“Probably there is no real Paris, except if you have always lived there. For those of us who arrive only to go away, the place teems with ghosts.” – Clive James, A Postcard from Paris, 1980.

This trip to Paris was the first time I visited the French capital. It seems amazing that it took so long to get there. After all, it was always the cheapest flight from England, or a simple train ride from Berlin. We passed through it on our way to Versailles on a French exchange trip but I remember only the traffic beneath my window, the rain on the streets, and the fact that we were not allowed out of the bus. So that doesn’t count.

I always thought that I did not make it to Paris because it was so close. It wasn’t going anywhere and it was always going to be easy to get to so why not try something else? But now I think there was something else at work, namely those ghosts that Clive James was talking about in his article written over thirty years ago, who lived in the pages of some of my favourite books and that had painted a picture of the city that I was convinced the real thing could never live up to. Of the places represented on my bookshelves only New York can probably compete with Paris, and I have never made it there either, and it was this realisation that has made me sure that it was the fear of disillusionment and disappointment that kept me away from these cities for such a long time. Continue reading →

(South Stack Lighthouse in the 1910s, reproduced with permission from www.oldukphotos.com)

There are countless special places along the coastline of Wales, let alone the British Isles, but the cliffs around South Stack seem to stir the imagination of a great number of people. Bird-lovers head for nearby Ellins Tower and the RSPB centre, and the chance to aim their binoculars and telescopes at the guillemots, razorbills and puffins, not to mention seeking out the incredibly rare choughs, of which the nine pairs on the reserve make up 2% of the entire UK population. Continue reading →