Jan 2019 update. Eurostar is to start a third daily direct service from London to Rotterdam and Amsterdam on 11 June, 2019. The existing two services a day have been selling well since they were introduced through the Channel Tunnel on 4 April, 2018. Fares on the high-speed rail service will continue to start at £35 one way, with… Continue reading
Browsing Category Travel
In the house where Dylan Thomas set “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”
This is the time to think of Christmas books. Dickens started our passion, but who has time for the whole of Pickwick Papers, unless you just read the snowy, seasonal scenes? A Christmas Carol is a possibility, but, weighed down with Victorian sentimentality, it lends itself to cinematic or theatrical adaptation rather then a comfy read in… Continue reading →
Writing Aylesbury out of a children’s classic: how important are real places in literature?
When The Story of Holly and Ivy was first published, it was set in the Buckinghamshire market town of Aylesbury. In later editions the location was switched to the made-up Appleton. Has the book lost something as a result? “And where does your grandmother live?” asks a gentleman in the train compartment. “In Aylesbury”, answers Ivy. “Yes,… Continue reading →
Is Bluestone green enough for national park Pembrokeshire?
I was at Bluestone in Pembrokeshire in December, 2015, on an important weekend. On the Saturday, the 12th, world governments concluded the Paris Climate Agreement. It was a pivotal moment in the story of the world about us. What would we, as individuals, do? What would governments and industries do, to met those targets of… Continue reading →
85 years ago, Patrick Leigh Fermor sets off on his great walk to Constantinople
DECEMBER 7, 2018 Irongate Wharf, the exact spot where Patrick Leigh Fermor left England in the Stadthouder Willem, as he recounted in A Time of Gifts 85 years ago, on the ebbing afternoon of Saturday, December 9th, 1933, a young man of 19, shrugging off a hangover, with a backpack borrowed from a friend, walked under… Continue reading →
The great (rail) way west – to Pembrokeshire
The holiday express: through trains will run from Paddington to Tenby and West Wales in summer of 2019, continuing a link which began in 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 Great Westernite, it is the Tenby express leaving… Continue reading →