It’s September, it’s back-to-school season and although all that means to someone of my age is that it’s time to go back to Brownies, I thought I’d give you a quick tour of my year abroad student room in Switzerland. That’s partly because this is a travel blog and partly because I had a film… More Year abroad student room tour
I’m a serial language learner. Oh, I don’t reach fluency, nowhere near. I have a degree in French and Spanish, I’ve been learning Norwegian semi-seriously on and off for nearly six years with the intention of becoming… well, not fluent but potentially able to get by if I moved to Norway. I learned enough Russian… More I learned Finnish for a month and here’s what happened!
This was one of the little pile of books I bought as a reward for having my second jab. Well, if you’re going to go all the way to Salisbury to have a needle stuck in you, you may as well pop into the bookshop. Quite a few books caught my eye and this is… More Travel Library: Icebreaker by Horatio Clare
Back in May, I wrote a post about my first swim of the season, my goals for the season and just generally my thoughts on swimming. The season has now come to an end; the pool has closed for the winter and I guess I’m now not swimming again either until it reopens next May… More 2021 swimming review
I’ve been kayaking before. I’ve been kayaking on the sea before – in fact, I’ve only ever been kayaking on the sea. But this post is about learning to kayak on a closed cockpit sea kayak with a spraydeck. The reason is there’s a thing I wanted to do but it’s only available to groups… More Learning to paddle a sea kayak
The other weekend I went for my first ever Moonlight Swim at Shepton Mallet lido. It’s an event they put on during the summer at the full moon and it features a two-hour outdoor swim by moonlight, firelight and fairy lights and a free hot chocolate to warm up afterwards. It’s a heated pool, heated… More Moonlight Swim at Shepton Mallet lido
Another year, another large-scale event missed. This time it’s Wellies & Wristbands 2021. I’ll let you in on a secret: it’s not my favourite of Girlguiding’s flagship events because I find it’s just too much and it’s too busy and too noisy and mostly too expensive but I could fix all of that and make this… More Wellies & Wristbands 2021 (at home)
I didn’t know I was going to Tintagel or I’d have 1) booked tickets to the castle 2) read my guidebook about the village 3) taken the Once and Future King with me. But I thought I was having a weekend walking on Dartmoor so I didn’t do any of that! It was my birthday… More An unexpected day at Tintagel | Camping on Dartmoor July 2021
In mid-June and late July, I went camping just off the edge of Dartmoor. It was supposed to be two weekends in June but the campsite was booked out and so I had to change my dates (and got a free night thrown in). I’d like to talk about the campsite but I have such… More Oaktree Lane Dartmoor campsite review | Camping on Dartmoor July 2021
I was camping the other day and realised that someone needs to speak up about fire safety while camping. Guess it’d better be me. My qualifications for this subject are that I’m a Guide leader of fourteen years’ standing, I was the fire marshall at my last job (and I wrote our fire procedures manual… More Fire safety while camping