Algarve
Where to go warm winter walking in Europe
This is the time of year when there are regular travel articles about warm winter walking. Generally they’ll feature the same handful of locations. […]
Europe
Europe
Ten things Tenerife taught us about living and working abroad
This is how the discussion went: “Let’s give up everything an move to Totnes.” “Why not go the whole nine yards and move abroad… somewhere like Sri Lanka.” And then we ended up in the destination at the end of many discerning travellers’ noses – Tenerife. […]
Italy
Pizza in Pisa
It’s not that pizza is exactly a speciality of Pisa, but it sounds as though it should be. It rolls of the tongue like the unravelling, stringy cheese which still connects the generous slice of quattro formaggi in my hand to the bit that’s in my mouth. […]
Hiking
Choosing hiking destinations and inexperienced hikers
My source for much travel related pondering, Tripadvisor, highlighted the potential minefield new walkers especially have to negotiate when deciding on walking destinations. […]
Aveiro
Into the north, a Portuguese road trip
This was meant to showcase why Portugal is such a popular holiday destination. But not everything went exactly to plan. […]
Europe
What’s so good about Ljubljana
Sitting in a riverside bar in Ljubljana and the movie Logan’s Run pops into my head; I instinctively close my fist around what would be a black-for-an-aeon palm flower embedded into my palm. Ljubljana is a young city, possibly the youngest-feeling city we’ve visited. Young and vibrant. […]
Checking In
Hotels with personality, Trigony Country House Hotel, Dumfries & Galloway
Image a world where in the late afternoon in September In Scotland you could sit outside your hotel room and feel comfortably warm. I don’t mean in a parallel universe, or even sometime in the near future when the Northern and Southern Hemispheres have switched places. […]
El Hierro
The other Canary Islands, the green ones
Social media can often be a forum full of people spouting things they think they know and doing so with unshakeable, definitive confidence. An example of this caught my eye the other morning in relation to a comment on a sponsored post about the Canary Islands. […]
Hiking
Impressions from walking around Lake Bled in Slovenia
Very quickly the natural and historic scenery takes over, and what glorious scenery it is. Bled Castle sits nobly on its perch; the bushy forest, just taking on some coppery autumn hues in early September, sweeps down to the water’s edge […]
Europe
Is food in Britain boring?
Food in Britain is boring. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard a variation of this statement in online travel discussions. When I hear the evidence generally provided to back it up, I tend to wonder about the travel habits of those who make it. […]
Alentejo
Rock and Soul in Beja
I didn’t expect this. Covering almost all of the gable end of a house is a huge blue and red rooster made from discarded pieces of metal. Portugal seems to have a thing at the moment for oversized ‘rubbish’ animals. The rooster’s tail feathers block part of a window whilst a stray metal breast feather juts out over a door […]
Hiking
The ups and downs of seven days of walking
Will we be up to the challenge? Have our muscles atrophied to the point of no return? A trio of leg muscle-loosening exercises before we set off is akin to slapping a slumbering drunk – “come on, wake up you lazy gits”. […]
Europe
In a valley on La Gomera
Jo will be gutted when I tell her Benedict Allen almost chose La Gomera as a place to lay his dusty, old wide-brimmed hat for a while. She’ll be furious when I tell her why. […]
Europe
Beauty or a blight? Urban art in Lisbon
Where they see squalor and a depressed urban landscape in some raggedy streets and obscure alleys, I see a raw, gritty, honest beauty – a down to earth yin to the yang of the city’s grand architecture. This Jekyll and Hyde character partly makes Lisbon the compelling city it is. […]
Alentejo
It is simply Alentejo, not the new Tuscany
Driving through an endless savanna where mounds rather than hills rolled lazily toward infinity, a travel article I’d read in The Guardian a couple of years ago popped into my head. It was called ‘A foodie tour of Portugal’s Alentejo’ and claimed that Portugal’s largest region was being touted as the new Tuscany. […]