Criteria for me for a simple holiday:

Ideally it doesn't involve airports and ungodly hours

The place I rest my head should be attractive, or at the very least clean and simple. I don't like to pay for lots of facilities I won't use!

I don't want to eat with strangers, and I hate making conversation at breakfast (am not very sociable at the best of times).

It has to be different enough from home to be stimulating. A new landscape to explore does it for me.

I have to come back with more energy than when I left.

The weather's not that important, which is just as well as all the above requirements boil down to self catering in the UK!

Log fire is a must.

What's your ideal simple holiday? Do share....

A full waterproofs August walk up Puck's Glen yesterday. At least heavy rain is good for something - the waterfalls were gorgeous!

I love silence and empty space. (I think this may be unusual!)

I have just acquired two new books: The Cello Suites by Eric Siblin, and The Spirit of Silence by John Lane. One is about sound and one is about the absence of sound.  The cello is my favourite instrument.

This morning, most unusually for me I woke at 5.30. Even more unusually for me, I got up. The sun was shining and I made a cuppa and took it down to the shore and found, in the perfect silence, this beautiful scene - the thrift in flower, apparently growing out of the rocks.

I came home and put on Paul Tortelier playing the Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello - what a start to the day.

Bliss!!

Ten minutes drive from the house, and a couple of hours of just relaxing and I feel like I've had a holiday! The primrose picnic was so refreshing. It is almost totally silent up there - one bird singing across the other side of the glen - echoing in the dark forest. Primroses, violets, some interestingly marked bird feathers, rough bark and lush mosses.

It is so nice to look at things that are not your responsibility. Much as I adore my house and my garden, it's hard not to think 'I must do this, and I must remember that' as I look around them. We often take a stroll round the garden first thing and I have to concentrate on not making it into a to-do list, but just observe what is new and beautiful - (the to-do list comes later - I'm a great list maker).

I'm still 'throwing ten things' (see 11May). Always having been a go at it full blast type, I am trying the incremental approach and finding it strangely satisfying. I don't feel so overwhelmed by a big task (and our shed is a BIG task) when I tackle it in 'throwing ten things' steps, and I've made spectacular progress by doing this every day for just 6 days!

I must obviously add 'chill out' to my to-do list every day too....

Ethically, it goes without saying - recycle, compost, charity shop, gift it, whatever.

'Throw Ten Things' I read in a magazine. I started in the greenhouse. Five minutes and I'd thrown ten things which were rubbish or shouldn't have been in there anyway. Then I threw away ten things from the shed. Then I went to the back of the shed - ten more things - then the pot area, then the bench area. In twenty minutes I'd got rid of fifty bits of junk and I felt great! Now if I did this every day....?

Then it was a coffee in the cosy greenhouse out of the cold north wind, with a new book I got for my birthday (Amazon wish list is such a good idea!).  The book is 'Lazy Days and Beach Blankets - simple alfresco dining with family and friends' Inspiring - I plan to have more of this this year. Starting with the primrose picnic . 'Picnic When Possible' is on my Simply Eat manifesto (see 9th April). A hill up the Larach, a pass between Loch Long and Loch Eck, has huge swathes of primroses on it and for a couple of years now we have taken a simple picnic up there - if it gets warmer by the end of this week I shall be ready with some food and a flask, and the picnic quilt made by Laura (who also bought me the book). Simple pleasures and lazy days. I think I need to practice lazy....