Spain 2023: A Day Trip to Valencia

I’ve made the day trip to Valencia from Linda & George’s home in Spain a number of times. It’s a beautiful city that I don’t think I could tire of visiting. The city is the capital of the province of Valencia and the third largest municipality in Spain. There has been a city there since […]

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Spain 2023: Return to Alicante

Remarkably, it’s been six years since I lasted visited my good friends Linda & George in Spain – a trip that was once an annual one. But covid and other things intervened, though happily I have seen them a number of times in London since then. So, it was with delight that I once again […]

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48 Hours in Chichester, West Sussex

There’s been a plan in my head to go to Chichester since June last year. So the trip has been a year in the making, and I finally made it there this week for a two nights’ stay. It’s not so far away from me – merely an hour and half’s drive (if traffic is good) – […]

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Warm Halloumi, Little Gem & Peach Salad

The current heatwave brings challenges other than simply trying to stay cool enough to sleep, work, live. There’s ‘What can I eat?’ too.  I’m not as hungry as usual, which is pretty normal in such heat, but I do need food! I always need food. I’m the kind of person who can’t go out early […]

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TV Review: Rick Stein’s Cornwall

I was delighted to see there was a new series of Rick Stein’s Cornwall on BBC2 last week: 15 half-hour episodes over three weeks. I really enjoyed the first series last year and it gave me some great information for my holiday in Cornwall last September, especially leading me to Jack Doherty’s pottery in Penzance […]

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Now We Are Ten!

The blog is ten years old today! I published the first post on 26 July 2011. It all started with … well, where does anything truly begin? Was my trip to Kardamyli in 2011 the seed of the blog or the germinating? Or was the seed meeting my friend Anna, who lives in the Peloponnese, […]

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A Visit to Buckingham Palace Garden

My daughter-in-law Rachael is a self-confessed Royal Family fan so when she saw that Buckingham Palace was opening its garden to the public for the first time this summer, she couldn’t resist buying tickets. Happily she included me, so with my daughter Nicola and their son Rufus (2¾) we set off to the palace on […]

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Travelling by Book

I’ve insatiably devoured books since I first went to school. I started school late due to a family house move; I was five and a half and should have begun school a year earlier. I skipped quickly up two years within a few months and certainly by the age of eight was a serious reader. […]

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2020: Oh, What a Year! … Happy Christmas!

‘Oh, what a night/Late December back in ’63/Was a very special time for me/As I remember what a night’. Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons may famously have been singing about a very good and special time back in 1975 but the words keep coming to me from the perspective of this year’s pandemic: ‘Oh, what […]

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Now We Are Nine!

It was as I was publishing my last post with the red mullet recipe that I noticed a message from WordPress congratulating me on my blog’s 9th anniversary. Yes, it the blog’s birthday!! I was too busy to cook the blog a birthday cake (and in truth, there’s no one around at the moment to […]

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