Porto – a blog from April Some places you just get a good vibe. Despite arriving late one evening, the taxi dropping us off at the top of the road (traffic prohibited down on the waterfront), it felt . . . good. The last bit had been along the River Douro (Av. Gustavo Eiffel) past …
Blue Mountains, Australia It was autumn so we expected a bit of rain; just not too much. We wanted to see the views. Driving up from Sydney following the SatNav to the Three Sisters, it was wet and heavy. Back in the UK, we had planned a route between Sydney and Melbourne driving the coastal …
It’s easy to make assumptions about a country whilst sitting in an armchair at home. There is always the unexpected be it the food, the people, the countryside. What a pleasure it was finding fields filled with tall stems of maize nodding in the autumn sunshine with the back drop of the Carpathian Mountains. A …
Tromsø Wikipedia says Tromsø is ‘the largest urban area in Northern Norway and the third largest north of the Arctic Circle’. There is a bridge and a tunnel connecting the centre to the mainline and another bridge to the Island of Kvaloya. Tromsø bridge as seen from Fjellheisen Cable Car station It is supposed to …
Roma blacksmith with red hot forged iron Mesendorf (staying at the Gasthaus) is a beautiful, Romanian rustic village. It boasts a winding lane up to the church and long views back across ‘green and pleasant lands’. A blacksmith – a vital part of life here – has a small hut at the back of a …
The Championship The British tradition of remembering Guy Fawkes and the failed Gunpowder Plot in 1605 is still celebrated in November with fireworks. Most people have forgotten the treason and why the day is commemorated but, though the selling of fireworks in the city, are now restricted, it is still in our psyche to go …
Exeter is the county town of Devon in the South West of England i.e. it’s a big old place. Yet as you follow the road to Topsham, one minute you are in suburbia and the next . . . a quaint ‘town’ (the 2021 census the population was 4,146) full of historic references from its …
Sometimes, it is obvious. For example, Coalhouse Fort was built to guard the lower part of the River Thames from attack from the French in the 19th century. It is a solidly built building surrounded by a wide water-filled ditch. It isn’t pretty but . . . maybe it was enough for people to feel …
There is a very special place in Rhodes Town that is dear to our heart. We first arrived to Spirit of the Knights in June 2014 where Felicity Marshall, a British mosaic artist decided to restore a 14th century crusader mansion in the Medieval town of Rhodes along with her son, Alex. There are six …
It started with a text message, “Get your camera ready tonight . . . it’s the buck moon”. So there we were all set up on a beautiful summer’s night above Firestone Bay, Plymouth waiting for the moon rise. We had the ‘app’ so had worked out the ‘where’ allowing for the cliff getting in …