Joel Baldwin Profile
Traveller, blogger and videographer from Australia, retired at 35 and travelling the world, aiming to visit every UNESCO World Heritage site.
Documenting our journey on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WorldHeritageJourney
Recent Reviews Joel Baldwin
Central Highlands
Joel Baldwin Australia - 23-Jan-19
As an Australian, I'm completely fine with all manner of poisonous insects, bugs, spiders, and other creepy crawlies. They just don't bother me that much. Leeches, however - they bother me. A lot. So although we were quite keen on doing some hiking around the Central Highlands of Sri Lanka, when we learned that all of the national parks were infested with leeches, our enthusiasm waned somewhat.
But, we pressed forward with our plans and came up with probably the cheapest and easiest way to access the World Heritage site
Read OnMonastery of Horezu
Joel Baldwin Australia - 08-Nov-18
Horezu was our first visit in Romania, and our first encounter with an Orthodox monastery since focusing full-time on World Heritage sites. It's quite an enjoyable site - the walls hiding a brightly-painted Katholikon surrounded by flowers. The portico and interior of the church are both covered with bright paintings done in the "Brâncovenesc style", considered to be the only original Romanian art form. Unfortunately we couldn't film inside, but managed to get some fantastic shots on the portico.
Read OnVerla Groundwood and Board Mill
Joel Baldwin Australia - 20-Sep-18
This was the second site we visited on our tour through Finland. Generally speaking I've quite enjoyed industrial Heritage sites like those in Germany and England, and I quite enjoyed this one as well. The large main mill building is excellently preserved, and is apparently much as it was when the factory shut down in the 1960s.
The first stage of the mill tour involves watching a film that details the workflow of the mill, showing how the raw logs were eventually turned into cardboard and the like. It was quite cool to walk out of the presentation room into the factory proper, and see the exact same locations and machinery we'd just seen on the screen - a little jarring, but cool in its own small way.
Read OnPetäjävesi Old Church
Joel Baldwin Australia - 20-Sep-18
We visited Petäjävesi on an overcast day in early July, as part of our tour around southern and central Finland. This really is a very small site, just the church and it's surrounds. We've seen lots of small wooden churches now on the World Heritage Journey, in Slovakia, Poland, Romania, and neighbouring Norway, and this one felt quite similar as well.
It dates from around 1765 and is almost entirely original from that time, although the bell-tower is a later addition. Inside there's some fascinating carvings and decorations that are excellent examples of vernacular art - just local artisans doing their own thing, so they look quite unusual and eccentric, particularly the large carvings of Jesus and the apostles.
Read OnSammallahdenmäki
Joel Baldwin Australia - 20-Sep-18
This was our last site visit in Finland. We visited in the late afternoon after spending most of the day wandering around nearby Rauma, and only spent a couple of hours here. But that's really all you need to see the majority of the cairns. Call me a little uncultured, but ultimately, these are just piles of stones. The large rectangular-shaped cairn was interesting, though the intricacies of the others (spirals, cisterns etc) went largely unseen by my non-expert eye. We've been to quite a few other Bronze Age burial sites now, and this unfortunately is not one of my favourites. Read OnProfile Data
- Name
- Joel Baldwin
- Country
- Australia
- Most Impressive
- Historic Centre of Istanbul
- Proposal
- Isle of Skye, Scotland
- Website
- website
Recently Visited WHS
- Update 17.02.19
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Reviewed WHS
- Central Highlands
- Monastery of Horezu
- Verla Groundwood and Board Mill
- Petäjävesi Old Church
- Sammallahdenmäki
- Røros
- Tower of Hercules
- San Cristobal de La Laguna
- Decorated cave of Pont d'Arc
- Mount Etna
- Vegaøyan
- Royal Palace at Caserta
- Burgundy
- Arab-Norman Palermo
- Isole Eolie
- Ivrea
- Verona
- Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy
- Bellinzone
- Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch
- Strasbourg
- Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes
- Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai
- The Four Lifts
- Brugge
- Flemish Béguinages
- Van Nellefabriek
- Belfries
- Durham Castle and Cathedral
- Saltaire
- Kilimanjaro National Park
- Blenheim Palace
- Ironbridge Gorge
- Stonehenge
- Dorset and East Devon Coast
- Tower of London
Visited TWHS
- Alexandria, ancient remains and the new library (T)
- Ancient cities of Upper Myanmar : Innwa, Amarapura, Sagaing, Mingun, Mandalay (T)
- Bagan Archaeological Area and Monuments (T)
- California Current Conservation Complex (T)
- Çanakkale (Dardanelles) and Gelibolu (Gallipoli) Battles Zones in the First World War (T)
- Chocolate Hills Natural Monument (T)
- Coron Island Natural Biotic Area (T)
- Cultural Landscape of Innsbruck-Nordkette/Karwendel (T)
- Diocletian's Palace and the Historical Nucleus of Split (extension) (T)
- Dreams in Stone - the palaces of King Ludwig II of Bavaria: Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee (T)
- El Nido-Taytay Managed Resource Protected Area (T)
- Gdansk - Town of Memory and Freedom (T)
- Great Desert Landscapes (T)
- Großglockner High Alpine Road / Großglockner Hochalpenstraße (T)
- Historic Centre of Guimarães and Couros Zone (extension) (T)
- Historical City Centre of Yogyakarta (T)
- Historical Lisbon, Global City (T)
- Historical-town planning ensemble of Ston with Mali Ston, connecting walls, the Mali Ston Bay nature reserve, Stonsko Po (T)
- Inle Lake (T)
- Karst Valleys of Slovakia (T)
- Khor Dubai (T)
- Knights Fortifications around the Harbours of Malta (T)
- Le Palais de Justice de Bruxelles (T)
- Les Alpes de la Méditerranée (T)
- Les villes antiques de la Narbonnaise et leur territoire: Nimes, Arles, Glanum, aqueducs, via Domitia (T)
- Monuments, Sites and Cultural Landscape of Chiang Mai, Capital of Lanna (T)
- National Park "Hohe Tauern" (T)
- National Park (Taman Negara) of Peninsular Malaysia (T)
- Nice, la ville neuve née du tourisme, ou l’invention de la Riviera (T)
- Nîmes, l'Antiquité au présent (T)
- Pobiti Kamani Natural Monument (T)
- Sites funéraires et mémoriels de la Première Guerre mondiale (Front Ouest) (Belgium) (T)
- The Burren (T)
- The city of Bergamo (T)
- The concept of the lenticular historical town core of Kosice City (T)
- The Historic City of Dublin (T)
- The historic town of Korcula (T)
- The Industrial Complexes at Ostrava (T)
- The Lofoten islands (T)
- The Old Town of Jakarta (Formerly old Batavia) and 4 Outlying Islands (Onrust, Kelor, Cipir dan Bidadari) (T)
- The Olive Grove Landscapes of Andalusia (T)
- The Porticoes of Bologna (T)
- The royal necropolis of the Thracian city of Seuthopolis – a serial site, extension of the Kazanlak Thracian tomb (T)
- The Royal Sites of Ireland: Cashel, Dún Ailinne, Hill of Uisneach, Rathcroghan Complex, and Tara Complex (T)
- Tokaj Wine Region (T)
- Wooden Monasteries of Konbaung Period : Ohn Don, Sala, Pakhangyi, Pakhannge, Legaing, Sagu, Shwe-Kyaung (Mandalay) (T)