Category Alphabetical Excursions
Z is for Zennor
Z had been planned fairly early in the year. A short break in Cornwall is just the thing to fill that aimless bit between Christmas and New Year, and we’d been down there often enough to know that there were rich alphabetical pickings. So, at the tail end of December we pack up and head […]
Y is for Yorkshires
An early start for Y. We have just one day and four bits of Yorkshire to get to. Not ‘Ridings’ – there are only three of those as the internet will tiresomely tell you. They are not even convincing administrative areas: I tried and failed to understand the local governance. But according to Google Maps […]
X is for Cheating
It is a proud British tradition to cheat with X. We don’t really like using it to start words. Let’s face it, the only reason anyone has heard of a Xylophone is that it generally features, rather incongruously, in children’s alphabet books. Thus all children grow up with an uneasy sense that alongside such crucial […]
W is for Woburn
Compared with the incoming tricky end-of-alphabet letters just over the horizon W presents a wealth of possibilities. Unwisely we decide to do most of them, and thus we find ourselves in a damp Warwick on a late Saturday afternoon. We’re there for no other good reason than it was on our way to see recently […]
V is for Vindolanda
It’s still dark as we leave the house. Perhaps slightly ambitiously for a day trip, we are retracing the steps of very annoyed Romans: we have been posted to the very Northern edges of the Empire. We do, however, have the advantage of a people carrier, and roads that are not only straight but also […]
U is for Uttoxeter
Uttoxeter is mainly famous for being in a Fry and Laurie sketch. So that was the main reason to pick it, as for some reason the name is inherently funny, especially when said out loud. It’s a hard act for the town itself to live up to, especially on a drizzly October Sunday, so dark […]
T is for Troutbeck
We don’t go to the Lake District enough. Less than two hours from home, it’s a viable day trip and easy weekend break, but we seem to have barely noticed that fact. So it was on the must-do list for this year, yet it has still taken until T to manage it. A prior engagement […]
S is for Scarborough
Rhyl wasn’t setting the bar enormously high for seaside excursions, but nevertheless picking Scarborough for S worried me a little. I hadn’t been there much since childhood and remembered the place being a little run down, without the romantic literary credentials of Whitby just to the North. We arrive in the quieter North Bay on […]
R is for Rhyl
Rhyl is a strange destination, especially in September. Like so many other seaside towns its fortunes have fluctuated over the last century and it’s hard to tell whether they’re currently on the way down or back up. We arrive mid morning by the marine lake, once linked to the town by a huge funfair, but […]
Q is for Quorn
Let’s just say that I am now quite familiar with the handful of places in the UK that begin with Q. Unfortunately many are in Northernmost Scotland, quite a number comprise three houses and a dog, and there’s one which Google Streetview swears blind is a field (in Staffordshire – as it happens it’s right […]
SoupyDave 