England
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The Difference A Year Makes
It’s not always easy to stay positive and optimistic during this COVID lockdown, a mood not helped by an extremely dreary English winter as our weather does its absolute best to justify its bad reputation. Whilst some parts of the UK have witnessed significant snowfall, our South East corner has been deluged with what seems like incessant rain, borne out by this detail: January brought 151mm of rainfall when the historical average for that month is 50mm. Three times normal, and it feels like it, too. Many days have been simply too wet to take a walk, and the countryside is now so saturated that the fields and footpaths are…
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Dry January Just Gets Harder
It’s more difficult for me to do dry January than it is for most people. I should explain. You see, as a younger adult, I spent many years dealing with the emotional trauma of being an Olympic athlete trapped in a beer drinker’s body. I overcame that burden with a new year resolution somewhere around 2002 to never again visit a gym: a resolution that I am proud to have maintained ever since. It was my father who introduced me to beer when I was a teenager, in fact I celebrated my 18th birthday in our local pub, with Dad and other regulars, three years in a row in the…
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Dry January And Wet Walks
Well, it came about like this. When we returned from our 9-week tour of Turkey towards the end of November, we had spent 14 of the preceding 18 weeks out of the UK, bathed in sunshine and lapping up wonderful places, enjoying great food and partaking in the odd sunset beer or two. Put simply, we’d gained a few pounds – not a lot, but enough to make us feel like we wanted to shed them and get a bit fitter, and so for the first 28 days back in the country we ate healthily and abstained from all alcohol. This kind of gave us the incentive to try “dry…
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MERRY CHRISTMAS
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OUR READERS AND FELLOW TRAVELLERS. Lets hope 2021 brings good news and more travel opportunities Stay safe everyone!
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COVID: Living In The Heart Of The Beast
Kent, England, December 22nd, 2020, and a COVID drama is unfolding right on our doorstep. In the last 48 hours over 40 countries have suspended all flights to and from the UK and our nearer neighbours in Europe have closed all other UK transport routes, following discovery of a new variant of COVID here in England. The source of this new variant, which evidently spreads considerably more rapidly than the parent version, is the county of Kent, which is precisely where we live. Not so long ago, the UK Government decreed that any country with an infection rate of over 20 per 100,000 population was a “dangerous” country: now, districts…
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Two Sides Of The Coin
As England takes strides to relax the COVID restrictions, we find ourselves experiencing the consequences of the changes from both sides. We are lucky enough to own a small cottage in the beautifully picturesque harbour town of Padstow in Cornwall – you can view it HERE – which is for the most part a holiday let. We have used the lockdown period to have some works carried out at the property, leaving us with some making good to do in the form of decorating and new flooring, figuring that there would be an amount of time to get this done before we could reopen for guests. That wasn’t how it…
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A Perfect Day in Constable Country
It is almost 100 days since COVID-19 put a halt to our travels and forced us to return home to England. During that time we have stayed close to home and enjoyed our local countryside and seafront walks, but now we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel, restrictions gradually being lifted and once again we have our sights set on travel in the not too distant future. Today was a landmark day for me, Michaela. With Phil and I living in Kent and my Mum living in Suffolk, the restrictions had prevented us from seeing her…. until today. I last saw my Mum on 23 January, 5…
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Walk On The Wild Side
There is very little to occupy one’s time during this lockdown, but thankfully the behavioural guidance from the UK Government includes taking outdoor exercise once per day. For us, our daily walk in the countryside is our only escape other than shopping for food, but it’s a very welcome daily event. Luckily, we live in a village surrounded by attractive countryside and woodland and can walk straight from our house into open country, safe in the knowledge that we will see almost no one and easily practice social distancing. Equally luckily, this period of lockdown has so far coincided with a spell of lovely Spring weather, we’ve had a lot…
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Isn’t Life Strange
Spring sunshine pours through our windows, the first warmth of the season alternating with blasts of cold wind coming in off the North Sea. Music plays, books get read, the TV is on more than usual. We are filling time, trying not to dwell on the fact that we would today have been in Hoi An, taking evening strolls along its quaint lantern-lit streets. Each day the saved internet sites update us with the growing death toll across the world, the TV news has just one subject every single broadcast, an unprecedented worldwide horror story unfolds before our eyes. We tune in to our Prime Minister’s daily briefings, obeying closely…
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It’s Life Jim, But Not As We Know It
It’s just a few short days since we walked back into our own home, which in itself was a strange feeling given that we hadn’t expected to see our home again for a long time yet. Not quite as strange though as coming to terms with how much has changed in those few days, for us, for our country, for the world. On a personal level, it’s still hard to take in that our plans for the entire year have gone, plans and dreams which were so long in the making, let alone taking in this unchartered territory which now surrounds us. We retired at Christmas with the sole intention…
