The summers are hot and full of activities! Click HERE to see 2025's trip to Sicily and the Auvergne, HEREfor 2024 (Europe), HERE for 2023 (Sicily, Paris), .HERE for 2022 (Amsterdam and Abruzzo), HERE for 2021 (Scotland, Paris, Kent), HERE for 2020 (Calabria and National Trusts), HERE for 2019 (London and Abruzzo), HERE for 2018 (Budapest, Le Marche, and Northern Ireland), HERE for 2017 (Paris and London), HERE for 2016 (festival and Chaps), HERE for 2015 (reunion and wedding), and HERE for 2014 (meeting the stars).
Blooming sights at our local National Trust house.
National Trust, homemade chocolate and hazelnut cookies like the ones we found in Paris, The Russell-Cotes gallery in Bournemouth, Boscombe Pier, and the annual wisteria and pink shirt photo
I first discovered Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies when I bought my mother a framed print many years ago. I didn’t realise that she was a local artist. Her work was on display at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum in Bournemouth.
Top left: The importance of a clear font and the comical placement of a holly serif. The other photos are details of work from the Rusell-Cotes gallery.
I branched out and sold baked goods at the St Denys Carnival this year. Other photos are from Winchester. Founded in 1382, Winchester College is the oldest continuously operating school in England.
Winchester sights
I performed Fauré's Requiem with lockdown hero Gareth Malone at Winchester College. He confided to me that he would be appearing as the Sherriff on Tuesday at Park Theatre's Whodunnit Unrehearsed 4 in London. We're going to see the show for my birthday on Friday.
Theatre voucher in hand, we spent my birthday weekend in London, enjoying sights old and new (but mostly new).
Hot weather
On our way to The Brown Collection, we walked through the Mayfair area, spotting famous residences and buying a coconut scrub brush at the old fashioned hardware store.
We visited the Hoi Polloi exhibition at The Brown Collection, home of British artist Glenn Brown. The artist is known for the use of appropriation in his paintings.
The artist took ideas from 17th century engravings and incorporated them into his own strikingly modern works.
Stoke Newington, where we stayed, was a revelation. We had a fantastic lunch in the garden of Acoustic Brasserie and then picked up a peanut butter fudge cake at a nearby bakery and ate it in the park.
In the evening, we walked to the Finsbury Park area and had an authentic Italian meal al fresco at Osteria Tufo, run by a Roman chef and reviewed by Grace Dent.
My birhday voucher from 2025 was applied to the Park Theatre's Whodunnit Unrehearsed 4. Set in the Wild West, our special celebrity Sheriff turned out to be Tamsin Grieg.
The next morning, we went to London Fields, which AI told me would be good for people-watching. We'd been there before to flash the Invader shown, but today, there was a busy market.
The bass clarinet player with a loop pedal was especially impressive.
Thank goodness for Italian immigrants! The gelato was the best we've had outside of Italy.
Our host recommeded us to visit the V&A East Storehouse, near Olympic Park in Hackney Wick. It was like the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, with priceless objects shelved away in rows.
The V&A East held Delft tiles, David Bowie memorabilia and the Firebird tutu, shown above.
We wanted a nice meal in 'Stokie' and booked into a pub for dinner. When we got there, it was full of Arsenal fans celebrating their recent victory. We cancelled and walked down the road to discover an outdoor table at Cálong (also reviewed by Grace Dent), which served Korean tapas dishes. Some of the tastiest food I can remember eating, we couldn't wait to recreate the flavours at home.
Because of the Arsenal celebrations, it was a long walk to the underground to get us to the National Gallery, but once there, we saw lots of amazing artwork, as shown above.
Some of my favourite baroque artwork, including Vermeer
For my birthday, Nick gave me lots of cool things: an air conditioner for the bedroom (we soon had a record-breaking heat wave to justify it) and a trip to Oxford to see Richard Ayoade, who was great.
Then in June, we went to Brighton for the weekend, stopping first for an amazing Mexican lunch, including a pineapple, hot honey, and pickle juice margarita.
This time on the pier, no seagull snatched our doughnuts.
Sundown by the seaside
The next morning, there was some kind of race from one pier to the other.
We went to the town museum to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year winners.
Another special birthday gift was an afternoon making German breads with Jürgen Krauss, the Great British Bakeoff semi-finalist who hails from Freiburg and plays the trombone.
We made pretzels with caustic lye, the old-fashioned way.
Having survived a school trip to Sicily together in 2025, the crew of adults met up at our house for dinner in July.
Hot on the heels of the Sicily Crew meetup, we gathered together in Reading with our theatre friends whom we see from time to time.
Having loved Ljubljana last October, we booked our summer holiday this year for three weeks in Slovenia, basing ourselves near the Alps.
Our nearest big town was Kranj, where we stocked up on market provisions the day we arrived. We returned several times to this historic town.
Mostly Kranj, above, with a pizza lunch and a stroll past the theatre, whose arcades were designed by Jože Plecnik. The architect oversaw the placement of the statue of beloved Slovene poet France Prešeren. The statue was created by the sculptors Francišek Smerdu and Peter Loboda and is the largest statue of Prešeren in the world.
I did my teacher thing and created a Google map of hundreds of places to visit. We only saw a fraction of them, as pictured here. Maybe a future trip will cover eastern Slovenia.
On our first Sunday, we took a driving tour with views of the Alps. We stopped at this roadside restaurant, Gostilna in Picerija Kocna Jezersko, for stuffed pork and cold Slovenian beer. Herbal Adventures, run by the Blonde Witch, was a fun stop recommended by our guidebook. The enthusiastic herbalist showed us around her garden and talked us through the range of schnapps and jams she produces.
We bought some of the special brew that takes two years to mature and contains 102 different botanicals. Back at our house, we dubbed it “medicine” and polished off the whole bottle throughout our stay. The drive through Austria and into the Alps was spectacular.
This is Solcava, the starting point of our 21-km drive through Alpine villages. We bought some wonderful peaches from a man sitting beside the road, visited the historic church, and heard some folk music with dancing.
We liked how there were all ages dancing and enjoying the folk music.
Some of our best views from that first Sunday, and one, top right, of the Capuchin Bridge in Škofja Loka
Škofja Loka was a beautiful town we visited twice.
Saint Jacob’s church has light fittings and other ornaments by Jože Plecnik.
Every building was decorated with ancient frescoes and ornate carving centuries old.
The town's museum held its museum, with artifacts from the distant and not so distant past, including the Communist era. I love the old photographs of people. The prehistoric carving, bottom right, features a unique arrow motif that is rare in this area.
Some of the art got weirder and more modern. We saw the first of many ornately painted wedding trousseaux and a portrait that looked uncannily like Stephen Fry as Lady Bracknell.
Slovenian folk art is rich with painted beehive panels and UNESCO protected Idrija lace.
We sought out the wooden Devil's Bridge, with its convoluted history involving frogs, submerged combs, the mayor's daughter, and the devil.
The donkeys lived near our mountain house and grazed on the hillside. Nick made fruit tiramisu and we returned to Kranj to stand under the artificial rain clouds.
We saw lots of folk art in the Gorenjska Museum, which is housed in the town hall.
The painted chests were beautiful and the story of the devil sharpening the housewife's tongue was new to me.
Top centre is the ghostly abandoned lake in Preddvor, more Art Nouveau and folk art, and Tiny Cow's Polaroid photo with coffee cup.
We arrived at Lake Bled early to beat the crowds. It was serene and beautiful and we had the place to ourselves for a while.
We don't know why he was in his underwear, but the man did catch a big fish. Top centre is the iconic cream cake that is famous all over Slovenia. We had it at the source of the original recipe, the Hotel Park in Bled.
Radovljica is a town known for its long history of beekeeping. We visited the Museum of Apiculture and admired the Art Nouveau beehive on the front of the bank. We returned to this town several times.
Some of the painted beehive panels and a barbecue lunch at Kunstelj
The inside of St Peter's Church, cooling off in the river near Preddvor, market-bought doughnuts, and the museum of technology
Most of these photos are from the museum of technology, along with Nick's girolles on toast and a barbecue meal rescued from marauding goats
Of all the cars at the technological museum, I liked the Bewitched-era one the best.
Bottom left, demonstrating the thickness of bullet proof glass on Soviet politicians' cars. We had an Italian lunch before our bear watching experience.
We tried not to get our hopes up about seeing a bear in the wild, but after an hour of waiting, this one appeared to have a snack.
We visited a wonderful organic agricultural farm that is set on an ancient site where a woolly mammoth was discovered. We bought honey, curd cheese, and apples from the woman who lives on the farm.
The unusual key, bottom left, is from the 14th century. As we were being told about it, the young son of the farmer came in and played with it. Bottom right, the hexafoil serves as an ancient solar emblem and a magical protective symbol used to ward off evil spirits, fire, and lightning. The six-petaled geometry confused or trapped malevolent entities, preventing them from entering the home.
Kamnik is the site of The Little Castle home of the fabled Stingy Veronica, half woman, half serpent. The fountain was designed by Plecnik and middle right shows a real beehive in the wild.
We heard a great concert in Radovljica featuring the musicians above playing Stravinsky and Schnittke. They were drumming up business before the concert by playing on the street.
Slovinske Konjice is a picturesque town with Art Nouveau houses and a river bisecting the main street.
We noticed that there was a LOT of gold in Slovenian churches. We even saw someone giving an altar a lick of gold paint in another town. Maybe that explains the White House renovations. The photo in the centre looks just like an oil painting to me.
Celje is a town with Roman heritage once mighty enough to challenge the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I thought the expression on the stained glass cow looked like that of our own Tiny Cow.
Various sights in Celje, including its church and water tower.
We stayed for two days in this wonderful AirBnB property outside of Trieste, Italy. The pool was wonderfully welcome! We took the bus into Trieste and headed for the cathedral, dedicated to Saint Justus.
Among the works of historical interest in the cathedral are the apsidal mosaics depicting Our Lady of the Assumption and Christ between Saints Justus and Servolus, laid by master craftsmen from Veneto in the 12th-13th centuries.
The Roman Theatre of Trieste is an ancient open-air theatre located at the foot of the San Giusto hill in central Trieste. Built in the 1st century BC and expanded in the 2nd century AD, it held 3,500 to 6,000 spectators. They must have been crammed together, as it looks quite small to me.
The Greek Orthodox Church of San Nicolò dei Greci is a historical Greek Orthodox Church in Trieste built in 1784-1787 and re designed by architect Matteo Pertsch.
It was too hot to spend much time in Trieste after lunch. We returned to our pool to cool down and then went to the local pizzeria for dinner. The following day, we drove to Izola, where we went swimming with the locals in the morning before it got too hot and crowded.
Photos from Izola's waterfront and beyond.
We didn't visit Piran but could see it from the open air sculpture park, which backed onto a campsite.
We visited the hilltop town of Padna. The most unexpected find here was a man selling produce out of his garage in the middle of the day. We bought olive oil and fresh and jarred tomatoes from him.
A spectacular highlight of our trip was The Church of the Holy Trinity, with rare frescoes from the 1400s which were only rediscovered in 1949 after hiding from invaders behind whitewash for centuries. The Dance of Death is its top unusual hit.
Excitement on our final morning in Trieste! Firemen showed up at the gate to investigate a neighbour who was mysteriously burning things in their garden at dawn and dusk. Our host gleefully let them in and I gleefully took photos.
Štanjel was a quite town, mostly deserted, with Ferrari Gardens and a castle.
The bora is a fierce wind in the Trieste area that can reach 160km per hour. The Museum in Štanjel has a glass cabin that recreates these winds. I repeatedly pushed the button for 120km wind to cool off and to dry my sweat- sodden shirt.
Contemporary art in the excellent Štanjel museum. Percussive harps made from local stone are typical of this area and there were lots in the museum to try.
Nick found us a great place to have lunch before we headed to Šmartno, a town rebuilt after a 1979 earthquake.
With a span of 85 meters, Solkan Bridge is the world's longest stone arch railroad bridge. We soaked our feet in the cool, clear water while watching the locals plummet down stream.
Locals enjoying the water. Back home, we had parmigiana made with barbecued aubergines. The next day, we returned to the Kranj market. .
We went to Sutdor in search of picturesque two-storey barns. I'm not sure we found any poper ones. .
We learned a lot in the Cerkno museum about life in Slovenia and the UNESCO-listed Idrija bobbin lace tradition.
Cerkno carnival characters embodying social roles, human flaws, and ancient pagan heritage. They have names like Flax Man and Scabby Man, like rejected super heroes. Note also the fascist reading material for youth.
We happened upon this swimming spot by zooming into contributors’ comments on Google maps. It was a wonderful way to cool down in the heat wave.
The medieval festival in Radovljica was small, but heartfelt. A dozen or so characters did everything from courtly dances to sword fighting to fire breathing.
They made the heavily dressed participants stand in the direct sun while the mayor stood in the shade to make his interminable speeches. We watched the guy in the middle set up a medieval contraption that I think was to become a children's swing.
The jester had great comic timing, and the boy in green was game for anything, despite the heat.
Impressive feat and lucky photo
Hard to pronounce, but easy to love, Tržic was the former home of a huge shoe production and indigo dyeing industry.
The museum was excellent, and the curator guide was charming and welcoming. He turned up in the upstairs videos giving information about local habits and skills.
A lot of sportsmen hail from Slovenia and the Tržic museum showed off their accomplishments. A whole floor was dedicated to skiing.
Peko was the Tržic's leading shoe company. We learned about the process at the town's museum. The globes, top centre, were filled with water to cast more light on the hardworking cobblers. Top right is processed indigo plant, dried and pressed into hard, dark blue blocks or cakes for shipping. These blocks look and feel like dense stones and require breaking or grinding into a powder before use.
Radetzky of Strauss waltz fame lived in the house top centre. The actor-cum-museum guide urged us to visit the Dovžan Gorge just north of Tržic. We saw this as another opportunity to get wet in a cold river.
Kropa is a historic market town known for its iron forging. There was an exposition honouring master decorative iron forger Joža Bertoncelj.
Back in Radovljica, we splashed out on a seven-course tasting meal at Hiša Linhart. This dessert was our favourite, with frozen spheres and wild strawberries, buckwheat crumble, and all sorts of interesting tastes and textures. We also liked the egg with pork crackling, the celery and apple granita, the egg dish taken from Slovenia's oldest cookbook, and of course the handmade chocolates.
After our meal, we attended a spectacular concert by the Fivebrass Quintet, featuring new works by young Sloveian Composers. Luka Toncic’s piece, Plehnata suita, brought tears to my eyes. The composer was in attendance, but I was too shy to congratulate him. I admired the amazing technique of big-armed horn player David Tretjak, who had to do a lot of difficult playing in this concert. On another lazy day, we went to the Kranj multiplex to see what all the Odyssey fuss was about. We enjoyed the film, as did Tiny Cow.
We drove a short distance to this manor house, only to discover that it was in the same location as our favourite swimming spot, shown earlier. It was raining when we arrived and we had ice cream in the garden. We drove up to the church on the hill and saw a man harvesting potatoes.
On the way home, we revisted Škofja Loka, with its ancient Capuchin Bridge.
Our best souvenier from this trip was a set of linen table napkins, handmade by blue-eyed Denis, enthusiastic proprietor of LinenFriday.
We planned to go to Austria for the day but got turned away at the border, so instead, we visited Begunje na Gorenjskem, a place with sad history. Nuns used to run a women's prison here and there is a cemetery where prisoners of war are buried.
Plecnik shows up once again with a summer house build to the nuns' specifications. Just outside of town was the surprisingly scenic Kamen Castle.
We ate at the very traditional restaurant that is run by the family of the Avsenik Brothers. We shared the Happy Carniolan plate, some goulash in a cauldron, and the delicious Prekmurska gibanica, a protected national dessert featuring eight distinct layers of poppy seeds, walnuts, apples, and quark cheese separated by filo dough. After lunch, we learned all about the remarkable Avsenik family and the musical tradition they created.
Apart from the numberous gold records and hundreds of polka tunes, the most arresting thing I discovered in the museum was how much the group's singer, Ema Prodnik, looked like my mother.
We drove over a stream every day going on excursions from our rental house. We decided to stop and put our feet in the cold mountain water. On our final day, we returned to Kranj and found two galleries that we hadn't yet visited.
Our final photos from Slovenia, including fried zucchini flowers and a guestbook signed by Count Binface. It was a memorable and packed holiday!
Meeting up with friends on A-level results day, with mini golf and my first ever Wimpy burger. Plus a Space Invader-inspired lion spotted on the pier.
