Travel Knowledge is the travel, hospitality and aviation blog of Gravity boss, Stan Abbott, who also writes as Stan L Abbott. Stan draws from his long career in travel and publishing to bring readers his personal slant on issues of the day as well as top tips aimed especially at the independent traveller.
If you have any questions about any of the content, or if you need advice on any destination, drop Stan a line or leave a comment – stan@gravity-consulting.com.
All content is © Stan Abbott and Stan L Abbott. Versions of some blogs may also have appeared in other publications.
See also Stan’s author blog at https://stanabbott.com/articles/
Island life: when small becomes just too small…
As COVID tempts more people to seek a life of greater solitude, can some islands become just too small to sustain a viable population? “Safety; a sense of community; opportunity.” Mati Ventrillon chooses her words carefully as she seeks to explain why she and her architect partner, Joe, set up home on the UK’s remotest island with their 18-month-old son 14 years ago. Fair Isle sits at the junction of the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, roughly mid-way between [...]
The long, lonely road to Lussa and the ladies who make gin
I meet three women who have overcome many challenges to produce a multi-award winning gin whose provenance is intrinsically entwined with their island home. The Lussa Gin team, from left, Claire, Georgina and Alicia Another week another new craft gin. That’s the way it can sometimes seem since distillation laws were first relaxed a few years ago. So a gin needs to have something a bit different about it to make us sit up and take notice. [...]
The (stone) Circle Line by electric cycle
Neolithic and Bronze Age stone circles find themselves in unexpected company with an electric bicycle in the rain: an author’s odyssey; or was it idiocy? Once upon a time, in a far off land in the days before COVID, I was commissioned to write three books for Saraband, a modestly-sized but highly respected publisher, based in Manchester. The first of these was a narrative non-fiction account of a walk from Settle to Carlisle (just published), loosely following the route [...]
It’s Scotland’s oil… or is it? The art of drawing ocean boundaries
A few years ago I got talking with the then boss of IBRU, Durham University's world-recognised centre for borders research and conflict resolution. I was curious to know how much of 'Scotland's oil' would actually belong to an independent Scottish state. Conversely, how much would actually be English or, in my fantasy world, 'Northumbrian'? I wanted to publish a curiosity piece on the subject in the inflight magazine I was editing at a time, but the subject was deemed far [...]
An island apart – the eco-tourism pioneer of Lanzarote
There’s nothing very new about eco-tourism, other than the name. The Canarian island of Lanzarote has been living by its code since the local artist and architect, César Manrique, found common cause with the tourism authorities and helped put the brakes on the kind of development that would threaten to overwhelm other islands, like Mallorca… César Manriquye, father of eco-tourism, above, and his Lanzarote "brand" at the entry to Timanfaya Natinal Park (right) “Yes, it’s sheer hell,” [...]
Emerging from the shadow of COVID: an author’s lament
“I’ve good news and bad news,” said my publisher when I finally tracked her down. It was the February day after the “publication” of the so-called roadmap out of lockdown… I do paraphrase – as is my wont – but she was much more keen to tell me that my Spring title would be out on time and that she’d lined up Book of the Month in Cumbria Life and an interview on Radio Cumbria than she was on sharing [...]
Merry isthmus everbody! A round-up of the world’s land-bridges
They may be tricky to pronounce and rarely visited on their own account, but isthmuses – those narrow strips of land that join larger territories together – have shaped the world we live in... Lacking the romantic allure of the island or the distinct cultural identity of the peninsula, the isthmus is a geographical feature that’s rarely celebrated, or even remarked upon. As Philip Steinberg, Professor of Political Geography at Durham University, put it to me when we chatted [...]
Corsica: the good, the bad and the beautiful
I first visited the extraordinarily beautiful island of Corsica at a rather troubled time in a young man's life. I vowed to return one day and give it the full attention it deserved. Shamefully, it took the best part of half a century for me to accomplish that second visit. The island that awaited me seemed scarcely to have been touched by the advances of mass tourism and questionable architecture such as have afflicted other beautiful islands, from Mallorca to [...]
Note to self: a shove in the time of corona
TWO MONTHS of lockdown really should create the head space to get so much done… and yet sleep trespasses into day from night; cooking graduates from necessity to hobby; the novelty of projecting Amazon Prime onto the living room wall still captivates; des-res-decluttering and grand-designs gardening are central pillars of the home-based New Normal; watching podcasts and webinars is a mandatory exercise in sanity – and exercise, physical that is, consumes any leftover scraps of time that may remain. So, [...]
Aviation is trying hard to go green…
I have been feeling the winds of change blowing through the European Regions Airline Association (ERA) General Assembly in Juan Les Pins this week. The airline community has been engaging with environmental issues for just about as long as I've been coming here, but to some extent this has been as a response (not always as well argued as it might be) to being framed as the whipping boy for all the world's environmental problems. Now it's all starting to [...]
Norway double-plus
As I gaze out from the top of the lighthouse at Lindesnes, I reflect that there is no piece of mainland Norway to the south of me. Granted, I have, just the evening before, been even further south without leaving Norway – but that was to visit the country’s southernmost lighthouse, Ryvingen, which sits atop a rocky islet a few miles or minutes by fast boat from the mainland. The old harbour at Landøy I have to remind myself that [...]
Geneva gets even geneasier
As the big European hubs get even bigger and busier, getting through the airport can take the gloss off a weekend break. So we thought we'd somewhere a bit more manageable and found Geneva just to our liking.Switzerland’s second city can boast barely 200,000 residents. But its numbers are swollen daily by around 88,000 commuters crossing the border from France.With the city also home to a variety of United Nations and other global agencies, it’s able to punch comfortably above [...]