I have been exploring parts of this world by visiting various places for quite a long time, but gone are the days when I took a long time about it. This is partly because I don't have as much time to spare. Gone are the days when there weren't any guide books - I do remember a few stapled sheets of A4 paper giving a limited amount of information on countries to the east of Turkey being circulated in Istanboul in the mid 1970s. Much of this info concerned where you could find good hashish or opium, which I think reflected the interests of many wayfarers on the hippy trail at the time.

I wasn't a very conscientious letter writer, but I know I put pen to paper a few times and that in due course some of those missives reached their destinations however indirectly. Nowadays I use e-mails, but infrequently, as I really prefer to immerse myself in the here and now whether in South America, Africa, South-East Asia, the South of France or the North of Wales.

I've always managed to make both written and drawn or painted records of my thoughts and the sights and experiences around me. Unfortunately I've lost one of my sketchbooks and another was stolen in Sudan and yet another in Morocco several years ago, and that's just one of the hazards of being vulnerable when moving around with a back-pack and finding precarious places to pass the night, but that goes down as natural wastage and I've accepted that. I'm getting excited now as I'm about to go to Algeria via Provence now, which is what I did 6 months ago.