by Ian Cochrane | Apr 18, 2018 | Europe
Broken walls topple, the last defenders with them. Canal bridges, city gates and the cathedral burn. Steel clashes with steel, horses’ hoofs pound stone roads and women drag screaming children, the old and infirm towards the hills and mountains. Columns...
by Ian Cochrane | May 30, 2014 | Africa
`…didn’t you ever want to know what was on the other side of the mountain?’ – James Hilton, Lost Horizon. Funny to find an Antipodean neighbour way out here: a beanie-clad, mumbling, red-head New Zealander in the middle of Africa; him...
by Ian Cochrane | Feb 16, 2014 | Europe
Four metre waves batter our ferry on the fiercest piece of water in the world. We’re 100km west of the Norwegian mainland and this is the Maelstrom, first mentioned by the Greeks 3000 years ago and immortalised in the iconic writings of Edgar Allen Poe and Jules...
by Ian Cochrane | Dec 8, 2013 | Europe
The phone rings late afternoon: my girlfriend having just arrived. We meet and trudge uphill from Granada station, through the 15th century Gate of Pomegranates to this Alhambra citadel – ruddy stone towers, roses, oranges and myrtles – a garden-fortress built to...
by Ian Cochrane | Aug 5, 2013 | Americas
The sound of our footsteps is muffled by patchwork drifts of snow on a gravel track winding past the bottom of carpark stairs. Surrounding hills are covered in local rhododendron; the air icy, the trees tall, rough barked and bare. Our guide strides ahead – rugged-up...
