Canada, eh? I could tell you I moved here for the raccoons and bears and the advocacy of lumberjack chic, but these are mere perks. (Although have not seen enough raccoons. Or any bears. And still trying to figure out where the lumberjacks hang out.) I moved here because I wanted – needed – greater proximity to the wild outdoors. Big Nature. To be totally honest […]
I Had A Sound Bath In The Desert As Recommended By Aliens
There are strange goings on in the desert. And hell, that’s what I like about them. But one of the strangest I’ve encountered was in Landers, a 20-mile drive north of Joshua Tree down very long, very straight, very dusty roads. I was, if all went to plan, going to a ‘sound bath’ on the site of a geo-magnetic vortex in the […]
Because A Spa On A Boat Can Be A Life Raft
Whisky is usually my friend. But cheap whisky and I are, I’ve now come to accept, not on the best of terms. At my AirBnB I was several drams of $8 Canadian Club down as I waited for the new friend I’d made in Montreal to let me know when he and his friends got to the bar they’d […]
I Can’t Feel My Fingers In Quebec City
It’s the middle of April in Quebec City, the sun is high and the sky is a cool, clear blue. Not that you’d know it was Spring. The city is frozen: framed in snow drifts, carpeted in ice. As I walked around in the early morning, I have to tred carefully, minding each step doesn’t land me on my […]
Feeling A Connection In Canadian Coffee Shops
In a New Zealand-inspired coffeeshop in central Toronto, the young, hip Canadian barista is making me a dirty chai – that’s a chai latte with an all-important shot of espresso: possibly the greatest crossover of all time – while we discuss The State of Things. “The world feels so crazy right now,” says the barista, with […]
Life’s too short not to drink Campari in the street in Paris on a Monday
I was probably feeling a little too pleased with myself. That must have been it. A Monday morning, up before the dawn, I had – swaddled in my faux fur coat, my comfy trainers on and coffee held jauntily aloft – sailed through all the usual scans and checks to take my seat on a Eurostar. It was a day trip to Paris; a […]
On The Edge: A Trip To The Seven Sisters Cliffs
“Today I will be happier than a seagull with a stolen chip.” So declared the sign in the pub, where seven of us filled up on fish-finger sandwiches and pints of ale ahead of a blustery walk across the Seven Sisters. I can’t believe I’d not been to Eastbourne before – especially as I actually grew up in another Eastbourne, in Wellington, New Zealand. […]
Solitude in the Scottish Borders
I couldn’t tell you exactly when I became an introvert, but somewhere between the constant craving for company in my early twenties and the sudden delight at cancelled plans in my early thirties, I turned into one. Time on my own is as necessary to my ability to function as physical exercise. Or coffee. And while introverts […]
A Narrowboat Escape
Messing about on boats is one of those innate New Zealand pastimes that come with the territory of a Kiwi upbringing. (Ironically, this upbringing included many a warning that one should never actually “mess about” on a boat. ‘Have fun in the water but do what you oughta’, right kids?) Growing up, my dad would take my brothers […]
In Search of the Sólheimasandur DC-3
The plane has been there since 1973. To look at the thing now – the torso of an aircraft, riddled with bullets, left to erode on a black beach in southern Iceland – you’d imagine something sinister happened. A tragic crash, a plane shot down in battle, a Bermuda-triangle-style missing airliner. The eeriness of this rusting wreck is its greatest allure. If you’d prefer to keep it […]
The Money Makers of Paris
How often do you think about money? Currency, I mean. Those coins in your pocket. What’s their story? The first time I went to Europe, the Euro had been in place about a year. On my debut visit to Paris, half of the menus were still in francs, yet francs themselves were proving increasingly harder to come by. At the time I feigned relief […]
Right Foot Forward
Funny, isn’t it, the things you get self-conscious about. My whole life I quietly resented little quirks of my features – my nose, my teeth, the usual things people fret about, worrying how they look to the rest of the world, despite the fact that all anyone else thinks is that it’s just your FACE. […]
David Bowie: The Babe With The Power
Today in the moments after waking I discovered two things: 1) that David Bowie wasn’t an immortal being, and 2) that all this time I had actually believed that he was. But Bowie had died. Cancer. One he had never announced. Lying in the dark, at 6am on a Monday morning, pitch black and rain […]
Tents, Tea & Sea: Surfing in Devon
I’m not sure where my love for camping first came from. Mine was not a camping family, so it was only in adulthood that I discovered great bliss in huddling under canvas, everything you need stuffed into a rucksack and the sense of satisfaction of, well, building your own house for the night. Sure, the […]
Joshua Tree National Park
I have this thing for deserts. Something to do with the emptiness of them – my life feels so cluttered most of the time, and in the desert I relish the space and clarity. Here, we’re reminded that in the big scheme of things we are a mere speck. You’d think there’s little life in […]
Ten Years a Londoner
On 29 April 2005, when I was 22, I landed in London. Fresh off the boat from New Zealand I had little more than a secondhand backpack, a new A-Z and a couple of hundred quid in the bank. Not even enough for a deposit on a room (I think a part of me was driven by […]
24 Hour Paris Cake Tour
Paris is always a good idea. So is cake. The first time my cake-fancying father went to Paris was in 2011 – his debut to Europe, in fact. That was a cold, bleak December, when the city was stripped bare of any colour. The Christmas markets sparkled and we spent almost all our money in […]
Herefordshire Gold: Chase Distillery
It all started with potatoes. Potatoes turned to vodka. Vodka became gin. And from a humble potato farm a rather more elegant empire has sprung: Chase distillery. It was William Chase who created Tyrrels crisps, before reaching the brilliant conclusion that potatoes might be better used to make vodka and gin. The result is the UK’s […]
My Year in Coffee
Considering my interest in food (preoccupation, some might say), there will always arise the question of what I don’t like. And for a long time my answer would elicit surprise. COFFEE. I couldn’t stand it. It was the only thing I detested, the last hurdle of flavour that I’d yet to conquer; I’d sooner stuff […]
Marrakechmas
Generally speaking, travelling is about discovery… but it can also be an escape. And last month, when I hopped a budget flight to Morocco, it was definitely the latter. I was adamantly escaping Christmas and all of its jingle-bell accoutrements. And what better place to dodge the flying tinsel and faux-religious sentiment than the gloriously […]