Barry Lee Cummings - Personal Travel Experience | Travel Destination Recommendations and insights

Welcoming the New Year Oz Style

The Barossa Valley – wine country part 2

Heading into Wine Country – McLaren Vale South Australia

Our 1st visit to wine country saw us head to the Mclaren Vale. This is a region not to far away from where we were staying. We visited Paxtons first, they are a small winery, who are heavily into Biodynamic farming to make their wine. Makes them stand out from just about every other producer and also has yielded some very tasty results. It’s always a much better experience we learned, when the person you are talking to is passionate about their [...]

1st trip to Oz – what’s in store!?

Kangaroo at The Gorge Wildlife Park Adelaide | Barrys travels

Al Forsan – Abu Dhabi’s Sports and Leisure Resort

September 25th, 2012

Barry

What is there to do at the weekend in the United Arab Emirates?
Many people that come to visit the UAE often ask what there is to do other than go to the mall – especially in the summer months, when it’s too hot to be outside, camping, hiking, dune bashing, wadi bashing and so on. The truth is that many of the inhabitants leave for a couple of months, so that’s one option. For those that remain, life moves indoors and many a DVD box set is consumed during the boiling hot summer months. The Dubai Institute of ‘Brunch’ sees an increase in attendance, if that’s possible. But for some of us, it’s just business as usual. And with that in mind, after a hard week at work, you want to unwind and do something, even if it is a bit warm outside, we want to be outside.

Diving is a favourite past time of mine, but sometimes, you just don’t want the hassle of having to pack up all your kit, get up a crazy o’clock in the morning and scoot over to the East coast for a couple of boat dives. And a couple of weekends ago, we [...] Continue Reading…

August 7th, 2012

Barry

Ras Al Khaimah Diving? Are you sure?
You’re right, Ras Al Khaimah is not the first place that springs to mind when you talk about scuba diving – not when you have the East coast of the UAE, or better still, Musandam just up the coast. But dismiss it, and you’ll miss out on some pretty awesome dive sites.

If you have the pleasure, you may also get to stay in the Ras Al Khaimah hotel, which is, if nothing else, an experience

Why am I diving in Rak Al Khaimah? Blame Ana ‘Banana’ Baptista. Actually, it’s Matts fault. He sent through a coupon deal of some sort and without hesitation, Ana bought it. It’s great that Ana wants to learn to dive, so we agreed to go up for the weekend to support her. The deal included a night in the Ras Al Khaimah hotel. I hadn’t heard of it before and the fact that it was actually in land, made me question how diving was going to be undertaken. Whilst it had a pool, what about the actual sea dives needed for the Open Water Qualification? Early Friday morning we packed into the car and set off. Ana was [...] Continue Reading…

August 1st, 2012

Barry

For a long time I’ve been wanting to go to Snake Canyon, to do the canyoning, but also to really do the Via Ferrata which is attaching yourself onto steel wires above the Wadi floor and going for a wander up the side of the Wadi walls and across the actual gaps in the earths surface! Unfortunately the Via Ferrata had been shut for maintenance and has remained shut since!

So we set off to Oman – two trucks, mine and Hussain’s – 8 people and we were away. Our destination was a little place called ‘Second Home’ not far from the Wadi entrance (Wadi Bani Awf) . It’s pretty basic rooms but very comfortable and a really cool place to bed down for the weekend. Some of our party weren’t too thrilled about it, as were afraid of various bugs that may or may not have been around. We left early on a Friday morning and actually left pretty much on time, which is unusual, especially if Laura and Keri are involved. It was also a first trip into Oman for one of our new family members, Ana Banana from Portugal. It was about a 4 hour drive, including [...] Continue Reading…

July 31st, 2012

Barry

As happens a lot in Dubai, those guys that are married and with families, become WANKER’s for a month or two. Wife Away No Kids Eating Rubbish – Lenny’s beautiful wife Morwenna and baby boy Theo (my godson) are back in the UK for the summer which means that Lenny is indeed a WANKER and as such wants to make the most of the ‘reduced’ responsibility in his life for the time the family is away.

And so a weekend was planned. Actually planned is not true. A date was agreed and about an hour after we’d agreed to meet on Thursday to leave, Matt and I turned up at the outlet mall and transferred everything into the Xterra and then we were on our way.

It was 8.5 hours door to door to our camping spot at Qiyoot, this did involve a lot of messing around trying to get groceries and the most elusive resource in Oman – Ice. We exited the UAE through Al Ain which meant paying 35aed to get out, an then another 50 aed to get into Oman! Also make sure you have a credit card as this is the only way to pay the entry [...] Continue Reading…

July 31st, 2012

Barry

This post is an amalgamation post, as we have been to Wadi Adventure twice since it opened and as the title suggests, it’s awesome. Only an hour or so up the road from Dubai, and you have a dedicated facility to cater to your water based adrenaline needs. The first trip up there, we literally had the entire park to ourselves, three of us and two other guys using the Kayaks, Literally that was it. Admittedly this was during their soft opening phase, as we had a chat to the guy that was running the place, having come over from the States to do so. It was like having our own private adventure water park.

First thing to get on then was the white water rafting. I’ve done this a couple times, once in Canada and once in Nepal, so wanted to see what they had done with their set up. There is a little safety briefing first of all, where you sit in a room and watch a video. All made sense and second time round was nice to get out of the heat and into an AC’d room for 5 minutes. Then it was out to get kitted [...] Continue Reading…

July 30th, 2012

Barry

New Years Eve- The River Cafe on the River Torrens http://www.rivercafe.com.au/ - awesome seats on the deck, some pretty good food and constantly flowing bottles of wine – perfect way to end the year. Love the long sunsets in Oz, bit warm to start with but cooled into a beautiful evening. Some other friends had got a table too in the restaurant so we watched the ‘kids’ fireworks display around 9pm and then the full on welcoming of the new year at midnight. Getting home, required a bit of a walk into town. A quick look in the casino, which was rammed at 2am, and then on to one of the many Free buses that would take you home. I do miss that about developed cities. A great family New Years in the land down under.

[easyrotator]erc_54_1343552454[/easyrotator]

July 29th, 2012

Barry

The Barossa Valley – a must do, if you are in the area and are even remotely interested in wine. We managed to actually get 4 cellar doors in on this occasion, but considering the vast number of them, this was still a tiny tiny number. We managed to hit Turkey Flat, Penfolds, Wolf Blass and Langmeil. Turkey Flat - http://www.turkeyflat.com.au/home/ wasn’t that great as the representative really didn’t want to be there and it showed, so this wasn’t a great start, especially as the wines weren’t particularly good either. In the Cellar Door, they were only tasting 2011 wines, which as you would expect, were young and as such, quite thin!!! Look at me, thinking like I know what I am talking about!!

We then headed over to Penfolds - www.penfolds.com as one of the largest and most commercial producers, they have a very slick set up, and some very nice (as well as expensive) wines. But what stood this apart from the others was the ‘make your own blend’ experience. Brilliant fun and you come out of it with your very own GSM Grenache, Shiraz, Mourvedre blend. Really great experience and educational too.

On to Wolf Blass http://www.wolfblasswines.com/ and again as a global distributor [...] Continue Reading…

July 28th, 2012

Barry

Our 1st visit to wine country saw us head to the Mclaren Vale.

This is a region not to far away from where we were staying. We visited Paxtons first, they are a small winery, who are heavily into Biodynamic farming to make their wine. Makes them stand out from just about every other producer and also has yielded some very tasty results. It’s always a much better experience we learned, when the person you are talking to is passionate about their topic. And believe it or not, there was at least one that definitely made the experience worse than any of the others by not really being into the whole experience. Really showed through and portrayed their Cellar Door in the worst light of all those that we visited.

Lunch time and to The Elbow room – new restaurant with the ex chef from the D’arenbourg winery. Lovely location and as we were fine with the heat, we were the first people to sit out in the courtyard. Lovely food and in complete heathen style, actually had a cold beer with lunch. The locally brewed beer to Adelaide is Coopers and their pale ale became my drink of choice whilst there. It’s brewed in the bottle so you have the unique serving suggestion of rolling the bottle before opening to mix all the sediment!! Tastes good and [...] Continue Reading…

July 26th, 2012

Barry

Annalisa and Matt (sister and brother in law) moved to Australia in July 2011, just after my birthday. It’s something that Annalisa has been wanting to do for a long time and finally, after all the usual hold ups an hassles with visas (2 years) they were on there way. The day they left was an emotional day to say the least, sad to see them go, but happy that they were effectively starting their married life together, in a new country, new house, new jobs, new people, new life!

The upside was that at Christmas time, I was going to be able to make my first trip to the land down under. Up until this point in my life, people had always found it strange that I had done quite a lot of travelling, played a lot of sports, loved being outside, and yet had somehow never made it down to Australia. This visit was going to be a family visit for sure, and I didn’t get to see much else than Adelaide, which again people found very strange – that I would go to Oz and not even see Sydney! Having said that, Adelaide, I think has loads [...] Continue Reading…

July 24th, 2012

Barry

Gorge Walking!
Friday of that week and 8 of us piled into cars and set of for Wales at some ungodly hour. Eds weekend had arrived! It was officially his stag do, but we were far from your ‘traditional’ stag party. First of all the first day would be spent dressed as morons, throwing ourselves into freezing cold water off of waterfalls and the like in a Gorge in Wales. Living in Dubai means that it is really quite rare to feel cold unless you accidentally turned the AC down too low. We started with an acclimatisation jump! Hands in, jump in, don’t panic, its gonna be cold! 1st in was Ol, then Ralph and then our friend Giles! The first ‘jump’ was no more than a step off a rock 2ft above the water level. Somehow Giles got this wrong and not only did he panic and look like a puppy learning to swim. He somehow managed to pull his back. This provided much hilarity for the rest of the weekend for the rest of us as Giles had to walk around looking like he had crapped himself. I jumped in and immediately turned into a woman. You are [...] Continue Reading…

Welcoming the New Year Oz Style

The Barossa Valley – wine country part 2

Heading into Wine Country – McLaren Vale South Australia

1st trip to Oz – what’s in store!?

Al Forsan – Abu Dhabi’s Sports and Leisure Resort

Ras Al Khaimah Dive Trip

Snake Canyon Wadi Bani Awf Oman – Canyoning down the Wadi

Boys Weekend – Jebel Akhdar | Oman | Hiking, Camping and Swimming

Wadi Adventure – It’s Awesome

Welcoming the New Year Oz Style

The Barossa Valley – wine country part 2

Heading into Wine Country – McLaren Vale South Australia

1st trip to Oz – what’s in store!?

And now for something completely different…..

Around the Globe

Featured Video

Recent Posts

Categories