Tag: travel
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Villeneuve-lès-Béziers – Cycling the Canal du Midi to the Mediterranean and an Ornithologist’s Dream
We arrive at Camping Les Berges du Canal, and it does just what its name says, the canal with its green waters, barges and rampant wildflowers runs right outside it. The banks are lined with plane trees. Béziers lies 5 kilometres along the cycle track, and its cathedral comes highly recommended so why do I…
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Why it’s impossible to zoom through France – From Dieppe to the Med’s Béziers
The plan is to bomb through France to Catalonia for our Spring tour. The minute we park up in Dieppe at Aire Camping-car Dieppe, there’s the usual magic, with the lights from the narrow restaurants reflected in the port’s waters, the masts of the sailing boats, the ghostly chalk cliffs, and Notre-Dame de Bonsecours looking…
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Dorset – Abbotsbury’s Swannery, South West Coastal Path and Sub-tropical Gardens
I scoot across to Portesham’s farm shop and café from the campsite. It serves good bread, British cheeses, vegetables without a piece of plastic in sight, along with the kind of incongruous nick-nacks that are endemic in all farm shops – cow mugs, primrose and poppy tea towels. After stocking up, we’re off on the…
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Pocket Friendly ways to while away the time on the Euston Road and a traditional Italian Restaurant in Paddington
We always think of major cities as pocket heavy destinations. Euston Road bucks the trend. First there’s Gothic St. Pancras Station and hotel, which takes opulence to its extreme and is great for a drink, or to take in the poet, John Betjeman’s statue, or the giant soldier kissing his partner farewell. Free entry…
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Street Art, Street Food, An Independent Bookshop and the Driverless Ghost trains of the Postal Museum at Mount Pleasant
We double back on ourselves today so we’re whisked into Whitechapel again from Abbey Wood to hunt down Hanbury Street, which crosses Brick Lane, to trace the street art. Huge outdoor murals have us darting from one to the other. The most gripping for me being the close-up of a man’s sad face, lines like…
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A Detour to the Southbank and on to Spice heaven in Southall
From Little Venice’s watery world we’re disloyal to the Elizabeth Line and shoot along to the Embankment on the Bakerloo’s old rattle and shake. It’s that time of winter evening, too late for museums, too early for libations of the alcoholic kind, so it’s non-negotiable, the buzz of the Southbank is the place to be,…
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Mayfair Meanders and on to Little Venice
Off we trot from the Elizabeth Line’s Bond Street station through Mayfair to the Halcyon Gallery on New Bond Street. I must admit that the easy-going attitude of the Whitechapel Gallery is more my style. Halcyon’s walkie-talkie clad, black suited doormen are perfectly well-mannered, but the formality makes me feel like an intruder. It’s worth…
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Canary Wharf’s Sci-fi Skyline to Mayfair’s Church of Food
The Elizabeth line’s Canary Wharf is our destination, with its sci-fi obelisks, very 2001. Soon we’re walking in the cross-rail roof garden where glass and steel meet giant palms, fatsia japonica, spices, cocoa, banana and coffee bean trees. The roof garden sits on the Meridian between the west and east hemispheres and features plants from…
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A Three-day Jaunt Tracing London’s Iconic Elizabeth Line – Whitechapel and Spitalfields
As my chauffeur eases the van between the over-hanging trees down the hill to Abbey Wood campsite, our excitement fizzes like Champagne in a flute. As two Londoners and now happy West Sussex denizens we still get that Champagne fizz when we return as tourists to the city of our birth. No sooner have we…
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From Veliko Tarnovo’s Historical Sights to the Rural Peace of Dimcha – The end of our Personal Pilgrimage
One ticket to Veliko Tarnovo’s historical sites lasts for two days. We spend a good portion of that time wandering round in circles searching for them. The Museum of the Bulgarian Revival is a gloriously colourful blue and white building. It is where the Bulgarian Constitution was negotiated by a multitude of representatives at the…
Campervan Therapy 