Salt cod in Porto, Portugal
Food & drink

Creative cuisine is working class art

My favourite part of the hotel was the kitchen, a volatile place where big personalities added expletives and threats to an air filled with the aroma of uninventive dishes destined for the unadventurous palates of coach excursionists from England. […]

Portugal

Cycling, what is it good for?

I like the thought of cycling that involves effortless pedalling along flat country lanes passing rows of vines, or alongside a gently rolling river, the warm sun kissing my face; a soft breeze caressing glowing skin; a bottle of wine, loaf of fresh bread, and a round of cheese in the wicker basket… […]

Alentejo

Camel Spit & Cork Trees, a Year of Slow Travel Through Portugal

Our quest to find the ideal place to live, combined with missions to create Slow Travel holidays, took us from the honey-coloured coastline of the wilder side of the Algarve to the verdant valleys of the Minho in the north, and from living beside a smugglers’ trail in Alentejo’s ‘beyond the back of beyond’ border country to a small farm next to a cork forest in the Setúbal Peninsula… […]

Europe

If you go to Calatayud, ask for Dolores

Intriguing earthy, red-brick spires and towers almost camouflaged against a matching rock-face catch our eyes as we shoot past at 120kph. The town, mostly hidden in a gully, has been little more than glimpsed. But it’s enough of a taster to have me commenting “that looks like an interesting place” […]

Food & drink

The problem with recommending restaurants

In the words of the great Jim Morrison, people are strange… or they can be when it comes to food. As well as having very contrasting likes and dislikes, folk have very personal foibles, all of which makes recommending restaurants somewhat of a lottery. […]

Checking In

To unpack the suitcase or not?

The idea of not unpacking the suitcase in a hotel room just doesn’t make sense to me. It conjures scenes of ugly chaos and inefficiency. Clothes strewn across a room seem no different to me than litter on the roadside […]