Like many rural areas, Cumbria loves its country shows. Every year in September there's the big Westmorland County Show, filled to the brim with cows, sheep, horses, tractors, stalls selling farming equipment and displays of combine harvesters. It's wonderful for the local farming community but a little too countrified for us - and very expensive [...]
'The Leftovers' is an odd name for a TV series that isn't about cooking. It sounds more like a slightly congealed, cold roast beef sandwich than an engaging drama. However, in this case it's definitely not the former. We first discovered the series on Sky box sets, and have been binge-watching it for the last [...]
The title refers to the pet name for our local newspaper, the Westmorland Gazette. It's based in Kendal and has just reached a rather impressive milestone - it's 200 years old this year! The paper was first set up in 1818 by William Wordsworth and a crony, to counter what they saw as the Whig [...]
We'd planned to visit a museum in Lancaster really. But part way down the M6 motorway, Dave said he'd heard that it was easy to get to Hest Bank now the new Morecambe link road is open. For anyone who doesn't know, Hest Bank is a small settlement on the Morecambe Bay coast, just north [...]
This book isn't my standard reading fare, but I picked it up at a book swap at a recent writing event, mostly because the cover looked so atmospheric and chilling. It turned out to be Gothic horror, much of it set in Scotland, and all I can say is, who knew Edinburgh could be so [...]
Does anyone else do that thing of driving past places every few days, and saying 'we really must go there' - but you never actually do? Well, we've had a few of those on our list, and yesterday we decided to cross one off. The good weather had got to Cumbria at last. It was [...]
There's a lovely new review of Got Ghosts? available today at Jen Med's Book Reviews. I met Jen at a writing weekend a few weeks ago and got chatting to her, and she was kind enough to offer (not quite at the wrong end of a cattle prod, either!) to read and review the book. [...]
