Ryan Murdock's Blog

Icebreaker briefs may not be the world’s worst underwear, but they’re the worst waste of forty bucks I’ve ever spent on gotch.

They should really change the name to Crack Chafer, because that’s what these things excel at.

This chameleon-like garment transforms itself into a sumo mawashi the moment you start hiking. 

Once it has lodged itself in your crack, it saws up and down like a violinist playing a particularly manic fugue. 

The further you hike, the louder you’ll swear. Profanity echos through the hills and dales, terrifying errant sheep and sending already panic-prone marmots into a squealing frenzy.

You’ll be squealing too, of course, as you reach back every five minutes in a futile attempt to dig these briefs out of your arse crack.

At least the mawashi worn by sumo wrestlers contains one’s balls. I can’t say the same for these Icebreakers. The elastic that was supposed to cling to my legs bisected my ballsack, lodging there with stubborn persistence, mirroring the back that was gleefully chafing away.

Don’t take my word for it. Here are a few of the many one-star reviews I found on the company’s own website:

You and me both, Nick from Perth. 

My idea of hiking does NOT involve a fiddler playing ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’ on my fundament.

I have the sort of stubbornness that can only be measured in geological time, paired with a martial artist’s tolerance for pain, but I was no match for the daily dose of misery this garment dished out. 

My high traverse of the Pyrenees took 35 days, from Atlantic to Mediterranean. I wore these briefs with grim determination for the first three weeks, but I finally gave up on Day 20 when I passed through a town with an outdoor shop. 

I replaced them with two pairs of the aptly-named Saxx, whose trademarked BallPark Pouch® was like a warm palm cradling my family jewels in elasticized comfort. The best outdoor underwear I’ve ever owned. The anti-Icebreaker, in fact.

At this point, you’re probably wondering what I was thinking. Why did I buy those awful Crack Chafers in the first place?

I bought two pairs of Icebreaker briefs  — at €39.95 each! — for my Pyrenees hike because merino’s microbial properties means it doesn’t stink like synthetic outdoor gear. I chose the briefs rather than boxer-briefs on the logic that the smaller ones would dry faster when I rinsed them in a stream and hung them on my backpack in the sun. 

I regretted my decision every day. I doubt anyone short of Dante could describe what it’s like to wear these things.

Unfortunately, Icebreaker didn’t just fall short in the realm of underwear.

I bought an Icebreaker t-shirt for this hike, too. I like their snug fit and stink-resistance, but their durability is unacceptably bad, especially for the high price.

My t-shirt was peppered with holes by the halfway point. By the end, it looked like I’d been attacked by moths.

And it wasn’t just the shirt I wore every day while walking. I have another Icebreaker t-shirt that I only wore at night. That has a big hole in it, too. 

I can’t see how merino wool is to blame for this. I have another merino t-shirt from Ibex. I got it in 2007 when testing gear on a magazine assignment. Eighteen years after that desert trip, it’s still going strong. 

To be fair, my Ibex shirt is heavier than these Icebreaker t-shirts. The thinner Icebreaker weave may be to blame for their fragility. But surely durability is a requirement when it comes to outdoor gear?

I don’t expect a t-shirt to last 18 years like my Ibex shirt. But falling apart halfway through a single trip is unacceptable — especially for a t-shirt that costs €85.95 at Globetrotter in Berlin.

The post Is this the world’s worst underwear? first appeared on Ryan Murdock.

At Hendaye on the Atlantic. Did I know what I was getting into…?

I’m back at my desk after hiking the length of the Pyrenees, from Atlantic to Mediterranean: just under 800 km, with 51,000 metres of elevation gain and descent, in 35 days. 

I wanted to do this high traverse as a sort of farewell-to-Europe after 15 years living on the continent, six of them in Malta and the rest in Berlin. To get to know one particular mountain range intimately, at walking speed.

I followed the Pyrenean Haute Route (HRP). Unlike the well-marked and heavily travelled trails that run either side of the Pyrenees — the French GR 10 and Spanish GR 11 — the HRP is more of an ethos than an officially designated path. It straddles the border using a mix of existing trails, local trails, and cross-country navigation to stay as close as possible to the main ridge of the Pyrenees the entire time. It’s said to be the toughest route in the range, and one of the toughest in Europe, and I can understand why.

My route with elevation profile

My maps for this hike weighed more than my tent; I sliced them into sections to cut the weight. My tent is an MSR Freelite, at 890 grams the lightest semi-self-supporting tent I could find. It stood up well to two storms with wind gusts approaching 70kph.

My MSR Freelite mountain home

My base pack weight was 8.5 kg, and close to 12 kg after a full five-day food resupply. Water was plentiful in the mountains, so I only carried a litre at a time, refilling as needed from streams and lakes with my Sawyer Squeeze filter.

A typical five-day resupply

I didn’t take a stove or pot in order to cut weight, just a little plastic container to cold-soak oatmeal in the mornings and plain couscous flavoured with a dusting of soup powder at night. I got the bulk of my daytime calories from dense foods like nuts, dried fruit, energy bars and a little chocolate, and made up for the lack of variety by gorging on burgers in resupply towns, and buying the odd omelette if I passed a mountain hut. 

My long walk began in Hendaye on the Atlantic coast of France, next to the border of Spain. 

I found the first day’s steep trudge up La Rhune in the heat very difficult, and wondered if I was up for this, but I got my hiking legs in the Basque country as I set out each dawn wrapped in morning mist and slowly climbed above the clouds.

Climbing above the clouds in Basque country

The Basque region was a pastoral world of domestic herds: sheep, cattle, and stout horses which are apparently sent to Japan for meat. Church bells tolled in tidy little villages of whitewashed houses trimmed with rust-red, and lonely shepherd’s huts occupied the high pastures where, when I was lucky, I could buy a hunk of sheep’s cheese.

Bought cheese from this Basque shepherd in a meadow below Ezkanda peak.

The higher peaks teemed with frightened marmots, gravity-defying isard, yellow and black salamanders, and soaring vultures, kites, and kestrels. There are a few bears in the range, but I’ve never heard of anyone seeing one.

I knew I was finally entering the high peaks when I struggled up the summit of Pic d’Orhy. I didn’t expect the landscape to change so dramatically. Crossing one col could open entirely new geographical worlds. It happened again and again.

Climbing Pic d’Orhy, that pointy one behind me

The next day, I passed through an incredible waterless karst wilderness near the Pic d’Anie that looked and felt like another planet.

From there it was into the high mountains. Over the Col de Pau, past Pic du Midi d’Ossau, across the Passage d’Orteig  — a sheer cliff with an abyss on one side and steel cable bolted to the rock — and then up a boulder field to the Port du Lavedan (2615m), across an unstable scree slope, up to the wrong gap and down by an improvised climb that was stupid and dangerous. 

Into the high peaks, near the Port du Lavedan (2615m)

It gave me a taste of what to expect in the next few days.

The highest passes of my route were bleak and intimidating, with steep snow fields approaching the Col Inferieur de Literole (2983m), and then a very steep descent on sliding scree to a chaotic granite wilderness where landmarks went out the window. Walking was tough on endless boulder fields, and navigation a challenge. 

The highest passes were bleak and intimidating

Crossing those snow fields, buffeted by bitter gusts that cut through my fleece and wind jacket, I remember thinking how easy it would be to die up there. All it would take is a slip in a boulder field and a broken ankle, and then the cold sets in…

Standing on the Col Inferieur de Literole (2983m), highest pass of my route

Beyond the high passes, I entered a more remote stretch of wilderness that skirted through the intensely beautiful top of Andorra. It was sparsely inhabited and seldom travelled by European standards, with long, level walks on steep slopes and a memorably vertical climb to a col.

Into Andorra, getting tired… I walked through a beautiful corner of Andorra

I knew I’d reached the final stretch when I climbed the steep scree slope of Pic Carlit after drinking a slug of olive oil from the bottle for energy.

The day I drank olive oil from the bottle The steep scree route up Pic Carlit

The route I’d come through was a bleak world of rugged mountain geography, but the way ahead was completely different. I had the feeling I’d left the high Pyrenees behind. 

On Pic Carlit after crossing that section behind me Onward from Pic Carlit — leaving the high Pyrenees behind

The final stretch after the summit of Canigou was an ordeal of heat, sweat, slimy skin, flies, painful climbs, and a murderous sun. The streams were dry, so I had to carry three litres of water. That’s three extra kilograms, in addition to food. It was the section I enjoyed the least.

I hiked some of my longest distances in those last two weeks: 29km one day, and 35km another.

My boots were falling apart by the end. There were holes on all sides where the stitching gave out, and the soles were peeling off in several places. Luckily I found a tube of crazy glue in a village shop and patched them up enough to see it through.

My boots were falling apart

I came to appreciate a few things on this long traverse: cold drinks (I learned to never pass a mountain hut without buying one or two), dry tent mornings, camping beside water, and the lack of rain. 

A cold drink at a mountain hut

I was lucky with the weather throughout. I only got caught in one thunderstorm on the fifth day. I was climbing a steep grassy slope when lightning struck the col right above me and I had to descend very quickly. I had two big windstorms in the high peaks and two thunderstorms at night when I was snug in my tent, but that was all.

I thought I’d spend long solitary days reflecting on the years I’ve spent in Europe, what I ‘d hoped for them and how they played out, but there isn’t much time for idle thought on a route like this. When I wasn’t thinking about navigation or where to step, I was thinking about how sore my knees and feet were, and my insatiable desire for food.

My life was reduced to a simple routine: wake at five-thirty or six, eat my cold oatmeal, pack my bag and then my tent, and walk. At day’s end, the reverse: pitch my tent, prepare my cold soak couscous, rinse my socks and feet, filter water, eat, write my notes, and sleep by half past nine.

Life was reduced to a simple routine

It felt like it’d go on forever, but kilometre by kilometre, it came to an end.

On the morning of my last mountain day, I sat on a minor peak looking down on the lights of the coast. I woke at 4am to climb up there with two guys — Ned and Declan —  whose paths crossed mine repeatedly over the last several weeks. We went there to watch the sun rise over the Mediterranean for the last time.

The lights of the coast at 4am

That was an unexpected lesson of my traverse. I started this journey alone, but crossed paths with so many interesting people along the way: Engie the French medical student who was walking this route with her grandfather’s maps and compass, Marion of the heavy pack and hardware store tarp, the American father-son duo Joe and Wyatt, and the abrasive Dutchman who became a character in my mind (and who wasn’t really Dutch at all).

Sometimes it was just a short conversation on a random col. Others I walked with for a few hours or a few days. Ned and Declan played a larger role: we compared notes on water sources and bivouac spots, camped together many nights, and coordinated town resupplies so we could share a meal. I never expected to spend so many of my Pyrenees evenings talking about Shakespeare.

When the sun finally crested the horizon, it was time to walk the last 22 km to the sea. We walked alone, but agreed to met at the edge of town to reach the sea together. I think that was a fitting way to end this.

The American father-son duo Joe and Wyatt were waiting for us by the beach at Banyuls-sur-Mer. They finished their hike the day before, and they brought a cooler bag with cold beers, cementing themselves as absolute legends in my world. 

Where do you go from there, and how do you stop?

I dropped my pack on the pebbled shore, stripped to my underwear and waded into gentle saltwater waves. Every blister, cut and insect bite stung like hell, but the Mediterranean washed away the sweat and the grime and the toil, and I emerged renewed.

End of the line: the Mediterranean at Banyuls-sur-Mer

I also emerged a hell of a lot thinner than I was five weeks before, but I only lost 4kg. I thought it would be more, given the distance and those daily climbs. 

It was impossible to get enough calories. I started losing muscle when there was no more fat to burn. My legs are ripped but my upper body looks like Che Guevara’s corpse. Hiking a route like this is the world’s best fat loss diet while eating the world’s worst diet.

And now I’m back at my desk, fighting post-hike exhaustion to work on the third draft of a book, and prepping new podcast interviews. That and rebuilding some muscle before I whither away.

I don’t know what my future holds, but I finally feel ready to move on. That was another gift of the mountains.

You can see more photos and videos of my hike by visiting my Personal Landscapes Substack site and my Instagram page.

The post My 800km Farewell to Europe first appeared on Ryan Murdock.

Waiting for the Nightjet to Paris

My attempt to reach the Pyrenees by train failed before it began. 

I had planned to go to the Atlantic end of the Pyrenees this week, where I would begin a long mountain hike. Here’s how it looked on paper.

I would hop an expensive ÖBB Nightjet from Berlin at 7:04pm on Tuesday, arriving at Paris Est at 9:38 the next morning, alongside other breakfasting passengers who’d spent a restful night in their compartments, rocked to sleep by the grinding of the wheels. 

I would then cross the city by subway to catch the 12:04 TGV to Hendaye from Paris Montparnasse, with time enough to spare for lunch at La Crêperie de Josselin nearby.

I imagined myself on the upper deck, sipping wine and looking at vineyards as my train sped past Bordeaux.

It was the best laid plan of mice and men. I should have expected it to gang aft agley.

The day before my departure, my scheduled 9:38am arrival time at Paris Est was changed to 11:04am with no explanation. No one warned me about this, of course. I only found out when I double-checked online using a trick in the ÖBB SCOTTY system that an agent had told me about on the phone. 

An hour wouldn’t be enough to cross the city by subway in time to catch my second train, so I searched for alternatives. 

The only solution would involve bailing out of the Nightjet at 5:30am in Strasbourg — the first station on the French side — to take a faster French TGV to Paris Est, arriving in time to make my connection. Nightjet said they would compensate me for this, so I bought the additional TGV ticket.

Not ideal, but such is travel.

I set out for my local U-bahn station on Tuesday afternoon, brimming with optimism and overloaded with hiking gear, where the dreaded warning chime informed me that all trains were “running irregularly”. 

At first I thought they meant ‘on time’. Irregular is the norm these days. I can’t think of a weekend in the past two years when a short subway trip didn’t involve no-show trains that vanished from the board the moment they were supposed to arrive.

Thankfully the wait wasn’t long. We were in the midst of a heatwave, and those stations get pretty hot when the thermometer hits 35C.

I made it to the S-bahn line, three stops away, where an unhappy crowd of sweating commuters clogged the platform beneath electronic boards that said the next train wouldn’t arrive for at least 25 minutes instead of the usual four.

I found out why the next day from the newspaper:

“Delays and cancellations occurred on the Ringbahn on Tuesday. Numerous trains were stopped on the line. The reason was a dog on the tracks between the Landsberger Allee and Greifswalder Straße S-Bahn stations. Because the animal resisted and had to be caught by hand, the power lines in that area had to be disconnected.”

Traffic across Germany was also disrupted that night, but it had nothing to do with my route. Also from the newspaper: 

“Rail traffic in northern Germany was severely disrupted due to an overhead line malfunction, a bomb disposal operation in Osnabrück, and embankment fires in Hamburg, Lower Saxony, and Saxony-Anhalt. Passengers on regional trains in North Rhine-Westphalia should expect train cancellations and delays on Wednesday as well. Due to high temperatures, disruptions are expected on numerous lines, according to railway companies Eurobahn and Nationalexpress. For example, embankment fires could occur again.”

So much for buying a sandwich at the station. With any luck, there’d be food for sale on my train — if I managed to catch it.

When the S-Bahn finally rolled up, it was Tokyo-subway-packed. Unlike the Tokyo subway, Germany has an aversion to air conditioning. They don’t like open windows, either, because a draft on your neck causes catastrophic illness for which the only remedy is extended sick leave and weak infusions of herbal tea. 

I only had four stops to Gesundbrunnen, but my shirt was soaked by Beusselstraße. A puddle formed around my boots at Westhafen. By the time we reached Wedding, I looked like I’d just climbed the Matterhorn.

I assumed my train would be waiting on the platform. The ticket said I must be in my compartment fifteen minutes before departure, after all. But there was no sign of the elusive Nightjet. 

A young kid in glasses walked up and said, “Are you taking the train to Paris?” 

“I hope to.”

He handed me a QR code with a little packet of gummy bears taped to it.

“I’m a student researching why people take night trains. I’d be very grateful if you complete this survey.”

When another train rolled in to the same platform three minutes before 7:04, I knew mine wasn’t coming.

I saw the student passing out candies to a cluster of travelers further down. “Ja,” he said, “it is always late.”

The night train finally showed up 45 minutes later, after vanishing from the arrivals board for twenty minutes, leaving everyone scratching their heads. 

An announcement said this was due to “a delay preparing the train”, and that they were sorry. They didn’t sound sorry, but neither do the U-Bahn announcers when they say the same thing. I wonder if it’s the same voice? A specialist like that would be in high demand here.

The 7:04 train finally arrived — note the clock Mountains, here I come…

Passengers filed on board and wedged themselves into compartments. I waved goodbye to my wife through the window. I’d only managed to read one page when the weak ventilation flow stopped and the sound of the engine faded to silence.

I consulted SCOTTY, just as the helpful phone agent had taught me, and saw a flurry of numbers in red.

Our 7:04pm departure was now delayed to 10:15. Five minutes later, it changed to 9:15 before reverting back to 10:15 again. 

They would occasionally switch it to twenty minutes from the current time, raising our hopes like an abusive spouse who swears the mind games will really stop, but the next faux-departure inevitably passed.

Maybe the heat had addled my senses? Did we leave ten minutes ago like the website said, and I just didn’t notice? If so, why were those people outside keeping up while standing still? No, all electronic evidence to the contrary, I had to conclude my senses were correct.

My phone buzzed with a message from my wife: “I’m still above the platform, wanting to see you off. It never departs!” I told her she might as well go home.

A ripple of optimism passed through the carriage when a conductor came by checking tickets. I pulled him aside and showed him my phone. Our upcoming stops were slashed with red — except for Strasbourg.

“Do you think we’ll still get to Strasbourg on time? I have to bail there to catch a TGV.”

He said he’d find out. When he returned he was clutching his phone, looking at exactly the same website I was using.

“This is incorrect,” he said. “We definitely won’t leave before 10:15, but it could be delayed beyond that.”

The reason? The driver wasn’t there. In fact, he didn’t seem to be anywhere. The crew knew as little as we did.

I sat in my sweltering, shabby compartment with two other guys and a mountain of luggage. The power and air conditioning came on again, followed by a strange gurgling from the sink.

“Maybe they’re filling up with water?” said the Pole.

The gurgling stopped. The fans stopped, too, and the engine drone faded away again. A bead of sweat dropped from my nose. I heard it hit my nylon trousers.

“I have to go straight to work in the morning,” said the Frenchman.

“I have to catch a train at Montparnasse,” said the Canadian.

“What time?”

“Noon.”

His eyebrows arched in a Gallic shrug.

This had clearly become a pipe dream. I spent the first hour searching for alternatives from Strasbourg to Hendaye, but they all connected to the same train I was already booked on. The one I was going to miss.

“Maybe you could try getting to Toulouse?” said the Frenchman. 

I did check it in desperation, but that would just leave me stuck somewhere else.

Berlin Gesundbrunnen sweltered on one side of the window, and we sweltered on the other. As the second hour began to tick by, I realized even bailing at Strasbourg in the middle of the night was no longer enough. 

Could I switch to a later train? If so, how late?

All later trains from Montparnasse were fully booked, even if I could have afforded the change fees. I was doomed to be stranded in Paris, with an overpriced hotel on my credit card and even more money spent on expensive last minute high speed trains. 

I closed my eyes and pretended I was somewhere else, but they just kept opening again and staring at that French guy’s seat. He’d left a wedge of cheese right next to me, with a little bag of bread and some crackers to go with it. 

I hadn’t eaten anything since noon. My unintended fasting fired forgotten brain synapses that told me with increasing urgency that I should bite his cheese and blame it on a mouse in the carriage. This seemed perfectly reasonable, given the general state of the train. 

I was reaching for the cheese when he came back. 

Gallic eyebrows rose and fell. I redirected my arm to my pocket and whipped out my phone with a flourish.

The usual news sites couldn’t distract me; I’d already skimmed them three times each. 

I needed to reassure myself I’d made the right decision, so I checked SkyScanner for last minute flights, assuming they’d be crazy expensive. They were less than the price of my train tickets.

Isn’t it interesting how our brains work when a cascade of unfortunate events crashes over us?

It begins with a semi-reasonable compromise — ‘If I bail at Strasbourg in the middle of the night and take a French train, I can still catch my Paris connection’ — but that option closes, so you make another deviation, and another. Before you know it, you’re ten compromises in from what was supposed to be a simple plan. 

Browsing SkyScanner brought me back to my senses. Better to be stuck at home with options than Bethleheming around Paris in a heatwave trying to find an affordable inn.

It wasn’t easy to pull my backpack from the overhead space once I’d made my decision. Not because I was reluctant to leave, but because the train just wouldn’t let me go. 

Elastic straps clung like jellyfish, twining themselves around my shoulder straps and tangling deliberately in the buckles. I briefly considered using my Swiss Army Knife, but it was zipped inside the top pocket beneath a tentacular Gordian knot.

I finally freed my belongings by mountaineering into the luggage rack via the light switch, and went outside to call my wife. The conductors were gathered at the far end of the platform, shrugging their shoulders and looking at phones.

Four travelers with backpacks spoke to the staff and left at 9:30pm. The Nightjet was still sitting at the platform when my S-Bahn train pulled away. 

I was a fool to think a train journey to the far side of France would be convenient, pleasant or easy.

Ironically, I’m about to release an episode of Personal Landscapes about the joys of rail travel in Europe.

To be fair, the norm in Germany isn’t the norm everywhere else. Only one of eight trains I took in Poland last Christmas was late. We didn’t see another delay until we crossed the German border on our way home, where we were instantly 30 minutes behind.

What next, you might ask? What happened to my long-awaited hike?

I went online the following morning to look for flights. 

You’ll never guess what I found — unless you live in Europe, in which case you probably expected it: a two-day air traffic control strike in France that also affects flights passing through their airspace to Spain.

But that’s okay, because it gave me enough time to write this article for you.

I found a surprisingly affordable direct 2.5 hour flight to Bilbao for Monday, and an early morning bus that should have me at the trailhead near dawn the next morning. 

And then I really am going hiking. 

Inshallah.

The post Night train to nowhere first appeared on Ryan Murdock.

Summer podcast update

A short note to let you know what’s happening with the Personal Landscapes podcast this summer. 

Most of the podcasts I listen to tend to take a short break in summer. I don’t. My ‘short breaks’ happen when I’m traveling.

There will only be one episode in July, rather than the usual two, and probably no episodes in August.

I prepared for several more but unfortunately I wasn’t able to pin down the writers for a recording session. Schedules change, potential guests go silent. It happens. 

If all goes well, I’ll be back in mid to late August, and back to recording podcast conversations by September. 

I’m walking the length of the Pyrenees, from Atlantic to Mediterranean, staying high up near the main ridge the entire time.  

It’s a sort of farewell-to-Europe walk after 15 years living on the continent, six of them in Malta and the rest in Berlin. 

I hope to finish by mid-August, but who knows? It’s a huge amount of elevation gain and decline each day.

My route with elevation profile

If you’re a hiker, you’ll know that I’m following the Pyrenean Haute Route, or Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne (HRP).

It isn’t a fixed hiking trail, like the two that run the length of the Pyrenees, lower down, on the French (GR 10) and Spanish (GR 11) sides of the border.

The HRP is a looser ‘route’ that straddles the border, using a mix of existing trails (like the GR 10 and GR 11), local trails, and cross-country navigation in order to stay as close as possible to the main ridge of the Pyrenees the entire time.

The stack of maps that cover the route weighs more than my tent. 

Those maps weigh more than my tent!

I’ll try to post the occasional update when I resupply in a village. If you follow Personal Landscapes podcast on Substack, you’ll find them there. It’s easier to update that site using my phone (I think…).

Until then, I hope you have a wonderful summer.

The post Summer update 2025 first appeared on Ryan Murdock.

Not following Personal Landscapes on Substack?

You’re missing out on a pile of exciting book-related content, like my recent long form piece What I Learned From Paul Theroux.

I’ve also published a growing archive of book reviews, including: The Longest Way Home by Andrew McCarthy, The Riverbones by Andrew Westoll, Mongolia: Travels in an Untamed Land by Jasper Becker, and The Saddest Pleasure by Moritz Thomsen.

Personal Landscapes Substack is the only place to find recommended reading lists from my podcast guests, and show notes and links for each episode. 

You’re missing out on videos, too, including a monthly What Am I Reading wrap-up, and a recent video on the tools of my trade (yes, my favourite pens and notebooks). 

You’ll also find links to useful reports, like my Anti-Influencer Guide to Travel, and 16 Keys to Creating Your Travel Life.

And we can talk in real-time using the subscriber Chat — open to free subscribers and Club Members — and the Feed, where I post photos and updates, and share cool articles I’m reading.

You don’t even have to be a paid Club Member to enjoy this stuff, though I hope you’ll consider supporting my work. I have larger plans for Personal Landscapes beyond the podcast but I can’t get there alone.

Pop over and check it out today. Almost all of these posts are free. And if you sign up, they’ll arrive in your inbox automatically.

Does it get any better than that?

[Hint: The answer is ‘no’]

The post You’re missing out first appeared on Ryan Murdock.

The St. Lawrence River near my hometown

I have given up on Canada. 

We’re leaving Berlin next year for Japan, and I’ve accepted that it’s probably permanent. 

I never gave my future much conscious thought. I went abroad for curiosity — to see the world beyond the 4,500 person town I grew up in — and to find my subject as a writer.

If I thought about it at all, I guess I thought of myself as an expat. Someone living outside their native country — ex patria — for my work. 

I’ve lived in 16 different apartments in 8 cities and 4 countries. I never thought of any of them as ‘home’ or tried to put down roots. I didn’t even fix them up beyond assembling bookshelves in my work space. Each rented dwelling was temporary and I was passing through. 

Somewhere in the back of my mind, the concept of ‘home’ was attached to the place I came from, alongside the unconscious assumption that I would grow old with my closest friends — those lifelong friends who have always been my family.

This week’s Canadian election made me realize that the move I made in 2011 was permanent, though I didn’t intend it to be at the time.

The mental shift from expat to emigrant is a disorienting one. In order to make a life somewhere, you have to let your old life go. Perhaps it’s how my Irish grandparents felt when they boarded a one-way boat to Canada in 1929?

I’m 52 now. Like the younger generations who came after me, I will never be able to afford a house in Canada. The door of that future closed and it isn’t opening again in my lifetime.

When I left Canada, Stephen Harper was prime minister. I never voted for Justin Trudeau. He only really impacted my life as a source of international embarrassment. 

As a Canadian living abroad, I didn’t experience the boiling frog phenomenon of the gradual erosion in living standards that sank the country during Trudeau’s decade in power. For me, the change was much more dramatic because I visited at intervals. 

Each year, I was shocked by what I saw: a steady decline in living standards, an increasingly unaffordable housing market, distressingly high prices driven in large part by a self-imposed Carbon Tax that claimed to change the weather while impoverishing the population, and a country bitterly divided between those who remembered the proud heritage we grew up with and a grovelling mob insisting our country is a white supremacist ‘genocidal settler colonial state’ (whatever the hell that means).

It takes a staggering level of incompetence to create a housing crisis in a place with near-infinite available land, but that’s just one colossal problem among many.

I registered to vote against Justin Trudeau in 2021, and against his successor Mark Carney in 2025, not because the precipitous economic and social decline of the past decade impacted my day to day life, but because I felt I had a stake in voting for a future I could eventually return to.

I hoped the 2025 election might change things. That people were finally sick of decline inversely matched by a precipitous increase in debt. 

I was mildly optimistic that a change in government might begin to reverse some of the damage. I wasn’t hopeful, but I thought, “Give it ten years to see if things improve.” It will take more than a generation to fix the housing crisis, but a decade should show whether it’s moving in the right direction.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. 

The older we get, the wider the range of things we will never do. Possibilities narrow, life becomes more limiting, and the many people we could have become drop away. 

I’ve only got two or thee decades left at best, and I no longer see a future for me back there. I’m trying to get used to the idea that I’m an emigrant rather than an expat. It isn’t an easy mental shift.

What happened to the country my generation grew up in? I never imagined it would end up like this.

The post The mental shift from expat to emigrant first appeared on Ryan Murdock.

I hate ads. I hate listening to them when I listen to podcasts, and I don’t want to inflict them on you, either.

I want to keep my conversations with the world’s most interesting writers both free — no paywalls — and ad-free, so I’ve moved Personal Landscapes to Substack. 

New episodes will be emailed to subscribers automatically, so please sign up to the free tier on my new Substack to stay informed. 

The other thing I like about Substack is that I can schedule episodes to publish automatically. Previously, publishing a new episode meant logging in to three different platforms, copying and pasting code, etc. If it all works as it should, I’ll be able to set episodes to publish while I’m off in the wilderness hiking this summer. I’m reading and recording frantically to cover that month and a half gap.

I’ve also launched a Member’s Club as a way to cover the costs of the show. You can join for what it would cost to buy a fancy coffee once a month. 

You’ll get cool Member-only bonus material for book lovers, including:

reading lists from my guestsbook reviews bonus videos a quarterly Q&A with me  …and more

New episodes of Personal Landscapes will still go out to iTunes and the usual places, but I’m not going to post the show notes here anymore. You’ll find the show notes and extras by clicking the Podcast link in the menu bar above.

Episodes will continue to be free — for now. I may have to rethink that down the road if I can’t get enough Member’s Club subscribers, but I’ll try this method for a year and see how it goes. 

I can’t keep paying all the costs from my savings and doing the sort of work it takes to keep it all running. It’s like having an unpaid part time job in addition to trying to scrape a living from writing. 

Please consider supporting my work by joining the new Personal Landscapes Member’s Club.

The post Personal Landscapes podcast has moved first appeared on Ryan Murdock.

Clair Wills

Clair Wills was in her twenties when she learned she had a cousin she’d never met.

It wasn’t as though their families drifted apart. She’d never been told of this person’s existence. It was shrouded in shame and secrecy, and she wanted to understand why.

She pieced the story together from forgotten anecdotes, dim memories and institutional archives spanning four generations of her own family, and the history of Ireland from the 1890s to the 1980s.

Her memoir explores questions of memory and loss, motherhood and emigration, guilt and blame — and it may change how you think about your own family, and your family secrets.

Clair Wills is the author of Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother’s Secrets, The Best Are Leaving: Emigration and Post-War Irish Culture, and other books. She is the King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge, and a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, and other publications.

We spoke about Ireland’s mother and baby homes, the stigma of illegitimacy, and how secrecy can shape a family and a society.

These are the books we mentioned in the podcast:Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother’s Secrets

You can listen to Personal Landscapes: Conversations on Books About Place on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Podbean, Google Podcasts, Audible, PlayerFM, and TuneIn + Alexa.
Please subscribe, and rate the podcast or leave a review.
Your support is greatly appreciated.

The post Clair Wills on Ireland’s missing persons first appeared on Ryan Murdock.

Deborah Lawrenson

What would you do if someone you knew your entire life — your mother — suddenly revealed that she’d been a spy?

Deborah Lawrenson turned her story into a novel. 

The tangled web of espionage she weaves in The Secretary is fiction, but the background to the story is authentic, drawn in part from a seemingly innocent diary her mother wrote in 1958 while working at the British Embassy in Moscow.

It’s an exciting high stakes thriller with insightful social commentary and a vivid sense of place. Exactly the sort of novel she excels at.

Deborah is the author of Songs of Blue and Gold, The Lantern, 300 Days of Sun, The Secretary and other novels. She trained as a journalist on the Kentish Times and worked for The Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Woman’s Journal before becoming a full time novelist.

You can read more about her on her website, and follow her on Instagram, Facebook and X.

We spoke about Cold War Moscow, growing up as an embassy child, and the shock of discovering her mother’s cloak-and-dagger past.

These are the books we mentioned in the podcast:The Secretary300 Days of SunWe also mentioned: Kim Philby press conference video A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre The Billion Dollar Spy by David Hoffman

You can listen to Personal Landscapes: Conversations on Books About Place on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Podbean, Google Podcasts, Audible, PlayerFM, and TuneIn + Alexa.
Please subscribe, and rate the podcast or leave a review.
Your support is greatly appreciated.

The post Deborah Lawrenson on her mother the spy first appeared on Ryan Murdock.

Join me on the Interlocutor podcast

I spoke with Tyrel Eskelson of the Interlocutor Podcast recently and the episode was published yesterday.

It starts with some questions about my first book, Vagabond Dreams. That was a nice surprise because it all seems so long ago.

We also talked about breaking into magazine travel writing.

And of course life in Malta and my recent book A Sunny Place for Shady People.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable conversation, and I hope you’ll check it out. Listen HERE.

The post Talking travel writing on the Interlocutor podcast first appeared on Ryan Murdock.