Talking of staycations, I’ve recently returned from a long weekend in Colchester. It’s not somewhere that would normally be top of my list of places to visit – it’s a rather tired garrison town in Essex, a good five hour journey from Malvern. However, my favourite holiday company, Andante, were running one of their Study […]
My sister gave kindly me some theatre vouchers for my birthday. Well, actually that’s not strictly true. She looked into it, and Malvern Theatres apparently don’t accept standard theatre vouchers. So what in fact I received were some folded notes in a card that said “Imagine this is a Theatre Voucher. To be spent only […]
My sister and brother-in-law have rented a cottage in the Forest of Dean for a short holiday. Since they were actually on the same side of the country as me, for once, it made sense to meet up. They asked me to recommend somewhere to visit on the Herefordshire/Gloucestershire side of Malvern, as that would […]
There’s an interesting cycle of plays on at Malvern Theatres this week – Tonight at 8.30 by Noel Coward. It’s a set of nine, one-act plays, grouped into three sets of three, “Cocktails”, “Dinner” and “Dancing”, and organised so that there’s a separate set on each night. On Saturday, if you want, you can have […]
I’ve been home over a week now, and have been looking back on the holiday. It’s the first time I’ve been on a “singles’ holiday”, and it definitely had a different atmosphere to my more usual trips. After the flight out, my suitcase seemed to take ages to arrive at baggage reclaim at Toulouse airport, […]
One day of the holiday was spent exploring some of the numerous “bastide towns”, or fortified villages of the area. They were fought over and changed hands regularly during the Hundred Years’ War, and are a remnant from the time in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when the Plantagenet kings of England also ruled all […]
One of the little pleasures of being on holiday in France, aside from the food and the wine, is playing the Michelin Green Guide game. This was made up by my parents when my sister and I were teenagers and we went on family holidays in France. I suspect their ulterior motive was so that […]
Carcassonne itself was a bit of a disappointment when we went there on the last day of the holiday. For a start, it was almost impossible to photograph. It’s a walled citadel, up on a small hill, but it was very difficult to find a spot from which to take a picture of the whole […]
The holiday was based in the city (well, largish town) of Albi, about an hour north of Toulouse. It has a UNESCO world-heritage listed historic centre, with the biggest brick-built cathedral in the world. It was an absolute monster of a building, and dominated the countryside for miles around. That was rather the point – […]
When my sister and brother-in-law came to stay a few months ago, they brought with them the card game Carcassonne which they thought I’d enjoy playing. They were right – it was fairly easy to get the hang of, but with subtleties that made it very interesting. I had some beginner’s luck too, which is […]
