It’s just under three weeks until we embark on our next slow travel journey.

It has snuck up on us, as my favourite person has not been a hundred per cent, I’ve had a couple of health issues of my own, there has been my PhD and waiting for the EPL fixture list to come out. All have meant we could not settle our final plans.

However with the last unknown, the EPL season fixture out, our itinerary is complete.

Going to the soccer in England has been on my wishlist for a number of years, and will be quite a different experience form very late nights and early mornings in front of the television or computer screen, accompanied only by the cat.

In our planning, we had left the last two seeks open as my goal was to see Arsenal, who for some reason I have supported since the 70s. The timing of Arsenal’s first home game couldn’t have been better, a second week home game just a couple of days before we leave for home.

So to our itinerary. It starts with a week in Israel, then onto Rome for a weekend before a few days in Assisi, and then along the coast to Lecce for a week or so, back to Rome, and then Portugal. The benefit of Arsenal playing at home in week two means that we can extend our stay in Portugal beyond a few days in Lisbon to include Coimbra and Porto before London.

We are away for the best part of 7 weeks.

Slow travel, means not being hurried. We don’t have to pack days with attraction after attraction.

I am looking forward to writing up my research while I am away. I also have a book chapter on one of my case studies to write up. Using siesta times to write worked really well when we were away in 2015, and I am sure it will again. I know I could write at home, but there will be something special in reflecting that I wrote segments of my research in places so far from home.