Author Archives: Martin

Boxing Day was a stunner! Blue skies and unseasonally warm. We fancied a walk so went to Swansea in south-west Wales (now part of The Swansea Bay City Region) where we walked from the east of the city, westwards along … Continue reading →

The town of Stroud in Gloucestershire (recently voted the “hippest” place in England outside Montpellier in Bristol) is always worth a visit, particularly on Saturdays when the market is held. Lots of choice of local food (and drink). It was … Continue reading →

Two recent musical evenings: one at the local monthly jazz club to see an excellent gypsy-style Django Reinhardt/Stephane Grappelli band, Swing from Paris; then, as a lifelong Dave Brubeck fan I couldn’t miss his son, Darius’s, quartet playing in Saint … Continue reading →

South of Weston-super-Mare, I’ve photographed this western end of the Mendip Hills before, but it’s always worth the climb from sea level, if only for the atmospheric abandoned 19th-century fort, jutting into the Bristol Channel (now documented on info. boards, … Continue reading →

These “whales” were last seen at the Bristol Harbour Festival, 2015. They are now further down the River Avon at a new Avon Wildlife Reserve site, alongside the Portway.

On a damp day on Walton Common we needed all the help we could get to start the bonfire:

We managed to get “the best of the day”, as our parents would have said (i.e. the part of the day when it wasn’t actually raining), and walk from Cooper’s Hill in The Cotswolds, where the annual cheese-rolling competition is held … Continue reading →

On 1 July 1916 19,240 British Empire servicemen were killed on the first day of the battle of The Somme. By the end of the battle on 18 November 1916 – one hundred years ago today – 127,751 were dead … Continue reading →