Puglia

Had the pleasure of visiting Puglia recently. Going to start travel blogging again – so here are a few Italian photos from my press trip… Will add links and more words very soon. Every one of these photos has a story to tell.

My trip began in Bari where my friend Concezio recommended this guy’s restaurant. More about it later. And also more about the oldest working olive tree in the world, and the food, and the people, and the landscape…

Later

name of restaurant to be remembered

  

  

  

pre dinner nibble Puglia-style

  

  

this really is the world’s oldest productive olive tree – and the farmer who owns it

  

  

  

superhero watches over Apulian town

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Salalah 2

A few more photos from my recent trip to Southern Oman  This is the Bronze Age hill fort at Khor Rauri east of Salalah  This is how you collect frankincense – merely make a cut on some ancient tree out in the desert and wait a couple of days.

Strange but true – and amazing – is the fact that nine tenths of the world’s frankincense used to be brought through this ancient castleIndeed, it was brought both in and out of this very door  before being transported around what was then a fairly small known world. 

Salalah 1

Martin Hesp journalist

Last week I was in Oman

Am writing a travel piece on the trip for the Western Morning News

And also start blogging again here

Apologies, if anyone is interested, for neglecting this blog which some people are kind enough to follow

Have loads of material, that I hope will interest, to blog in the coming weeks

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Salalah 1

Last week I was in Oman

Am writing a travel piece on the trip for the Western Morning News

And also start blogging again here

Apologies, if anyone is interested, for neglecting this blog which some people are kind enough to follow

Have loads of material, that I hope will interest, to blog in the coming weeks

Isles of Scilly Walks festival inspires idea for new Cornish Snapper story

It was an honour to be asked to lead the first hike in this year’s Walk Scilly festival last weekend. It is one of the most enjoyable walks festivals that is staged regularly in the UK in my opinion – but for much of the time my mind was on other things.

Today I’ve started working on a new Cornish Snapper story based on my recent visit to the archipelago.

It is going to be a mystery surrounding a walks festival in the islands – and I reckon it’s going to be fun.

British Virgin Isles

Was here recently and have written about the happy experience

I guess it’s not surprising that millionaires go to the BVI

Just occasionally wish I was one

There is road through some of the BVI – this is it

St Kitts

Was waiting for a train the other day

Took a while to circumnavigate St Kitts

And then it was three and a half hour around the island

And during that time a small quantity of rum was drunk

Covering the Floods in Somerset as a journalist – Winter 2013/14

Throughout the past winter I’ve been travelling regularly to the Somerset Levels to cover the floods for the Western Morning News. Of course, I’ve been there to talk to people and write stories, but I always carry a camera with me. These are just a few of the photo’s I’ve taken while reporting on the many woes faced by victims and also while researching several opinion pieces about the floods.

I’ll blog some of those stories and opinions soon, but in the meantime here’s just a small selection of the snaps I took on my travels which might give people from further afield some idea of just how big and crazy the whole flood situation was…

Blogging again now I’ve got a small iPad

Have been extremely busy – also travelling a lot in Westcountry and abroad – here are a few pics of the places I’ve visited in the past few months
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British Virgin Isles

St Martin

St Kitts

Dorset

Catching up after a month on the road including unusual trip to the Alps

Haven’t posted on WordPress for a while due to foreign travel and lots and lots of work. But been having a good time all over the place meeting interesting people and seeing fantastic places – which is luckily what journalists are meant to do…

Here I am in Switzerland with some Dartmoor farmers helping to crown Miss Lenk. And what a beautiful girl she is…

I was in Switzerland visiting the town of Lenk with a group of Dartmoor farmers and other movers and shakers from the hills. And while there we attended the big autumnal dairy fair where animals are bought down from the mountains for winter.

Westcountry hill farmers are used to high places, but take three Dartmoor agrarians half way up a Swiss mountain and you might well see them silenced in awe – not only because of the stunning scenery, but because of their astonishment when observing the achievements of their alpine counterparts. 

Recently the Western Morning News witnessed such an event 6000 feet above sea level on the snow covered slopes of the beautiful Simmental Valley. The three well known Dartmoor farmers – Colin Abel, Mathew Cole and Ed Williams – weren’t silent for long, but they were impressed by the remarkable things farmer Ueli Tritten and his wife Hedi had achieved amid the alpine crags.

You can read the full report on the trip here at the Western Morning News website

http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/hills-alive-new-ideas-boost-Dartmoor-s-agri/story-19963023-detail/story.html