Inspiring Travel Starts in the Comfort of Your Own Home
The skills needed for inspiring travel can be learned and practised before leaving your own home — whether you are a digital nomad, or slow, sustainable traveller.
Tag Orkney
Lost Cities and Sustainability
It was 27°c here two weeks ago. The flowers leapt toward the sun with abundant joy, the bees danced and hummed their tales amongst themselves and anyone else who would listen, and the birds designed and structured their nests, some…
Whispers of Summer
From a Window The bedroom — my office — window is open, despite the downpour. At this side of the building it mostly flies beyond the eaves, lashing into the orange grove and obscuring all but the nearest hill. Such…
Islands of Hope
Waters of Warmth Specks of seedlings are strewn across the empty plant pots on the balcony. The flowers or salad they held are now mostly long gone, with the exception of a single nasturtium and a sprawling and exceedingly hardy…
Seasons and Memory
Whispers and Seaglass No place has but four seasons, and Alentejo is no different. Summer, yes, of course it is, but it is no longer the days of the wildflower-rich, high-sun summer, nor the screaming swift summer, nor the misty…
Time and Magic
Magic and Time Time, at some points and places, stretches. Days seem longer, the mind translates the passage of the sun in ways which are not, perhaps, normal. When I was eight, my family moved to Stromness, Orkney. The month…
A Tale of Salt and Wave
Of Edgelands and Imagination We live around 12 kilometres, or 7.5 miles, from the ocean. Here, as I have mentioned, the ground begins to fold and hills rise around us, stretching above crinkled, complicated valleys, all the way down to…
Stories of Life
Also featuring stories of drafts and edits Outside the window, the world warms, stories of life everywhere. Swirls of storks climb invisible spirals. Beneath, strata of swallows manoeuvre, twist, brake and snatch, manoeuvre, twist, brake and snatch. Lower still, plummeting…
On Books
A Departure from the Norm (Norm to follow soon). This is not your normal monthly newsletter. This is something extra. There are a number of reasons for this but, primarily, after some rumination, I wanted to share something different, something…
Friday Photo #15 The Cliffs of Insanity
These are not actually The Cliffs of Insanity, as everyone knows they are in Ireland. Or, really, they are in a book and a film, that portion of which was filmed over at Moher. Instead, these are the sea cliffs…