Steve Hanson from Senior Travel Expert has been in touch to tell me about their ‘Off the Beaten Track’ travel writing competition. It’s free to enter and has a prize of £100. 

Entries should be “about a fascinating, relatively unknown place near to where you live or that you came across by chance when travelling around, or it may be a totally fictional place”. The winner should “persuade readers of the Senior Travel Expert website that the place you describe is somewhere they would very much like to visit”. The closing date is September 30th 2016.

Often when you’re on holiday the things you stumble across by chance turn out to be the most interesting. I’m just back from a holiday in Madrid and Barcelona.  One evening we sat in the window of a cafe in Madrid and above me was hung a display of books (see picture on the right). The next day we spotted a grand building that turned out to be The Society of Authors building – which I think is something like ALCS but please correct me if I’m wrong.

And remember, you don’t have to travel to enter this competition – your destination can be purely fictional.

Sociedad General de Autores de Espana