What's your earliest memory of travel?

My late father used to take me down to Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh to watch the trains rumble by beneath the bridge with the castle hulking above. I loved the big ones to London, which seemed incredibly exotic at the time and in a way still do. I think you still need to retain some of that childish enthusiasm about travel to do the job we do.

What's your most bizarre memory of travel?
To narrow it down from about a 100 contenders (I sadly keep a list) I reckon walking stark naked into the reception of a hotel in Venice thinking it was my bathroom and trying to ‘cover up’ Billy Connelly style by asking ‘What time is breakfast?’ to the bemused receptionist as an American tour group dissolved in laughter.

Which is the place you haven't been to yet but would most like to visit?
(North) Rona. I love islands and similarly remote St. Kilda just blew me away (literally) when I sea kayaked around Hirta. Rona remains a real enigma for me, uninhabited since 1844, over 40 miles off the Butt of Lewis and within spitting distance of the Faroe Islands.

Where would you never want to go again?
Guangzhou. Been there twice and been in three car crashes, arrested once and was also food poisoned last time just for good measure.

If you could take a day trip back in time to any point in history, when and where would you visit?
Clichéd I know, but would have to be Berlin on the east side on November 9 as the Cold War crumbled amidst the wreckage of the Soviet system and lovers and lost loves were united as the map of modern Europe seismically shifted into the world we have today.

How did you get involved in travel writing/photography/ broadcasting?
By taking a very long train trip in 1995 from where I watched those trains as a boy. I headed from Edinburgh Waverley to Hong Kong’s Kowloon Tong on a 5 week epic that crossed two continents and a number of different worlds, generating a dodgy buffet car of surreal experiences that I am still writing about.

How has the Guild been most helpful?
I like to think of it as a sort of ‘Travel Writers Anonymous’ where we can all have a constructive discussion/good moan about all the awful things we have to deal with, while at the same time in moments of candour admitting to each other we really do have the world’s best job despite what we tell non-writers.

Everyone gets it wrong sometimes, so what's the biggest travel blunder you've ever made?
Has to be the line ‘My favourite ten Parisian brasseries are…’ which was actually published with brassieres instead of brasseries – a very different article. Then there was the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, which I claimed rather grandly not only ‘defied all critics’ but ‘deified’ them too.

Who, outside of your own family, would you most like to go travelling with and why?
Ratko Mladic, so I can take him on long deserved one way trip to the Hague. His men took a pot shot at me in the Balkans in 1993 and he is up there with Radovan Karadzic amongst Europe’s biggest post-WW2 villains.

Which travel destination has taken you most by surprise and why?
The three Baltic Republics. My anachronistic images of Communist-era privations and dull architecture were turned on their head by my first visit in 1998 and the region constantly surprises me even after a dozen visits and having written 4 books on ‘The Baltics’.

Three Desert Island discs for your iPod?
Prefer single tracks to albums. Radiohead’s session version cover of Joy Division’s ‘Ceremony’ (hate the New Order ‘original’), Joy Division’s ‘Disorder’ (live) and Mogwai’s ‘Mogwai Fears Satan’, perfect as this epic ‘song’ lasts a touch over 16 minutes.

And a favourite book to pass the journey?
Wonderfully pretentious I know but also wonderful too – Milan Kundera’s ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’, a more twisted and realistic Wuthering Heights for Cold War kids.

Additional Question:
If you had one tip to share with other travel writers what would it be?
As Paul Weller said ‘The public gets what the public wants’ so when an editor asks for an 800 word tightly edited piece on Madrid’s cafés, bars and restaurants, don’t waffle on about how your last visit to the Prado moved you way beyond 1,000 words and also beyond the reach of spellcheck.

Robin McKelvie – www.robinmckelvie.com

August 2008