1. Going for a song
Published in the Sunday Times, 19 March 2000; Winner, Best Overseas Feature (above 850 wds), British Guild of Travel Writers Awards 2000
This is not a good sign. In fact, it’s rather worrying. Patch, a six-month old mongrel, has made straight for my backpack and begun chewing it. Usually I’d just laugh and say ‘how cute’ – but not this time. Not when I’m striving to make myself and my belongings as unappealing to animals as possible. Patch’s owner, whom Sally my wife and I had befriended on the ferry to Port Angeles, tries to reassure me.  “Hey, it’ll be okay,” he says. “By now the bears are so stuffed with berries and salmon they’ll not be that interested in people.”  It’s easy for him to say that. He’s travelling around in a camper van, whereas we’re about to hike alone into one of North America’s last great wildernesses – a primeval realm of mountains and forests in Washington State’s Olympic National Park.

2. Catching the rays
Published in Wanderlust magazine, April/May 2002; Winner, AITO Travel Writer of the Year awards 2002
I’ve never been this close to a stingray before. We only met a few moments ago and already we’re lying on the seabed practically rubbing noses. Normally I wouldn’t let things progress so far, so quickly – but who am I to argue with a 2m-wide fish that looks like a stealth bomber? It was the smelly old mackerel head that did it. A sure way to woo a stingray confided my dive guide, Neville, before we took the plunge beneath the imposing cliffs of Los Gigantes in Tenerife. We had barely sunk the 20m to the seafloor before the rays got a whiff of our bucket of fish bits. I knelt on the black volcanic sand and watched them approach – stingrays, eagle rays, bull rays – wave after wave of them flapping towards us like giant vampire bats drawn to blood.  They were, of course, harmless. According to Neville you would only get stung if you really provoked one by poking it, pulling its tail or making derogatory remarks about ‘flatfish’.

3. After it blows over
Published in the Sunday Telegraph, 20 May 2001; Winner, Best UK Feature (under 850 wds), British Guild of Travel Writers Awards 2001
Messy. That was the weather forecast and that, undeniably, is what we’ve got. No wonder there’s a grim silence on board the Scillonian III. The ship’s commentary, waxing lyrical about Mousehole and Wolf Rock, is obviously pre-recorded. We can barely see the Cornish coastline, let alone any landmarks. But it gets worse. “As we head towards the Isles of Scilly,” the voice croons, “you can sense the ship lift eagerly as she meets the great swells that have travelled across 3,000 miles of open ocean…” A woman next to me flinches as the ship shudders from another crashing broadside. There’s a pale, stoic look about her as she clasps an empty cup and tries to ignore the fresh slick of coffee at her feet.