World news seems to get worse and worse, but for us personally it's been a cracker of a month.

When it started, we were still on the Isle of Man. Just...


We headed for Derbyshire on the 3rd. And then we spent slightly over three weeks chilling with family, and exploring what is pretty much a new area for us. (For Derbyshire pics, start here, and work forward.)




I enjoyed it all, but if I had to pick out particular highlights, I guess I'd have to point to the bit of High Peak trail that we walked, our exploration of D.H. Lawrence territory, and our trip to Wirksworth.




I have no objective evidence to back this up, but to me it seemed like an extraordinarily beautiful autumn in the British Isles. There were three named storms while we were there, and yet the gorgeously tinted leaves hung on, and were still glowing even when we left.

Because, yes, we've now left. Sunday saw us driving down to London, dropping the hire car, and taking to the rails. First to Paris (just to change trains), and on to Stuttgart (very pleasant, would visit again).



On Monday evening we were off again, taking the night train to Venice, where we -- somewhat guiltily -- spent a few hours before moving on to Trieste.

That's where we've been for the last two days, and we really love it. (See here for our low-key but pleasant explorations so far.)

We won't be lingering long, though, because our goal is Istanbul, and we won't get there if we hang around in every place we fall in love with...

You can find the proposed route here, if you've got the patience to scroll right down to the bottom of the post, which is where I seem to have taken to hiding key information...

The TL;DR version is that we're travelling slowly overland to Turkiye, which is where we climb on the plane, go home, and face the various tedious tasks (visa-related, medical, and other administrative) that await us in fun-filled February.

But we don't have to worry about that yet, because we're in Trieste, and on Sunday we'll be heading for Zagreb, and then on to other interesting places.

Our route this time doesn't lend itself so much to train travel. It's a little sad, I think, that you used to be able to get from Zagreb to Sarajevo by train, and now you can't. Ditto Banja Luka to Sarajevo. Ditto Zagreb to Belgrade, and Belgrade to Sofia. Ditto Thessaloniki to Plovdiv...

So we've diverted in several ways from the original concept, and we're going to be doing a lot of bus travel, which is not my favourite. But hey... These are very definitely first-world worries.



Christmas, if all goes to plan, we should be spending in Dubrovnik. (Which we'd booked before I read this...)

The Christmas onslaught in the British Isles was quite overwhelming, even though it was only November. The "continentals" seem a bit more relaxed about the whole business. Decorations are going up, and there's Christmas produce around, but it's a little less in-your-face. We'll see how that progresses.


Meanwhile, quite a lot of reading has been happening, but the path from "book completed" to "Velvet Cushion post written" is a bit of a slow one at the moment... Emerging from the pipeline this month were posts on an audio adaptation of The Little Mermaid (written by Hans Christian Andersen and adapted by Dina Gregory); Murder in the Studio (aka Artists in Crime), a vintage whodunit by Ngaio Marsh; and three really thought-provoking histories/historical reflections: Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris; A Small Town in Ukraine by Bernard Wasserstein; and A History of the Balkans by Marie-Janine Calic.

Even when happily travelling, reading seems no less necessary for survival. This mug, seen in a Stuttgart bookshop, sums it up pretty well:


So there we are. November.

As always, I'm aware that I'm enjoying my little measure of time and space while the planetary crap piles ever higher. We try to do our small bit, but in the main I find myself surveying the world with a feeling of helplessness and guilt constantly buzzing in the back of my mind.

Christmas is the quintessential time of hope, however.

As always, my Advent prayer is for peace.