When it isn’t raining, the Lake District is really quite breathtaking. Although the one dry day I had there ended up with me being carried down a fell by Ambleside Mountain Rescue and spending the next few days off my face on morphine… On reflection, it’s probably safer when it’s raining and you don’t get […]
Visiting the Lake District in October might not have been the wisest idea… It’s rainy enough in the summer! You couldn’t see the tops of the fells most of the time, so landscape photography wasn’t really an option. If you’re up that way, check out the Honister Slate Mine – fascinating place. It’s the last […]
The Monkey World Ape Rescue Centre is a brilliant place, it’s a shame it has to exist, but it’s excellent work that they do. If I ever win the lottery, I’m going to send them a massive box of fezzes.I could watch these characters going about their business for hours… […]
Lemurs are ace. Like cat-squirrel-bears. The ringtailed hooligans kept trying to start on the big ruffed fella, but all he had to do was to look at them and they’d scatter. You can go in their enclosure at Monkey World and the lemurs really don’t care that you’re there, often barging you out of the […]
Beaulieu Motor Museum makes for a good day out. It’s not just cars; there are some lovely gardens to walk through and a really nice (still inhabited) house to poke around in, all set in beautiful English countryside, riddled with (effectively wild) horses. […]
I had to get up at 4am to get the photo of dawn over Lulworth Cove, but I think it was worth it. It also meant I could get to Monkey World before the shaved monkeys arrived with their spawn. […]
There are a lot of lovely spots in the New Forest area. Pretty little villages, heathland, forest; witches and horses everywhere. Salisbury is just up the road too. Then you might as well go to Amesbury and visit Stonehenge, (where the moon doth rise with a dragon’s face). […]
Venice at night is a magical place. Around 10pm, all the day trippers have gone and the majority of restaurant staff have gone back to the mainland, leaving a medieval maze to get very lost in. […]
As Venice is on a lagoon, the water is a lovely emerald green – considerably cleaner than it was when I went there as a boy. This gives an ethereal quality to reflections one doesn’t get with fresh water. […]
Venice is an incredible, nonsensical, fairytale world. “Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show them.” Not even the postmen are quite sure how it works. […]