Blogs from United Kingdom, Europe - page 4

When you live in the same place for a while it is hard sometimes to think of places to visit . You find you have done them all. Sometimes more than once . The choice of places to look at diminishes over time or the distance between each becomes too great for a day trip out. There is something to be said for moving home on a regular basis . Perusing the local maps doesn't always give you new ideas. Trawling through the internet draws blanks . Sometimes I find somewhere we have not been to but it is either too far to drive to or the weather puts us off . February is an inclement month . We can expect frosty nights or exceptionally mild ones . We may get high winds or torrential rain. ... read more

The car with no name needed a trip out . We had tried earlier in the week to get over to Anglesey. Ynys Mon - a smallish island about one hour and forty five minutes drive from home. The home known as the mother of Wales and home to the Druids pushed back over the years. But that was thousands of years ago. The A55 North Wales Expressway runs from near where we live and we can join just south of Chester and travel right along the coast with the Irish Sea to one side and pretty welsh villages and towns to the other . There is always a lot of traffic on the Expressway as it runs from east to west taking traffic from and to the port of Holyhead and then on to or ... read more

Saturday 20th January One of the advantages of taking a Saga cruise is that you have a courtesy car pick you up from home and take you to the Port. The journey to Portsmouth on a Saturday was without hitch, the driver had an eta arrival slot at the Naval Port so we had a 45 minute comfort stop en route. The cruise terminal at Portsmouth was new to us since our last cruise this time last year, as soon as the car pulled up our baggage was taken straight to the ship, check in was very efficient and as David had the wheelchair everyone was so helpful. As we arrived on board staff were lined up to greet us and escort us to our cabin, we had an adapted cabin to accommodate the wheelchair. Everything ... read more

My wife and my son had booked to do some sourdough bread making in London, so I thought I would go in as well for a morning of photography. It was an early start as we needed to be in Borough Market ready for the breadmaking to start at 9.30am, which meant leaving home well too early for a Saturday morning. We were treated to a stunning sunrise, but it was just a shame that the setting was the railway tracks heading off towards London. I left my wife and son at Borough Market, but as soon as they were out of sight, I sneakily diverted to Humble Crumble. It's a favourite of ours, as you can choose your own tailor-made fruit crumble, but even I would admit that it's not really what I should be ... read more

Today Renata and I headed into Central London to explore. We made our way to Platform 9 ¾ and discovered the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum. We ended our day going on the Harry Potter Studio Tour. Renata and I are fairly big Harry Potter fans. We named our cat after the titular character. So, we were excited to see where Harry Potter was filmed. On the tour, we saw various costumes, breathtaking sets and interesting props. We also tried our first taste of butter beer, which was delicious I must say. I could have spent all day at the Harry Potter Studio, but we were on a time limit and the night was getting dark. We had to head back to central London to take the train to Norbury back to our cousin Jean’s ... read more