The Anglo-Italian Runner
Viareggio, Tuscany · 07 February 2026
Featured walk
Viareggio wasn’t the plan. We landed in Verona, caught the train to Florence, checked in, showered the travel off, and within an hour we were back on a platform heading…
Viareggio wasn’t the plan. We landed in Verona, caught the train to Florence, checked in, showered the travel off, and within an…
We landed at Linate, dropped the bags, and walked straight out the door. No plan to rest. No easing in. This was…
Ferrara was Sarah’s idea, and she was right. We’d jumped on the train down from our night in Venice and had a…
It was just after seven in the morning and Siena was still asleep. The hotel door clicked shut behind me and the…
We came for the coasters. That was the deal — birthday trip, PortAventura, two days of screaming and queueing and eating theme…
The free hotel shuttle drops you at the gate before the park opens. There’s something about walking through before the crowds arrive…
There is a very specific kind of morning that follows an evening of birthday drinks. The new Garmin Venu 3 was sitting…
Every birthday gets a run. That’s just how it works now. The park opens later, the day stretches out ahead, and there’s…
It was a work trip. An IT Summit — the first one after the acquisition, when the UK teams came to Maxon…
There are some friendships that arrive through work and stay long after the work is done. Thomas is one of those. We…
We had already walked some of Siena the previous evening — a short recce from the hotel, just getting our bearings. This…
Siena does not ease you in. The bus from Florence drops you at the foot of the city and from there, it…
Fiesole was a recommendation. Someone our son knows said: you have to go, the views are something else. We were in Florence…
We’d already walked Florence once in the dark and the rain, the night before. The city hadn’t quite shown us its face…
We had already walked eight miles. The afternoon had taken us up through the Oltrarno, across the river, back again — every…
Ferrara arrives quietly. The train from Venice pulls in, you walk out of the station and into streets that are wide and…
She pulled the entire way. Every step, every field, every pavement stretch through Bothenhampton and down to West Bay — the lead…
There is a version of this race I could have run — head down, chasing a time, treating London as a backdrop…
The ballot place arrived in the post and I knew immediately what I was going to do with it. I didn’t need…
This one is filed under Italy. It counts. But I should be honest with you from the start — this is not…
Poggibonsi was two hours between trains. We knew nothing about it. We got off at the station, looked at the map, saw…
San Gimignano requires a bus. Not because of any failure of ambition, but because the hill from Poggibonsi — where the train…
Pisa wasn’t really on the list. It was on the list in the way that things end up there — because we…
We were already at the lake. Sirmione in the evenings, Peschiera in the mornings, and Gardaland somewhere in the middle — not…
We were already in the region. Ravenna was four days away. Mirabilandia sits on the Adriatic coast just south of the city…
There is something quietly absurd about running past a rollercoaster before it opens. The track sits above the treeline at a slight…
We had two days. You need two days. The park runs across nineteen themed zones and no amount of early starts fixes…
Dubrovnik does the old city brilliantly, and it knows it. The walls, the limestone, the Stradun — all of it polished to…
This was before everything. Before Italy, before Lisbon, before the plan had a name. We were in Bodrum on a family holiday…
Castillo Colomares from the gardens below. A monument to Columbus's voyage, built by one man between 1987 and 1994. Still a private…
We walked to the centre and back. Then we did it again. Then we did it at night. The day after, we…
There was a half marathon on in Málaga that morning. We didn’t enter it. We just ran one anyway. Thirteen miles, give…
We were in Málaga with Kara and Tom. A proper trip — four of us, a good apartment, the kind of January…
The castle had been watching us since we arrived. You can’t not see it — the rock face of Monte Benacantil rising…
We’d been here three days. Long enough to feel like we knew the shape of the place — the rambla, the castle…
It was still dark when we left the marina. Not the romantic dark of a clear night — the particular dark of…
Valencia wasn’t on the original itinerary. A colleague at work — his parents are from here — heard we were heading to…
The last morning. Clear head. Different direction. The previous two runs had gone north and east and up into the old city.…
La Devesa. Plane trees, long avenue, dappled shade. The finish line you didn’t know you needed. Domeny The route headed east out…
Sarah doesn’t always run. When she does, you pick a good one. We’d already spent days on foot in Girona by this…
A couple of days before, I’d run the Santa Eulàlia promenade in roughly the state you’d expect after Sarah’s fiftieth birthday celebrations.…
The night before, we’d been at Chinois. Franky Wah was playing his SHEN residency — Sarah has a thing for Mr. Wah…
We don’t usually do this. Organised excursions, shared minibuses, someone else deciding where we stop and for how long — it’s not…
Marrakesh by day is an assault. That’s not a criticism — it’s the point. The souks press in from every direction. Mopeds…
The window gave it away. Pull back the curtain on a Vilnius October morning and the city has disappeared — replaced by…
Vilnius arrived grey. Not the dramatic grey of a storm coming in but the settled, committed grey of a northern European October…
Kaunas was a Ryanair decision. Bristol to Kaunas, cheap enough to feel slightly implausible, booked on the basis that we’d never been…
We came to Padova at the end of a long trip. Gardaland the day before — James’s birthday, the theme park tradition…
We said it in the morning, somewhere between the station and the Gardaland shuttle stop, walking along the edge of a fortress…
We had a birthday to get to. Gardaland was booked for the 7th — James’s birthday, the theme park tradition running unbroken…
We had a plan. A proper one — trains looked up, timings worked out, three countries in four days. Europa Park on…
“It’s forty minutes on the AVE. You’d be mad not to.” — said by nobody, but implied by the timetable We were…
We flew into Girona airport. Not Barcelona. Girona. Because the Ryanair flight from Bournemouth was forty quid and we are exactly who…
There is a walk I did before I knew I was going to be a walker. May 2022. Sarah and I had…
We had seen Sirmione at midnight, exhausted and dragging luggage. Now we were seeing it properly. It was even better. Breakfast at…
We arrived late, weighed down with luggage, having navigated a train, a bus, and a walk we hadn’t planned for. Then we…
We weren’t supposed to fall for Bergamo. It was a stopover. It turned out to be one of the finest places we’ve…
A Swiss colleague had said: go to the Navigli at night. We went. He was right. Milan had been spectacular in the…
September 17, 2025 · 1.59 miles · Venice, Italy The night had been Venice at its most cinematic. The morning was something…
September 16, 2025 · 0.84 miles · Venice, Italy We were back. Four months since we’d stood on these bridges in the…
May 9, 2025 · 6.2 miles · Venice, Italy Most people visit Venice once and tick it off the list. We went…
September 22, 2025 · 0.84 miles · Punta Marina Terme, Ravenna Ten minutes. That’s all it takes. One bus from the centre…
September 19, 2025 · 3.05 miles · 687ft elevation · Bologna The number is not an accident. Six hundred and sixty-six arches…
We almost skipped Rimini. It was one night on the way south from Ferrara — somewhere to sleep before the next train.…
Ravenna wasn’t on the list. It was a day trip from Ferrara — somewhere to fill a morning before we got the…
We were leaving for Siena at midday. That gave me the morning. I was out of the door at quarter past seven,…
About
I’m a runner who carries a camera. Every time I visit somewhere new — whether that’s the Dorset coast path, a Spanish city at dawn, or a Swiss lake at an unreasonable hour — I lace up and go. Not to race, not to train, but to see.
Running gives you a place at a pace cars can’t, and a perspective most visitors never find. This journal is where I write it all down.
Thinking Out Loud Runners
A running and walking group for the over 50s. No pace requirement, no kit list, no lecture about your heart rate zones. Just good routes, good company, and somewhere decent for a coffee at the end.