It’s Shakespeare’s birthday weekend and I’m celebrating in his birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon (Will, you don’t look a day over 400). So, in the spirit of all things literary and wanderlustful, I have compiled a list of Shakespeare quotes about travel from the bard’s most famous plays; to inspire you to either pick up a pen or get on a plane (or both). Read more
My passport may be bursting at the seams, but I’m definitely guilty of ignoring what’s in my own back yard. So, since I’ve been back in Birmingham (UK, not US), I’m making it my mission to explore my home city a little more, starting with my favourite places to visit – bookstores! Here’s my list of the best Birmingham bookshops for new and secondhand books, from comic book stores to independent bookshops selling used books; where you can find your next Brummy read: Read more
This year I literally saw in the New Year with a bang, as I celebrated New Year’s Eve in the Netherlands visiting a friend in Den Haag. She had warned me about a few odd Dutch traditions for New Year, but I was unprepared for the level of crazy my New Year celebrations in the Netherlands would bring!
Here are just a few (insane) ways the Dutch like to celebrate New Year and my exhausting experience celebrating New Year’s Eve in The Hague: Read more
After booking a last-minute flight to the Netherlands to spend New Year with a friend living in The Hague, I found myself being roped into the Nieuwjaarsduik Scheveningen. So, while you were nursing your New Year’s Eve hangover, I was taking a plunge into the North Sea as part of Den Haag’s New Year’s Day swim!
This is the story of how I was peer-pressured into running down Scheveningen Beach in nothing but my swimming cossie and an orange hat on the 1st January, wondering how I’d wound up in Holland, throwing myself into the icy waves on Nieuwjaarsdag (New Year’s Day). Read more
Hey guys. So, I recently participated in the World Nomads Travel Writer Scholarship programme, where I wrote a piece on the theme ‘a place that is unfamiliar to me’. Devastatingly, I didn’t win the scholarship (next year, perhaps?), so here is my entry published here instead, entitled Chasing Home: Read more
Dictionary: A book or electronic resource that lists the words of a language (typically in alphabetical order) and gives their meaning. Inspired by a long (and sunny!) weekend in the home of Oxford University, here is a day in Oxford city as told through Oxford Dictionary definitions… Read more
I feel as if spring has really snuck up on us this year. It’s officially time for people living in Britain (or anywhere temperate in the Northern Hemisphere) to come out of hibernation and start enjoying the extra hours of sunshine. And so, I have written this spring foraging guide to edible wild plants you can find in the UK. Read more
I’ve been back in the UK now for four months. I’m still reluctant to say ‘back home’, but I’ll admit that it’s slipped off my tongue more than once. Like travel writer Pico Iyer says in his TED talk, ‘Where are you from?’ and ‘Where is home?’ are more complex questions now than they once were. Read more
So, I’ve put on a lot of weight since I’ve moved back to the UK and with very good reason. British food is not an internationally beloved cuisine. In most large cities around the world, you may be able to find a decent pizzeria, Chinese takeaway or Irish pub.
But, you will never ever find a good chippy or a proper British pub outside the British Isles. Read more
London has a reputation for being expensive and often with good reason. A standard cup of coffee will cost you a cheeky £3-4, one stop on the tube can go for as much as a fiver and a trip to St. Paul’s Cathedral will set you back eighteen of your English pounds! However, one redeeming factor is that there are hundreds of free museums in London.
Here are just a few of the free museums in London and why you should visit them:
The iconic British Museum is instantly recognisable for the Great Court (pictured above), Read more