2024-04-20 09:52
It had been over an hour since we'd left Aylesford Priory on our walk along the Augustine Camino. We'd left pavements and roadways behind and had begun to walk across muddy, waterlogged… Read More
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London. Architecture. Travel. Culture. History. A photo narrative of life in London and beyond.
2024-04-06 09:38
Desperate to explore more at the end of winter, I'd been searching for Kentish walking tours and was delighted when an advert popped up on my feed for the Heart of Kent walking festival wh… Read More
2024-03-31 06:16
With its rich history and distinctive appearance, Bryggen is one of Bergen's most iconic landmarks. Like much of Bergen, Bryggen was quiet three days before Christmas but it is usually a b… Read More
2024-03-10 11:48
I found myself in Kentish Town this week with a moment to spare. The journey from Dartford had somehow worked out to be half an hour shorter than expected and my friends' taxi was going to… Read More
2024-02-24 10:06
We decided to visit Bodiam Castle on a bright February morning. I had incorrectly thought the castle is in Kent and could not figure out why it took us so long to drive there. Turns out Bo… Read More
2024-02-10 10:14
I know you shouldn't pick favourites, but if I had to choose my favourite day in Bergen, it would be the second day when we journeyed to the top of mount Fløyen on the Fløiba… Read More
2024-01-27 10:02
We went up to Canary Wharf last Saturday night to see the famous Winter Lights Festival. It was such a fun night and we got to see most of the lights before the cold and sore legs sent us… Read More
2024-01-20 10:55
"You may want to come to the terrace". I'd been sitting on a window seat in my hotel room in Bergen, enjoying the view over the snowy rooftops, when the message came through. We were taking… Read More
2024-01-13 13:55
We spent three days in Bergen just before Christmas and it was glorious. Before this trip, I held a somewhat irrational fear of visiting cold places at cold times. Now that I've seen the m… Read More
2023-12-30 08:16
Seasons greetings! It's the most wonderful time of the year. Christmas is over for another year and we have a week between Christmas and New Year to relax. If you’re in the Northern… Read More
2023-11-24 14:02
The Snowman is one of the great loves of my life. I loved both The Snowman and Father Christmas books by Raymond Briggs and couldn't even try to estimate how many times I've seen The Snowman… Read More
2023-09-23 08:24
It’s been years since I last went for an afternoon tea in Johannesburg. My lovely friend Sarah and I had High Tea at the Palazzo, Montecasino in 2015 and we decided that it was defin… Read More
2023-09-09 08:13
I love deer. I don't remember seeing Bambi in a cinema when I was about 3 years old but my Mum loves telling the story of how I jumped up on my seat at a pivotal moment and shouted, "don't… Read More
2023-08-24 07:18
I've been a fan of Morph since I was a little girl and knew that I absolutely needed to visit Morph's Epic Art Adventure in London. It's been ages since I explored an art trail in London a… Read More
2023-08-02 11:40
Every summer, in early July, the Royal Horticultural Society presents a celebration of gardens and flowers at the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival. It's a magical collection and I jump… Read More
2023-05-01 18:05
A year ago today, I saw a post on Instagram about the tulip festival at Pashley Manor Gardens in East Sussex and I knew that I absolutely had to go. After a year of planning and looking fo… Read More
2023-01-25 14:25
The wonderful Gravesham Light Festival returns this week thanks to additional funding from Arts Council England. We really enjoyed our visit last year so read on discover what to expect, wh… Read More
2022-12-23 20:55
Seasons greetings everyone! I hope that you're having a peaceful time and enjoying the festive season. My family is a mix of faiths, none of them very observant, but my mum and my brother a… Read More
2022-11-30 10:00
On our second morning in Loch Monzievaird, I enquired at reception about walks in the area and was told that I could take a circular walk around Laggan Hill and that it would ‘take abo… Read More
2022-11-16 10:03
I love all things abandoned and derelict. When I visited my friend in Bournemouth in September, she asked if I was keen on visiting a little Dorset village that had been evacuated during Wo… Read More
2022-11-02 10:16
I'm full of British wanderlust today. I just want to find a little village and explore, take photos and eat cake to my heart's content. It'll be a little while before I can do that, so I'm… Read More
2022-10-19 09:01
I’d planned a trip to Bournemouth to see one of my oldest friends in September. When we arrived, she mentioned that the Bournemouth Air Festival was on that weekend – would I b… Read More
2022-10-05 09:00
It's cold, windy and definitely autumnal now but today's post harks back to the blue skies and sunshine of summer. These are my favourite photos from Hastings beach and the Follow That Duck… Read More
2022-09-21 09:30
I’ve been in training for some time to prepare for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. First, I completed the couch-to-5k programme through Zombies, Run! so that I’d be in a positi… Read More
2022-09-07 09:00
Today is an auspicious day for I get to tell you all about one of my favourite days out. I’d wanted to visit Hastings for the longest time and a great part of that was due to my inte… Read More
2022-08-24 09:00
I can’t believe I waited so long to visit Hastings. I’d always wanted to go and my in-laws jumped at the chance to spend five days in a sea-facing apartment while we explored a… Read More
2022-08-10 07:44
The best days are the ones spent with good friends. I joined a local book club when I moved to Dartford and the book club might be no more but the friendships remain. On Sunday morning, I m… Read More
2022-07-27 09:25
It was the event that almost didn’t happen, one of those post-lockdown days that seemed doomed to be rescheduled and postponed indefinitely. Finally, after a bout of Covid and a memo… Read More
2022-07-13 15:55
The best Mondays are the ones where you wake up without an alarm and make your way, at a leisurely pace, to somewhere new and exciting. My in-laws had arrived from a bitterly cold Johannesb… Read More
2022-06-29 09:12
I adore summer in Kent. The sun comes out, blooms are everywhere and we know its time to explore. On a gorgeous Friday in May, I took my mum to nearby Rochester to see Luke Jerram’s… Read More
2022-06-15 09:04
Way back in 2015, when I was still working in London, the company I was working for moved their offices from the Strand (near Charing Cross) to east London. I was excited to explore a new… Read More
2022-05-31 10:06
We recently spent the most incredible weekend in Northern Ireland. We were based near Ballycastle and had spent the Saturday in Mussenden Temple and Lissanoure Castle for the wedding of my… Read More
2022-05-18 16:37
I love street art and the east end of London has some of the best street art in the world. There are many excellent tours, some of which I've written about here under the street art tag, b… Read More
2022-03-05 10:55
I'm at the 'will it ever end' stage of winter which is why I tend to count the spring equinox as the official start of spring. While it is cold, wet and grey outside, I know that spring wil… Read More
2022-01-15 19:31
One thing I've learned about the new world is that we spend an awful lot of time planning and looking forward to things through delays, false starts and eventual happenings. This was especi… Read More
2021-10-18 11:56
It's Monday morning and I'm sitting in bed with a cup of coffee, celebrating one of my last days off before I start a new job in November. I'm reminiscing about the perfect weekend just gon… Read More
2021-04-27 06:46
Whitstable is one of my favourite towns on earth. I don't quite think I could ever live there (or afford to) but I do love visiting as often as I can. The last time I went, I expected it to… Read More
2021-03-30 11:58
Sometimes, the biggest adventures are right on your doorstep. There is a river that flows near my house and once you exit our estate, you can follow the river along a creek, onto Dartford m… Read More
2021-03-19 19:27
Look at that beautiful blue sky! Barely a cloud in the sky and where there were clouds, they were cute, fluffy and simply idyllic. We've had horrible weather in Kent this week with heavy sh… Read More
2021-03-14 08:11
It seems impossible now but there were five days in 2020 where life almost felt normal. We drove down to Lyme Regis in Dorset and stayed in a fisherman's hut by the seaside. It was one of t… Read More
2021-03-06 13:20
Oh! Glorious spring! I’d been planning a socially distanced walk with my friend Amanda for several weeks but January and February were bitterly cold, with several instances of snow… Read More
2021-01-02 09:53
A year ago today, before the pandemic, we decided to do something different. We drove down to the Hythe Bay Restaurant on a very wet and windy day. I was disappointed to discover that not al… Read More
2020-02-27 18:57
It’s scandalous how often we take luke-warm reviews seriously without trying a place out for ourselves. Although, if I’m honest, my reason for never having visited the Duck &… Read More
2020-02-11 16:41
I love Kent and tiny little Kentish villages. On a sunny, wintery, February day, we travelled down to the village of Chiddingstone, one of the best preserved Tudor villages in England and s… Read More
2020-01-01 09:59
This is one of my favourite photos of Bo-Kaap – the light reflecting on the pieces of cloth, the clouds falling over Table Mountain and the Bo-Kaap Museum in the middle ground. Bo… Read More
2016-12-28 20:39
Well, hello! I know, it's been six weeks without even the slightest peep from me. I am sorry, lovely readers but sadly I'm not here to say that I'm back. I've decided to take a year off from… Read More
2016-11-13 10:32
I'm just going to take five photos, I thought to myself. I don't actually have to take a hundred photos of every place I visit, making it ever more difficult to choose a couple and write abo… Read More
2016-11-09 11:31
My love for opera is quite new. I was always in love with the idea of opera, inspired by countless films in which the characters sat in the balcony at the opera and silently wept, but my fi… Read More
2016-11-06 20:54
Well, it’s November. With two blinks of the eye this year will be over and there seems to be no chance of slowing it down. The good news, is that I’m really settling into this a… Read More
2016-10-30 09:51
Saint Agnes was the sister of King Wenceslas I and in 1234, she founded a convent of the Poor Clares in what is now the Jewish Quarter of Prague. It might seem unusual to visit a convent wh… Read More
2016-10-15 09:29
It was one of those conversations. I'm quite certain it began with the two of us communicating like adults but it had somehow become quite fraught. I began to backtrack. "Okay, Stephen, is t… Read More
2016-10-10 18:35
Have you ever encountered a story so big that you simply had no idea where to start? This is how I feel about The World Garden at Lullingstone Castle. I want to tell you everything and show… Read More
2016-10-02 14:44
All of a sudden, the year is three-quarters of the way through. How did that happen? The predominant theme this month has been me denying that summer is over and trying to stretch it out as… Read More
2016-09-28 10:17
I love living in Kent and barely a week goes by that I’m not grateful for our decision to move here. Having said that, I also escape every opportunity I get and bank holiday weekends… Read More
2016-09-21 09:35
There are certain lessons that Stephen and I appear to need to learn twice. Or many, many times in some instances. For example, when you are in a seaside town on a bank holiday, it pays to b… Read More
2016-09-17 07:23
The Open House weekend in London is one weekend every September where buildings across the city are open to the public. It is a celebration of architecture and design and an opportunity to… Read More
2016-09-14 09:45
London is a treasure trove of architectural masterpieces, showing off the finest examples of every major school of design from Neoclassical to Art Deco to Modernist. There is one school of… Read More
2016-09-10 07:40
How do you show your love for a city? You can photograph it from every angle, dine along its rivers and tell the world of your love affair. Or you can just walk through its streets and brea… Read More
2016-09-07 09:11
We’d been for a long walk along the beachfront from Tankerton to Whitstable Harbour and as we rounded the last stretch, we could see Whitstable Harbour. There in the distance, I saw w… Read More
2016-09-04 09:53
This year is speeding away like a runaway horse which makes me especially glad that I’ve started this monthly series. It is difficult to rush through two thirds of the year and wonder… Read More
2016-08-31 09:04
It is strange the things we dream about, things that are so easy to do but we simply never seem to get around to doing them. For the longest time, I dreamt about walking my dogs on the beac… Read More
2016-08-18 20:42
There is something simply sublime about Kent in summer. Known as the Garden of England, the county comes alive in the warmest months of the year to put on an astounding display of colour. W… Read More
2016-08-12 18:10
It's no secret that I love afternoon tea but what you might not know about me is that I was a goth during my formative years. If you've suddenly conjured up an image of black hair, black eye… Read More
2016-08-09 21:01
I have to admit, when I had the bright idea of doing a monthly real-life round up, I was hoping to be a little more diligent than recapping the month a third of the way into the next month… Read More
2016-08-09 06:41
Our first day in Prague was hot, very hot. It was over 35°c and someone had the bright idea to forego the Metro and walk instead from our hotel in Vinohrady to the Old Town. Okay, I&rsqu&hell…Read More
2016-07-30 08:42
I remember the first time I stepped into a derelict building. It was a house I had lived in during my final year in school and both the roof and floor had rotted away. Stephen’s insti… Read More
2016-07-23 09:48
I can remember the first time I ever saw a computer game. My mum has a Sinclair ZX80 which allowed us to play an infinitely frustrating game of tennis with controllers that could move up and… Read More
2016-07-16 09:51
I love Lullingstone and Eynsford. It was one of the very first areas of Kent that I ever explored and I’ve been back many times since. The minute I discovered that they were holding… Read More
2016-07-07 19:53
Have you ever had one of those months where you get to the end and wonder what the heck was that? June was that month for me. It was crazy and cool and went by in a kind of blur. Still feel… Read More
2016-06-29 09:13
I held my breath when our car turned off Yarmouth Road into the long driveway of the Old Rectory. It had been a long day and I was eager to settle into our accommodation for the evening. My… Read More
2016-06-25 09:06
What is the most fun you’ve had recently? Late last year, we discovered that one of our favourite venues in Kent, The Secret Garden, runs a monthly pudding night. You might remember… Read More
2016-06-22 09:49
With most of our weekend in Norwich already planned, I was searching in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival website for something to do on the Sunday afternoon. The minute I saw the listing… Read More
2016-06-21 06:23
Sometimes there is no better place to be than wherever you are right now with camera in hand. I recently found myself in Brixton with some time to kill and decided to head off in the direc… Read More
2016-06-15 09:34
I like the Côte Brasserie, Norwich the minute I walk in the door; the sounds of piano notes and acid jazz float across the room and blend perfectly with the Art Deco décor. We'r… Read More
2016-06-05 15:42
Note to self, I thought to myself as I prepared for our trip to Norwich, take photos with actual people in them. See, I’m notorious for taking photos without people in them and have h… Read More
2016-06-01 06:27
Trying to manage expectations when travelling can be similar to walking a tightrope and if you know how clumsy I am, you’ll know that I’m more often falling off the tightrope th… Read More
2016-05-26 17:11
Looney Toony. The minute I saw that on the Grosvenor Fish Bar menu, I knew that I had to taste it. I turned to Stephen and said that whatever we did eat that day, it had to include a Looney… Read More
2016-05-22 10:21
"Weird", says Stephen and he's not entirely wrong. It is a little odd to be walking in the beautiful grounds of Norfolk's Felbrigg Hall, wearing headphones and carrying an iPad for navigat… Read More
2016-05-19 05:02
Doesn’t time fly? Tomorrow will mark eight weeks since we moved into our new house and it is already four weeks since I started at the new company. Life is good but it feels that I can… Read More
2016-05-14 09:51
Have you ever had a day where everything seemed to go wrong? Melissa and I had one of those days recently when we met up in Richmond for a walk and a session of afternoon tea. Our day st… Read More
2016-05-07 09:49
It is generally accepted etiquette that one does not go behind one’s friends’ backs to plot and scheme about them; unless, of course, those plots involve the gift of a spa weeken… Read More
2016-04-30 09:53
Life in London rushes by with the skyline changing on a daily basis but nowhere is that change as rapid as in the East End. At the western edge of Tower Hamlets, an area known for its soci… Read More
2016-04-23 14:00
It’s no secret that I love museums and the Science Museum, London is one of my favourite museums in the world. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve visited the museum but… Read More
2016-04-16 07:45
In the book P.S. I Love You, H. Jackson Brown’s mother says to him, "twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do… Read More
2016-04-10 11:36
Good grief. How is it two months since I last wrote on this blog? I don't even know how that happened. In other times of unexpected interludes, I've been painfully aware of my blogging abs… Read More
2016-02-07 13:17
It is a little known secret that my mum calls me her Intrepid Super Photo Reporter as I go out on my adventures and she is able to live vicariously through my travels. It is a very clear h… Read More
2016-02-07 13:17
It is a little known secret that my mum calls me her Intrepid Super Photo Reporter as I go out on my adventures and she is able to live vicariously through my travels. It is a very clear h… Read More
2016-02-01 06:12
Today was one of those damp and rainy London days where you'd only leave your house if you had a very good reason to do so. Thankfully I had a very good reason indeed because today I did o… Read More
2016-01-20 07:12
At the dawn of the 20th century, Russian cosmists developed the idea that the future of humanity lies in space. Their ideas made the leap from science fiction to reality when Konstantin Ts… Read More
2016-01-17 21:41
With all the Christmas lights packed away and the magical shop windows returned to normal, January can be the most dull and grey of months. Until now. Some genius thought it would be a brill… Read More
2016-01-10 18:07
There is a light that falls over Dungeness in Kent. It is golden yet muted, capturing the strange, slightly surreal atmosphere on the beach. I try not to experience envy in life but on cou… Read More
2015-12-31 09:54
Gosh, can it really be the end of 2015? How on earth did that happen? 2015 was one of the toughest years of my life from a working perspective. There was the complete lack of a work/life ba… Read More
2015-12-22 13:24
If you’ve been in London long enough, you start to hear the same big brand names in coffee. But over the years a pocket of specialty brewers have come to the forefront of the London… Read More
2015-12-06 16:24
Remember when I visited Eltham Palace and told you that the gardens were so exquisite that they deserved a post of their own? Well, here is a bumper post full of photos of the gardens, mainl… Read More
2015-11-07 09:29
It is one of the greatest love stories of all time. One Christmas Eve in Paris, young bohemian Rodolfo receives a knock on the door of his tiny, freezing apartment. It is his neighbour Mim… Read More
2015-11-03 06:42
When I was on my recent holiday, it occurred to me that I don’t write often about my daily life in London or what is going on in my personal life. A million blog years ago, I used to p… Read More
2015-10-31 11:13
Since arriving in England in 2007, I have never lived more than 9 miles away from Eltham Palace and in fact, I lived within walking distance of it for a year. You might be surprised then… Read More
2015-10-24 08:38
Each year in June, London hosts the Open Garden Squares Weekend. For one weekend, the gates open to the city’s secret and hidden gardens and members of the public can wander their gr… Read More
2015-10-18 19:03
When my friend Sarah suggested we go for afternoon tea at the Secret Garden in Kent, I did not hesitate for a moment before saying yes. I thought that it sounded like such a magical, whims… Read More
2015-09-12 18:05
Being a train geek and fan of hidden and abandoned places, I have always wanted to go on one of the London Transport Museum Hidden London tours but was always disappointed because they sel… Read More
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