Travel vignettes, site visits and location observations where landscape, history and atmosphere inform the work and linger after departure.
Day 4 We made good progress packing up and got on the road for our long drive to Slovenia. However, fate had other plans. Not even twenty minutes into the journey, in the middle of forest with no phone signal, the dreaded engine oil warning light flashed up on the dashboard. Three hours later, we … Continue reading The Long Road Home from Dracula: Slovenia…
Day 3 One final stop-off in Romania to see Corvin Castle, which translates as Raven Castle, and then we were on our way towards Hungary. Along the way, we passed a graveyard unlike anything I’d ever seen. It went on for miles, packed tightly with graves. I joked to my husband that you’d need to … Continue reading The Long Road Home from Dracula: Hungary…
Days 1 & 2 I flew to Bucharest, via Amsterdam, to meet my husband, who was waiting for me with our car and roof tent. From there, we headed towards the Bran area for our first evening. We got caught up in spells of roadwork traffic, but it gave us plenty of time to take … Continue reading The Long Road Home from Dracula: Romania…
I spent the weekend off-grid camping on a farm in Northumberland, tucked between woodland and fields beside an old barn that now belongs to barn owls. On the first evening, a farmer’s combine harvester became a dark silhouette against an amber sky. A modern vision… yet somehow timeless. On the second evening, when the crops … Continue reading The Land Remembers…
To wrap up the month of Haunted Journeys, here’s another personal tale, one that starts with medieval relics and ends with… well, keep reading and you’ll find out. In 2024, my husband and I visited Pisa. A beautiful little city filled with history, culture and gelato that’s worth every single calorie. We did all the touristy … Continue reading Relics in Pisa…
Day 5: The morning arrived calm and bright. Our resident songbird was already awake and making certain everyone else was too. After packing up, we headed for Bealach na Bà, the highest road in the UK. It’s a single track with tight hairpin bends, the sort of route that comes with a police warning advising … Continue reading Where the Road Thins: Skye…
Day 4: Wind and rain. Rain and wind. After a mostly sleepless night on the cliffs above Durness, everything was damp, everything rattled and our spirits had taken a firm battering. But storms lose their power once you’re on the move again, and by the time we were packed up and back on the road, … Continue reading Where the Road Thins: Ullapool…
Day 3: The morning began beneath an impossibly blue sky. Our first stop was Dunnet Head, the most northerly point on mainland Great Britain. Seabirds crowded the cliffs, some of them nesting and others carried effortlessly by the wind. Puffins perched on rocky ledges in the distance, meaning binoculars were a requirement to properly appreciate … Continue reading Where the Road Thins: Durness…
Day 2: Our first stop was the Glenmorangie distillery. Which was closed. The first lesson of the trip: never presume. We laughed it off and continued north. The Whaligoe Steps were next. Rather than fight for a space in the tiny car park above them, we left the car in a layby along a quiet … Continue reading Where the Road Thins: Scarfskerry…
Day 1: The NC500 route officially starts in Inverness, but we’d been there before and it felt right to begin the journey beside water filled with stories, so we began our camping road trip at Loch Ness. The forecast promised rain, but it never arrived. Instead, something else hung in the air. Something heavy and … Continue reading Where the Road Thins: Loch Ness…
R. H. DIXON 