Huw J Williams

I love this country. I am still wondering why I left. There are so many incredible people I met here that I didn’t get photos of, I just didn’t carry my camera enough. No reflection on how happy they made me to meet them.  Did you know Georgia is where the Ibero-Celts originated from? Was […]

Up at 05:15. Woke to a cool breeze and an oozing treacle light. Deliberated about more sleep but realised it was probably the best time to drive. Yesterday I nearly cooked the engine. Steep hills, a hot day and driver nonchalance-negligence meant the water temperature was in the danger zone for far too long.  With […]

Sat outside eating an excellent kebab and sipping tea at a trucker’s overnight rest stop with about 60 Turkish truck drivers, striking up basic conversations using google translate. Collecting facebook friends from smiling men who speak no English. The soundtrack is diesel and drilling: engines running to keep refrigeration trailers cold, and gearing down rigs […]

Leaving a place I love, sad but rich with memories of people who have honoured me with their friendship     Tomorrow is my last day of a year spent in the Arabic world. If I had doubts before this time about the depth of human generosity, they have been wiped clean by the unquestioning, […]

Being a sucker for Land Rovers and off-road Adventure, Huw Williams didn’t take much convincing to join a new self-drive option in Egypt’s Western Desert. Driving off-road for 500km through the immense Saharan wilderness was child’s play compared to the first fifty getting clear of Cairo. Twenty million people live in Africa’s biggest city and the roads […]

One day good. One day bad. The best truck in the world that dances over sand dunes and makes old men smile in the street as it passes with its V8 purring like a Siberian tiger slurping Cornish cream. The worst pile of malfunctioning anachronistic mechanical engineering since the invention of the internal combustion engine. […]

It was complex. It was taxing. It took a while. And in the end it has become a clear lesson in “be careful what you wish for….” Got the stamp, which of course takes up a whole egotistical page. It’s a transit visa, which we wanted, because it was only £30 for both, hundreds cheaper […]

The tarmac ends abruptly a few kilometres south of Douz, the road continues, but there is a clear line when it turns from black-top to dirt track. From here to Ksar Ghilane, about 150 kilometres drive to the south east, the surface changes many more times; fast-driving hard-packed sand, corrugated shake-the-truck-to-bits sand, smooth rock-bed, gravel […]

I was nine years old and I stood on the rocks at the edge of the sea a little way out of Bugibba. It was a fishing village then, now I understand, like most of Malta, it’s a tourist town. I had a new mask and snorkel on my face and flippers on my feet. […]