As the world seeks ways to reduce its carbon footprint over the next crucial decades, travel will have to do its bit too. There are many areas where action is required, such as reducing the impact of flying, increasing recycling in hotels and making food and drink more sustainable. But as the tourism industry primes… Continue reading
The worst day of the year for the railways in the UK isn’t when storms, floods or snow do their worst to cripple the network. It’s on that one day in August when the ritual above-inflation rise in fares is announced for the next New Year. By the same token, the best day for motorists… Continue reading
“At one end of the Thames you may picnic over the river on ancient farm bridges garlanded with stonecrop, and watch aerial warfare between monstrous dragonflies; at the other end is the Thames Barrier, reposing in the departing flow like a shining line of walnut shells.” – A Walk Along the Thames Path (Michael Joseph,… Continue reading
53 years today, on Saturday, August 31st, 1968, Garfield Sobers became the first player in the history of cricket to hit every ball of an over for six. I was there and I wrote a book about it, Sobers six hit perfection at Swansea: That was the Day. Sobers was captaining Nottinghamshire that day, in a… Continue reading
How we found one of Monet’s flowers using a mobile phone plant identification app. In 1894 the artist Claude Monet ordered a selection of plants from his new friend Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac, who had recently exhibited plants from his nursery at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1889. One of them, unsurprisingly, was the water… Continue reading
The holiday express: in 2021 there were no through trains from Paddington to Tenby and West Wales on summer Saturdays, breaking a link which has endured with only a few gaps since the days of Queen Victoria. “If there be any one train more than another, the sight of which stirs the patriotic pride of an enthusiastic… Continue reading
Update BeaconLit is back as a mini-festival on Saturday 10 July 2021. The festival, which launched in 2013 and ran every year until the Covid pandemic, was cancelled in 2020. The committee decided Festival 2021 could not go ahead in its usual format of a full day event, with author panels, interviews, workshops etc. But… Continue reading