Category Archives: Travel

A Whistle-Stop Trip

‘You can’t roller skate in as buffalo herdBut you can be happy if you’ve a mind to…’ What have we been up to lately? A whirlwind trip east to Melbourne: four days in the car, visiting friends en route; a … Continue reading

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A Capricious Spring

“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!You cataracts and hurricanoes, spoutTill you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! ~ Shakespeare’s King Lear We were back on the road this week, but without poor Barney, who is currently in … Continue reading

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“The Wide Brown Land for Me.”

‘I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,Of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains.’ ~Dorothy McKellar, 1908 The Australian landscape may not change quickly but change it does. Growing up in South Australia, I had assumed … Continue reading

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Roaming in the Riverland

It is dawn. The sun sits like a navel orange on the horizon, reflected in the dimpled river. The air is crisply cold, but that doesn’t seem to bother the pelicans swooping low and dipping for breakfast. Two wrens dash … Continue reading

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Time Travel

It’s 1991. We have taken an overnight train to Rome from Genoa. The train is absolutely packed and there are no seats left. We are perched in the aisle on our rucksacks. Sandy-eyed, grubby and aching, we stagger into the … Continue reading

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Sea, Saki & Sashimi

It’s a modest block of flats, almost drowned out by the ostentatious and more glamorous towers that cluster along the beachfront. But from the balcony, the view over a long stretch of white sand that sinks beneath the roiling, boiling … Continue reading

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A Pebble in My Pocket

PART TWO: THE YORKSHIRE DALES NATIONAL PARK It is the fifth day. We leave Shap behind, crossing a footbridge over the motorway, passing the quarry and the steel factory spewing forth clouds of smoke. Three hours of mole-hills, moorland and … Continue reading

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A Pebble in my Pocket

PART ONE: THE LAKE DISTRICT NATIONAL PARK London, 1991. It is the week before Easter. We squeeze sideways onto the commuter train to Euston with heavy rucksacks, trying hard not to look smug. ‘There, but for the grace of God, … Continue reading

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Port Elliot Treasures

We are in Port Elliot. Again. Purportedly in the height of summer. Yet we sleep snuggly under our quilts and travel with layer upon layer of clothes like Sara Lee’s Danish pastries. Whatever the weather, however, Horseshoe Bay, with its … Continue reading

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Jersey Jottings

“Gradually the magic of the island settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen.” ~ Gerald Durrell I do love islands. I seem always to feel more comfortable living on an island than in a landlocked country, be it … Continue reading

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