travel

The Shire

Birmingham is not necessarily the first place you’d think of to be the inspiration for an…
Blue Remembered Hills

Alfred Edward Housman is best remembered today for A Shropshire Lad, a cycle of poems celebrating…
Newstead! Fast-falling, once resplendent dome!

In the little town of Hucknall, nestling in the forest of East Nottinghamshire, is the Church…
Once a Rebel, Always a Rebel

Nottingham has a reputation as a rebellious city. They supported the Parliamentarian cause in the Civil…
By the Tide of Humber

“Had we but world enough and time,This coyness, Lady, were no crime,We would sit down, and…
Out to where the Essex Marsh…

It is always an absolute pleasure to drive through drive through Essex. Despite the popular media…
A Port Without Trade

Kirkcudbright, (or ‘Kirkubree’) is a very picturesque, small fishing town on the South Coast of Galloway…
Queen of the South

Dumfries, the ‘Queen of the South’: important trading town on the river Nith, the administrative centre…
Melrose to Dumfries

It is late July and I am sitting in the lounge bar of George and Abbotsford…
Abbotsford

Abbotsford is a rather grand, gothic baronial house, just outside of Melrose in the Scottish Borders.…