The Gippsland Lakes are a network of lakes, marshes and lagoons, covering an area of around 350 square kilometres. From Bairnsdale, I followed the Princes Highway, as it snaked its way down and around a point known as Jemmy’s Point.
In 1889, a wall was built to fix the position of a naturally occurring channel between the lakes and Bass Strait, to stabilise the water level, create a harbour for fishing boats and to open the lakes up to shipping. Hence the name, Lakes Entrance.
I decided last week I needed some R&R and some nature, so I headed down to Victoria’s lakes district on the south-east coast. I’d been promising myself I would explore the area for years but somehow hadn’t got round to it. I stopped the first night in Bairnsdale, before taking the last 38kms down to Lakes Entrance the next day.
After my slightly disappointing visit to Tintagel Castle, I hitched a ride up the hill on the mini bus they provide (thank heavens, one less Cornwall hill to negotiate) to the village. While waiting for a bus to take me back to Port Isaac (I was never quite sure, while in Cornwall, whether or not a bus was going to come), I wandered up the main street and came to a 14th century medieval hall house. It has the most gorgeous undulating roof and walls, and I absolutely had to go in for a look.
Continue reading “The Old Post Office Medieval Hall House, Tintagel, Cornwall”
I thought, while I was in Port Isaac, I’d catch a bus out to Tintagel. There’s a castle there, or the ruins of one. It was built in the 13th century by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry 111, with an outer bailey on the cliff tops of the mainland and an inner ward with a great hall and chambers on an isolated and inhospitable rocky headland.
This week, I’m launching the third book in my Planning to the ‘Nth series. Is This the Road to Stratford? describes my trip to England in 2011. Arriving in Manchester, I crossed by train to York, where I picked up a particularly malevolent rental car and, bewildered by indecipherable road signs and massive, terrifying roundabouts, wound my way down to Oxford. From there, having with great relief disposed of the car, I caught the train to London.
The book is now available as an ebook from Amazon. To check it out, click here.
Continue reading “‘Is This the Road to Stratford?’ Book Launch”
I had decided long ago, while watching the 70s version of Poldark, that I would one day walk along some Cornwall cliffs. On my first morning in Port Isaac, I had my chance.
Gazing up at the cliff, looming over the town, I took a deep breath and headed up Roscarrock Hill past the Doc’s surgery and onto the track.
Anyone who’s followed my blog or read my books will know I’m besotted with film locations.
I’ve been waiting for a chance to visit Cornwall ever since the seventies, when I watched the Poldark series, with its ragged cliffs, waves crashing into coves where smugglers plied their trade, windswept moors, tin and copper mines and, let’s face it, its leading man. This was my chance.
Recently my artist daughter exhibited some of her paintings in an art exhibition at Coolart Homestead at Somers, on the Mornington Peninsula, 80 kilometres south of Melbourne. I went down for a look.
I woke on my second day in Salisbury to discover the weather had returned to grey skies and misty rain. Today was the day for my visit to Salisbury Cathedral.
One of my very favourite authors is Susan Howatch. Susan wrote a series of novels based around the Church of England and its clergy, and having lived and studied in Salisbury, set the stories there, calling it Starbridge.
Planning to the Nth 