Introduction

Hello, and thank you for choosing "An English Fool Abroad With His Sketchbook". If you didn't choose, well, that's ok. Maybe you'll decide to stay for a bit after you read what's here. If not, well it was nice seeing you anyway.

I like travel. There we are, I've said it, and to be fair I'm sure that you've worked it out for yourself. Without going into very tedious details, I never travelled anywhere until I was 18. I have two brothers, one slightly older and the other slightly younger, and my parents never once took us on holiday. We had some great day trips, but that was it. If you couldn't get there and back from London in a day, then we never went, it was as simple as that. Suburban West London where I grew up was a pretty diverse community back in the 70s, and we weren't by any means an area of social deprivation, so loads of my friends spend large chunks of every summer holiday jetting off to exotic places. I was jealous as hell, and I promised myself that as soon as I was old enough to travel by myself, then that's exactly what I would do.

And that's pretty much how it worked out. For three years I'd work every vacation from University until the summer, then I'd be away for two or three weeks. I thoroughly loved every moment of it. So what made me stop?

Well, life, basically. I met my wife, we got together, had a baby, got married, I got a job, we got a mortgage. It's an old , old story, and considering that we're still together 33 years later, with five fantastic grown up children and three wonderful grandchildren, it's a pretty happy story too. However, it did curtail my travelling. For a long time, all we could possibly afford to do with the whole family was take the 26 hour bus to Callela in Spain. Wherever we went too needed to be family friendly, with a beach, a pool, and enough to entertain the kids.

Not that I regret any of this at all.

Still, the travelling me had to take a back seat for three decades. Now, in early 2016, one of my twin daughters got a job with Thomson's travel agent - now called TUI. A few weeks after she asked me where I would go if I could go anywhere. I told her that I desperately wanted to go to Ieper - Ypres - in Belgium to visit my great grandfather's grave in the war cemetery at Voormezeele. I never suspected that she was arranging, in conjunction with her siblings, to buy me a plane ticket to Brussels, a hire car for four days, and a room in a hotel in Ieper. I can honestly say that I think it was the best present I have ever had.

I discovered urban sketching a few years ago, and already thought of myself as an urban sketcher by the time I flew to Belgium in 2016. So it seemed natural to make a couple of sketches while I was there. And I have to be honest, I loved it. Since that 'first' trip, sketching has formed a more and more important part in each subsequent trip.

This next paragraph is rather heavy, for which I apologise. In March 2017 I was diagnosed with clinical depression. While I was still on medication I travelled on the next trip the kids bought me, to Prague. I'm so glad I went, even though I wasn't 'right' all of the time that I was there, and I found the large amount of sketching I did there really helped. I've used Facebook and other social media sites to post sketches, but, following trips to Berlin and Budapest I really felt that I could dedicate a whole blog to my sketches from Europe, and also my experiences. 

What you won't find in my blog:-

* I don't do beaches. Actually, that's not true. Give me a bucket and spade and a complicit grandchild I'm perfectly happy to spend a day on Aberavon Beach. But I just can't lie on a beach for more than about 15 minutes. I just can't. I couldn't when I was 18, and I can't now.

* I don't do nice restaurants. A combination of being both fussy about food and a dedicated cheapskate means I'm more likely to find a local supermarket and eat rubbish back in my hotel room or eat out of takeaways for the short duration of my stays.

* I don't do shopping. Well, obviously I do go shopping when I have to, but not while I'm away. The fault is surely mine, but I just don't understand shopping as either a leisure activity or a spectator sport. So I can't tell you about the best shopping areas in any of the cities I've visited, because I wouldn't know if they bit me on the backside.

* I don't do nightlife. I'm a teetotal diabetic who would be past it, apart from the fact that I never reached 'it' in the first place. On this score I've always behaved a bit like an old grandad, and now that I actually am one I feel I have every right to do so.

So that's a lot of stuff you might expect to find in a travel blog, which you won't find in here. Sorry about that, but there's no point me pretending that I do any of this stuff, because I just don't.

Well, if there's anyone still here, after all of that, let me tell you about the sort of things I will be writing about.

* I 'do' architecture. Which is not to say that I know a great deal about it, because I don't. But I love sketching it, and the real purpose of the blog is sharing the sketches I make.

* I 'do' History. I've always loved History, and I can't help trying to immerse myself in it when I'm visiting a city. So It should come as no surprise when I tell you that:-

* I 'do' Museums and Galleries. I grew up in a city with some of the world's greatest museums and galleries, so this shouldn't be a surprise.

* I 'do' transport. I love metros, trams, boats and bridges. Nuff said.

I hope you'll like some of my sketchesand find something of interest in my ramblings.