I’ve been fortunate in my career to have worked in international sport journalism and media relations since 1986.

From small acorns as a staff editor on a weekly motoring newspaper in London – where I was travelling the length and breadth of the country most weekends or hopping on a ‘plane to cover an event in Europe, Africa or the Middle East – I managed to continue my love of travel into self employment from 1990 onwards.

Over the course of the last 38 years, I have worked in or visited 109 countries, although many of those earlier business trips came before the age of digital cameras and logging trips for the archive.

For too many years, a foreign trip consisted of the usual airport delays and stresses and then the taxi, the hotel, the race circuit or the sporting venue, the bar if you were lucky, and then the return trip to the airport. I rarely got to see the sights around me unless I was covering something like the Dakar Rally or driving through remote jungle tracks in the Ivory Coast or the Rally of Asia.

For example, it took me until my 31st trip to Jordan before I even visited spectacular Petra and the renowned Treasury.

Over the last couple of years I have decided to take time out where possible from the work schedule to archive as much travel material as I could in a quest to visit every country on the planet before the final day comes…

I hope you enjoy these blogs as much as I did to create them.

Over the course of time, I will dig out older ones where possible and try to convert colour print and black and white photography to a modern-day format.

A big thanks to friend and work colleague John Moore for his thoughts and being the brain child on this project.

 

Neil Perkins

 

Newport, Shropshire
November 2024