in a steady decline and it is now categorised as Vulnerable by the IUCN. A multitude of reasons has been given for this but mass die-offs in the Bering Sea in 2016/2017 have been in part accredited to climate change and warmer seas changing the availability of zooplankton for fish lower down the food chain (forming the main food source for the puffins). The availability of young herring as prey off the coast of Norway has also been linked to population fluctuations. Check out the RSPB if you want to read more about the cheeky little chaps and how you can help them!

28/08/2017

Hello everybody! After a ridiculously busy year and an overly long hiatus Bean Abroad Travel Blog is being restarted! To kick start it all off again here is an interview that I did recently with the artist Jody Artist Bristol at this year's Upfest.

For those who don't know Upfest is Europe's largest graffiti festival and is a must for anybody visiting England in late July (although the great thing about graffiti is it stays there for ages so you can still go see all the works now). It is based in Bristol and is basically a street party for three days but with amazing artwork being created at the same time and I would definitely recommend it.

Check out the blog post below and let me know what you think! Thanks a lot. It feels good to be back writing 🙂!

http://www.beanabroadtravelblog.com/upfest-2017/

Upfest, the Urban Paint Festival, is Europe's largest graffiti festival and I was lucky enough to interview the artist Jody Thomas this year.

08/10/2016

Guarding the grave of the emperor, outside Hue, Vietnam. Head to http://ift.tt/2b55N2U for more! http://ift.tt/2dmFYeF

07/10/2016

View from the rooftop bar in Hoi An Old Town.

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06/10/2016

Traditional hand painted images, Hoi An old town, Vietnam.

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05/10/2016

The lanterns of Hoi An.

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03/10/2016

Hiplets just shared my post about shops in . Make sure to check them out. Thanks a lot guys!

My review of a tour of Bath with Showaround taking in all the best independent coffee shops and cafes.

03/10/2016

The waterfront of the fishing village outside Nha Trang.

Blog posts about my trip will be going up on www.beanabroadtravelblog.com soon. Like and follow for more!

30/09/2016

The beautiful blue doors of the fishing village near Nha Trang, Vietnam. Like and follow for more! http://ift.tt/2dcDDVA

29/09/2016

Alleyway in a fishing village near Nha Trang, Vietnam.

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