“We rumbled slowly into a land of little wooded glens and then to a great wide moorland place, gleaming with lochs, with high blue hills showing northwards.” John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps. Buchan’s thrilling novel, with
Graduation road trip: Exeter
Let me start by offering a piece of advice. If your child is in their final year at university, find out the graduation dates and book yourself a hotel room for the whole week. Once
Outdoor clothing shops – my guilty pleasure.
Breathability. Fill power. Active particle technology. Do these phrases excite you? Is your guilty pleasure a penchant for Gore-Tex? I never used to pay much attention to all the technological terms associated with outdoor clothing
Going for a walk in Bear Grylls’ trousers
After traipsing around Snowdonia last Spring in either jeans or shorts, my man decided he needed a proper pair of walking trousers for our late summer trip to Scotland. Something more practical and waterproof was
A Holbeach man, born and bred.
I always think of myself as a Geordie, hailing from Newcastle upon Tyne, even though I haven’t lived there since I was 18. Husband, Dougie, is an Edinburgh man, despite leaving home at the same
A taste of the estuary at Lympstone Manor
The end of an era is fast-approaching. Rory now has a degree in politics from Exeter University and our three years of visiting him will end next month with his graduation ceremony. I’m not sad
Spending a day at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard
As we drove towards Portsmouth harbour I could see the distinctive shape of the Spinnaker Tower against the sharp blue of the sky. This puzzled me. “I thought that tower was in Plymouth,” I said
Unlocking the secrets of Bletchley Park
Dougie earned lots of brownie points for booking a superb hotel, the Aviator in Farnborough, Hampshire, for our last-minute Easter break. But this wasn’t the end of his brilliant ideas. In an effort to escape the traffic over