Visiting Arbroath – A Tale of Scottish Independence and Smoked Fish Arbroath is a small Scottish fishing town on the coast just north of Dundee. It has two main claims to fame – the Arbroath Smokie and an ancient Abbey where the Declaration of Arbroath was signed – one of the first formal statements of […]
The Special Story of Salisbury – A New City with History.
History and Heritage in Salisbury – the oldest ‘New Town’ in England Despite living in Wiltshire a few years ago, I haven’t visited Salisbury for a lot longer. In fact, it was half a century ago. We lived in the area when I was a kid so I remember trips to Salisbury for shopping and […]
Mary Arden’s Farm, the Tudor Kitchen and the Art of Chocolate.
The Tudor Kitchen at Mary Arden’s Farm and some Twenty-First Century Chocolate Making in Shakespeare’s England: Quintessentially English countryside and villages around Stratford-upon-Avon seems, in my fanciful eyes, remarkably unchanged since Tudor times. The narrow lanes lined with hedges, timber-framed houses, castles and manor houses in themselves are enough to take any visitor a step back history. […]
Mayflower Pilgrims in Lincolnshire – Gainsborough and Boston
Separatists and Secrets – the Mayflower and the roots of American Heritage: 2020 marks the 400th Anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower with its 102 passengers to a new life in America. We are travelling England exploring the Mayflower heritage in a series of features and this trip takes us to Lincolnshire. The City of […]
Exploring Tay Country, Scotland – Feasting, Whisky and a Royal Visit
Crowning Scotland’s Kings and More – Perthshire: Despite my Scottish heritage, I’ve never spent much time exploring the East Coast to the north of Edinburgh. The MacLeans come from the Western Isles, specifically from Mull and so on family trips we generally turned left at Edinburgh or Stirling and head to Oban for the ferry. […]
Mayflower Heritage in Dartmouth
The Mayflower and Speedwell in Dartmouth Although the annual Thanksgiving Dinner marks the survival of the early European settlers in New England, the less remarked upon, but nonetheless remarkable story, is of the initial obstacles they encountered even before setting sail across the perilous Atlantic Ocean. This is set to change with a series of […]
Discovering Dartmouth
Dartmouth – Heaven on Earth in Devon “Ruby’s going to Heaven for her holiday” announced my young daughter, not registering my look of shocked concern. Further probing clarified that rather than departing to a celestial paradise, Ruby (our trusty motor) was hitting the highway and heading to Devon, a destination which, as I recently discovered […]
Antigua – British Heritage in the Caribbean
Hurricanes and Heritage – British Colonialism in Antigua: One of the best ways to escape the monotony of a long haul flight is to find a good film to watch. Flicking restlessly through the available movies on the Virgin Atlantic flight to Antigua I found ’Twelve Years a Slave’. On my bucket list since release, […]
Perfect Pesto
Italians do it better – Pesto World Championships, Genoa, Italy: It stands to reason that Italians should make the best Pesto in the World. A simple fusion of two kinds of cheese, garlic, basil, olive oil, pine nuts and salt sounds on the face of it like something that could easily be recreated anywhere. But, […]
Plotting the Mayflower Heritage – a 400 Year Anniversary
The Mayflower Discovery Trail: The year 2020 marks the 400 year anniversary of the Mayflower’s journey from England to America. It was in 1620 that an intrepid group of dissenters set sail across the Atlantic on what was then an incredibly dangerous journey. Underlying their journey was a belief that the reformation of English churches […]