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Tag Archives: Travel
Best things to do in Cyprus
Published on Staysure on 19th March 2021
Ordinarily, around a million Brits visit Cyprus each year, making it one of the most popular holiday destinations for UK travellers.
Those numbers may have dipped recently, but our love for the island certainly hasn’t dampened.
In fact, since the country announced that it would be reopening its borders to British holidaymakers this summer, travel firms have been reporting a huge surge in bookings.
How the United Kingdom’s Lockdowns Made Me a Tourist in My Own Neighborhood
Published on Fodor’s Travel on 16th March 2021
On the southern bank of London’s River Thames sits Battersea Park, a protected green space that first opened to the public in 1854. Within its 200 acres of parkland are several hidden gardens, a boating lake, and even a children’s zoo, making it one of the city’s most interesting parks. Its northern perimeter is a promenade that opens out onto a view of the river and the grand Chelsea mansions beyond that. On its other three sides, dense apartment blocks plug the gaps.
I’ve lived in a tiny studio apartment in one of these blocks for the last four years. For me, the park has always been a place of peace and joy, a replacement for that rare commodity in central London—a private garden.
That all changed last March when the U.K. entered a national lockdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The entire country was told to stay at home, and only go outside once a day for essential reasons such as to shop for groceries or to exercise. To ensure we complied, police were sent to patrol the streets, ready to hand out fines to those who broke the rules.
Words – February 2021
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Welcome to my home town: Reading was more of a community than I ever realised
Published on The Independent on 25th February 2021
Reading is the sort of place that people only get excited about once a year, when the Festival is on. The rest of the time it’s lost in the homogeneity of commuter towns, never gaining the notoriety of Slough as the worst place to live in England, nor with the culture and postcard views of Henley-on-Thames. It’s just a vast, suburban sprawl that bleeds and blends into more of the same.
I never wanted to move to Reading. There was a choice, you see – we had to live somewhere near Bracknell for my dad’s work and, for some now unfathomable reason, I was quite taken in by the promise of an astroturf pitch at a school in Winchester. But the world conspires against you when you’re 14. Somehow, despite failing French in the entrance exam, I got into the girls’ grammar school in Reading where the outdoor space was negligible and a mounted portrait in the main hall proudly proclaimed: “John Kendrick, the founder of this work house”. But at least it was academically excellent.
So it was that my formative years were spent in this humdrum place where I made friends, lost them, rekindled some and laughed and cried with wild abandon. I went to house parties at homes of people whose names I can no longer remember, kissed secret boyfriends in verdant gardens and fell too madly in love. But I was living in a bubble, one pressurised by this collective drive to achieve great things. And like all bubbles, mine burst.