One of the things most craved when travelling is your own bed! However, once returning home the joys of travelling are quickly missed and you begin to wonder what all the fuss about sleeping back in your own bed was about.

There’s an email that often does the rounds when people return home about readjusting. I still get it sent to me from time to time – today being one of those times. As it always makes me smile and crave for hostel life I though I should post a copy here

Having trouble readjusting to life back at home now that the travelling is over? Here’s a few handy hints to help you settle back in.

1) Replace your bed with two or more bunk beds, and every night invite random people to sleep in your bedroom with you. Ensure at least once a week a couple gets drunk and shags on one of the top bunks. Remove beds one by one as symptons improve.

2) Sleep in your sleeping bag, forgetting to wash it for months. Add some bugs in order to wake up with many unsightly bites over your arms and legs.

3) Enlist the help of a family member to set your radio alarm to go off randomly during the night, filling your room with loud talking. This works best if the station is foreign. Also have several mobiles ringing, without being answered. To add to the torture, ask a friend to bring plastic bags into your room at roughly 6 in the morning and proceed to rustle them for no apparent reason for a good half an hour.

4) Keep all your clothes in a rucksack. Remember to smell them before putting them on and reintroduce the use of the iron SLOWLY.

5) Buy your favourite food, and despite living at home, write your name and when you might next be leaving the house on all bags. This should include mainly pasta, 2 minute noodles, carrots and beer.

6) Ask a family member to every now and again steal an item of food, preferably the one you have most been looking forward to or the most expensive. Keep at least one item of food far too long or in a bag out in the sun, so you have to spend about 24 hours within sprinting distance of the toilet.

7) Even if it’s a Sunday, vacate the house by 10a.m., and then stand on the corner of the street looking lost. Ask the first passer-by of similar ethnic background if they have found anywhere good to go yet.
When sitting on public transport ( the London Tube would be ideal) introduce yourself to the person sitting next to you, say which stop you got on at, where you are going, how long you have been travelling and what university you went to. If they say they are going to Morden, say you met a guy on the central line who said it was terrible and that you’ve heard Parsons Green is better and cheaper.

9) Finally stick paper in your shower so that the water comes out in just a drizzle. Adjust the hot/cold taps at regular intervals so that you are never fully satisfied with the temperature. Because of this frustration, shower infrequently.

These simple but effective instructions should help you fall back into normal society with the minimum effort. Good luck!

For those still travelling: Dream about your own bed, just not too hard

only its raining outside and its all dark…

But the tree’s have blossom and leaves on them…

…theres colour around…

so summer must be near!

Last week I was talking about how I had added a guestmap to the site (sort of a cross between a visitors log and map). Two things annoyed be about what i’d done, the first is it required user interaction and the second is it was open to abuse from spam bots (and wow did it get hit!).

So rather than fix what i’d done I decided to make use of something i’ve been using to see roughly where in the world people have been visiting from since the begining of the April. That service is ClustrMaps. Eachtime somone visits Gone Walkabout an image is opened (its the one under visitors map in the sidebar on the left). ClustrMaps see where in the world the image is being requested from and plot that information on a map with a red dot. The more people visit from the same location the bigger the dots get! Then each day that map is updated and made avaliable to the world!

So, I’ve changed the visitor map page that I did have to a new one (same location) which means that daily map is avaliable to everyone. If you follow the link to the Gone Walkabout page on the ClustrMaps site there is also the option to ‘zoom’ in on continents for more detailed information.

This seems appropriate for Easter Sunday.

I’ve added a permament section above the posts on the main page of the site showing three random images from the gone walkabout gallery. There are so many photos in the gallery its nice to be able to see a random selection!

Also, and something I should have been aware of, the various googlemap features on the site:

• Photomap
• Postmap
• Visitor/Guest Map

wont work on konqueror based browsers – affecting Mac and Linux users. The good news is that v2 of the googlemaps software is moving towards fixing this, in the meantime firefox will work when visiting those links.

I’ve also changed the layout on the photo pages in the gallery to show the photo details (exif, comments, ratings) by default which can then be hidden by the user instead of the other way round. Click on one of the random photos for an example.

I tend to get a few hits from people looking for the vSlider Wordpress and gallery2 themes, so thought it worth a mention that there’s now new versions for both applications. This follows on from the recent new releases of both wordpress2 and gallery2.1.

Ive not moved Gone Walkabout over yet, and maybe won’t as i’ve quite a lot of template changes – but if your thinking about trying the best wordpress/gallery2 theme avaliable go grab the newer versions with a few new, and very nice, features!

• vSlider 2 Wordpress Theme
• vSlider 2 Gallery2 Theme

Don’t forget the home of vslider too – iRui.ac

A final few photos from Canada taken on an icy day around Niagara Falls. Well worth the cold to watch the water and ice cascading over the falls.

Despite the commercial nature of the town, the area itself is amazing. Just yake a trip and follow the Niagara River away from the falls.

Next new Travel Photos – Portugal in a few months!

As part of integrating everyone corner of this site with google maps I’ve added a visitor map which takes advantage of the google mapping system. It’s using a utilty called Guestmap which i’ve modified to fit into the sites theme. It’s basically a cross bewteen a visitors map and a guestbook.

It’s still needs some work as its using some very very messy coding right now, so if you have a slightly strict browser it may not display properly. Working on that

So, if you’d like to put your footprint on the site allow and leave a short message go see the visitor map! It asks for an email address, don’t worry you don’t have to leave one if you don’t want to

Update: I’ve decided to replace this with a ClustrMaps map instead to avoid spam and I knd of prefer this method

The final selection of photos from Toronto feature the city skyline from Toronto Island park, and some from the Island itself.

I’d spent the best part of a day trying to figure out how to get across there to get some photos of the Toronto Skyline. The map I had made it look like the Ferries left to get across to the Island from somewhere they really didn’t. But after a brief stop at my hotel and a look at another map I found the actual location and headed over to the Island for a walk from Ward’s Island Ferry point across to the other side at Hanlons Point – and with it being winter and Ferries only leaving from Ward’s Island the walk back!

The Island features many inland waterways all of which had frozen which made for some really nice Icy scenery, and the Lake Ontario side of the Island had some fantastic views over the lake itself. I’m going to have to visit during the summer at some point as it looks like theres a lot of fun to be had over there!

Plenty more Toronto Photos in the Toronto Gallery!