Norfolk’s coastline veers from the placid to the chaotic depending on the weather. And we witnessed both during our stay in the pretty town of Wells Next The Sea. The county has a coastline of crumbling cliffs, endless sandy beaches, salt-flats and marshes. Birdwatchers love its many nature reserves, sunbathers its sandier spots. Out to…
Tag: Beaches
Greece: A week on the coast at Parga
Greece may be a part of Europe but there are times when it feels like a world apart. Epirus, the region in the country’s north-west, is wild and rugged, remote and peppered with ruins. It’s a land of mountains and broad valleys, lakes, striking bays and cliffs that plunge to the sea. Driving through, it…
Melbourne, a new year and St Kilda
Melbourne’s cityscape doesn’t have the drama of Sydney’s Port Jackson but I’d plump for it over the capital of New South Wales given the choice. We arrived on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve fresh from the Yarra Valley and parked ourselves in our funky hotel, the Ovolo, situated in the Laneways, a district famous for…
The beaches of Manly and Bondi in Sydney
Christmas Eve back in England is invariably cold and grey. Waking in our hotel on the other side of the world in Sydney, we knew it was going to be a scorcher. Australia doesn’t do Christmas as excessively as the UK. Decorations are more restrained, the pubs aren’t as packed with work parties getting trashed…
Sydney: Hyde Park Barracks and Watsons Bay
Ahead of our Australian holiday I started reading A Commonwealth of Thieves, the excellent Thomas Keneally book that describes the arrival of the First Fleet of convicts in New South Wales in 1788 and its consequences. On our second day in Sydney we visited two places that played a key role in the early years…
Cycling the Toronto Islands and a stop at the beach
Toronto residents are a lucky bunch for a number of reasons but up there near the top are the beaches. There are plenty to choose from – not least a district called The Beaches – but we opted to visit the Toronto Islands, which lurk just offshore in Lake Ontario and offer plenty of cycle…
Whitstable: Food, beer and sunshine
Our day out in Whitstable was accompanied by wall-to-wall sunshine and scorching temperatures. If only all our visits to the English seaside were in such glorious weather… On the north Kent coast and long popular with the bucket and spade brigade, Whitstable’s also become a trendy destination for Londoners seeking fine food. The town’s famous…
To the bottom of Italy’s heel
Italy famously looks like a boot and during our stay in the south we drove to the bottom of the heel that goes by the name of the Salento peninsula, to the town of Santa Maria di Leuca. It’s a peninsula of solar farms, polytunnels, olive groves and vineyards, orchards and fields of vegetables, derelict farm…
A week in Gallipoli on the coast of Puglia
The Puglian seaside town of Gallipoli looked historic, elegant and characterful in the photos I found on Google ahead of our stay. But as a seasoned traveller, I should’ve known that marketing was at play. Lonely Planet had warned me that it was a working town, where fishing is still a mainstay of the local…
Tenerife: A week in Puerto de la Cruz
We’re no strangers to the Canaries. They’re the default, value-for-money option when it comes to escaping the drab, damp days of winter in London. We’d plumped this time for the northern resort town of Puerto de la Cruz in Tenerife rather than Gran Canaria. It was my first time on the island, Graham’s second. The…
Croatia: A day trip to the island of Lopud
There are something like 1,000 islands along the Croatian coast. Lopud is one, part of the Elaphiti Islands chain that lies just a few miles from the city of Dubrovnik. Its main attraction in rocky Croatia is its sandy beaches. During our stay in the beachside suburb of Lapad we couldn’t avoid the touts trying to tempt…
Croatia: By the Adriatic at Lapad
Croatia has a memorable coastline. It’s jagged, scarred and never dull. Hundreds of islands of all shapes and sizes, covered in greenery, lie amid the sapphire blue of the Adriatic sea, some inhabited, some deserted. From thousands of feet up in our Monarch aircraft, I watched the islands float by. The sea looked as flat as…
Athens: The Greek capital in 1980
I first went to Athens aged just 16, in the days when flares and dodgy haircuts ruled. It was 1980 and I was on a day trip with my mate Chris during the height of the August holiday season. Together we were spending a week in a very down-at-heel ‘resort’ on the Greek mainland called…
A cycle tour of Jekyll Island, Georgia
Our stay on Jekyll Island was all about relaxation but we also wanted to find out more about area, so we hired a couple of bikes and went on a ride. The bikes took a little getting used to, especially the surprising lack of brakes. I only discovered how to stop when I lurched suddenly,…
Heading south from Savannah to Jekyll Island, Georgia
It was time to say goodbye to Savannah and head south, deeper into Georgia. We checked out of our smashing hotel, the Hamilton-Turner Inn, after an over-the-top waffle for breakfast, served by our friendly innkeeper. A true Southern lady, she stopped to chat to us about the fascinating history of her house, including its links…