I confess I’m not a fan of winter, it’s my least favourite season. Yes, I love Christmas: enjoying festive celebrations with family and friends, decorating the house, seeing the lights in London. And I can get pleasure from crisp sunny days, perfect for a walk whether in London or on a Northumberland beach. But I don’t like grey skies, and I especially don’t like the shorter days and longer nights.
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It might surprise you to know that London can be a good place to spot wildlife! Tucked into a loop of the Thames in west London is a watery wonderland. The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust was founded in the 1940s by the naturalist Sir Peter Scott, to protect wetlands and save wetland species.
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However much you plan a trip there will be some moments and places you didn’t expect. Places that weren’t on your itinerary but catch your eye, or simply provide a convenient pitstop. Places that delight you all the more because you expected little of them. Such serendipity is one of the joys of travelling. On our recent California trip, Eureka was such a place.
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The Periodic Table tells us that our world is made up of 118 elements. But the elements of nature are different from chemical elements. They were used to simplify the complexity of nature and matter by ancient people.
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I often go on a bit about the weather (I am British after all, and live up to that stereotype at least!) This month has been particularly ‘interesting’ in that respect. We reached pretty much the middle of the month without once seeing the sun, but also without any rain. All we had was gloom!
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Language differences may make it challenging to communicate with the people we meet when travelling, even if we have made the effort to learn a few words. But music transcends spoken languages, and the enjoyment of music becomes a shared experience irrespective of our different native tongues and cultures. It’s the most universal of languages, speaking to all of us no matter from where we come
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No, it isn’t possible to successfully photograph a redwood tree, nor to convey its impact; you have to experience it for yourself. Walking among these groves is unlike any other forest walk. More than by any other trees, we are dwarfed by them, and awed by a palpable sense of their great age. That age, that immense size, their sheer presence; only by being there can we feel those qualities.
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When I travel of course I take plenty of photos of the ‘big’ things I see. The landscapes, the city sights, the famous buildings and monuments, the wildlife, interesting people … The list is, if not endless, at least pretty long. But I’m also on the lookout for quirky details. The sort of thing that would never make it into a guidebook and which I come across by chance.
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Where do the seeds of an idea for a trip start? Maybe in a book or TV programme or a fellow blogger’s post? Maybe a friend comes back from a holiday full of enthusiasm for the place(s) visited? Or maybe you have memories of a place you loved and want to return to, having left so much of it as yet unexplored? For us California was such a place.
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The arrival and consequent colonisation of America by the Spanish and English is well known of course. But the influence of Russia on these north-western coasts is less often mentioned, and was new to me until we visited Fort Ross. The skies were grey, but the sea fret lent an air of mystery to the scenes here that heightened the sense of a journey back in time.
