square miles which lies in the English Channel, just south of the city of Portsmouth - a little over nine years ago.

It was a natural step which most of my friends had already taken. There, career opportunities were limited - at least insofar as I was concerned - and I knew that in order to move on I needed to make the break. I travelled to the mainland - the name inhabitants from the smaller islands of the British Isles tend to call the larger landmass of Britain - and lived there for almost four years until deciding to go one step further and leave for foreign climes.

My destination was Trieste, an Italian city with a multinational heritage. A leftover of the Habsburgs' once mighty empire, Trieste has been Italy's easternmost port of call - barring almost a decade of international limbo after the Second World War - for close to a century. Moreover, for caffeine lovers it plays host to one of the biggest concentrations of coffee bars in the whole of Italy, if not Europe. It is a city I am happy to call my second home. Five years on and I've seen a fair few of the sights, local and

national, and got to know something of a culture which, although in contrast to my own, is not all that far removed from it.

And that's where the shift in what you might call my 'home perspective' began to occur. For as I've become at home in my adopted land, complete with ID card and driving licence, all of which go to make me feel a vero Italiano, the call from my island home has become stronger still. Which is how I've discovered that it's really not important how far you travel, or where, but what you bring with you. Of course, that's an age-old piece of wisdom, but sometimes you've got to learn it firsthand to truly appreciate it.

Over the past two summers I've made an effort to learn more about the place I once thought was the whole world. Twice I've circumnavigated the coast of the Isle of Wight on foot; a journey of approximately seventy miles, which I divided into four stages. I've made the half-day roundtrip by bicycle an annual pilgrimage since I was seventeen, but by foot you see and take in so much more. I've discovered nooks and crannies which, for me, had lain unseen for the first