30th September – 3rd October 2025 Looks a bit grim, doesn’t it? Well, nothing could be further from the truth for we have just spent three days “pavilioned in splendour” in this magnificent Gothic-Revival castle overlooking its lake and arboretum…
I am just back from a few days in the Ribble valley. To many people this is an unknown land wedged between the industrial heartlands of South Lancashire and the hills and (teeming) dales of the Lake District. Unspoilt and…
Have you ever been deafened by silence? The silence at Kyre is total, no motor-way noise, no 21st century, just a total stillness, which at night is covered by a velvet star-spangled sky. Kyre,(pronounced Keere) an 18th century house of…
Here is a view from the garden terrace at Raby Castle as it was last week when a party organised by Aspect Events spent a few days discovering some intriguing sites of Teesdale. Yes, the weather was just like this,…
As a freelance lecturer on the Decorative and Fine Arts, I get to go on some fascinating trips. This one with Noble-Caledonia on the Elbe Princess. A new vessel with paddles at the stern rather like something from the Mississippi…
Like the melting ice on the River Neva in Russia, the travel log-jamb caused by the multitudinous and confusing Covid regulations seems to be shifting. The news which percolates through to me in the vast open spaces of Yorkshire from…
There has just been an advertising campaign encouraging visitors to Northamptonshire citing amongst other things the plethora of country houses, to which you could easily add the breath-taking expanse of unsullied countryside rare on our crowded island. Aspect Events, in…
This tour included a visit to the church of North Marston which at one time was the third most-visited shrine in England and includes a small embrasure into which the sufferer inserted his foot in order to experience relief. Well,…
It seems hard to believe that a spectacular house like Apethorpe could be forgotten, neglected, and brought to the verge of dereliction in the last fifty years. It is hardly situated in the wilds. It is only twelve miles from…
