This year's winner is...

Last night I went to London - to Stanfords, perhaps the world's best map and travel book store. I was there for the awards ceremony for this year's Bradt Travel Guides / Independent on Sunday Travel-writing Competition.

As an entrant to this competition for several years, and via other routes, I've made the acquaintance of some of the great and the good of the travel writing profession who were there last night, including Hilary Bradt, the founder of Bradt Travel Guides, and Jonathan Lorie of Travellers' Tales.

I had a stimulating conversation with Adrian Phillips, Bradt's Editorial Director, and we conclusively proved from a sample audience of two that nobody will ever agree 100% on who should win awards! We also listened to a short speech by Matthew Parris - ex-MP, onetime presenter of Weekend World, political sketchwriter, travel writer and judge of the final winner from the six finalists. As always on these occasions, one's feelings are split between admiration for the winners, envy for the prizes they win (in this case, a trip to Colombia) and a nagging feeling about whether you could have done any more with your own entry to give it a better chance of winning.

I am lucky enough to have had the winning feeling - last year. I didn't win the big prize, a trip to Kyrgyzstan, but the Best Unpublished Writer prize (where unpublished = "never paid for being published"). I won a trip to Granada in Spain on a writing course with Travellers' Tales, which was very enjoyable. You can read my winning article here, or this year's winning articles here.

I also had a few words with Jonathan, who has been very helpful and encouraging about the book, and I will be taking up some of his suggestions. Onwards, ever onwards...