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.
Tag: England
‘Is This the Road to Stratford?’ Book Launch
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”
Climbing Cornwall Cliffs
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.
Port Isaac, Cornwall
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.
Salisbury Cathedral
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.
Salisbury UK
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.
Jane Austen’s Bath
Anyone who happened to follow me around England would become very sick of cathedrals and abbeys, and even everyday churches. I can’t walk past a church without checking it out. Each one is a little different (or very different) to the one before, although after a while I have trouble remembering which is which without looking at the photos.
Bath UK
On my first trip to the UK in 2011, I hired a car and spent two weeks wending my way, nervously, around narrow roads and laneways designed originally for horses and carts. I decided this time not to put myself through that stress, and so took advantage of a British Rail offer: 8 days of travel within a month for under $500, which I thought, after checking prices for individual trips, sounded good, though the offer is only for we people living outside the country, which seems awfully unfair on the locals.
Back to Cambridge
What is the best thing that can happen to a travel blogger when she’s lost all her travel photos? Get the photos back? And that’s what’s happened. I took the camera card to Payam Data Recovery, just to check out if something could be done with it. A week later, I was picking up my photos, saved onto a USB stick. And so I can share the more interesting parts of my recent trip to England after all. It’s fair to say I’m over the moon.
Ely Cathedral
I had discovered while researching my trip to the UK that just 14 miles out of Cambridge was Ely, famous for its cathedral, and where Oliver Cromwell lived for ten years of his life.
The bus took an hour and a quarter to get there, the consequence of stopping at every local bus stop along the way but I had a good look at the suburbs of Cambridge and the surrounding countryside, and watched the locals coming and going, noticing the change in their accents the further away from Cambridge we got.
Planning to the Nth 