Exploring cultures and communities – the slow way

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A key element in the mountaineer's armamentarium: the ice axe (photo © Claudio Baldini / dreamstime . com)
Letter from Europe

Just an ice axe

  • 22 Jan 2021
Nicky Gardner, one of the editors of hidden europe magazine, reflects on all the good and bad things that can be done with an ice axe. Opening tins of pineapple is just the ...
Search for the spirit of the late Jan Morris in the waters around Miramar Castle near Trieste (photo © Freesurf69 / dreamstime.com).
hidden europe note

Travels with Jan Morris

  • 22 Nov 2020
Jan Morris, who has died at the age of 94, was one of the most gifted travel writers of our era. But, despite the sadness of her passing, her words remain as an inspiration to those who write about place and ...
A classic piece of communist architecture: on its completion in 1952, the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment building on the Moskva River in Moscow was the tallest building in Europe (photo © Leonid Andronov / dreamstime.com).
Letter from Europe

Welcome to hidden europe 48

  • 13 Mar 2016
Today's Letter from Europe reviews the contents of hidden europe 48. Publication of this new issue of the travel magazine is 15 March 2016. Copies are already available for ...
Magazine article

Playing the Welsh card
  

Welsh settlers landed on the Patagonian coast in 1865 to create Y Wladfa (literally 'the colony') in the Chubut Valley. Within little more than a generation, most of the Welsh migrants had moved inland or left South America altogether. But a veneer ...
50 years ago, the village of Capel Celyn in North Wales was sacrificed to make way for a new reservoir (photo by Velela).
Letter from Europe

Remember Tryweryn

  • 20 Oct 2015
The Welsh phrase Cofiwch Dryweryn (Remember Tryweryn) recalls the fate of the Tryweryn Valley which was flooded to provide water for the English city of Liverpool. The new reservoir, officially opened in October 1965, meant the end for the village ...
The E22 Holyhead to Ishim road crossing the Afsluitdijk
in Holland (photo © Chrwincan5dm2 / dreamstime.com).
Magazine article

The road to Ishim
  

The Edinburgh Castle is a pub in the Welsh town of Holyhead (Caergybi in Welsh). The roundabout just outside that pub looks unremarkable. But it marks the very start of the road to Ishim, a route of over 5000 kilometres that spans seven ...
Canaletto's 1730 painting of the Bucentaur's return to the pier by the Palazzo Ducale. The Bucentaur was the royal galley which conveyed the doge. The original painting hangs in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. This image is taken from the Wikimedia Commons library.
Letter from Europe

Much ado about the Ascension

  • 29 May 2014
There was often much ado around San Marco on Ascension Day. At least if Canaletto's celebrated paintings of Venice on the Feast of the Ascension are to be believed. The particular ceremony that caught Canaletto's attention was the annual dedication ...
The River Elan runs through the expanse of the Elenydd moors in central Wales (photo © Sharpshot).
Letter from Europe

Sweet Cambria

  • 1 Mar 2014
Wales is a place for miracles. Perhaps the greatest miracle of all is that Wales is there at all, that it has a strong cultural identity and a language that is still spoken. Wales is nothing if not tenacious. It has a knack of getting into your ...
Magazine article

Hiraethog: the hills of solitude
  

The Wikipedia entry for Mynydd Hiraethog is slim. So minimal in fact that, acre for acre, this Welsh wilderness must be the least interesting place in the British Isles. Philip Dunshea knows Mynydd Hiraethog well, having grown up in the shadow of ...
Letter from Europe

Look west

  • 31 Oct 2012
The West is inscribed on our imagination. It is where we watch the sunset, and thus the cardinal point that ushers in the evening, bringing promise of rest and sleep. And yet the West means other things too. For generations of Americans, the West ...
Letter from Europe

Britain by bus — could you write for us?

  • 11 Oct 2012
Let's speak of buses. Can we set you a challenge? Could you pen some words for us? Britain benefits from a fabulous network of local bus routes. True, there are worries in many communities about how government cuts may affect subsidies for bus ...
Letter from Europe

Flying can still be fun

  • 11 May 2012
Flying has generally ceased to be fun. The only certainty about much modern air travel is that it will be boring. Gone are the days when Dakotas battled against headwinds and made unscheduled landings at rough airstrips in offbeat parts of Europe. ...
Urban style with a modern double-decker cruising through the middle of Birmingham (photo © hidden europe).
Magazine article

Celebrating British buses
  

Buses are experiencing a happy renaissance in Britain. The advent of concessionary bus passes to senior citizens has tempted many diehard motorists onto the top deck. In a special two-part feature for hidden europe, we look at a new book that ...
Magazine article

A matter of Principalities
  

A pot-pourri of railway-related facts that you would never have guessed could ever be so interesting. We leap from Wales to Monaco, from Liechtenstein to Vatican City in search of a few railway records. Not just for ...
hidden europe note

Lamb soup galore

  • 6 Mar 2010
Lamb soup is a staple in some parts of Europe, but utterly unknown elsewhere. In Iceland, lamb soup has the status of a national dish. That lamb soup was once judged to be the perfect remedy for dysentery was new to ...
hidden europe note

False starts and flying starts

  • 1 Mar 2010
Today's the day. 1st March. St David's Day. And the day on which three start-up companies were due to launch new transport links in or around the British ...
Letter from Europe

Ferry updates

  • 27 Sep 2009
September will not be remembered as an easy month for ferry operators in the waters around the British Isles. With the end of the peak summer season, many ferry operators look to their books and ponder how (or even whether) they can survive the ...
Magazine article

A Welsh encounter
  

On the eightieth anniversary of the formal inauguration of Clough Williams-Ellis' impish architectural experiment at Portmeirion in Wales, we remember a chance encounter with the architect at his home at Plas ...
Magazine article

Rest-stops for the soul
  

There is little that is religious about modern mass travel. But seaports, railway stations, airports and even motorway service areas have chapels and churches that address the needs of ...
Magazine article

The road to Abergwesyn
  

The tides in the Mawddach estuary never come too early. Nor too late. The rain never beats too hard on the road to Abergwesyn. hidden europe editor Nicky Gardner celebrates the communities in rural Wales where she once ...
Magazine article

In her element

There has been a paucity of women writers celebrating the Welsh landscape. For too long the narrative has been dominated by English writers - mainly men! A new book restores the ...
Letter from Europe

Remote mosques: Norway and Wales

  • 13 Feb 2007
Tromsø¸ has many charms, though they may not be quite evident at this time of the year when deep winter darkness still shrouds the town in Arctic Norway. The island town can pop a few surprises, however, for it turns out that Tromsø¸ has a small ...