John Frew
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jdfrew.bsky.social
John Frew
@jdfrew.bsky.social
13 followers 60 following 19 posts
Interested in journeys, stories of journeys, and what they mean to us.

Essays on travel, literature and the places where they meet, published here: fromatincup.com
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jdfrew.bsky.social
The edges of desire: on black walnuts and plantains. A short reflection on a path in Marble Hill Park, Twickenham, from this summer. Please check it out at fromatincup.com
October 31, 2025 at 5:07 PM
jdfrew.bsky.social
I have recently learned that, not content with their other and better-known acts of violence, the Mongols also appear to have invented the protein shake. #marcopolo #history #mediaevalgymbros
Should circumstances render it necessary, in the execution of a duty that requires despatch, they can march for ten days together without dressing victuals, during which time they subsist upon the blood drawn from their horses, each man opening a vein, and drinking from his own cattle. They make provision also of milk, thickened and dried to a kind of paste, which is prepared in the following manner. They boil the milk, and skimming off the rich or creamy part as it rises to the top, put it into a separate vessel as butter, for so long as that remains in the milk, it will not become hard. The latter is then exposed to the sun until it dries. Upon going on service they carry with them about ten pounds for each man, and of this, half a pound is put, every morning, into a leathern bottle made like a goatskin wine bag, with as much water as is thought necessary. By their motion in riding the con-tents are violently shaken, and a thin porridge is produced, upon which they make their dinner. - Travels of Marco Polo, Book 1, chapter 47
October 3, 2025 at 2:57 PM
jdfrew.bsky.social
I suspect that in typical Nietzsche style this is simultaneously absolutely true and also total garbage, but either way I think about it quite often
Quotation from Nietzsche's Ecce Homo. Ultimately, no one can extract from things, books included, more than he already knows. What one has no access to through experience one has no ear for.
September 28, 2025 at 9:21 PM
jdfrew.bsky.social
Peter Matthiessen on solitude. I grow into these mountains like a moss...
A passage from The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen. I grow into these mountains like a moss. I am bewitched. The blinding snow peaks and the clarion air, the sound of earth and heaven in the silence, the requiem birds, the mythic beasts, the flags, great horns, and old carved stones, the rough-hewn Tartars in their braids and boots, the silver ice in the black river, the Crystal Mountain. Also, I love the common miracles, the murmur of my friends at evening, the clay fires of smudgy juniper, the contentment of doing one thing at a time: when I take my blue tin cup into my hand, that is all I do. We have had no news of modern times since late September, and will have none until December, and gradually my mind has cleared itself, and wind and sun pour through my head, as though through a bell. Though we talk little here, I am never lonely; I am returned into myself.
September 20, 2025 at 9:52 AM
jdfrew.bsky.social
Really enjoying Tracks on the Ocean by @saracaputo.bsky.social (and also somewhat wishing I'd read it before I started writing stuff about maps 😳)
uk.bookshop.org/p/books/path...
Tracks on the Ocean: A History of Trailblazing, Maps and Maritime Travel a book by Dr Sara Caputo.
Longlisted for the 2025 BSHS Hughes Prize 'Enthralling' Philip Ball 'Ingenious' Sujit SivasundaramIn Tracks on the Ocean, Sara Caputo tells how our journeys around the globe became fixed lines on maps...
uk.bookshop.org
August 26, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Reposted by John Frew
Unlocking maps of Aboriginal ‘sky country’ cosmosmagazine.com/space/astron...
Unlocking maps of Aboriginal ‘sky country’
The emerging field of Cultural Astronomy is unravelling how Indigenous understandings of the night sky is linked to navigating "songlines".
cosmosmagazine.com
August 3, 2025 at 10:45 AM
jdfrew.bsky.social
On armchair pilgrimages, the geography of invented worlds, and the islands of our imagination from-a-tin-cup.ghost.io/maps-without...
Maps without journeys: the practice of armchair travel
The third, and possibly the last, in a series on maps
from-a-tin-cup.ghost.io
August 22, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by John Frew
reuters.com
African Union urges adoption of world map showing continent's true size reut.rs/4fNugJZ
African Union urges adoption of world map showing continent's true size
The African Union has backed a campaign to end the use by governments and international organisations of the 16th-century Mercator map of the world in favour of one that more accurately displays Africa's size.
reut.rs
August 15, 2025 at 8:10 AM
jdfrew.bsky.social
Freya Stark on solitude, travelling in Arabia...
August 14, 2025 at 9:36 AM
jdfrew.bsky.social
Peter Porter wrote in a different context about the "pointlessness of poetry". Anyone writing poetry in the context of what's happening in Gaza must be acutely aware of that pointlessness now. On many levels, it doesn't matter what we say.

www.instagram.com/brokenpathpo...
we ran out of new ways to say it. it didn't matter what we said. changing nothing, sick at heart we just carried on living
August 12, 2025 at 10:26 AM
jdfrew.bsky.social
On lost paths, hidden signs, and Graham Greene's murky journey of the soul: from-a-tin-cup.ghost.io/journeys-wit...
Journeys without maps: on paths and signs
The second in a series about maps, and the absence of maps
from-a-tin-cup.ghost.io
August 1, 2025 at 12:41 PM
jdfrew.bsky.social
I've chatted to a few people over the last few years about bits of the Salt Path that didn't add up but never saw it unravelling quite like this...
theobserveruk.bsky.social The Observer @theobserveruk.bsky.social · Jul 6
Penniless and homeless, Raynor and Moth Winn found fame with their story of their 630-mile walk to salvation. The Salt Path became a global bestseller and was adapted into a major film.

But we can reveal it wasn’t the whole truth.

@chloehadj.bsky.social

Read more:
The real Salt Path: how the couple behind a bestseller le...
Penniless and homeless, the Winns found fame and fortune with the story of their 630-mile walk to salvation. We can reveal it was far from the truth
observer.co.uk
July 6, 2025 at 9:37 PM
jdfrew.bsky.social
New essay on projection, distortion, and how maps shape the way we see the world. The first in a short series about finding our way, and the many meanings of maps.
from-a-tin-cup.ghost.io/journeys-wit...
Journeys with maps: on cartography and its discontents
The first in a series of (probably) three essays, loosely about maps
from-a-tin-cup.ghost.io
July 5, 2025 at 9:59 AM
jdfrew.bsky.social
An essay on hearing the sound of wind in traffic, and seeing roads as rivers: from-a-tin-cup.ghost.io/roads-as-riv...

Featuring Loch Fannich, Andalusia, Myanmar's Shan plateau, @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social, @katykelleher.bsky.social, Han Shan, Gary Snyder, Wordsworth, and a bit of soulmaking dharma
Roads as rivers, roads as wind
An imaginary exercise in rewilding
from-a-tin-cup.ghost.io
June 15, 2025 at 8:57 PM
jdfrew.bsky.social
from-a-tin-cup.ghost.io/on-knowing-w...

An essay on the things we take with us when we travel, and what they mean to us. Belated happy #towelday to all Douglas Adams fans
On knowing where your towel is: a theory of essentimentials
As everybody knows, there aren’t nearly enough words in the English language. So here’s a new one: essentimential. An essentimential is an ordinary object with a basic, everyday function which has tak...
from-a-tin-cup.ghost.io
May 30, 2025 at 12:46 PM