Two years ago today Greg and I arrived in Italy. When we landed in Bologna on that hot August afternoon we were excited at the prospect of what lay ahead, but the past couple of years have delivered much more… Continue Reading →

Summer is festival season in the Gulf of Poets. Every weekend there’s a festa or sagra in one – or often several – of the communities around the bay. Some, such as the ‘Festival of the Mussel’ and the superbly-named… Continue Reading →

We weren’t sure whether we wanted to go to the Cinque Terre. Sounds crazy, right? Who wouldn’t want to visit that string of five gorgeous, little villages clinging like jewels to the cliffs of the Ligurian coast? It had been… Continue Reading →

The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley described it as a place ‘where music and moonlight and feeling are one…’. Mary Shelley found it bathed ‘in the rich tints of Italian heaven.’ While the coastline’s sweeping curves made DH Lawrence’s blood ‘run… Continue Reading →

The plan was to be away for a couple of years, though we weren’t sure exactly where we’d be. Obviously there’d be hot summers to survive and cold winters to endure. It would be mostly casual travelling though, hopefully, with… Continue Reading →

‘Did you know Faroese girls are the prettiest in the world?’ asks the very pretty young woman with the long dark hair and happy smile. ‘It’s our heritage,’ she laughs. ‘Viking and Celtic – a good combination.’ If we didn’t… Continue Reading →

We interrupt the program to bring you a weather update. You may have seen stories in the news about the heatwave surging across Europe. Schools are closed, roads are melting and rail tracks are buckling in the extreme temperatures. Authorities… Continue Reading →

There’s a place on Iceland’s south coast where the huge Vatnajökull Glacier reaches out to touch the ocean. At the edge of a large lagoon, great chunks of ice break away from the face of the glacier and float out… Continue Reading →

They call it ‘The Land of Fire and Ice’ and the geography of Iceland is as dramatic as that sounds. Volcanoes and glaciers dominate the landscape here. The huge Vatnajökull Glacier alone covers eight percent of the island’s landmass –… Continue Reading →

As we wandered around Scotland’s northeast one day, we stopped to admire a view. Nothing unusual in that. But then this little scene unfolded before us.