I can’t believe it’s a year since Catering turned 60. It’s been a blast helping him celebrate, but today he’s 61 and so we’ll have to think of another reason to keep on having a good time. May have to corral my employer’s centenary as 2026’s reason to celebrate. Anyway, we are currently on holiday…
It’s no secret that I am particularly fond of sneaking off for a warm week in Europe ahead of the UK summer – a week of sun & sea ahead of the various events that define our summers in the UK – Henley Regatta, Henley Festival & Friday Night Field Drinks. This year it was…
Looking back it seems that 2025 became a year of travel. Catering turned 60 in January, which resulted in a couple of trips with old friends,1 to San Sebastian & Rioja and a weekend at the cottage in Dulverton, with people he’s known since he was 12. Life’s a beach… And then you dine… If…
Continue readingI have a companion voucher and I’m not afraid to use it – Part 1
We’ve had a couple of false starts & frankly COVID didn’t help, but I think we can safely say that both our chicks (the Not-so-small Boys) have fledged. The Smallest Boy is now the proud owner of a delightful 2-up & 2-down mews house in Battersea, that he is getting to grips with. The first…
Continue readingIt’s official – the nest is empty and they both have their own nests now
Above Trapani on the top of a mountain sits Erice, originally settled in 1200 BC by Elymians (don’t know, so please don’t ask), a desirable (largely because it was defensible) cliff-top place to live in the Middle Ages. It was the place to live, with Trapani simply acting as its port. The tables have turned…
Once we’d recovered from lugging the bags up to our 4th Floor apartment, it was time to explore and eat, because it felt a long a long time since breakfast. The big mistake I regularly make is bowling up to places and expecting that we’ll be the only people interested in eating there at peak…
After the many ups & downs (physical, rather than emotional) of the days since we left Palermo, we were looking forward to a few nights in the same place, sauntering about the city, which we were assured was largely flat. The best laid plans were somewhat scuppered when we received an email from our host…
Continue readingTrapani – What do you mean the lift’s not working!
The reason we spent 2 nights in Castellammare del Golfo, rather than swinging straight past and on to Trapani, is that buried somewhere in all the holiday research done, there was an article about the creation of the first nature reserve in Sicily. In 1989 a large, peaceful protest (please note no one threw soup…
We returned to the airport to collect the hire car and set out with what can only be described as an air of trepidation about us. We had witnessed first-hand the lawlessness of Palermo’s roads on our relatively short taxi journey from the airport to our hotel, how would we deal with this on our…
Apart from a quick week at the Cottage and a couple of long weekends away, we have been largely Hambleden based over the summer. The theory being that while the weather is good in the UK, why travel when most of Europe is ferociously hot in July & August (and full of people armed with…