Just back…

…from the Isle of Man.

Not me, sadly, but Nat Geo travel books editor Larry Porges, who said numerous nice things about my favourite island:

Biggest selling point: It’s fourfold.

1) The beautiful scenery—rich green hills peppered with bright yellow gorse, dramatic cliffside vistas, thatched-roof villages, tumbling waterfalls, and the 2,000-foot Snaefell mountain overlooking it all.
2) Unusual wildlife, including tailless Manx cats, four-horned Loaghtan sheep, and a small population of feral wallabies in the north.
3) Sincerely friendly residents. I was only on the island four days and have been in touch, via email, with six different people since my return.
4) A storied history and heritage. Three highlights: remnants of medieval Viking castles, 1,000-year-old Tynwald Hill (site of the oldest continuous parliament in the world), and a charming Victorian-era narrow-gauge steam railway that chugs around the island’s south.

Homesickness.

isle-of-man-aerial-590-590x413

More homesickness (despite the fact my family was once escorted off those very same fields by a maniacal farmer with a shotgun).

You can read the rest of his review here.

A February admin post

Look at the title: This is an admin post. No – I don’t like them either, but they are necessary evils to keep you informed and to remind me what I did and why I did it. Keep reading – you might learn something.

Without wanting to give too much away (just in case the Overlords are reading), despite my physical geographical location being 33°54’44″S 18°29’19″E (ish) as I write this, it is becoming evident that my emotional geographical location is much more 53°23’09″N 1°28’10″W.

I’m missing the snow and the warm beer. All we have here is soaring temperatures, hot winds and runaway veld fires. I’m missing the decent football, although last night’s Merseyside derby cup replay didn’t do much to promote the beautiful (English) game. As one correspondent to the blog remarked: “What a complete waste of nearly 3 hours of potential sleep time.”

And he was right.

But no-one likes a morose blogger, so keeping my mind busy with other things is what’s required. Thus, it’s spring-cleaning time at 6000 miles….
Out go a couple of redundant blogs from the blogroll, in comes heavyweight English comedian Stephen Fry and his unsurprisingly chatty personal offerings.
The RSS feed has been updated too. Following a myriad of pleading emails, it’s now full text. See? I listen!
I have been signed up by GlobalPost.com and will now be telling the truth about South Africa to people even more globally than before – if that’s possible.

Additionally, I’m now on twitter. Not for any other reason than everyone else seemed to be doing it and it looked a bit of fun. You can look in the sidebar for my latest status, or if you follow me @6000, it’ll even keep you in the know about updates on here.

Finally, I’m attempting a post a day in February. This is day five of February and this is my fifth post. So all in all, it seems to be going quite well. And your response has been wonderful too – visitors are up almost 300% on this time last year. Thanks. And tell your friends to come and have a look too.

There. All done, I think. Like a uneventful visit to the dentist – not as bad as you thought, was it?
Although you haven’t got my bill yet.