My ordinary church hall Brownies seem to have become Forest Brownies. I’m in an outdoorsy bushcraft wild state of mind and the plague is still ravaging, so Monday Evenings Indoors Brownies are (maybe temporarily) Forest Brownies now. Being a Brownie leader is stressful sometimes, especially when you only took on the Brown Owl job right … More Forest Brownies: campcraft & firelighting in the woods
I’ve just watched someone in all seriousness tell a fairly large following that you can use Google Earth to plan a hike and therefore I need to announce categorically that no, you cannot! And thus here is how to plan a hike.. This is about the route, by the way. It’s not about equipment, experience, … More How to plan a hike
Well, it seems I’m the go-to person for writing about celebrity travelogues in Iceland (see Zac Efron last summer…) so here we are again in Iceland with Alexander Armstrong. Of course, a well-spoken BBC presenter on a Channel 5 documentary isn’t going to make quite the waves throughout the internet that a Hollywood A-lister on … More Iceland with Alexander Armstrong (episode 1)
On Friday I went out for my long-awaited night navigation by sea kayak, which is the mysterious thing I had to practice sea kayaking for in September. The October weather smiled down on us. The run of wind and rain and grey skies vanished literally just for the evening and we set out onto a glassy … More Serenity, sunset and shooting stars: night navigation by sea kayak
Today is the second anniversary of me flying back into Moscow from my adventures in Murmansk, Ekaterinburg and Perm, the second anniversary of seeing Red Square properly for the first time, and I think the post I’m going to commemorate the event with is this one, Russia on film. Back in 2018, I found three … More Russia on film
I’ve done some whittling before – I own my own bushcraft knife and, for safety, a pair of kevlar gloves – but the other day I went out in the woods to learn how to carve a spoon. I was looking into bushcraft but ultimately, it’s all stuff I’ve done before (firelighting, shelter-building etc) or … More How to carve a spoon
It’s now two years since my big Russian adventure and to celebrate the anniversary, and because I was talking about language-learning the other day, I want to talk about overcoming the Russian language barrier. I put off my Russia trip for years. Russia was well outside my comfort zone. It’s so… Russian. It never feels quite … More Overcoming the Russian language barrier
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
I Am A Polar Bear 