A year ago yesterday, we set out on an epic 10-week journey from London to Baku.

Knowing what I know now, I so wish we'd stuck to Plan A (or B or C, or whatever it was by then), and journeyed right on to the eastern edge of Asia...

But we didn't. We felt it was better to get the setting-up-of-home thing done without further delay.

No doubt there was merit to that decision. But now, with the door still firmly shut on home, and travel an utterly unpredictable phenomenon in the short and medium term, I can't suppress the regret that we didn't travel further while we could.

Anyway, bygones... No use crying over spilled milk.

Instead, as I previewed a little while ago, I'm going to shadow last year's journey over the next few weeks. I always felt I hadn't had enough time to fully digest it. We moved pretty much instantly from being on the road into a very intensive phase of getting started in Kuching, without any real opportunity for reflection. Well, here's the perfect digestion opportunity...

I'm not going to chain myself to a precise timetable, but over the next 10 weeks, I will focus once again on the countries we visited a year ago.

The aim is to learn a little more about themes that interested me, and "experience" these places all over again through books, food, music, language, memory, and anything else that lends itself to this endeavour.

First up, France, where we arrived a year ago yesterday.

More soon, but for the time being here are some unpublished pics of the 20th arrondissement, the untouristy and fascinating area where we parked our rucksacks for a little while.







This is part of the "La Petite Ceinture", the railway that by 1869 ringed Paris, but was abandoned in the 1980s:



A shadow journey can never replace the real thing. But I'm sure there are going to be lots of rewards.