Rail & Road
A night train sells space rather than distance
What you are buying on an overnight service is a volume of the carriage for a number of hours, and every…
Daniel Okonkwo
Deputy editor, The Next Postcard
Daniel writes about cities, slow routes, rail & road, mostly the parts other people skip and is unreasonably interested in the detail nobody else checks.
12 articles
Cities
A second city explains a country better than its capital does
Capitals are shaped by national institutions that distort everything around them, while the next city down…
Slow Routes
The off season is really an argument about daylight
Travelling outside the peak is usually described as a question of crowds and price, when the variable that…
Travel Craft
Getting by without the language is a matter of narrowing the question
Communication across a language barrier succeeds when the range of possible answers is small, which is why…
Cities
A city cemetery is the most detailed archive it leaves in the open air
Burial grounds record trades, languages, migrations and epidemics in a form that is public, dated and free…
Cities
A closed factory becomes a visitable place only if someone can keep the roof on
Industrial heritage survives where a use, a subsidy or a story could be found for buildings that were built…
Slow Routes
The gap between one room and the next is the part nobody plans
Checking out in the morning and into somewhere else in the afternoon leaves several unstructured hours with…
Rail & Road
A preserved railway is a charity that happens to run trains
Heritage lines exist because volunteers bought a closed route and kept it working, and that origin explains…
Coast
Sea fog arrives in the warm months and is not the weather you booked
A coast can be cold, grey and invisible on a day the interior is in full sun, because the fog forms over…
Coast
A dune system is held together by grass and very little else
The hills of sand behind a beach are built by wind, stabilised by a few specialised plants, and undone by…
Slow Routes
Winter does not close an overland route so much as narrow it
Cold-season travel over land is governed by reduced frequency, larger consequences and infrastructure built…
Travel Craft
A free cancellation rate is an option, and you are paying for it
Refundable and non-refundable prices are the same room sold under different risk arrangements, and the gap…