England – Smtfhw's Travels

Travel 2025 – Cunard Queen Anne – Day 13 (Southampton to Home)

Wednesday 8th October, 2025 – Southampton to Home (via Hungerford) And so we arrived back in Southampton ready to disembark after 12 nights of being so well looked after. It was going to be a wrench to get off. Breakfast was early (they stop serving at 08:00 on the final morning and there’s a limited…

Travel 2025 – Cunard Queen Anne – Days 1, 2 and 3 (Southampton and at Sea)

Friday 26th – Sunday 28th September, 2025 – Southampton to Ålesund Despite not being wholly convinced by the whole “let’s go on a cruise” hype, we found ourselves handing over our car to the parking people at Southampton, dropping our luggage off with the baggage handlers, and embarking on Cunard‘s newest ship, Queen Anne, ready…

Travel 2024 – North Coast 500 – Day 14/Day 15 (Shieldaig to Hawnby, Hawnby to Home)

Friday 11th/Saturday 12th October, 2024 – Sheildaig, Aviemore, Hawnby, Home Distance driven: 429.0 miles/177.0 milesTime at the wheel: 7 hours 38 minutes/3 hours 15 minutesHeiland coos spotted: 0 (but then we hardly expected to) And so we left Scotland and completed the leg of the NC500 to Inverness, skimming by the edge of the city….

Travel 2024 – North Coast 500 – Day 3 (Tebay to Inverness)

Monday 30th September, 2024 – Windermere, Tebay Distance driven: 301.0 miles,Time at the wheel: 5 hours 56 minutesHeiland coos spotted: 0 And so finally to Scotland. But not before a very good breakfast at the Westmorland Hotel. We’d had a good night’s sleep and been well fed before getting on our way (after wrangling the…

Travel 2024 – North Coast 500 – Day 2 (Yorkshire to Cumbria)

Sunday 29th September, 2024 – Windermere, Tebay Distance driven: 158.0 miles, Time at the wheel: 2 hours 48 minutes Heiland coos spotted: 0 Sunday morning started damp, but seemed to be improving as we repacked the car (something of a trial and error process at this stage), and headed out from Nunnington after a light…

Travel 2024 – North Coast 500 – Day 1 (Home to Yorkshire)

Saturday 28th September, 2024 – Nunnington, Wombleton Distance driven: 174.4 miles,Time at the wheel: 4 hours 05 minutesHeiland coos spotted: 0 We’d been intending to do the mighty North Coast 500 road trip for some time (certainly since before the pandemic struck) and so this year we decided it was time that we finally got…

Travel/Food 2023 – Yorkshire

Saturday 7th/Sunday 8th October, 2023 – Wombleton, Marton, Nunnington Back in the UK, and we made a weekend trip to Yorkshire complete with an overnight stay. The impetus behind the trip was to see our friends Richard and Lindsey and to try out their new culinary venture, the Plough Inn, in the delightfully named village…

Travel 2023 – Cunard Queen Mary 2 – Day 5 (Southampton)

Friday, 22nd September 2023 Today was home day. On advice from J and J we decided to breakfast at 8am, despite being told our disembarkation time was 8:30. Theirs was “any time up to 09:50” so clearly no one was going to throw us off ahead of that sort of time. A leisurely breakfast would…

Travel 2023 – Cunard Queen Mary 2 – Day 4 (At Sea)

Thursday, 21st September 2023 I started the day with a run round Deck 7, which was quite busy at 08:00 – probably because you’re not allowed to run before that (there are cabins underneath and it would be unfair to subject sleeping people to the sound of pounding feet), and after breakfast finishes lots of…

Travel 2023 – Cunard Queen Mary 2 – Day 3 (Hamburg)

Wednesday, 20th September 2023 After getting an early night, we were rudely awakened by an announcement over the ship’s tannoy system at 06:45. It was our Captain informing us that we were not in Hamburg as planned. We weren’t even in the River Elbe on the approach to Hamburg. Bad weather overnight had seen the…