It appears to be that time of year again when swordsmanship becomes a central focus of conversation between my eldest son and myself. Last year we tried battling it out (after a suitable length of self-training) with shinai, the Japanese split bamboo weapons used in kendo. At my son’s 18th birthday party we faced off […]

Yesterday, my friend Rusty met me in Bardejov, East Slovakia to take me hill walking. I left my car and got into his Toyota Hilux Kingcab, then we headed off on the Stara Lubovna road until turning off onto progressively smaller and worse condition roads until ending up in the incredibly middle-of-nowhere, end-of-the-road village of Livovská […]

Having finally bought a new car after our other two became unreliable, a Dacia Duster we’ve named Liška (Fox), we decided to take her out on her maiden voyage and do an old fashioned roadtrip as a family. Cerveny Klastor played a large part in my early years here as it is very close to […]