Tag Archives: travel

A Last Minute Escape to Dubrovnik: Sunshine, Hidden Corners and a Perfect Birthday for The Bloke

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At the end of October we booked a very last minute trip to Dubrovnik. It served two purposes: a chance to celebrate The Bloke’s birthday somewhere a little different, and it gave us the break we desperately needed after our disastrous trip to Scotland in August. I have been to Dubrovnik before, but he hadn’t, and the idea of showing him around the city while also getting some proper rest felt like fun.

At the end of October we booked a very last minute trip to Dubrovnik. It served two purposes. First, it was a chance to celebrate The Bloke’s birthday somewhere a little different. Second, it gave us the break we desperately needed after our disastrous trip to Scotland earlier in the month. I had been to Dubrovnik before, but he had not, and the idea of showing him around the city while also getting some proper rest felt ideal.

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When a Holiday Doesn’t Quite Go to Plan

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Or… I got Covid. Yay.

There is something about arriving in Johnshaven that always feels like coming home. It doesn’t matter how long it has been since the last visit; as soon as we see the sea and the harbour, it all feels familiar again. That is exactly what I like about it… every visit feels like we are picking up where we left off. The village had grown slightly, with some new houses that had been built since our last visit a year ago, but not enough to see a huge difference. 

I was looking forward to seeing my favourite place in the world: Dunnottar Castle, and we decided that at the first opportunity we would go there to see the sunrise. As luck would have it we were able to do this within the first 24 hours of arriving. The castle looked as striking as ever and I sat on the clifftop for several hours, just taking it all in. It’s difficult to describe – I have never felt as connected to a place as I do there, and if given the opportunity I would just set up a tent and move in. 

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A Visit to Stirling: Stirling Castle and The National Wallace Monument

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After the sadness of losing my little friend, I was more than ready for a break in August, and there was only one place that The Bloke and I wanted to go: the west coast of Scotland. It’s my favourite place in the world, we have visited a number of times (even getting engaged years ago on the clifftop overlooking Dunnottar Castle), and we had been looking forward to it for months after booking the same beautiful cottage that we stayed in last year. 

The drive from Birmingham is a long one, though, so we decided to break it up with an overnight stop. Last year, we stayed in Falkirk and visited The Kelpies and Blackness Castle, and then visited Doune Castle the next day. This time, we chose to stay in Stirling. We have passed it on many occasions during the drive up there, and it has been on our list of places to see for a while. It felt like the perfect place to pause.

The drive up was surprisingly easy, and we arrived earlier than expected, so we decided to spend the afternoon at Stirling Castle. 

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A Trip to Little Venice and a Canal Boat Ride to Camden

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You know those rare days where everything just goes… right? That was last weekend.

The Bloke and I took a spontaneous trip to London. I had already booked the day off in anticipation of being needed by a social media client, who unfortunately wasn’t available. Meanwhile, The Bloke discovered that he had a few surprise days of annual leave, so we made a last-minute decision to have an overnight stay, just for a change of scenery and a bit of head-space after what has seemed like a rather intense few months. We hadn’t done a proper touristy day out together since last September, so we figured we were due.

Little Venice in London

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A Trip to Belfast: Mum’s Titanic Dream, My Perfect Nap

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A few weeks ago, Mum and I hopped over to Belfast for a quick trip. The whole reason? The Titanic Museum. 

It would be an understatement to say that she’s a Titanic obsessive. She has paintings signed by a survivor, an original 1912 newspaper that was published just a few days after the sinking, White Star Line wine glasses, replicas of the menus and tickets and a playlist of the music performed by the quartet on board, books, DVDs, clothing… She’s been to every exhibition you can imagine since it was discovered – I very distinctly remember going to the Greenwich Maritime Museum as a young child when some of the artefacts from the wreckage were recovered and put on display in the 90s, my parents then went to Wembley to see James Cameron’s tour of the movie set and costumes, and in the last few years alone I have booked and organised trips so she can see exhibitions at London Docklands, Worcester and the NEC. At the beginning of the year, she went to Camden for the VR experience that is currently there… 

Suffice to say, the Titanic Museum in Belfast has been at the top of her list for a very long time, and this is something that she has been going on (and on, and on) about for years.

Now, I’ll be honest – the Titanic has never really been my thing. I appreciate the history, of course, and I get why it’s significant, but after being made to spend many hours reading plaques and looking at ship artefacts and replicas in my youth, it is no longer my idea of a good time. 

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A Quiet Start to 2025

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It’s the first week of February and thank goodness… Did anybody else feel like January was the longest month ever, or was it just me? 

Despite this, 2025 has been pretty great so far. The steps that I took at the end of last year to reduce my workload and commitments have been extremely effective – so effective, in fact, that I was initially unnerved by how quickly I completed my task list each day. It took a little while to get rid of the nagging feeling that I had missed something, and I had to get out of the habit of triple checking everything just in case.

A pic at Baker Street that I took on my travels last month – if you put Gerry Rafferty on while looking at it, it looks like Sherlock is playing a tiny saxophone…

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2024: A Year in Review

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Over the last few years I have added a ‘Memories & Highlights’ double page into my Bullet Journal. This serves as a reminder at the end of the year of all the positive things that I’ve been lucky enough to experience over the last twelve months, and is extremely helpful during times when things are tough. 

Perhaps the most challenging part was at the start of the year when we moved house, and what followed was MONTHS of individual battles with various companies including SCS and So Energy (that went on for nine months until I lost my temper and started leaving negative reviews – amazing how a 1* review on Trust Pilot suddenly makes a company pay attention). We quickly realised that neither the landlord and the property management company weren’t interested in helping too, which hasn’t been great.

However, 2024 (despite all the challenges and annoyances we’ve faced this year), has in fact been pretty great for the most part. 

The Bloke and I have again been extremely lucky to watch numerous shows at the theatre. My favourites? Book of Mormon, &Juliet, Hamilton, I Should Be So Lucky, Here & Now and Dear Evan Hansen – many of which were on my bucket list. Additionally, I got the opportunity to meet STEPS at their press launch, and I don’t think I blogged about it at the time, but I met Pete Waterman TWICE. I won’t go into detail now as this post is already going to be a lengthy one, but I was so overwhelmed by meeting him that I cried when I got home. 

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A Silent Disco at The Natural History Museum

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There are certain things that just seem too cool to be true, and the idea of a silent disco at The Natural History Museum was one of them. 

Until earlier this year, when my friend Helen mentioned it as something that she would like to do for her birthday. 

Amazing. 

A silent disco in the Great Hall at The Natural History Museum in London

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A Week in Johnshaven, Scotland

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Back in August The Bloke and I took a last-minute, much-needed holiday in Scotland. We were lucky to find a lovely little cottage (that is rarely available) had a vacancy at the time where The Bloke was on annual leave, and booked it immediately – as if the universe had stepped in at a point where we really needed it.

We decided to add an extra day, staying in Falkirk overnight before we were due to check in so that we could see The Kelpies and Blackness Castle, and then stopped in at Doune Castle on the drive up the next day.

It was definitely the right decision, as it meant that we could split the 10 hour drive over two days, and saw things that had been on my travel bucket list for a while.

We found the tiny, winding road down to Johnshaven easily. There have been some changes – since the last time we visited, a bunch of houses have been built on the edge of the village which was a bit disorienting at first, and there has been the addition of a cafe and a lobster shop.

But as soon as we pulled up to the cottage, it felt like home.

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Back to Dunnottar Castle

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Dunnottar Castle is probably my favourite place in the whole world. 

Sitting on top of a 160ft rock near Stonehaven, the castle was once a fortress of the Earls Marischal, one of the most powerful families in Scotland. It now sits as a stunning ruin. 

During our first stay in Johnshaven in 2016 we had marked it as at the top of our list of places we wanted to visit, and I had watched lots of videos about it in advance, but nothing could prepare me for just how utterly breathtaking that first sight of the medieval ruins were. 

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