Wales Tourism and Visit Planning

I m dropped in a car park, over two hours after we arrived at the border, and take a taxi to Zahko to look at the town s ancient bridge before continuing on to Dohuk for the night. holiday in wales

Fruit juice stand

I take an instant liking to Dohuk, it s bright, energetic, crowded and has lots of fruit juice stands. The Sulav Hotel might be one of the biggest (and most expensive) in town, my room is costing US$36 for the night. holiday wales

06 April 2006 Dohuk to Arbil It s still raining when I get up and as I leave Dohuk it starts to bucket down again, a condition which continues all the way north to Amadiya which I was expecting to have hints of a Kurdish mountain escape but, in the rain, it turns out to be simply a miserable dump. Perhaps it all looks better when the sun s shining and indeed, as I head south again, glimpses of snow-dusted peaks appear. Before long the sun is shining and everything looks much better. cottage holiday in wales

Roadside lunch

Travelling east towards Arbil seems to require lots of diversions, presumably to avoid approaching too close to Mosul. There s lots of security but it seems to concentrate on checking each vehicle s inhabitants, presumably Arab passengers get more than a cursory glance. Only once today (and once yesterday) do I have to produce my passport and explain what-the-hell I am doing in Iraq. Along the way we stop for a hearty roadside lunch (the Kurds seem to like to eat well) and taking some photographs of the restaurant and staff delights everybody. caravan holiday in wales

Kurdish men in citadel

Arbil is a delight as well, I d always thought that Damascus was the world s oldest continuously inhabited city but Arbil (Hawler or Hewler in Kurdish) disputes that claim. The modern city crowds around the ancient citadel and inside I discover a superb recently opened textile museum run by Lolan Mustefa, who is a mine of information on Arbil and the surrounding region. It seems ridiculous but I m really enjoying Iraq. camping holiday wales

07 April 2006 Arbil to Suleimani Funny how things always look darker at night. I woke up in the middle of the night worried about how the crossing to Iran might go and that unease coloured the rest of the day. Before departing Arbil I wasted some time tracking down the small, rather dusty and forgotten archaeological museum. Finding things which nobody seems to know about and with language difficulties to cope with is never easy. accommodation holiday wales

road to Baghdad

The drive to Suleimani was fast and fraught and even featured a brief dip into Kirkuk, a town I thought we would try to avoid. Rereading my information it seems the northern fringe of the town is under Kurdish control but the driver seemed keen to linger as little as possible. holiday last minute wales

Suleimani Park

Suleimani featured another museum-location operation and by the time I found it the doors were shut for the day. Wandered the park, the market, the mosque and shopping area before returning to the Ashti Hotel, which is definitely not up to the high standards of Dohuk and Arbil. 8 April 2006 Suleimani to Arbil Important time zones Again I wake up in the middle of the night running through the logistics of this trip. I ve got to get to Tabriz in Iran by tomorrow night in order to fly out the next morning to Istanbul and on to the USA. It looks like the drive from Arbil to the Iran border could take 4 or 5 hours. Add a similar time from the border to Tabriz and it s going to be a push to get it done in one day, especially if there are any delays at the border. And what if I can t get across the border at all, that s going to be a huge hassle. catering holiday self wales

Gali Ali Beg waterfall

So after a look around the surprisingly good museum (it didn t get trashed in the post-invasion chaos, like the Baghdad museum) I decide to head straight for the border. Which still means going via Arbil and, once again, hitting the edge of dicey Kirkuk. holiday wales walking

Beyond Arbil the road starts to climb and then runs through the spectacular Rowanduz Gorge along the Hamilton Road . This fine piece of British colonial road building was managed by Alexander Hamilton, a young New Zealand born engineer, between 1928 and 1932. He wrote a book about it, Road Through Kurdistan, which after nearly half a century out of print was reprinted recently and I m reading it at the moment. family holiday wales

Hamilton Road

Beyond the gorge the road continues to climb and I begin to get more concerned about the crossing. This is nothing like the busy crossing I ve made from Turkey, it s a very remote region surrounded by snow-covered peaks and little else. If the border s closed for the evening, it s now late afternoon, what am I going to do until morning Stand in the rain Yes, the rain has started again. Finally we arrive at the Kurdistan border control and my worst fears are realized, I m not sure what it is that I m told at great length but the general message is I m not going to get into Iran, perhaps the border is closed to anybody who is not Iraqi or Iranian. holiday riding wales

What a drag, here I am right at the border, about the same distance from Tabriz as Arbil but that s where I m heading back to. Still the sun breaks through to provide a nice clouds-over-the-snow sunset as we hurtle back downhill. It s a scary ride, a 9 hour round trip when I arrive at my hotel. There are flights out of Arbil, I d checked that possibility before I left, but tomorrow the only option is to Beirut. Looks like the best bet is to retrace my steps back to Diyarbakir in Turkey, where I started my Kurdistan foray. But are there flights tomorrow and can I get there in time to fly to Istanbul to pick up my flight to the USA the next morning I dump my bag in the Arbil Tower Hotel, race around to the internet caf next door, where I m told they close in 5 minutes. Which, it turns out, is plenty of time to get on to the Turkish Airlines website and check their flight schedules. Isn t the world wide web wonderful, even in Iraq it works If there s a seat available and if I can get across the border fairly quickly I should make it. adventure holiday wales

9 April 2006 Arbil to Diyarbakir to Istanbul Arvan doesn t turn up at 530 am. Which is probably just as well, the first hint of dawn only shows after 6 am, when he does arrive, and then there are thick patches of fog to slow us. Plus we get lost once, just after I thought we were heading in to the Mosul no-go-zone, and for awhile we seem to be travelling in totally the wrong direction. Twice last night on the return trip from the Iran border he took wrong turns as well, once my GPS squawked no and once I realized he d gone wrong. holiday park south wales

Arrive at the border just after 10 and I m immediately pounced on by a gang of Turkish drivers keen to take me to somewhere, anywhere in Turkey. I quickly negotiate a price with one dapper gentleman and it s less than half what I paid for the same trip heading to Iraq. Then it s the excruciating departure procedures including a fine-tooth-comb search of the car for smuggled cigarettes. Some vehicles seem to spew cigarettes out of every cavity but the three cartons my driver has are not found. In my travel pack. Altogether the paperwork, rubber stamps, racing from office to office, standing in line and car searching (out of Kurdistan as well as in to Turkey) consumes almost three hours. cottage holiday wales

line of trucks at the border

The line of trucks waiting to cross the border seems even longer than at the beginning of the week, it s well over 20km long. Mardin Then we re on the road and what a beautiful road it is. The sun is shining, the countryside look beautiful, later in the trip the snow capped mountains spread right across the frame, the town of Mardin looks like a postcard (wish I had time to stop for a day or two) and we even pause for an excellent lunch which also includes a car wash and shoe shines for both of us. Arrive at the airport at 4.45 for the 5.45 Turkish Airlines flight but it s full. Diyarbakir s modern little airport (excellent wifi reception throughout) has one curious omission there is no departure or arrival board anywhere so the only way you can find out if any of the four airlines represented (Pegasus, Sun Express and Onur Air as well as THY) have flights and when is to ask at each desk. holiday in wales

There are some no shows so I get the last seat on the flight but there s one final amusement. Out on the tarmac we have to identify our bags before they re loaded on board and mine isn t there. Some more last minute bags arrive, but mine still isn t there. Finally somebody looks at my baggage tag and boarding pass and points out that I m standing beside the wrong aircraft. The Airbus over there waiting for one final passenger and with a lonely blue travel pack sitting beside it is where I should be. holiday wales

8 February Muscat 7 February Al Sawadi to Muscat 6 February Sohar to Al Sawadi 5 February From Dubai to Oman ... then back to Dubai, then to Oman 5 February My Trip to Oman My Profile Tony Wheeler

Tony Wheeler is the co-founder of Lonely Planet. And this is his blog. cottage holiday in wales

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AAA - Short Travel Blogs Tuesday, 31 January 2006 Great Ocean Walk Cape Otway Lighthouse

Australia s Great Ocean Walk only opened for business in late December 2005. So far only a handful of walkers have set out along this spectacular coastal walk. On the last two days of January 2006 I was one of them. The walk stretches for 96km from Apollo Bay to The Twelve Apostles, past Cape Otway on the western coast of the state of Victoria. If you were in a hurry you could probably do the walk in four days but five or six days is probably a more reasonable pace. I covered the first two days from Apollo Bay to Aire River, camping at Blanket Bay along the way. The rewards Beautiful coastal scenery, some long stretches of remote beach, an historic lighthouse and a lot of wildlife. We saw wallabies, echidnas (spiny anteaters, one of which just wandered into our campsite), a seal on Station Beach, a lot of koalas and a wide variety of birdlife including plenty of parrots. camping holiday wales

Station Beach - Great Ocean Walk

For more information on Great Ocean Walk check the website www.greatoceanwalk.com.au . I ll be back to walk the rest of the way later this year. accommodation holiday wales

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AAA - Short Travel Blogs Friday, 03 March 2006 Mini Production

Tony Mini Mini Production I ve watched 747s being put together in Seattle, Mazdas roll down the assembly line in Hiroshima and seen far too much beer in production, so when I was in the English midlands I decided to drop in on the Mini production line just outside Oxford. Maureen and I have one (well it s hers rather than mine) but I also had another Mini connection. Back in a pre-Lonely Planet lifetime I worked for a couple of years as a car development engineer, and Roger Twiney, my flatmate at the time, stuck with the automobile business and after spells at Ford, Citro n (in Paris) and Rover (before they went broke) is now the UK Director of Environmental Affairs for BMW, who make the Mini. That makes Roger responsible for everything from making Minis in an environmentally friendly fashion to worrying about how to recycle a Rolls Royce (also owned by BMW) at the end of its lifetime. His office is at the Mini plant. catering holiday self wales

Mini manufacturing

Mini surprises Well they re making a lot of them, the car has been a runaway success and they spill off the end of the assembly line at the rate of 38 an hour, just over 200, 000 of them in 2005. The Body in White production line was the most intriguing area, that s car speak for the welding together of the panels to produce the complete bodyshell, ready to be painted. It s almost entirely automated with robots picking up and moving around panels with amazing precision and what looks like fastidious delicacy. I particularly liked the marriage point where the central floor pan was matched to the front and rear assemblies, a process that took half a dozen separate little maneuvers, including holding the panel up to a camera which checked sealant had been properly applied, before the panel was moved back, down, rotated and finally put in place. You half expected the robot to turn round and take a bow. holiday wales walking

Human beings are involved in the final assembly line, where it s always amazing that all the right variations and options end up on the right car and, almost at the end of the assembly line, the correct colour doors, which were detached after the paint shop, finally arrive back with the car before it s started up and driven away. family holiday wales

You don t need a friend at BMW to visit the plant and see Minis being made. Check the Mini website for the full story on Mini manufacturing or email Oxford.Plant-Tours@mini.com to put your name down for a tour. Plan ahead, tours are heavily booked. holiday riding wales

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AAA - Short Travel Blogs Sunday, 06 May 2007 Whale Sharks at Exmouth Whale shark permit

Maureen and I arrived in Australia in December 1972 at Exmouth on the North-West Cape, off a yacht sailing from Bali. In May 2007 I returned to Exmouth to dive with the whale sharks. Rhincondon typus is the world s biggest shark, whale size in fact. They re also harmless filter feeders, straining planktonic matter from the water through their gaping mouths. holiday park south wales

Welcome to Exmouth

They pass Ningaloo Reef off Exmouth from April to July each year and this is the best place in the world to get up close and personal with them. Whale shark snorkellers are dropped off beside a cruising whale shark and, for a few minutes, you can fin alongside the behemoth. It s an awesome experience, you emerge from the water with a smile nearly as wide as a whale shark. So thank you Paul, Wren, Inday, Mel and Dani of Kings Ningaloo Reef Tours. Inday made the Wet Foot Productions film clip of the whales sharks. cottage holiday wales

Shothole Canyon roa

In the 35 years between my two Exmouth visits the small town has become a major tourist destination. Apart from the whale shark migration there s excellent scuba diving (dive the Labyrinth or Blizzard Ridge at Lighthouse Bay), some terrific walking territory (try the walking track from Charles Knife Road towards Shothole Canyon Road) and superb beaches (sample the snorkelling at Turquoise Bay). holiday in wales

There are also plenty of places to stay including a brand new Novotel and lots of places to eat although the bar at the Potshot Hotel, where I downed the first beer I ever had in Australia, looked remarkably unchanged. Check Lonely Planet s Western Australia guidebook for the full story. holiday wales

Lonely Planet Television would like to thank Taiwan Tourism. Shop Lonely Planet Six Degrees on DVD Vol. 1 Six Degrees on DVD Vol. 2 Six Degrees on DVD. cottage holiday in wales

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