Local travel around the Wessex Area. I’m a Wessex Girl through and through (we’re more into wellies and cider than white stilettos and cocktails) and these are my posts about travel, adventure and holidays around Dorset, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Devon and Somerset.
Are you looking for a holiday around Bournemouth? Got you. What’s good to do on the Isle of Wight? Got you! Christmas on a heritage railway? Oh yes, got that too. Plenty of seaside, camping and family days out here, so take a look and see what catches your eye.
Back in the summer, I had a beautiful spa evening but even while I was enjoying it, I was thinking how much more I’d enjoy it in the winter, when it was dark and cold. So I picked an evening when it would be wintery, when it wasn’t half term or Christmas or Valentine’s Day… More A winter spa evening
Bournemouth at Christmas – ok, it doesn’t compare with some of the big markets which is why you won’t see it in lists of “best Christmas markets in Europe 2022!!!” but it’s still good fun. It starts down on the pier and stretches all the way through the gardens and up to the Square. So,… More Christmas in Bournemouth
This week I’m bringing you glad tidings from Shaftesbury, a royal town in North Dorset. Why? Well… If you don’t watch Richard Osman’s House of Games, it’s a teatime quiz show made on a shoestring where four celebrities compete to win dartboards, aprons, deckchairs and the like, all emblazoned with the stylised face of… More Shaftesbury: a royal town in North Dorset
Down in the depths of the Isle of Purbeck, you’ll find a perfect chocolate box village called Worth Matravers. It’s all built from local grey limestone, there’s a duckpond in the middle and one of these tiny local pubs perched on the hilltop, with incredible sea views, the sort of pub where you can get… More Walking to Dancing Ledge from Worth Matravers
I don’t really celebrate Halloween. My parents never let me trick or treat as a kid and we never carved pumpkins either so those are both things I just don’t do. Well, by the time I was old enough to not need their permission to trick or treat, I was too old for it –… More Halloween at Upton Country Park
That’s a total clickbait title – for the first time, I deliberately didn’t book a qualification at Try Inspire Qualify because there were none I wanted to do that I haven’t already done. Try Inspire Qualify has a lot in common with Camp Wildfire, actually: a lot of adults taking the weekend off being responsible… More I didn’t qualify at Try Inspire Qualify!
You may – or more likely, may not – remember back in 2019 I started a series called Before It Burns Down, which is a very tasteless title for my plan to visit all the cathedrals, after having realised when Notre-Dame caught fire that these medieval behemoths might not actually sit and wait for me… More The weirdness and wonder of Wells Cathedral
If you’ve been reading the blog or following me on Instagram, you’ll know that I’ve been trying to get in touch with my inner waterbaby this summer – I’m building up my kayaking skills and confidence, in part through wild swimming, and I swim a mile twice a week in my local outdoor pool. But… More A Twilight Spa at Aqua Sana Longleat Forest
I spent the weekend (my birthday weekend!) camping in Devon. On Friday, having finally arrived at my campsite two and a half hours later than planned thanks to everything going wrong with the traffic, I decided to drive over to Bude for the evening. I fancied getting a wild swim in while I was in… More Swimming in Bude Sea Pool
RSPB Arne is a nature reserve, a peninsula covered mostly in rare lowland heath sticking out into the west side of Poole Harbour. You may remember it from my Christmas Adventure with Tom & Catherine this year. It welcomes day visitors but you don’t normally get to camp there so when the opportunity came up… More Camping at RSPB Arne: the Big Wild Sleepout