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Farewell To Cornwall: Next Stop Cairo
As ever, we have loved this visit to Cornwall. Spring seems to have dawned before our eyes, colours have intensified, and Padstow, the estuary, the coast path…have all been as wonderful as ever. We always feel so at home here. We conclude our time here by climbing to the top of Brea Hill, the highest point in the area and consequently one of the best places from which to view the estuary. As we climb, we are again at low tide, vast reaches of golden sand either side of the river’s narrow channel where in just a few short hours water will stretch right across the divide. Windshields and windows…
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The Unique Village Of Clovelly
Venturing out of Cornwall and up to the north Devon coast, we take in the self-proclaimed “unique” village of Clovelly, knowing of its beautiful setting but knowing little else about it. We are in for a treat. The first thing which strikes us as “unique” is that we have to pay to get in to the village! At first we are a little baulked by having to fork out £8.25 each just to enter, but once we see Clovelly and learn about its status it all becomes clear and we don’t begrudge a penny of it. Clovelly is perched on a seemingly almost vertical slope, cascading from clifftop to shingle…
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Cape Cornwall
Monday March 14th, and suddenly it’s Spring. As we descend the stony path alongside the cascading brook, warm sunshine kisses our faces and the air hangs heavy with the pungent scent of wild garlic. The blooms of gorse, celandine and wild daffodils paint yellow splashes amongst the green foliage as flocks of goldfinches scatter across the clifftop, maybe just arriving for the summer. Rabbits scurry beneath hedgerows and, across the field, a pheasant squawks and races away like a sprinter with his hands in his pockets. Majestic cliffs tower over the deep blue Atlantic, birds carry twigs towards nesting sites, the colours are impossibly sumptuous and if it is remotely…
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Famous Faces, Favourite Places
Darkness becomes morning light and the incessant rain of the last five days turns to dry roads as we head south west; the rising sun illuminates a cloudless sky across which the blue starts to deepen as we near the end of the 320 mile journey and approach Cornwall, our second home in more ways than the obvious. Without fail, arriving in Cornwall makes both of us, me in particular, feel like we’re home: today’s blue skies and early Spring sunshine just make those feelings even stronger than normal. But this time, as we leave the dark and the damp behind, our conversation is as much about yesterday as it…
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England And A Not So Warm Welcome
Eighteen hours after leaving Lindsay’s house in California we are walking the few yards from the car to our front door, jogging with backpacks on for those few paces to get out of the cold as quickly as possible. After seven weeks in the sun a February English evening doesn’t feel great. “Phil?”, calls Michaela from upstairs, “the screen’s blank”. “What screen?”. “The heating system”. The house is utterly perishing cold. It’s becoming plain that the heating – and hot water – must have failed weeks ago; carpets don’t get to feel like sheets of ice in a few days. Frantic fuse changing brings no joy, we’re going to have…
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California Dreamin’
All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey I’ve been for a walk on a winter’s day I’d be safe and warm if I was in LA California dreamin’, on such a winter’s day. Four years ago, in October 2017, my sons and I waved a tearful farewell to my daughter Lindsay as she disappeared through the barrier at Heathrow and set off to begin a new life in Los Angeles. At that point, as she gave one last look over her shoulder and headed off to a brave new world, I never thought for one moment that it would be more than four years till I saw…
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St Albans: Romans, Saints & Boudicca
With no opportunity to leave these shores just yet, we continued our exploration of our own country this week with a brief visit to Hertfordshire, centred on time in St Albans, an ancient city steeped in fascinating history. After a motorway closure made our journey somewhat tortuous we rolled into St Albans around lunchtime and set about exploring a city with some of England’s most dramatic history. St Alban the man was a religious martyr executed on the spot which today houses the cathedral, itself originally an abbey which was ransacked and all but destroyed by Henry VIII’s men during the Reformation. From a distance, the wide central tower of…
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This English Summer
As we sit trying to predict the next steps in the complicated and illogical rules on international travel from the UK, this non-starter of an English summer just makes our frustration grow and our sense of isolation increase. First we had the coldest April since 1922 in terms of average minimum temperatures, in fact the third coldest April since records began almost 140 years ago. After a cold dry April we were hit with wet May, during which many areas of the UK experienced considerably more than double the normal May rainfall, and the South East, where we live, was again well below average in terms of daily temperatures. And…
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Nostalgia Trip #1: Barnt Green & Brownsover
Before we turn the metaphorical corner into memory lane, we spend good times visiting some of Michaela’s family in the West Midlands. The combination of our curtailed world trip and the effects of lockdown means we haven’t seen them in almost 18 months, so there is a great deal of feelgood in meeting up with her Dad, brothers and our nieces and nephews. Our base for this is the leafy village of Barnt Green, south of Birmingham and home to Michaela’s brother Andy and his lovely wife Claire. Barnt Green sits on the edge of the Lickey Hills which hold heaps of childhood memories for Michaela, so we take time…
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Our Next UK Tour: Nostalgia Trip
That’s the end of our music history posts for the time being, as we are now leaving on our third trip around the UK this year. There is no Cornwall involved this time, instead we will be visiting various places which play a part in our life histories, one way or another, evoking memories of some special people. A bit of a nostalgia trip. Today is the first day of June, the month we have previously earmarked for a decision on where and how we can resume travelling further afield to other countries. With a considerable lack of clarity still surrounding international travel in terms of where we can go,…