Dear Polly,
Spring is in the air, and I have hayfever. In February. Yes, it's ridiculous. I also have unsightly gashes across my shins following a truly extraordinary accident in which I became tangled up with the leash of a small dog as I was running down the river path near my home. I was intending to hop over the leash, but just as I was doing so the dog moved, and I ended up all tied up and with rope burns to show for it. Oh well.
Running down the river path has not been the most exciting of my outings over the last couple of months, however. For a few days at the end of January I went all the way to York for the British Guild of Travel Writers' AGM. I'm not sure I've ever been to York before, which turns out to have been an oversight as it was very nice. I particularly recommend the National Railway Museum to anyone heading there. If you're interested in trains, you'll be in locomotive heaven, but even if you're not, it's fascinating in its portrayal of the way the railways changed British society. We had a dinner there - complete with characters in period dress acting out, for example, a visit from Queen Victoria and a family going on holiday to Scarborough. I went in thinking I wasn't interested in trains, and came out thinking I'm definitely going back to have a proper look around. The following night we had dinner at Castle Howard, where both renditions of Brideshead Revisited were filmed. Again, it was very impressive, and intriguing to see the veritable smorgasbord of artifacts that the family has brought back to Castle Howard from travels across the globe, and across the centuries.
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| And the winners are... |
January-February's PollyEvans.com travel-writing competition has been won by Ross Cormack, who submitted a hilarious piece about the troubles he had taking a shower in a guesthouse in Chile. I enjoyed the piece because it was funny and self-deprecating, but I also Iiked the fact that Ross chose just to write about one tiny aspect of travel. Arguably one's ablutions are a rather workaday topic, but the lack of a decent shower is something that's familiar to anyone who's travelled off the beaten track - and it's particularly nice to read of someone else's discomforts when I'm sitting happily at home, smug in the knowledge that my own shower works really rather well, and I can just go and turn it on whenever the mood takes me. Read Ross's story here.
Ross wins the Bradt guide of his choice. Entries are now open for the March-April competition. Just email me with the story of your most bizarre or most beautiful or most battering travel experience, in 500 words or less, by 30 April. For more lengthy instructions, click here.
The winner of my newsletter draw, meanwhile, is Mohammed Abdalla Zayed, who wins a signed copy of one of my books.
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In the press
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Condé Nast Traveller (the UK edition) has published my recommendations for high-latitude escapes, from watching the Iditarod dog-sled race in luxury to playing in Greenland's World Ice Golf Championships, in its March issue. I've posted a scan of the piece on my website.
Plus, out in cyberspace, GreatOutdoors.com has published my story on
hiking the Donjek Route, an ardous 120km yomp through Yukon's Kluane National Park. Some of my photos from the Donjek Route are also posted at GreatOutdoors.com, or there's a greater selection on my photography website. Also at GreatOutdoors.com is a piece I wrote for them about learning to drive sled dogs in the Yukon, which ties in with the US publication of Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman (the book is now on the shelves in the US and Canada, as well as in the UK, of course).
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Billy Connolly and the Canadian north
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I was driving down the Yukon's Dempster Highway in the summer with my friend Sian, and we stopped for the night at the Eagle Plains Hotel - as does pretty much everyone driving the highway, as it's the only accommodation option for nearly 800km and it's conveniently bang in the middle of the road's substantial length. I was sitting in the hotel lobby doing my emails (as the wireless connection didn't stretch to our room) when I heard a weirdly familiar Glaswegian voice. It was Billy Connolly who, together with a TV crew, was filming his latest travel show Journey to the Edge of the World - which is currently showing every Thursday evening in the UK. They haven't got to the Yukon bit on the telly yet - the show's about him travelling across the Canadian Arctic from east to west - but it's definitely an engaging programme, with Connolly on good form. (Better, in fact, than he was that evening in the Eagle Plains Hotel when he seemed a bit quiet and knackered - then again, he had been on the road for 10 weeks, he's 66 years old, he probably was completely knackered, and why on earth would he want to talk to strangers anyway?)
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This month at PollyEvans.com
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I'm doing well so far in 2009: I have written yet more book reviews. (OK, OK, you can pick yourself up off the floor now.) This month's are two books by Will Randall, Botswana Time and Indian Summer, which were sent to me by my friend Gavin's very kind mum Pat. Read my thoughts on these two tomes here.
And now I think...that's all folks.
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Yukon Quest
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The final musher of the Yukon Quest, the thousand-mile dogsledding race that runs between Whitehorse in the Yukon and Fairbanks in Alaska, finished the course on Saturday. It was an exciting race this year, even if you were only following it online as I did. Quest veteran William Kleedehn looked set to win - until his female lead dog went into heat and all hell broke loose with his team. He ended up coming in sixth (whether his lead female will go on to produce Quest-conceived puppies remains to be seen), while the big gong went to Sebastian Schnuelle, who beat Hugh Neff by a sensational four minutes. There was excitement further down the field as well, as there was a Jamaican musher this year - that's a first for the Quest, and follows the Caribbean island's high-spirited tradition in snow sports started by its bobsleigh team a few years back. Rookie musher Newton Marshall did incredibly well, finishing in 13th place with a time of 11 days, 19 hours and 2 minutes, and winning the 'Challenge of the North' award, given each year to the musher who best demonstrates the spirit of the Yukon Quest. 'My friends think I'm a madman,' Marshall told the Jamaica Gleaner. 'They said I'm sick but, being the first black man and the first Jamaican to enter this race makes me proud.' There was also a British musher this year, Mark Sleightholme, who finished the race about an hour and a half ahead of Marshall.
The Quest is over for this year, but if you're worried about having missed the action, never fear - the other race (yes, yes, it's called the Iditarod) starts this Saturday 7th March. Hans Gatt, who's won the Quest several times, pulled out of the Quest halfway through this year, claiming that his dogs were going so well he thought he stood a chance of winning the Iditarod, which he's never won, and he wanted to keep them fresh. Keep an eye on the action at www.iditarod.com
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