Wow!
Just checking what I’ve added to the site since the last update mentioning what I’ve added to the site and it looks like I’ve gone and added a lot of stuff to the site. Best not waste any more of your valuable eyeball usage time with unnecessary waffle and get you all caught up.
I’d started on the series of posts covering last years weekend away in Salisbury already in the last update, and there have been a few more since then. First up is a look at Salisbury Cathedral, a chance to see the proper modern font and not the prototype modern font we’d seen on our last visit, and a look at the Magna Carta too, that we’d somehow completely missed when we’d hit Salisbury before.
Almost opposite the entrance to the cathedral in Salisbury is the amazing Arundells, former home of Sir Edward Heath, and both my photos and writing do no justice to how good this place was and how much we enjoyed it. But don’t let that stop you clicking through and reading anyway.
Concluding our first full day in Salisbury is a quick look at the military museum next to Arundells followed by a bit of a walk through the town and a visit to some pubs. Yes, we visit pubs. Don’t act surprised. Salisbury, Rifles Museum, Pubs.
The last of the new posts on the site relating to Salisbury comes from the following day when we headed out to the hill fortifications and ruins of the old cathedral at Old Sarum.
I’ve finally finished my travelogue series covering our Canary Islands cruise and started on the next one (which explains the title of this update).
The first three posts cover cruising away from Lanzarote, then making an unplanned stop at Gran Canaria, and then some days at sea on Ventura heading to Spain.
The final stop on this cruise was at Vigo in Spain. We had a tour booked, but not to see the city itself, although we started with a trip to a viewing point for a view of Vigo from the hermitage.
Our excursion next took us to Monterreal Castle.
From there we had a short walking tour and some free time – but nowhere near enough free time – in the port of Baiona.
Our cruise away from Vigo deserved a post all of its own because someone – and I’m naming no names – got a bit carried away with taking photos and video of the pretty scenery we were passing.
The final post from this cruise travelogue series is the typical last sea day and a summary of the cruise on Ventura. Without wishing to spoil it, because I’d love it if you read these things, but I will anyway because I know you don’t have time for that what with all that’s going on in your life right now, Ventura undid a lot of damage that cruising on Iona had inflicted on us.
And now to that transitioning bit I mentioned, where I move onto the next cruise we took. For the second time in half a year we found ourselves boarding Sky Princess for a week’s cruise to Norway and Denmark. This set of travelogues will definitely focus on the destinations and not the ship because the ship’s already been covered, and after this travelogue series is complete, the next travelogue series will be on the same ship again so, yeah, hopefully you’ll appreciate that perhaps you can have too much of a good thing; or too much of a same thing; I know we kinda felt that way by the end. To start, though, boarding, food, and a day at sea as we started a cruise on Sky Princess.
You know us and excursions! On our first port of call – Kristiansand, Norway – we took an organised tour that started off with a visit to the fishing village of Høllen, and if you’re one of the almost everyone on the planet who’s never heard of Høllen or read about Høllen or even thought about visiting anywhere called Høllen before then this might just tempt you to think: huh.
There will be more to come from that day in Norway and more from that cruise in later posts and in later blog updates like this.
As usual, there have been some non-travelogue posts as well. I like to keep the site ticking over with other photographic work so if you’re interested in seeing what an art student wedding at Chichester Cross looks like then you’re in luck.
I’ve been reworking old photos on occasion, and you can find a few on the Photography page. You can see a landscape picture from the Peak District, some brutalist building windows, and something a little weird from the Suez Canal there.
One other thing I’ve started doing – and if you receive these updates by email then you will have accidentally been sent a preview of this already; sorry about that – is embracing my old love of E/N (which this site historically started out as) coupled with my fondness for photography. A new section of Short Stories basically takes a photo, possibly Photoshopped in some way, and conjures up a tiny tale around it. There are only a few so far, but I want to keep throwing them in on occasion. What I don’t want is for them to be sent as emails – again, sorry – so I needed to hook into a WordPress filter to remove the category type from syndication. I’ve rediscovered my love of writing nonsensical gibberish from my time microblogging on the Fediverse now where many people prompt people for short stories based on images. I’ve been liking the community creativity so much there – such a change from the competitive nature on Twitter – that it’s triggered my own regression back to simpler, happier internet times.
Hopefully, not so long until the next update so I don’t have as many things to catch back up on. Still in progress are the Salisbury and Sky Princess cruise travelogues. No new travel news to impart right now. We’re still waiting to hear flight details about the first trip abroad coming up in a couple of months and we still have no excursions available to book when we transit the Panama Canal later this year, but we still have a handful of days for potential trips that might end up being UK-based, but might not given how stupidly expensive it is to do anything here right now. You’ll hear any news plans here first.