Sydney has had a few monikers over the years, but perhaps none so evocative as The Emerald City with its shimmering harbour, golden beaches and dazzling architecture – new and old. This particular name comes from the David Williamson play (newly coined at the time) ‘Emerald City’, referencing that other great Land of Oz, the…
Sculpture By The Sea
Another crowd-pleasing if quirky Sculpture By The Sea along the spectacular Bronte to Bondi coastal walk – the world’s largest free to the public sculpture exhibition. Two kilometres of cliff top paths with 100 sculptures from around Australia and across the world with some 500,000 visitors over 18 days. You need to get there early…
Cooktown – The Final Frontier
There are a couple of ways to reach Cooktown, some 326k’s north of Cairns. There’s the inland sealed route that takes you up from the tropical rainforest coast to the dry tableland ranges and the inland outback of Cape York. It’s around a 4-hour comfortable drive on a two-lane ‘highway’ that takes in some spectacular…
Koufonisi, A Dose of Paradise in the Windy Cyclades
Koufonisi is made up of two island gems, Pano (upper) and Kato (lower), both part of the Lesser Cyclades that include Irakleia, Schoinoussa, Donousa and Keros with Pano Koufonisi the most populated with some 400 or so souls – more in summer when tourists arrive to stay, no day trippers though, as these islands are…
Lyme Regis and The Jurassic Coast
Another bucket list location ticked off, Lyme Regis on the stunning Jurassic Coast. It’s where the rugged cliff tops and coastlines of West Dorset and East Devon meet. Bucolic Thomas Hardy countryside with ancient castles, medieval churches, impossibly cute villages and gorgeous seaside towns. Perhaps none more beautiful than Lyme Regis, the so called ‘Pearl…
Deiá and the Serra de Tramuntana
After a couple of days in sunny Palma we headed out of town, having been picked up by good friends to drive across the island and over the mountains to the magical hilltop village of Deiá where they’ve been living on and off for some 10 years. We’ve been looking forward to coming to Deiá…
Ciutat de Mallorca
I can’t believe we haven’t been to Mallorca before. After all the years of travelling, arriving in beautiful ancient Palma de Mallorca (Ciutat de Mallorca) is somewhat of a revelation. Capital of the Balearic Islands, Palma was first founded by the Romans in 123 B.C., but of course given its strategic position in the Mediterranean,…
Charleston and the Churches
It would be hard to pick a more bucolic English setting than Charleston Farmhouse in East Sussex. Once the home of Vanessa Bell, her lover Duncan Grant and, as was their modernist way, his lover David Garnett. This was a very unconventional household for 1916. Part of the Bloomsbury Group, they were some of the…
Ancient Rye and The Barren Nuclear Wasteland of Dungeness
Eastwards along the south coast from Hastings lies the old sea port of Rye, founded in 1289 and a member of the Cinque Ports, a confederation of English Channel ports (Hastings, New Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich) dating back to around 1350. Rye, a royal dockyard and shipyard provided half of the ships and mariners…
A Little Unorthodox In St. Leonards-On-Sea
There’s a gorgeously unorthodox Bed & Breakfast in St. Leonards-On-Sea (near Hastings) that’s like a time portal to the 1880’s and the dizzying highly decorated camp of Victorian England. It all gets even more OTT when greeted by the very Orthodox owner, Aleksandr, a recently ordained Russian Orthodox Priest, an imposing and slightly disconcerting sight in…
Travels With My Ant 