I approached the Horse & Groom at Bourton on the Hill in the Cotswolds, on a dimming autumnal evening, with “child in the toy shop” level of anticipation. It had just been voted Pub of the Year in The Good Pub Guide 2016. The guide…
Why should somebody like me, who does not own a dog, who has never owned a dog, be interested in a book with the cover tagline “a must read for all dog lovers”? Predisposed to dismiss it as uninteresting reading, I took a dip inside…
I have experienced several spirit-sapping, early morning departures from UK airports (mainly Luton) this year. This makes me wonder, and not for the first time, whether flying (early, it is always early) with budget airlines was worth the effort. On one occasion, at Luton, we…
Wine and Brine, a small restaurant in Northern Ireland, was named as local restaurant of the year in the Waitrose Good Food Guide 2017. Another culinary coup for the province in 2016, which is Northern Ireland Year of Food and Drink. —- I was delighted to see Wine…
There is a direct service from London’s Marylebone station, fast (49 minutes, one stop), to Oxford via that incongruous commercial phenomenon Bicester Village, a chic and expensive designer shopping outlet in rural Oxfordshire. —- Since October (2015), for the first time in over a hundred years, trains have been running from London by a…
The film of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train opens in cinemas in October (2016). – – – – So it is settled. We don’t have to worry about the, appropriately, confused geography in The Girl on the Train. (Appropriate, because it is about a person…