I am officially a bad mother. My son is now 21 and in all those years I forgot to introduce him to the joy of playing Pass The Pigs. This simple and very silly...
Graduation road trip: Alloway, Robert Burns’ birthplace
It was hard to say goodbye to Shingle Lodge in Knockinaam. It had been our idyllic hideaway on the western coast of Scotland but we were looking forward to moving on, spending a night...
Graduation road trip: walk from Knockinaam to Portpatrick
“It’s a moderate walk and should take us an hour and a half,” Dougie announced to me, as I was happily scoffing toast and lounging about in our gorgeous holiday home, Shingle Lodge....
Graduation road trip: Shingle Lodge at Knockinaam Lodge hotel
“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,...
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....
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...
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...
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...