Gary Wilson

OK I'm doing a thing. As part of my first year of retirement, I’ve embarked on a challenge that’s part rambling (fitness edition) and part rambling (writing edition). 🚶‍♂️📚 More Than Words

More Than Words: Stage 36 Norfolk: flatter than my handicap trajectory, and considerably more interesting than it looks. Medieval gold dreams, whale-powered fertiliser factories, and a village that formed a committee rather than accept last orders. 🦆 morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2026/04/16/sta…

MTW Stage 35: Only Fens 🌾 From Pennine punishment to Fenland flatness so extreme it feels theoretical. Barber endurance, Tebay financial ambush, sheep tech, lost credit, and an A17 allergic to corners. Overwhelmingly flat. Mildly unhinged. morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2026/04/09/sta…

Stage 33 goes full Midlands chaos: museums that open less than Halley’s Comet, a 1,400‑yr‑old yew, Derby casually inventing everything, a ghost with livestock‑alarm‑clock energy & Gotham — the village that gaslit a king into birthing Batman. Full saga👇 morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2026/03/26/sta…

MTW Stage 32 dives from Cheshire calm into canal chaos: spite canals, cosmic telescopes in fields, a million‑gallon breach, escaped Tudor bears, and Stoke‑on‑Trent doing its six‑town trench‑coat routine. England at its gloriously peculiar best. Full saga: morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2026/03/19/sta…

New post: Stage 31 – The Long And Winding Road. Featuring: skiing hubris, Liverpool, Vikings, soap barons, Civil War ghosts and a church literally rotated for one admiral’s view. British history continues to be… a process. morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2026/03/12/sta…

🌊 More Than Words – Stage 30: Keepin’ It Rhyl 🌊 North Wales delivers goats with media careers, a Victorian tram that refuses to retire, a castle now famous for Ant & Dec, and Rhyl — Britain’s seaside Time Lord. 👉 morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2026/03/05/sta… #MoreThanWords2025 #Stage30

🌊 Stage 29: In Deep Water 🌊 1,000 miles done. Proclaimers fulfilled. Irish Sea endured. Sodor imagined. Cod fought over. Elephants under towers. Submarines built. Puffins… formerly. Over halfway. Entirely afloat. 👉 morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2026/02/26/sta… #MoreThanWords2025 #Stage29

🏍️ Stage 28: Man, Overboard 🏍️
 Isle of Man shenanigans via thundersnow skepticism, pirate-turned-bishops, 200mph neurosurgeons, Victorian waterwheels still turning, & toilets achieving TripAdvisor acclaim unavailable to most saints.
 Read: morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2026/02/19/sta…

🌊 Stage 27: The Old Man and The Sea Glute mutiny. Irish Sea mood swings. Viking motorways, Donaghadee’s “oldest” pub, Millisle’s quiet heroism, a Stevenson lighthouse (obviously), and the Isle of Man: tax-savvy, self-governing, faintly Norse. morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2026/02/12/sta…

🚶‍♂️ More Than Words – Stage 26: Don’t Look Back In Bangor Christmas fitness plans vs cheese, Belfast’s industrial ghosts, buried rivers and premium souvenirs, wind-battered bays, puffins opting out of society — and Bangor waiting patiently at the end. 👉 morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2026/02/05/sta…

Stage 25: 🌸 The Hothouse Flowers 🌸 From Miami smugness to graffiti tunnels, Craigavon’s roundabout fever dream, pineapples in Moira & NI’s most over-engineered corridor. 👉 morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2026/01/29/sta…

MTW Stage 24: Not Throwing Away My Shot Alexander Hamilton’s birthplace, Caribbean granite flexing, silent discos, compost protests, linen mills, duels, bogs & one VERY persistent smell. 👉 morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2026/01/22/sta…

☀️📍 MTW – Stage 23: Show Me the Sunny 📍☀️ Featuring: drumlins as ice-age bubble-wrap, villages named after plague graves, miraculous beer taps, saints with dairy-based miracles, playground-level dynastic feuds, and Victorian cheese co-operatives. 👉 morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2026/01/15/sta…

🌊 More Than Words – Stage 22: West Side Story Britain shivers, Miami flexes, then Fermanagh reasserts damp control. Stage 22 features war goddesses, defeated castles, wicker bridges, and history’s pettiest copyright beef. Read all about it: morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2026/01/08/sta…

🌬️⚙️ Stage 21 of More Than Words: Grill, Interrupted From deafening linen mills to a barbecue that briefly believed it could fly. Bronze Age Airbnbs, folklore rabbits, confused lakes, weather turbines, and a pub that encourages emigration mid-pint. morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2026/01/01/sta…

More Than Words - Stage 20 goes inland 💷 A particular set of mills, hedge-fund hedge funds, Winterfell on fire, haunted mansions, confused eels, Typhoid Mary, and a lake owned by an English earl. NI, but weird. 👉 morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2025/12/25/sta…

⛴️ Stage 19: Ferry Tales ⛴️ Radioactive seabeds, semaphore courtships, seaside hypothermia & castles collapsing photogenically—Northern Ireland’s surreal mix of ferries, folklore & photobombing power stations. 👉 Read: morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2025/12/18/sta… #MoreThanWords2025 #FerryTales

Episode 9 of the podcast is out! • Spotify: bit.ly/44dV0yK • Apple: apple.co/4pVEsUr • Amazon: amzn.to/3MvULJg • YouTube: tinyurl.com/MoreThanWord... Featuring a northern bloke rambling on about: 🌿 Gardening: the new contact sport

🍖 Stage 18: Meat the Parents 🍖 Cannibal caves, smugglers turned sourdough hipsters, falcons posher than you, and ferries that double as disaster films. Brutal, beautiful, briny. 👉 Read: morethanwords2025.wordpress.com/2025/12/11/sta… #MoreThanWords2025 #MeatTheParents

It’s genuinely made us steer away from doing any tours with you which seems a shame.

$89 per person from the ship to go to The Baths, so $178 in total. Independently, with yacht dock taxis and entrance to the park: $26 in total - same experience. I know your tours are going to have a mark up, that’s understandable. But over 500% ???

Hey @Azamara … we’re very much enjoying our time on Onward this week. Your crew are fabulous. Quick question though … your tour prices seem absurdly high - we would usually take some ship tours but we’ve gone completely independently. eg: Virgin Gorda to The Baths today (1/2)