Richard Bannister

I have historically been a very frequent traveller, both for business and for pleasure. This section of my site contains photographs, diaries, and random and thoroughly useless statistics that I've accumulated over the years. Much of the information found here is automatically generated from databases I built for the purpose, and yes, I am a nerd.

I'd strongly encourage all those who fly regularly to consider offsetting based on the BlueSkyModel estimated emissions figure of 0.24 pounds per passenger per mile. There are various ways that you can do this; some of my favourites are the Climate Action Fund, Team Trees, and Vita. We only have one planet (for the present at least!) and it is beholden upon us all to do what we can to preserve it.

Amusement Parks

Amusement parks are my escape from reality. Over the last twenty years I've visited more than a thousand of them in 80 countries around the world, and have clocked up rides on 3132 different roller coasters. I've published diaries from these trips:

My reports are also available indexed by park.

Hard Rock Cafés

Exploring local cuisine is an important and immensely rewarding part of travel, but occasionally it's nice to have something predictable. It was a craving for a decent burger that led me into my first HRC, and since then I've visited 146 different branches in 49 countries. Recent additions to the list include:

Photographs

I've been interested in photography for as long as I can remember. In my teens I went through a number of film cameras (remember those?) before migrating to digital at the turn of the millennium. I can still remember how exciting it was to have a 64MB CompactFlash card that could store more than one hundred high resolution pictures. Since then I've upgraded a number of times, most recently to a PowerShot G7 X Mark II. Some of the more interesting places I've photographed include:

• Chernobyl
• DPRK (North Korea)
• Skellig Islands

In addition to the above I've published a few thousand shots from amusement parks and fairgrounds at ThemeParks.ie.

Statistics

I have a fairly complete record of all the flights that I've taken from 2004 through to the present. Sadly this data does not include trips to America in my youth, as the paper tickets for those have long since disappeared.

I've got a separate list of airport and airline information.