After a break of over two years, and being offline for many months, I’m back! The new, improved Off the Beaten Track site was permanently deleted by the domain provider after a paltry, month-long period of grace (along with about eighteen months of blog posts), long before I realized I’d forgotten to update my payment methods, but the original WordPress site survives, and I’m intending to revive it with occasional ‘new’ posts from pieces I wrote (and saved) during my last two years on Taiwan. I moved permanently back to England in July 2018, and after vainly hoping for six months to get my new trekking outfit Trek Taiwan up and running, I accepted the fact that I was back in the UK to stay, and gave up those plans. In hindsight it was unfortunate timing, since I’m now confined to my home in rural Wiltshire (not far from Stonehenge and Bath) while a global pandemic rages (while back in Covid-free Taiwan, my old friends continue to live – and hike – as though nothing was happening!) However, much as I miss Taiwan, Britain offers way more than enough to keep me busy hiking and exploring for at least a couple more decades before I even start to feel like I really know my home country.
While cooped up at home I’m planning to top up this blog with some articles written during those last two years in Taiwan and not yet posted on this blog. . I’m now working as a peripatetic piano teacher in local schools, and since I get the same lovely long holidays I enjoyed in Taiwan, I’ll be back in Taiwan for a summer’s adventure, revisiting some old favorites and discovering lots of new places. This almost certainly won’t happen until 2021, but when it does, I’ll have some new fodder for this blog. Can’t wait!
OFF THE BEATEN TRACK 