Off Mt. Everest’s Beaten Track

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Joseph Reaney

I feel like throwing up. My head is spinning, my stomach churning, my joints throbbing. I suck in a lungful of icy air but there isn’t enough oxygen. Yet still I ignore that pounding thought: ‘turn back, turn back’. After two weeks of physical and mental exertion, with my final destination only an hour ahead, I know I can’t give up now. So I plant a walking pole deep into the dirt track and drag my heavy body onwards. Slowly, I begin to move my legs, bend my knees, pick up my feet, and I struggle on through the white wilderness, closer and closer to the finish line. I’m going to make it.

That’s when it all goes black. Continue reading →

The Search for Ischia’s Wild Seaside Spa

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Joseph Reaney

A few days ago (on Saturday 4th February, to be precise) I had a brand new travel article published in the leading British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. It’s all about a rather chilly quest to find the secret seaside spring of Il Sorgeto, which is (in turn) on the Italian island of Ischia, and this is how it starts…

““Have you got the eels?” I ask, teeth chattering, as my girlfriend steps off the yacht and onto the deserted jetty. She nods. “And the mullet, too? And the calamari?” She holds the bulging bag of seafood aloft with one gloved hand, as she pulls her jacket tight with the other, and I grin a chapped-lip grin. Now all we need is a scooter rental shop. One that’s open in December…”

If you’d like to read on, you can either view the print version here or take a look at the online version instead. Enjoy!

Sleeping with Strangers in Busan

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Joseph Reaney

CouchSurfing provides the perfect antidote to a restless night… another one.

“I’m very sorry” he says, with a deep bow, as the door swings open. “This is all is left.” I look down at my bed for the night – five-feet long, two-feet wide and three-feet deep – and smile. “It’s perfect” I reply, as I unfold my blanket on the tiled floor. “Just knock if you need the toilet.” Continue reading →

Travel Guides Now Online

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Joseph Reaney

Good news! After putting it off for a disproportionately long time, I have finally, finally, uploaded all the travel guides I have completed in the last year to this very website.

Since the beginning of 2011 I have written dozens of guides, itineraries and reviews on everywhere from Cardiff to Cancun – with particular focus on my joint residences of the UK and the Czech Republic – and they are now available for everyone to see!

Visit my new Travel Guides page here. Or read my GuidePal guide to Prague here.

GuidePal City Guide to Florence

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

As it’s been an unforgivably long time since my last post, I thought I’d take a couple of minutes to point you in the direction of the thing that’s been keeping me so goshdarn busy… the incomparable GuidePal city guide to Florence. That’s right – I did a guide.

As the world’s leading smart phone travel guide application, this is officially the best free downloadable guide to Florence out there. Probably. So if you’re lucky enough to be heading to this cultural capital, why not take my wise words along for company?

Incidentally, if you’re heading to Prague or Edinburgh, I wrote those city guides too…

Europe’s Best Cemeteries #3

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

Père-Lachaise – Paris, France

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Everyone loves a celebrity corpse, and there are quite literally piles of them in Père-Lachaise. Renowned as the final resting place of Jim Morrison, this enormous Parisian landmark is also home to Oscar Wilde, Frédéric Chopin, Molière, Marcel Proust and Édith Piaf (three guesses what’s written on her tombstone. Wrong: there’s nothing.)

But it’s not all about the famous cadavers: come for the dead, stay for the décor. Père-Lachaise’s ornate memorials, leafy walkways and lovely smoke-free follies help create a calm oasis in the frantic French capital.

You can read the whole article – Killing Time in Europe’s Best Cemeteries – in the August edition of stalkingElk

Europe’s Best Cemeteries #2

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

Old Jewish Cemetery – Prague, Czech Republic

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The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague is, rather predictably, a cemetery for old Jews: specifically, those who snuffed it between 1439 and 1787. During this time the Jewish community was kettled into a tiny ghetto, having to stuff their stiffs into a 60-metre-square graveyard, and so over three centuries it was crammed with around 100,000 bodies. Which explains why it has Europe’s highest concentration of tombstones.

FUN FACT!!! Prague’s famous cemetery only survived Nazi occupation because Hitler wanted to preserve it as ‘a museum to an extinct race’.

You can read the whole article – Killing Time in Europe’s Best Cemeteries – in the August edition of stalkingElk

Web spelling errors cost retailers ‘millions’

Posted on July 15, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

It’s official: spelling matters. New research reveals that simple spelling and grammatical mistakes cost web firms ‘millions of pounds’ each year.

Online entrepreneur Charles Duncombe claims that misspellings can foster major concerns about the credibility of a website, and therefore put off a slew of potential consumers – and potential income.

“Even cutting-edge companies depend upon old-fashioned skills,” says Mr Duncombe. “When you sell or communicate on the internet, 99% of the time it is done by the written word.” Continue reading →

What Makes a Viral?

Posted on July 10, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 4TH APRIL 2009 BY RED C MAGAZINE]

On 10th March 2009, the BBC’s Today current affairs radio programme ventured into the world of viral marketing by uploading a video to YouTube. The ‘viral’ – a video that rapidly gains popularity by being distributed and shared on the internet – was created as an experiment to see how widely the three-minute ad could spread in a short amount of time.

As of 31st March 2009, three weeks after being uploaded, Inside Today has been viewed nearly 55,000 times and has been emailed, instant messaged and blog linked across the planet. So far, so good. But the experiment has had its critics, with many questioning whether the Today promotional video can really be defined as viral. Continue reading →

Socialism & Tourism #3: North Korea

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

Prior to the release of my new travel article about socialist tourism, I will be previewing a few of the commie states featured. This last one is North Korea.

If travel is about experiencing other ways of life, then it doesn’t get more ‘other’ than this. North Korea is the most isolated country on earth, cut off from reality by a totalitarian communist government that imprisons its citizens in a 1950s vacuum. This not only means North Koreans have never questioned Lady Gaga’s gender or not shut up about The bloody Wire: they have no idea man has been to the moon.

Consequently, visitors must accept strict limitations on what they say, as well as what they see. But that doesn’t mean the tourism is humdrum – not a bit of it. Visit the Democratic People’s Republic and you’ll get to board a captured US warship, be dwarfed by a colossal bronze dictator and witness the largest gymnastics festival on earth. Oh, and you’ll get sneaky peeks of reality too, like malnourished workers in rice fields and legions of rats scurrying through the metro. Continue reading →