My daughter Nicola and my grandson Rufus (7) were taking a car trip round Brittany and planning to finish in the St Malo area and Nicola invited me to join them for the last few days. This was partly in memory of my parents as our last holiday with them before Dad died in 2009 […]
After some rather grey, cold and windy weather over Easter, the last couple of days the sun has put in a welcome appearance and I’ve had to change into summer clothes and even locate the sun cream! Typical British weather than can change dramatically literally overnight. When I woke to a clear blue sky this […]
I’ve written about Santa Maria before: my first visit to the Ealing branch in 2019 and to the Kew branch earlier this year. But when I took the grandsons to Kew in July, there was no kids’ menu … then last Monday, my son suggested we all went to Kew Gardens for a walk in […]
Regular readers will know that Aldeburgh has become a favourite place for me to head to for a short break. It’s an easy and not too long drive and, most importantly, I’ve come to really love it there. I first went in June 2022. I wanted to explore Suffolk, a county I didn’t know at […]
It’s school holiday time and it’s always lovely to take the grandsons out for a treat. Today’s outing was a little last minute so we weren’t going to venture far. The family are coming and going a bit during the holidays and are briefly home for a few days. Looking at the weather forecast, I […]
It was nearly six years since I’d last been to Nice – September 2019. That time I’d stayed just 4 nights; 5 nights in 2015, but this time I made it a whole week. I decided that it would be nicer to stay in an apartment rather than a hotel for the longer spell and […]
The Easter holidays have begun and I always like to take the boys – my son’s eldest two, Freddie (10) and Ben (7) – for an outing. It’s fun for me – and it always seems fun for them too! Of late, we’ve combined some kind of cultural – art/museum/theatre – visit with a meal […]
Malaga is a great choice for a short break early in the year as it’s one of the warmest places in mainland Europe in the winter/spring time. Last time I was there in January 2020 the weather was lovely and sunny – though with some rain – and temperatures in the late teens, but I […]
This is the kind of post that usually gets published around new year, looking back on the best of the previous year. However, I had a busy start to 2025 – family and work – and so a look back on 2024 passed me by. Now spring is on our doorstep (not officially with us […]
I’m just back from visiting my daughter for a couple of days. She lives in Worcestershire, about a 20-minute drive from the county’s capital, Worcester. We’ve never been into the city itself much in the years she’s lived there, but now 6-year-old grandson Rufus attends one of the Pauline Quirke Academies for a drama class […]