Independent on Sunday, 26 April 2009. The oil industry is providing an unlikely aid to tourism in this US state. Polly Evans takes the Dalton Highway into the heart of the wilderness

Voyager, February 2009. It must be something they put in the Guinness: Dublin has bred more than its fair share of pen-wielding, string-strumming, hell-raising geniuses...

Condé Nast Traveller, March 2009. And now for something completely different: how about a high-latitude escape for spring?

www.GreatOutdoors.com, February 2009. The three of us stood stripped to our underwear and contemplated the rushing glacial stream. The water came to hip height—if we wanted to stay dry we’d have to undress still further—but wordlessly we agreed to cling to this one last vestige of propriety. And then, backpack waist straps unclipped in case of calamity and using each other’s bodies for support, we inched our way through the numbing torrents...

GreatOutdoors.com, February 2009. I’ve never been good with the cold, so it was with some nervousness that I set off for three months in Canada’s Yukon Territory, where winter temperatures drop to forty below and the sun rises for just a few hours each day. My mission was to learn to drive sled dogs...

Traveller, winter 2008/09. It wasn't my idea to go to the Arctic. I've never been good with the cold....

BBC Wildlife, December 2008. Being sent to Siberia was once the ultimate punishment but now the region offers some exhilarating wildlife encounters. Polly Evans braved snowstorms and biting cold to join Chukotka's traditional reindeer races.

Wanderlust, December 2008. History has been hard on Chukotka. The most north-easterly region of Siberia, it's considered so desperately remote and backward that when Russians tell 'idiot' jokes, it's the Chukchi who take the flak...

Wanderlust, November 2008. There are few experiences that compare to the intense sense of peace you feel when travelling with a team of huskies along a wilderness trail, silent except for the sound of paws on snow. Or to the wonder inspired by the extraordinary blue that emanates from an iceberg. Or by the sight of a female polar bear romping with her cubs...

Food & Wine, October 2008. "I’m leaving tomorrow morning, very early, for Sicily,” Count Paolo Marzotto tells me. It’s hard to grasp why anyone would leave this idyllic spot, let alone fly at the crack of dawn to the opposite end of Italy. It’s a balmy Sunday afternoon, and we’re enjoying a family lunch with the Count’s wife, Florence Daniel, and their daughters, sons-in-law and grandchildren at Villa Nievo, their home in Vicenza, 40 miles west of Venice. Our table is on a flagstone terrace that runs the length of the older wing of the 300-year-old house, where the stucco exterior is painted a deep cranberry.