We were headed to the south west of England to have a weekend break on the English Riviera. We eventually arrived into Torquay just after 21.00 having missed our planned connection at Newton Abbot. Our B&B was a 10 minute walk from the station and about the same distance from the seafront. It was a pretty good location, and at £117 for two nights including breakfast it was definitely a step up from our previous UK break in Morecambe. The room was however ve...

This is the first of two weekends taking in two different British seaside resorts. This weekend it was Morecambe in Lancashire, and this will followed by Torquay in Devon at the end of July. Arriving at Morecambe by train you feel like you are in the middle of an out of town retail shopping complex. The original terminus station for the railway was almost on the seafront and still exists as a pub, KFC and live music venue, but the modern soulless station sits a ...

Our good friends Tim and Georgie invited us to join then for the weekend at the Forest Holidays complex at Coleford in the Forest of Dean close to the English/Welsh border. Arriving in the wooded park that makes up the site we were pleased to see a rather smart three bedroom wooden cabin complete with all mod cons and a hot-tub. The site also had a shop, bar/restaurant (called the Forest Lodge) and was close to many walking trails that could be accessed without ...

Looking back on my records the last time that I visted Northern Ireland was 2012 and then that was only Belfast city centre having travelled by train from Dublin with the 'cheeky boys', the previous trips in 2007 and 2010 with Heather saw us travelling a little further afield as we had a car. This trip with my mum was to be her first ever trip to Northern Ireland and fortunately we really did luck into some smashing weather to enjoy not only the coastal areas bu...

A trip to the Somerset coastal resort of Minehead was on the cards after seeing the West Somerset Railway (WSR) featured on a TV show. I think my last visit to the railway was with my parents (30+ years ago) and Heather had never been on what is the longest steam railway in operation in the UK. Our day trip started with catching the 07.26 High Speed Train from Derby to Taunton, for a bus connection to Bishops Lydeard the southern terminus of the WSR around five ...