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I wake up, thinking that I’m either on a train or a ship, and wondering why my bed isn’t moving around. Then I remember. I’m in Lucca, and it’s buying books day. After a comprehensive, included-in-the-price breakfast and a bit more wirelessing I go back over the walls and, by either luck or instinct, certainly not conscious thought, find myself in the little ‘piazzetta’, the open square where the second-hand books and prints are sold. I select a modest eighty-six or so, and airily pack them into my enormous fabric bag. I manage to stagger out of the piazza with something like insouciance, only to collapse on a step round the corner, under the incurious gaze of fifty or sixty American tourists. After a few more false starts, the bag and I work out some sort of modus operandi, and I succeed in lugging it back to my room. Even the fact that the bag is considerably wider than the hotel doors doesn’t faze us for too long, as we come up with the revolutionary scientific principle of turning sideways for a bit.




Piled up on the floor, eighty-six books look like quite a lot, and I package twelve or so up to post back to myself. I’ve looked at the PosteItalia website, and reckon it ought to cost around six euro using the economy service. After a battle of wills between me and the Scotch tape, won by the Scotch tape – something about a Presbyterian upbringing, I expect – I take the packet to the central post office, using the same vaguely divining method by which I found the books in the first place. Alas; the economy service no longer exists, and the parcel will cost thirty-three euro to post; more than it cost me to travel on the sleeper train from Paris. After various discussion of alternatives, none of which help with much except to practice my Italian, I walk out with the parcel under my arm and console myself with a lemon sorbet at a nearby gelateria. It’s a very good sorbet, and I am thoroughly consoled, especially when I get back and find that I do, after all, have room for all eighty-six books, together with the twenty-eight that I go out and buy later in the afternoon. By then the booksellers are all celebrating the birthday of one of them, with a large bottle of bubbly stuff, and I enter into a confused conversation about Delft. It turns out that the confusion is my fault, as my pronunciation of Irlanda sounds to them like Olanda. Insufficiently rolled ‘r’ I think.






After a little more wall-meandering I go back to the rest of the Roquefort. Somehow I don’t feel quite as fond of it as I once did. To improve my Italian listening skills (honest) I watch the Italian version of Deal or No Deal. It’s considerably jollier than I remember the English one to be, with computer-animated characters, contestants from each of the provinces, audience-participation songs with actions, beautiful hand-made boxes with weird things in them and the contestant’s family sitting on a sofa next to her. Tonight’s was unlucky, ending with a choice between 250 euro and a cactus, but 7,000 euro appeared from a small sack, by way of a consolation prize, and a good time was obviously had by all.

I wake up briefly, at about half past four in the morning, as the train groans to a stop and eases itself off again, like an old man cajoling himself up from a park bench. It’s due to stop at Dijon, pass through the Simplon tunnel and call at a few northern Italian towns before Firenze (Florence) and later Rome. I wonder vaguely where we are, and go back to sleep. At seven my alarm goes off, and judging from the houses I can see under the blind, we are definitely in Italy. The train is due into Firenze at 7.15 but we left Paris late when the attendant comes round at half past seven with our passports, he tells me that it will be another half hour before we arrive. Ten minutes later we pull into a station and I glance idly to see the name. Firenze Campo di Marte. Aargghh. Fortunately we have our bags packed and are able to stagger out before the train chugs on to Rome.

From the air alone we would know we were in Italy. It’s still cold, and there is frost on the tracks. We know this cold. For the final seven or eight months that we lived in Italy, we rented a farmhouse in the Mugello, the hills north of the city, and caught the train into this station for Christmas shopping and for G to play rugby. But there’s nothing much to see, other than the pitch, and we catch the next train for the seven minute journey into the central station, Santa Maria Novella. There I fail to find a fornaio to buy plain bread so we breakfast on the leftovers from our French picnic supper – Roquefort, tomatoes and those ubiquitous sandwiched biscuits with chocolate in the middle. To be strictly accurate I have the tomatoes and G had the biscuits, so it isn’t quite as bizarre as it sounds. While G. digests the gastronomic feast, I go for a quick gallop around the city, armed with camera, thus:

When I come back, G. goes to catch his train for Pisa and I wait at the station to meet Timea, the export manager of the Italian publishers Giunti. I’ve dealt with Giunti since we first started our online Italian bookshop (now www.crystalbard.com ) and Timea has been especially helpful, efficient and friendly. It is the first time we’ve met and we recognize one another immediately. We go to a new Giunti bookshop in Firenze and browse around together – I can’t think of a much better way of getting to know someone, unless it’s indulging in coffee and apricot tart at a corner café, which is what we do next. After that we go out to the Villa Giunti, the firm’s headquarters north of Firenze, towards Fiesole. It’s probably the most beautiful house I’ve ever visited in Italy, with ancient wall-paintings, a light gallery where the art and children’s departments work and a perfect library with huge windows opening on to the olive-strewn hills. I’m mostly lost for words, in any language, but nod as I’m welcomed and shown around with delicate Italian courtesy.

Back in Firenze I buy a ticket for Lucca at one of the automatic machines. It not only gives me the option of buying a ticket within Italy or internationally, suggesting the destination when I type L, U… but tells me the times of the next few trains and asks which I would like to take. The journey, as all Italian train tickets tell you, is 78km long, I have no eligibility for reductions, and have not booked in advance. So the price would be … imagining a similar situation in the U.K…. five euro. The train leaves in half an hour, as I have just missed one by seconds, but is already at the platform and I can get straight on and settle into one of the clean and comfortable seats. Looking around I see that special litter bins are marked inside the carriage for recycling of paper and cans. It’s the sort of detail we imagine in the Netherlands or Germany, but are rightly ashamed to find the laid-back Italians doing these things so much better than we can. The journey is smooth, quiet and quick, and I am soon back in Lucca, where we lived for a year and a half, and to which I cannot stop myself returning.

I’ve booked into the Hotel Rex, this time, next to the station and with precious wireless internet. The Rough Guide is a bit sniffy about it, complaining of a lack of atmosphere, but the staff are all exactly what most of us hope for, friendly and helpful without being pushy, and the rooms spacious and imaginatively furnished.






Mine is a bit dark, being at the back of the hotel looking out on a narrow alley, but we can’t all be at the front, and it is well-lit and a generous size for a single booking. To my mild surprise the wireless internet, which is free, works first time as soon as I get a username and password from reception, and I’m able to catch up with M, who is valiantly holding the fort at home, including snuffly son and missing books.






Later I go out to walk around the broad walls that circle the city, planning to pick up some bread, olives and water to supplement the remaining Roquefort. Distracted by memories, I am confused by a new chldren’s playground and come down from the walls too early, walking around the road for the rest of the way. But if I hadn’t, I would have missed the typical Lucchese sight; a young man cycling, in the chaotic rush hour, along the busy ring road, baby (six months at the most) in a carrier in front of him, while his golden labrador trotted along, also on the road, at the end of a sturdy lead. There are so many ways of travelling about, given a little courage and imagination.

Begin the day, as befits one taking a long journey, by going to Mass. I feel as though, like a medieval pilgrim, I ought to be going via Canterbury instead of Dover, and continuing on to Rome. Instead I catch the train from Stafford to Reading. I have a reservation in coach C so while I wait for my train I watch the two earlier ones pull into the platform and note where coach C usually stops. Third from the back, ending up in a patch of sunlight. I stand in the patch, and sure enough, as the Reading train wheezes to a halt, the door of the third coach from the end is directly in front of me. I take this as a good omen and lug the great green case inside with no more ado. It’s only when I’ve stowed the luggage and am looking for my seat that I realise this train has its carriages lined up the other way, and I am in coach I. But the friendly lady ticket-collector says it doesn’t matter; they’re not busy.






Nothing seems to matter very much on this sleepy, sunny Sunday afternoon as we meander through the ruins of England’s industry (the picture on the right shows what was once a Wolverhampton brewery). It must be the beginning of the university year, as here, as on the ferry, are students with giant sports bags and anticipatory faces, less frenetic, but happier, than the holidaymakers at airports. Between Birmingham and the NEC are green fields with no-nonsense oak trees and the irrepressible ghosts of Falstaff and King Charles join us in the empty seats. In places the globalized world makes its sulky bid for dominance, like a child no one likes, that has to shout for attention, but in Coventry the church spires rise high behind the garish Burger King, leaving it flimsy as one of its own abandoned boxes. White bindweed twists up the sidings, shimmering trees overhang little rivers, a woman and child pick blackberries and odd shaped fields, hills and copses remind me that this is also Tolkien’s native country, The Shire.






Inside the train a man in a red anorak won’t sit down but stands in the aisle

for the entire journey. When I excuse myself to squeeze past he doesn’t reply or move, but gazes into some unsharable distance. At Banbury a group of young people in bright clothes clamber on while an elderly Chinese lady waits on the platform. A man with a magnificent black beard talks on his mobile phone in a language I don’t know. The whole experience, inside and outside the train, is of England at its best; eccentric, tolerant and diverse; calm, with no sign here of anything to trouble us and yet real, more real than the panic-stricken headlines. Haystacks are rolled up on the pale gold fields and the canal boats are bright in primary colours. Sometimes I spend so long thinking about doom and woe, I forget how much good there is left to treasure. The churches in the countryside seem signs of continuity here, not conflict, as they inevitably are in Northern Ireland. There the scenery is greener, our spirits lifted higher by the breathtaking lakes and forests but correspondingly plunged into melancholy when we come to another of the ugly, brutal settlements. Now, as we pass Oxford with a moment’s glimpse of the city and follow the Thames southwards, I have the unusual sensation of gratitude towards my homeland.






My bucolic reverie is rudely broken by the discovery that the platform lift at Reading station has broken. A chivalrous passer-by carries my light case leaving me with the great green monster. (Not excessively chivalrous.) A kindly old gentleman with a walking-stick, who seems to have wandered by accident into the twenty-first century, laments “I can’t be much help to you, I’m afraid.” and follows me, breathing auras of sympathy, as I edge the suitcase up, step by step. It’s enormously heavy, and only the knowledge that, if I let go, it would knock the KOG down to the bottom, keeps me hanging on. Finally I reach the top, breathless, and a jolly ticket collector explains that the lift only broke that morning. I’m not sure why that should make me feel better, but it does. Back in the sunshine outside I wait for the bus beside little knots of taxi drivers, talking in what I think of, childishly. as taxi-driver language, all dressed in neat cotton shirts with sandals or, in one case, bare feet. It feels exotic and oriental. The bus driver arrives, running and laughing, calling out, “I wish I was single!” When I get on the bus he rather charmingly apologizes, explaining that his wife is out at work and that his mother has only just arrived to take over looking after his children. “I tell her I have to drive a bus at three o’clock so what time does she come? Three minutes to three!” On the bus is an advert for a promotion, In Town Without My Car, and another for a Safer Reading Campaign. I wonder if this is to do with not straining your eyes, or, as at Cambridge University Library twenty years ago, not letting impressionable students take The Bell Jar back to their rooms with them. But then I remember where we are.






At Lower Earley I bid the green suitcase a not-very-tearful farewell, as our eldest son meets me at the bus stop and trundles it along to the house he’s renting with a fellow chess player. His old school friends from Lucca (where we lived five years ago) are now at university, mainly in Pisa, and so I’ve coaxed him to keep me company on the journey. The case is full of essentials; Playstation games, jeans, snooker cues and a fair chunk of Terry Pratchett’s oeuvre. We stay for long enough to eat the only food in the house, two bananas, listen to his brother on the radio in Enniskillen (intermittent wonders of the internet) and admire the cat who has annexed their front garden to its territory. Then it’s back to the bus stop, station, train to London and tube to Victoria where we grab a quick meal, with more economy than imagination, at Wetherspoons before going in search of the coach station.

The original plan didn’t have this bit in it; we were going to stay overnight at G’s house and then catch the Eurostar at some civilized time on Monday morning. After a few days of agonizing, following the fire in the tunnel, I decided not to risk hoping for a seat on one of the few trains still running, and booked us instead on the Eurolines overnight service. Neither the coach station nor the coach itself is terrible; everything is clean and modern, but after my transcendent train journey, it’s very crowded and we are herded with little idea of what is to happen when. Most of the passengers are French, and the driver makes his brusque announcements in French only, so we have to grasp what we can and follow the others. The only thing that really annoys me is that, waiting at the ferry port in Dover, the driver switches the engine on to indicate to those who have gone to the terminal for coffee that it’s time to return to the bus, but then leaves it running for almost an hour until he can drive on to the ship. But by then I’m drifting in and out of sleep and don’t think of saying anything (if I’d dared in any case).

Not one of the great travel epics of all history, but I had a pleasant time mooching around the Oxfam shop, meeting up with family and visiting the bridge over the stream out of Doxey. It’s being repaired, so the road is closed to motor traffic and blissfully quiet (except for the roar of the nearby motorway). We met a few fellow pedestrians and a couple of families out cycling, trying quite hard not to look smug as they sailed over the bridge while the 4x4s did their grumpy three point turns.

Note to the confused: These first two entries were both uploaded the next day, so Day One was actually Friday and Day Two was Saturday. I don’t know when I’ll get the chance to upload later ones, so will try to explain as I go along. Now I’m confused as well.

In a way, the trip started yesterday. For reasons known to themselves, Ulsterbus have got rid of the early bus from Enniskillen to Belfast, so the only way of getting to the ferry port on time, other than spending another night away or managing to make conversation for two hours with a taxi driver, was by hiring a car. So MJ and I set out on the bus yesterday to collect a car from Belfast. We usually hire a car once every few months, and do as many as possible of the motoring-type errands that have built up since the last time. No one enjoys it particularly (except the dog, who wagged his tail in ecstasy when we got home with it yesterday afternoon) and there’s always a great collective sigh of relief when it’s safely back with the car hire firm.

We were the babies on the bus, as all the other passengers were white-haired couples taking advantage of their free bus passes. It was oddly quiet, especially as I often find myself on the bus at around four in the afternoon, with the hoydenish teenage girls, and rather reassuring. The reassurance was even odder, as I racked my brain to think of a bus-related crisis that would be defused by an ability to solve the Telegraph crossword or to bake a plateful of really well-risen scones. All the same, there it was.

In Belfast, while MJ got another bus up to the airport to collect the car, I whizzed (later modulated into a trudge) up and down Botanic Avenue, in the university district, visiting the charity shops (and post office, to send back our Eurostar tickets, q.v.). We met up outside the Hilton, or opposite the market, whichever sounds more congenial, and drove back to Enniskillen via Dungannon for a bit more thrift-shop browsing. Back at home we delivered some boxes of books to the business unit, collected a large box of other odds-and-ends, and called in at the supermarket for the great British (and Irish) institution of the “big shop”. After four years of not having a car, and bringing almost all our groceries home by bike, we’ve rather lost the knack of buying too much, but managed to half fill a trolley with lemonade, cereal, dog-food and vegetarian sausages.

I walked back from town, having failed to get Boots’ photo processing machines to recognize my jpgs as valid files, and was perplexed to find my legs aching quite badly as I walked up the last hill. It was bizarre – all I’d done, apart from a couple of miles wallking in Belfast and a few yards in Dungannon, was walk into town and back, a journey which I do virtually every day, usually in combination with ten miles’ cycling. The only difference was the two hours on the bus to Belfast, which I also regularly combine with walking, and the two more in the car going back. I’m beginning to understand why drivers are so anxious to park as close as humanly possible to their destinations. There seems to be something about sitting in a car – maybe the design of the seats? – that makes it really difficult to walk afterwards. Has anyone else noticed this?

At 6.45am this morning we were off again, calling at the Halifax cashpoint machine (the only one in Enniskillen that gives out Bank of England notes) and listening to more more financial squeaking on the car radio. Of all the fantastic explanations of the “crisis”, the only one we missed was the story of the innocent young bankers who, on their way to market, meet a plausible man who bought their cows in exchange for handfuls of magic beans. Of course, the tale has a happy ending; the government buys all the beans, which have turned out not to be magic after all, puts them all in a giant tin marked “Not For Human Consumption” and gives the bankers their cows back. After all, it wouldn’t do to shake confidence in the regulated fairy-tale cattle market. Not until the next time, anyway.

The journey to Belfast was quick and easy, suggesting that the massive scars across the countryside, showing the path of the new designated motorway, are less than absolutely necessary. In Ireland, however, north and south, the word “by-pass” is still synonymous with “panacea” and the phrase “road improvements” uttered without a hollow laugh. We reached the docks and the ferry terminal with an hour to spare before the check-in closed, and MJ, having lugged my enormous suitcase out of the boot (couldn’t take that on Ryanair without precipitating a personal banking crisis), set off around the harbour to take the car back.

It wasn’t, by any means, his only enormous contribution to the journey. Earlier this week he made a couple of heroic cycle trips across the border to collect my euro spending money, and while I’m away he’ll be single-handedly looking after the boys, dog, house and my book orders. No man is an island, and neither is a woman, especially when in motion. None of us can get anywhere without a bit of help, and in my case (pun not intended) an awful lot. So thank you again, M.

“Check-in” and “security” for the ferry isn’t quite what air travellers are accustomed to. In place of the long bad-tempered queue, the frenzied tapping at the keyboard, the suspicious questions, water confiscation and obsessive bagging of toothpaste, we get a friendly hello, a swipe of the passport, an offer of help with luggage and a nice lady who asks whether you have any alcohol. (I didn’t, so never found out whether it was an official question or whether she was just thirsty.) A passing lorry driver lifted my gargantuan suitcase on to the luggage trolley, with only a slight gasp and blanching of the features, and I joined the other passengers in what I suppose is probably called the departure lounge. It’s fine; modern, clean and bright, with a water cooler, toilets, television and machines for drinks and snacks. Not the total consumption experience of the airport; no opportunity to buy ties, knickers, wide-screen televisions or twenty-year old malt, just the sort of room you’d choose to wait in for half an hour before you get on a boat.

The minibus that took the foot passengers to the ferry has seen better days, and many of them, but we almost all fitted on, and it took us efficiently and unpretentiously on to the ship. In front of me was a middle-aged couple travelling with an elderly lady, and I had the pleasure of hearing them, when the bus came to a stop, urge her, “Come on Eileen.” No one else seemed to notice; maybe they didn’t go to so many discos in the early 1980s.

On the ferry I went for a wander around on the outside decks with my camera. No one else was there, and the crew hadn’t yet put up the chains designating staff-only areas, so I ended up in a few places I wasn’t supposed to be. I was enjoying feeling a bit like a journalist, but not an undercover one, so I conscientiously went back to the proper passenger places. I didn’t see anything gruesome, anyway, just a glimpse of an older world where things still get done without the benefit of wall-to-wall PR and focus groups.

The vegetarian option at lunch (three course, included in the ticket price) was the same as last time, rather glutinous spring rolls, but the chips were outstanding and, as always, the service courteous and efficient. I managed to find a seat overlooking the prow (it is prow, isn’t it?) – definitely more civilized than the safety instructions on the back of an airline seat.

The crossing was pretty near perfect; calm and smooth,and after lunch the sun even came out. I’ll leave the pictures to tell the story.

We were half an hour late getting in, but the foot passengers’ minibus was as swift as before (albeit with a cheery Scouse accent) and I found a couple of people going to Manchester and bludgeoned them into sharing a taxi to Lime Street Station (Mind you, they hadn’t seen the suitcase when they agreed.) At Lime Street there was an almost empty train about to leave for Birmingham and by dint of looking pathetic, I got another kind-hearted sap to help with the monstrous article. So,as at the time of writing (five to eight, a few miles north of Runcorn) things couldn’t possibly have gone much better. But don’t worry;there are nine more days, plenty of time for mystery,adventure,gloom and the good-natured exercise of schadenfreude.

Do you remember the final scene of Clockwise, the one where John Cleese is giving his speech at the Headmasters’ Conference and the middle-aged motorcycle couple come creaking in? I felt a bit like that this morning, arriving at work in soaking waterproofs, some shiny black amphibian crawled out of the marshes. I was deliciously dry underneath, though. In the afternoon it didn’t rain at all, so I felt humanoid enough to call in at Curry’s and ask for the manager. She (which shamingly surprised me for a start) was very co-operative, explained that the sign wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near the corner, and despatched one of her large minions to move it. Well, we’ll see…

I’ve reluctantly given up the idea of Eurostar, as their latest bulletin advises against travelling with them for the rest of the month, so we’ve booked with Eurolines (coach and ferry) instead. I think I feel happier on top of the water, anyway.

I’ve been watching bits of Charley Boorman’s travel programme, By Any Means, in which he travels from Ireland to Australia using, according to the website “over 110 modes of transport”. Sadly, an awful lot of the hundred and ten turn out to be different models of car, along with several virtually empty buses. Admittedly, he doesn’t fly, at least so far, but then (on the whole) neither did Michael Palin, when he did this sort of thing much more charmingly a couple of decades ago. By Any Means had a lot of talk about logistics, and film of harassed producers buzzing about “the London office”, all of which seemed a little over-the-top for what was after all, a completely arbitrary endeavour. But it at least helped me to put my Eurostar panic into proportion.

Meanwhile many thanks to Paulo for his comment and link to the Bike2Oz website. I’m really looking forward to watching Lowanna and Kevin’s adventures, and expect to be a great deal more inspired than by BAM.

A couple of months ago I planned a complex plane-free journey, starting next week, from Enniskillen to Lucca via Belfast, Liverpool, Stafford, Reading, London, Paris and Florence (spot the awkward bit?) It took weeks to work out, and pages of A4 to write down all the journeys and connections, which all had masses of extra time for delays, problems, and just plain daydreaming. Nothing could go wrong … except for maybe the worst fire in the Channel Tunnel’s history. Oh well, it’s a few days off yet. All shall be well, as Dame Julian reminds us. At least we’re not flying.

It’s the first day this week that the rain hasn’t been kellying it down at 3.15pm, so here’s a picture to celebrate.

Thanks to everyone who has commented on entries in this – yes, I think I can just about force myself to call it a blog. Please do continue. (And you don’t necessarily have to agree with me; at least not quite all the time).