I took my first solo trip around Europe when I was seventeen, and I've been travelling and writing professionally since I published my first travel guide – to Scandinavia – in 1988. Since then I've eaten a puffin in Iceland, got stuck up a mountain in the Lake District, crash-landed in Iran, fallen off a husky sled in Canada, and got stranded on a Mediterranean island. Not all of those things were my fault. You can read about my travelling life in my two travel memoirs, Don't Eat the Puffin and Never Pack an Ice-Axe. I wrote Rough Guide travel books for over thirty years, but now that I no longer have to copy down bus timetables for a living I don't really know what to do with myself. So I come up with ridiculous ideas for trips and then write about them, which is where my 9-city, 9-day, 9-country trip came from – that's covered in Not Cool: Europe by Train in a Heatwave. I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. You can find out more about me and my books at my publishing website, www.trustmetravel.com. I also blog at www.julestoldme.com, sharing travel stories, travel-writing tips, videos and inspiring destinations - see you there, and happy travels.
