Walking
At home in England, walking is a big part of our lives, either in the countryside or by the coast. So of course, as we make our way around the world we love to go trekking. Mountains are there to be conquered, hidden waterfalls need to be found, those ruins need to be experienced. In some more challenging places we may use a guide, for safety and for information. However, we usually walk alone, just us and the map and our sense of direction. There are few feelings better than sinking that rewarding beer at the end of a long day walking thinking back over all that you’ve seen. Quaint villages, fabulous views, village bars, classic buildings, you will see it all, the rewards are endless.
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Welcome To Padstow
In truth it feels more like “welcome home”, so often have we visited this lovely place down the years that returning to Padstow often feels like coming home. To get here is a 320-mile, five and a half hour drive from our actual home but our drive down was stress free and sunshine virtually all the way, and arriving to see the picturesque estuary and harbour bathed in the afternoon sun was a treat. The current COVID restrictions mean that only outdoor catering is permitted, and a quick reconnaissance around the harbour established that just 2 of Padstow’s 6 pubs are open, augmented by a number of eateries serving outdoor…
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Cornwall Calling
We aren’t yet in a position to organise any foreign trips but with COVID restrictions easing we can at least now travel within the UK and so tomorrow we head off down to Cornwall, where we will be based in Padstow for the next ten days. We are fortunate enough to own a property in Padstow itself, which we rarely get to visit in high season as in normal times it is used as a holiday let to provide some income in our retirement, but this year we are so starved of travel that we’ve snaffled a few weeks for our own use – in fact we will be there…
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Beautiful Places #8: Elba
The large house you can see on the headland in the picture above is reputed to be the site of Napoleon’s exile to Elba. When you think of exile, you might imagine imprisonment, but, in his case, Napoleon had the freedom of this beautiful island and lived in opulent luxury in this castle with a view. You might reflect that being in enforced exile on an island like Elba is an awful lot better than the last twelve months have been for many people. Even getting to Elba was special, flying in to Pisa and then taking the train out to the ferry port at Piombino from where the “Moby”…
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Beautiful Places #6: Zabljak
Zabljak holds a very special place in our hearts, having been our first mountain destination together, ten years ago back in 2011. Most of our time on that trip was spent in Kotor, much further south on the coast of Montenegro, but for a spell in the middle we hired a car and drove up to the Durmitor Mountains in the north of the country to indulge in a bit of challenging trekking. And wow did we hit the jackpot, with superb hiking, other activities and a delightfully rural setting. Some of our terrific hikes in Zabljak saw us start off in 30+ degree temperatures in the village and then ascend…
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Photographic Memories #12
As every traveller knows, when you look back through old travel photos, many of them trigger wonderful memories. With no current prospect of travel even domestically let alone worldwide, we will have no new adventures to blog, but we do have many such memories…. Photo #12: Stromboli A bit of poetic licence here as there’s 3 photos instead of the usual 1, but then it’s not often that you get the opportunity to climb a living volcano after dark and look down on the fiery inferno below. This was the Aeolian Islands, 2011. A boat trip from our host island of Lipari to the volcanic Stromboli included an afternoon stop…
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Cold Snap
Is it just me, or is anyone else irritated by the fact that, in the context of COVID, the world is referring freely to the “British variant” or even more geographically specific, the “Kent variant”, when ex President Trump was consistently vilified for referring to the pandemic as the “Chinese disease”? It’s called “COVID” because phrases like “Asian flu” and “Spanish flu” have been outlawed by the WHO as racially divisive, so how come the “British variant” is acceptable? Maybe it’s just me. Anyway, just as we sit here confined to quarters unable to travel, we get a little bit of the world – indeed a little bit of 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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Cirali: Cool Bars & Hot Rocks
The Mediterranean coast of Turkey stretches for a total of 994 miles, most of it with stunning scenery, and as we drive to our next destination it’s plain to see why its alternative name is the Turquoise Coast; the colours of the sea are so extreme as to be almost unreal. Our final day in Kas is spent at Kaputas, a cove beach much loved by Turkish weekenders just a few kilometres up the coast from the town. Despite being right on the D400 main road, the beach sits way below the highway down a steep cliff, and is a picturesque cove where the waves crash in over a high…
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Island Hopping Croatia: Brač
Some of the inter island ferry services have been scaled back due to an expected drop in visitor numbers during COVID, so to hop from Šolta to Brač we have to go back to Split and on again from there. So it’s an early alarm, the 7:20 bus from Maslinica and the 8am ferry, breakfast in Split harbour and then a second ferry over to Supetar on the island of Brač. Brač a much bigger and more mountainous island than Šolta, in fact the third largest Adriatic island; our next billet means travelling some distance to the south of the island, and we’ve been recommended that the best option for…
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Krka National Park
As well as the many attributes of its own, the city of Šibenik is also a gateway to the Krka National Park, another spectacular series of waterfalls as the Krka river crashes down the mountains towards the Adriatic. To access the park, we drive to the small town of Skradin, from where we take a river boat to the falls: a wise decision, as Skradin turns out to be a charming and peaceful place in its own right. Krka is markedly different from Plitvice. Plitvice was largely unspoilt, and clearly less popular, perhaps due to its more remote location. Around the sixteen lakes there were only three modest cafes, spaced…
