planxty's VirtualTourist Home Page

Hello there, I'm really glad you dropped by my homepage, whether on purpose or by accident.

Please feel free to comment on any of my pages - I always like to get feedback and hopefully it will help me improve future tips. Please also feel free to VT mail me if you have any questions. I'm not online every day, but pretty regularly, I'd love to hear from you.

I'll start you off with an AWWWWWW moment, always a good icebreaker. I met this adorable little chap in Dallah in Burma, and, yes, he really was that cute!

I've just looked at my homepage, and realised that it is almost a year out of date. As Sandy Denny wonderfully used to sing, "Who knows where the time goes?" OK, so I've got to re-order the thing a bit. Since the last update, I've had another lovely Easter in Cyprus (including the christening of the child of friends, as pictured), various day trips round Southern England, a long weekend in Brno (tips coming up, honestly), a trip home to Northern Ireland for the wedding of my best mate's daughter, and, undoubtedly, some things that I've temporarily forgotten about.

Hopefully, I can get all the tips together sooner or later.

The picture is purely a random one from the christening in Cyprus. The godmother on the right of the photo is my stepdaughter, which makes me feel a little old all of a sudden. I suppose, by default, I must be some sort of technical (if not biological) grandfather now. Actually, it's not as scary as I thought it would be. There are several infant children in Cyprus who call me Papou (grandfather) and several more older ones who call me Theo (uncle), and, much as I protest, I really quite enjoy it.

Although not a Christian myself, I felt it genuinely a privelege to be invited to what was obviously such an important time in the lives of these people. Their hospitality and generosity will not be soon forgotten, I can tell you.

I have just come back from an absolutely superb weekend at the Fish convention in Haddington, Scotland. It was a wonderful few days of drinking, revelry and very, very good music spent with dear friends from all over the world. I've just constructed a travelogue on this pgae - check it out to see what I got up to.

Right, I've really got to get down to this. Looking at my homepage, I realised it was just a load of updates posted in a hurry after every trip so here is the full story.

I really have had the most remarkable year travelling. The year started brilliantly with the whole month of February spent in Burma. I'm almost finished my pages from there, and I've just spent a fair bit of time writing a travelogue about a great day spent walking near Nyaungshwe, including an impromptu walk IN Lake Inle. Not beside it, mind you, but actually in it. It's a long story. I also have pages on Magwe, Prome/Pyay, Bagan, Mandalay, Nyaung-U, Hsipaw and Rangoon. I'm extrmely flattered that I have received some very positive feedback about these pages. It makes all the hours spent constructing tips worthwhile.

My next trip was a long weekend with mrs_p. to holland where we were based in Eindhoven with a trip to Maastricht. A wonderful time and I've got all the photos, but the tips haven't been done yet. Soon, I promise.

After that, Orthodox Easter was spent, as is our habit, in Greece. We based ourselves in Piraeus and took island trips to Hydra and Spetses. We also visited Aegina and Poros, but, again, the tips haven't been done yet.

A couple of weeks ago, I had five wonderful days in Zagreb. Again the tips are in the pipeline.

I've noithing planned in the near future (that's not to say some impromptu trip won't happen) so hopefully I'll have time to catch up.

Having travelled for so long, i really can't understand how I didn't get into photography earlier. I have now been totally bitten by the photography bug. I have bought a Minolta Dynax 5D, and I'm really pleased with it. The majority of the photos on my travel pages (especially the Burma pages) were taken with it. This photo was the result of my efforts (on a particularly cloudy day). I really hope to learn a lot more about photography and have posted a few of my efforts on a new Docklands album below.

Trawling through VT, it is obvious there are some great photographers here, so any suggestions would be welcomed.

the photograph at the top of my homepage is one of my favourites. It was taken at sunset and features the bridge in Magwe, Myanmar. It is totally undoctored, the sky really was that amazing colour.

You can see some other examples of my photos in the various albums on my travel pages and on this page. hope you like them.

On beginning my homepage on VT I chose the header line "OK, where to now", and have subsequently seen no reason to change it since it is a question always close to my heart. Since then I have, inevitably, had another birthday. Unlike some here, who are a bit coy about their age, I'm not in the least worried about letting you know that I'm now 46 (see my bio).

Now, I don't think I'm having a midlife crisis, at least not any more than over the last 20 years or so, but I happened to be sitting in a London bar recently thinking. Nothing unusual in that, I have to say. I was, at the time, re-reading Michael Palin's excellent Around the World in Eighty Days, which I thoroughly recommend, and found myself taking stock a little about what I had actually done with my life. Before you stop reading, don't worry, this is not a long discourse on matters philosophical. I did, however, and as the title line suggests, come to the conclusion that I have been one lucky man.

Since I initially wrote this paragraph, I have been lucky enough to have visited Burma / Myanmar and Croatia, my 34th and 35th countries visited respectively.

I have seen Angkor, walked the Annapurna trail, swum with a dolphin in the wild, bathed an elephant, watched the sun rise over the Himalayas outside Darjeeling and stood on the Equator in Ecuador amongst a host of other experiences too numerous to mention here.

For me, my guitar and my rucksack are almost inseperable, and musically I have played to an entire Nepalese village, headlined a Folk Festival in Norway, played 14 years at the brilliant Broadstairs Folk Week (see other paragraphs here for links), got horrendously drunk playing an all-nighter with Slovak musicians, and so it goes on.

I'm lucky enough to have a girlfriend who puts up with all this and, as long as my health and finances hold up, I can see no reason why I won't be doing the same in 20 years!

There are far too many cliches about travel but, like most cliches they are rooted in an element of truth. Yes, travel does broaden the mind. Yes, a journey of a thousand mile does begin with a single step and so on. To return to the beginning, there was a lovely quote in the Palin book, written whilst in Dubai, "Travellers depend so much on people, and have to place enormous trust in them. Strangers become friends quickly, but all to briefly........." I couldn't have put it better myself!

As you can see if you check the link on my bio, I am lucky enough to play in a Celtic / country band. Apart from ourselves, obviously ;-)), what music do I like? Well, my musical tastes are fairly eclectic. In my collection I have everything from Marlene Deitrich to Hendrix by way of South American panpipe music and Greek bozouki albums. Here are some of my favourites.

Rory Gallagher. The first gig I ever saw in January 1974 in Belfast. A great musician and sadly missed.

Fish. I absolutely loved (and still do) the older Marillion stuff, but he is now a superb solo artist. I took the photo at a gig in Edinburgh a couple of years ago, and a few of them are on his website now. A really nice bloke, I've had a drink with him a few times.

It's probably to do with my age, but I love prog rock - Yes, early Genesis, ELP, Fruupp (very good Belfast band) and so on.

i love most 60's and 70's music - Hendrix, the Who, CSN, Neil Young (who just keeps on rocking), Moody Blues, Stones, Beatles Wishbone Ash.

Given my folk leanings, it's probably no surprise the I love folk and folk rock. Favoutrites in this category include Fairport Convention (obviously) , the late Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, Battlefield Band, Wolfstone, Runrig, the Byrds.

I really must also extol the musical virtues of a good mate of mine whom I had the privelege of recording a CD with last year. He's a guy called Tim Edey and, for his relatively young age, he's one of the most talented multi-instrumentalists in Britain today. I'm not just saying that because he's a mate - it really is true. Check out his website.

Tim Edey

Of more modern artists, I like Coldplay and Travis, to name but two.

To be honest, I could go on and on, but I hope this has given you an idea of the types of things I'm into.

I think it would be true to say that I am absolutely useless at computers. However, in a mood of probably totally misplaced optimism, I'm going to attempt to post some hyperlinks here. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, I obviously need the practice. Secondly, whilst I love travelling abroad, I have recently been rediscovering the delights of what is on offer closer to home, and so here (hopefully) are a few of my more recent pages. I hope you'll enjoy them.

St. Albans
Battle
Broadstairs
Pevensey
Winchester
Chichester