Author: hashtagtravelling

I'm a freelance writer with a special interest in destinations, lifestyle, arts and culture, food and wine. I believe a life well lived is about experiences and I aim to provide readers with informative and evocative stories. Follow me on Instagram at @hashtagtravelin. Memorable moments include a 2,500-mile road trip in a vintage Healey Silverstone, clocking up 11 border crossings in three weeks and quad biking in the Sinai Desert at sunset. I have a particular soft spot for the Balearics, particularly Mallorca where I lived for a year in the fishing port of Puerto d'Andraitx.

Food & wine

Wild Food: Foraging on Cowdray Estate

While man has foraged for food since time began, in the mid 20th century before pre-commerical snacks and fast food had been invented, it was also a given that you searched the hedgerows for juicy autumn blackberries, elderberries, hazlenuts, windfall apples and plums. During my childhood eating nose to tail, and field to plate, was the everyday, rather than the trend. Food tastes so good when you’ve grown it or foraged for it.

hashtagtravellingSeptember 26, 2021September 26, 2021Leave a comment

Art and culture, Food & wine, This week, Travel

This week… chimney tops, ration books and guardian angels

Every September heritage houses, museums and other buildings throw open their doors to the public. Entry and tours are free despite the work of many of these organisations being independently funded, so a donation is welcome. The nationwide Heritage Open Days festival closes today and I took the opportunity take a peek behind the scenes over the nine-day event in Winchester. Here’s what I discovered.

hashtagtravellingSeptember 19, 2021September 19, 2021Leave a comment

Featured, Food & wine

These are a few of my favourite (autumnal) things

The early mornings are now cooler but by late morning the light mists burn off to reveal the atmospheric, pale autumn sunlight. The leaves on the trees are just beginning to turn colour, with a promise of blazing reds and burnt oranges soon to come. In the UK you need to pace yourself though because spring is a long way off. Celebrating the changing seasons is a form of mindfulness or meditation. Taking things slowly, enjoying the simple daily pleasures of changing landscapes and seasonal food, autumn is a time of year to truly indulge the senses.

hashtagtravellingSeptember 12, 2021September 24, 2021Leave a comment

Featured

Whistler’s Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan

If you have never read Wilkie Collins’s novel Woman in White written in1859, I urge you to remedy the situation before you visit a new exhibition opening in February. (So, no excuses, you have plenty of long winter nights to catch up). It is a wonderful Victorian tale of intrigue surrounding a mysterious woman lost in London and dressed entirely in white. A new exhibition at The Royal Academy of Arts also aims to ‘cherchez la femme’, in this case the flame-headed Joanna Hiffernan, through the work of American painter and printmaker, James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834 – 1903).

hashtagtravellingSeptember 5, 2021September 5, 2021Leave a comment

Travel

Exploring Britain: Cowdray Heritage Ruins

The history of one of the most important early Tudor houses in the UK is threaded through a Civil War, Henry VIII’s Reformation, and a devastating fire which all but destroyed the beautiful Cowdray House in 1793. This week I joined a tour around the ruins and ventured up the 70-odd spiral steps of the Kitchen Tower, the only part of the building still intact. Walking in the footsteps of history is always a slightly spooky experience and brings out the goosebumps.

hashtagtravellingAugust 29, 2021September 5, 2021Leave a comment

Round-up

This week… pottery, postcards and rats

So, in the UK someone appears to have switched off summer, and in the cold rain temperatures have dropped dramatically. Of course, being British we staunchly hold on to the hope that the sun will come out again before autumn sets in but the mood as I write feels like the dog days of summer. I’m craving a bowl of warming homemade soup (broccoli, pea and pesto, thanks for asking) so there’s definitely a slight shift to the earth’s axis. Ahem.

hashtagtravellingAugust 8, 2021September 2, 2021Leave a comment