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Travel journals


Bequia 2025
17 February - 2 March 2025 We have to start with Hurricane Beryl. Back in June a tropical storm in the Atlantic was aiming straight...

Tony Herbert
Mar 227 min read
73
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Norfolk surprises
3 - 6 December 2024 The Thursford Christmas Spectacular A few days in North-west Norfolk, not the most exotic destination, indeed not...

Tony Herbert
Dec 20, 20244 min read
53
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Baroque cities in Sicily
VAL DI NOTO 28 September - 3 October 2024 A few days in Sicily, to a part less visited than some, namely Noto and its surrounds...

Tony Herbert
Oct 6, 20249 min read
86
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Bequia 2024
1-21 February 2024 Three weeks on our favourite island in the sun, Bequia - avoiding what has been a particularly dire February in...

Tony Herbert
Feb 27, 20246 min read
130
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Christmas in Vienna - 2023
22-27 December 2023 This was four days over Christmas, in Vienna - all part of a package tour, not a thing we’d done before - or at least...

Tony Herbert
Dec 31, 202311 min read
98
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Paris in (Wet) Autumn
27-29 October 2023 This is hardly a travel journal, just a note of a short weekend in Paris, to which we hadn’t been for some years, even...

Tony Herbert
Oct 30, 20234 min read
75
1


QUEILLE - 2023
June 2023 This was my fourth and Mary’s third visit to the wonderful music-fest at Queille, the ancient chateau south of Carcassonne, not...

Tony Herbert
Sep 24, 20235 min read
40
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Amsterdam and Vermeer - 2023
23-28 March 2023 A long weekend in Amsterdam with two objectives: to catch up with some old friends from Allen & Overy days; and to see...
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Apr 4, 20237 min read
146
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Bequia - 2023
1-23 February “Bequia isn’t the same”, warned a friend. “It’s all changing – restaurants closed, the Frangipani Hotel deserted”. All doom...
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Mar 5, 20239 min read
122
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Rome - 2022
25-29 November 2022 A long weekend in “low season” Rome, surrounded nevertheless by hordes of tourists. It turned out on our arrival to...
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Dec 4, 202210 min read
85
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FLORENCE - things not to miss
This isn't really a travel journal. It's just a short note that I wrote to a friend who is going to Florence and wanted some tips. It is...
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Oct 15, 20223 min read
45
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GREECE – Nestor’s Palace and Messene
3-10 September 2022 A week in the south-west Peloponnese, staying with our kind friends Christopher and Sarah Cornell. We visited (among...
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Sep 26, 20225 min read
71
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Legend of the True Cross
This is a belated addition to my journal about Arezzo and Perugia, which I said that I would attach to it and then forgot. The legend has...
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Jul 1, 20222 min read
29
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AREZZO AND PERUGIA - 2022
13-20 May 2022 Arezzo is quintessential Italy. We sit before dinner in a square sipping Aperol Spritze, watching hordes of elegant...
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Jun 29, 20228 min read
37
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Bequia - 2022
28 January – 22 February This was our first visit to Bequia since the lockdowns, the first for two years, going as usual via Barbados,...
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Mar 3, 202210 min read
100
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Hamburg and Rostock
1-8 November 2021 This is our first attempt at foreign travel since the Covid pandemic – going to Hamburg to see our friend Gerhard (who...
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Nov 10, 20219 min read
64
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Lyon - 1-2 September 2021
I decided to come back from the summer spent in Beaumes de Venise via Lyon, never having been there, except possibly as a student staying...
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Sep 14, 20217 min read
21
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The Camargue
20-22 July 2021 I am sitting, as I write, in the most splendid, restful place imaginable – at the Hotel L’Estelle in the Camargue. It is...
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Sep 13, 20215 min read
22
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Norfolk and the Fens, 9-14 October 2020
Foreign travel is pretty much forbidden these days, so here we are in Norfolk. Staying with our immensely generous and welcoming host...
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Oct 16, 202010 min read
74
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Burgundy
I took a detour on the way back from Beaumes de Venise – leaving after two months of relative normality, to face the rigours of 14 days’...
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Sep 14, 20205 min read
13
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Bequia, 2020
This is our umpteenth visit to Bequia, via Barbados, for most of the month of February; this time spending slightly longer in Barbados,...
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Feb 28, 20208 min read
88
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Germany, 2019
This is our fourth trip to Germany, on this occasion to Rheinland-Pfalz (the Rhineland Palatinate) in the west, probably prompting the...
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Oct 30, 201915 min read
19
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Queille – 2019 24-26 May
A visit to the biennial music festival at Queille in southern France, characterized this time by even more exceptional music than before,...
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May 30, 20194 min read
11
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Queille Music Festival, 2017
This is my second and Mary’s first visit to the wonderful, even unique, Queille music festival, held every two years in the depths of the...
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May 29, 20195 min read
12
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Umbria and Tuscany, May 2019
This was a short visit or rather long weekend, staying with our generous friends Martin and Tessa in Canalicchio, just south of Perugia,...
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May 14, 20197 min read
25
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Bequia, 2019
I am starting to write this two or three days into our stay on the Caribbean island of Bequia, where we come now for three weeks in...
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Mar 4, 20198 min read
24
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Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, December 2018 – January 2019
Two weeks in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, both southern India, all organised by our good friend Jane Points, whose business Points South...
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Jan 7, 201925 min read
7
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Rome, November 2018
We are in Rome for a week of sightseeing in November, blessed with warm sunshine and blue skies that miraculously lasted the whole week....
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Nov 17, 201814 min read
16
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Canalicchio in Umbria, May 2018
Are the Fates conspiring against us? We spent three days in an unusually cloudy, even rainy, Umbria, at the same time as London was...
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May 11, 20186 min read
3
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BEQUIA 2018
This is a note about our annual three weeks in the sunshine of Bequia. I recognize that the readership of this particular travelogue may...
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Mar 23, 20189 min read
15
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Bequia 2018
This is a note about our annual three weeks in the sunshine of Bequia. I recognize that the readership of this particular travelogue may...
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Mar 14, 20189 min read
34
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ROME
This isn't really a journal. It's from a letter to a friend giving some recommendations about what to see in Rome. Here are some ideas. ...
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Oct 24, 20173 min read
8
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Malta, 24-30 March 2017
I am slightly unused to the joys of extravagant hotels – of the type that investment bankers stay in and permit their lawyers to do too. ...
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Mar 31, 20175 min read
18
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Bequia, February 2017
I was hoping that our arrival at Gatwick for our annual spell in Bequia wouldn’t prove to be an omen. All Virgin Atlantic computers were...
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Feb 26, 201711 min read
8
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Kerala, 16-30 December 2016
We are on our way to southern India, more precisely Kerala, to escape – as we often do – the rigours of Christmas. We are looking...
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Jan 1, 201721 min read
5
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Washington, then Toronto, September 2016
We are in Washington DC, recuperating from the flight, in our room in the Crowne Plaza Hamilton, named after the great founding father...
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Oct 6, 201613 min read
4
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Bequia, February 2016
We got off to a bad start. Arriving at Victoria and looking forward to being whisked to some breakfast, we find that the Gatwick Express...
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Feb 28, 201611 min read
7
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Germany, 2015
Germany again. Having become enamoured of Germany and the Germans during our visit to Eastern Germany last year, we are embarking on...
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Oct 28, 201524 min read
11
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Italy, 9-14 September 2015
Our trip to Italy got off to a bad start. The flight to Rome was to leave Gatwick at 8.00 (so I thought). Applying my normal 3-hour...
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Sep 15, 201515 min read
7
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Queille Festival, 2015
Music in the depths of the French countryside (near Mirepoix in the Languedoc) organised by an English woman, performed largely by...
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May 27, 20155 min read
72
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Bequia, 2015
This is a note – or journal or memoir, whatever – of our three weeks in the Caribbean, escaping the cold and the rain of February. I am...
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Feb 27, 201521 min read
14
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Marrakech, Christmas 2014
I am writing this, sitting in the very Moroccan sitting room of our two-level suite in a distinctly Moroccan riad – trying to ignore the...
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Dec 31, 201411 min read
16
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Germany, October/November 2014
Mary and I did a tour in late October/beginning of November 2014 to Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig and Munich. The reason for the tour was to...
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Sep 28, 201422 min read
13
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United States and its National Parks
9 – 26 October 2013 In writing this, I’m having even more difficulty than usual in working out who the audience is. Mary and I are...
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Oct 31, 201324 min read
17
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Rajasthan, 2012
20 November to 4 December 2012 Why am I writing this? We have just come back from a spectacularly wonderful two weeks in Rajasthan, but...
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Dec 9, 201222 min read
15
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FLORENCE - Cenacoli and other excitements, April 2010
I am writing this as a record, before I forget it all, of our exploration of various paintings and other things – but most importantly...
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Apr 10, 20106 min read
16
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YALA NATIONAL PARK - December 2009
I last wrote a journal when we were last on an animal safari (in South Africa) I think about 10 years ago. Here I go again. The reason...
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Dec 1, 20098 min read
10
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