Our 2025 Remembered - First half until June
We did an awful lot of travelling, exploring and eating for this website during 2025, so we have just pulled together some photos of the first half of the year - with links to the relevant pages on this site.
The Chains in winter on Exmoor
Living inside Exmoor National Park, we always spend time just after New Year wandering around in the moors…
These hikes in the middle of the moors often end up in Lynton or Lynmouth where it’s always fun to spot on of the wild goats in the Valley of Rocks.
In early 2025 we were off to Cornwall - this time to an amazing holiday home in Polzeath…
And then we were off to the Lake District for a two part stay in February - starting at The Samling, an very lovely hotel situated on a beautiful slope overlooking Lake Windermeer.
The second half of our stay was centred on the lovely and cosy Rothay Manor at Ambleside.
And then it was back down to Cornwall, this time St Ives.
And then we were off to the very northern tip of Denmark.
We loved Skagen and the extraordinary area based on the sand spit which reaches north into the Skagerrak.
The town is filled with lovely people and delicious food.
After that we visited Aarhus known as Europe’s City of Smiles. We could see why…
We stayed at the lovely Budock Vean Hotel…
The grounds of the Budock Vean
Then there was a trip to Dorset with my old friend, the poet and writer James Crowden - this time tracking down out-of-the-way cider farms.
And another local day lout tracking down the best cream teas in lovely tea gardens.
And then it was back down past Cornwall to the Isles of Scilly to meet with various food and drink producers around the islands.
Then Cornwall again, staying at this amazing property in Mousehole and being catered for by our brilliant friends Rebecca and Robin from Indulgence Catering.
The Fallen Angel
And then, to round off the first half of 2025, to Sri Lanka as part of a truly wonderful expedition organised by the British Guild of Travel Writers in conjunction with Sri Lanka Tourism.
I was with a group from the BGTW which signed up for a particularly lengthy journey around this most magical of all islands. It was called The Road Less Travelled, and after 3000 kilometres, we could see why. I loved every minute of it. The Sri Lankan people are among the most friendly and welcoming anywhere on the planet – which is saying something, seeing they were fighting a terrible civil war not that long ago.
Actually, I see that British tourism in Sri Lanka has grown by some whopping figure (over 600 percent) this year, and I like to think this may, in part, be down to some of the work we folk from the Guild of Travel Writers did after our wonderful visit.
