Northumberland rolls and undulates as you speak the word, mirroring the landscape it names. To drive the arrow-straight Roman roads up here, the wildest, emptiest and remotest county of England, is to feel like you are sailing above some terrestrial ocean of expanse. Ochre and umber fields roll away either side, rising and falling, until […]
I have overlooked Pentewan, the small, quiet village on the south coast that grew up in. Taken it for granted, as we seem to do, purely because it has always been there for me. So I have been reading into it and in doing so uncovered quite a bit more than I anticipated. Pentewan has […]
Nine months in Taupo. Restless. I suppose we are all inclined to self-criticism; I should have done this or seen that, should have saved more money, should have spoken to that person but in the end I guess that we do what we do. The spring came through the winter and we were stir crazy. […]
So I have settled, for the time being at least, in a ramshackle but charming hostel on the shore of Lake Taupo. New Zealand is an expensive country to travel about in and winter employment was in order. The town of Taupo (toe-paw, not t-ow-po) is fine, occupying an inlet at the north end of […]
When we started to drive with teenage abandon around the lanes that connect Polgooth, Sticker and St. Ewe, a story started to trickle down into our hot-boxed Peugeot 106. In between St. Ewe, Polgooth and Pengrugla there is a little triangle of woods, a copse really, that the road dog-legs around, which we called Nunnery […]
A few days ago I was reading of Norilsk, an unimaginably oppressive, filthy, cold, dank industrial city high in the Arctic Circle. Once known for its Soviet Gulag labour camps (in which tens of thousands of prisoners died), it is now a hub of mineral mining. Nickel primarily but also palladium, cobalt, arsenic and coal. […]
Just off the south side of the arterial A30 that cuts the Moor in two one can find Temple. A collection of farm houses and out of the way cottages, there is not much other than the small community that dwell here. Temple Church is the prime attraction. You see, if you blunder across anywhere […]
It used to confuse me that this little village nestled in the lee of Rame Head and facing the beginnings of Devon from across Plymouth Sound is nominally divided into two. Cawsand and Kingsand. The actual reason is that the border of Devon and Cornwall once ran though the village until they changed it to […]
That Cornwall was once ruled by a separate and unique lineage of Kings ignites a schoolboy-like excitement. It makes me think of Tolkien. It also highlights that this little chunk of land oozes with its own idiosyncratic history. Just the names of the Kings brings to mind a wild, fierce and proud people roaming a […]
Summer is a busy time for me, I will explain why, for the moment allow me to break my post drought with a small piece of Talland Bay. Situated betwixt Looe and Polperro you will find Talland. It is overlooked by the Cornish, much like the rest of South East Cornwall, but for those faithful […]
