Travel

I enjoy foreign travel, having started in 1989 when I was 16 with an expedition to Kenya with the Yorkshire Schools Exploring Society. Since then, I've visited places from Iceland, Helsinki and St Petersburg to Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, Kenya (again, four times) and Australia. The Australia trip was in 1997 with the Brathay Exploration Group - a group based in Cumbria, specialising in youth expedition in the UK and abroad. In summer 2003, I followed the route of the first crossing of America, and in 2004, I returned to Kenya

Some useful sites to visit before going anywhere include those of Rough Guides and Lonely Planet, both of which have plenty of information, some of which is downloadable. It might also be worth looking at the Foreign Office and US State Department to see how interesting they think it will be. And if they don't think it will be exciting, there's always the chance that the Centre for Disease Control will. For the Top 500 places to visit, look at the UNESCO World Heritage List. If you keep a count of the ones you've seen, I'm on 66 out of 690. Perhaps less fun but still useful to convert dinars into dinners is The Universal Currency Converter.

Some fun ventures worth watching include the Virgin Challenger round-the-world balloon attempt and the international Camel Derby . Camels are great and so are more camels. The Wildernet gives a list of current expeditions which can be a handy way to waste an hour.

For cheap flights, try Easyjet.

More close to home, Railtrack and A-B: The UK on-line travel section both give train times in the UK. The London Transport page tells which tubes aren't running. And, being British, I must have a link to the weather, including the weather here in London.