Category:

Intersting architecture.

The entrance to the station

Unexpected signs

street trees with oranges..

local produce for great gifts

Fanoous people have left their mark

And you can eat Briget Bardot's favoutite cake.

What more could you ask?

8 Comments

Simply..holiday....

25/6/2022

Simply Holiday is a sizeable category in my blog! I absolutely love holidays.

I enjoy the research and the planning, the event itself, and reliving it here in the blog. On the journey (which went pretty smoothly thankfully) I listened to Carol Drnkwater's The Olive Farm, an account of her purchase and restoration of a derelict property in Cannes. Then I revisited Lawrence Durrell's Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, and Gerard Durrell's My Family And Other Animals, and some videos and old BBC documentaries about that generation of travel writiers. Patrick Leigh Fermor among them. There is lots to be found online on the still earlier generation - Freya Stark, Wilfred Thesiger whose wonderful photographs I omce saw in Oxford, Gertrude Bell... A quick refresh of Peter Mayle and thank you Liz for the reminder of Sheila Hancock's Just Me. I also have Driving Over Lemons lined up.

So part of me is still in the Med!

Do you have favourite writers about your holiday destinations?

Further suggestions most welcome.

6 Comments

Simply..Matisse....

24/6/2022

9 Comments

Loved the Matisse Museum in Nice.

We also loved the food in the surrounding park. Sitting in dappled shade we felt as though we were relaxing in one of our favourtie Renoir paintings.

Idyllic. What holidays are for.

9 Comments

Simply Eat..Provence....

23/6/2022

3 Comments

You can always tell a blogger - they photograph their food before they eat it!

It's a wonderful and relaxing treat to have such food put down in frnt of you. Leisurely breakfasts and healthy lunches..

Salads and juices with 7, 8, 9 ingredients.

A restaurant on the beach as the sun set - torches lit the beach after dark and we waded into the still warm sea.

Desserts included the best affogato ever!

All making me rethink my cooking at home..

3 Comments

Simply..joie de vivre....

22/6/2022

Heather, wonderful travel companion in Venice and Paris, now lives and works in Cannes. Oh joy!

This is Forville market...

8 Comments

Simply Chill....

21/6/2022

Though maybe chill wasn't the word for temperatures of 31 degrees! In the sense of relaxing and taking it easy, it was perfect. Had a wonderful week in Cannes on the beautiful Cote d'Azur.

I hope you hve had a lovely Midsummer Day.

6 Comments

Simply..Carry Farm

10/5/2022

I loved Carry Farm. And I adore the image on this page of their website. They somehow manage to be both homely and sophisticated at the same time. No hype. Low key. Small scale.

Caravans and eco lodges, hens arund your feet, donkeys and rare breeds, a sailing school, quality craft work, real coffee. The woods around full of primroses and bluebells.

A young Dad and his two small children passed us here - they were putting up a tent for the night on this bit of machair.

2 Comments

Simply..the old and the new....

25/3/2022

I was curious to see 'The Walnut Whip', a new hotel in Edinburgh's St James's Quarter.

I like the juxstaposition of old and new in architecture - a real design challenge which when it does come off can be very exciting.

To my eye this nearly works...

I liked this view - the bold strong curve against the geometry of the old buiildings makes an intersting contrast.

The deep steps for sitting on, the normal size ones to walk up and down on - this works well. Very user friendly.

This strange shape interested me. I wondered if it was a staircase? (At the time I did not know that one of the names for the buidling is the golden ribbon.) I went for a closser look and grasped the concept.

..where the 'golden ribbon' shoots up from the ground to wrap around the building, though a quite beaurifully executed bit of sculpture, it looks as if it is considered such a hazard that safety barriers have had to be put around it, totally spoiling the effect! If I was the designer I would be weeping into my drink if I saw this!

I thought about the building over a cup of coffee in the adjacent Black Sheep Coffee Shop at an outdoor table and concluded that it would take a builder of consumate skill, a genious of a builder to create this design almost completly made of curves, with the confident panache it needed..Instead it is a bit wibbly wobbly and ponderous and sadly, in my view, doesn't quite come off.

Better to have tried and failed? Better to have given it to Frank Gehry...

2 Comments

Simply..sublime....

24/3/2022

Second live concert (one of the things I missed most during the pandemic). I think there is a very special atmosphere at these first concerts - both the nusicians and the audience are so especially delighted to be there - it's palpable.

The RSNO concert at the Usher Hall was stunningly good. Lise de la Salle played Rachmaninov 2. The programme began with Walton and ended with Elgar. We loved it.

What things did you miss most during the past two years?

4 Comments

Simply..Reekie no more....

23/3/2022

I wonder how many chimneys there are in Edinburgh?

Edinburgh was once known as Auld Reekie (Old Smoky), but it was all cloudless blue skies and sunshine for the four day visit I had with friends meetng up from Washington DC, Paris and Glasgow. A leisurely meal for a catch up on the first evening, and breakfast at The Urban Angel in Hanover Street the next morning, and we were ready to hit the town..

The galleries of Dundas Street are close by and this was a good , if small, exhibition at The Scottish Gallery. Upstairs the work of Claire Harkness is selling well. Beautiful work. On until the 26th if you can get there.

The Botanic Gardens on a perfect spring day.

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A little browsing in George Street shops (this is Anthropologie). A brilliant concert to follow....

I am so glad Covid waited till after our trip!

4 Comments

Simply..mimosa

8/3/2022

7 Comments

I bought some mmosa yesterday. It reminded me of my bedroom in Venice. The shutters opened onto a courtyard with a mimosa tree in full bloom. Heavenly.

!

I almost forgot to listen to the March episode of The Season Turns. You can listen to it here.

7 Comments

Simply..counting our blessings....

3/3/2022

Simply..deep forests and dark skies....

28/2/2022

Mainly pictures for a few days....

Should we go? Yes! The quiet south west conrer of Scotlaand was calling. The Galloway forest and hills, the neat little towns of Wigtown and Kirkudbright with their largely intact architecture, the bracing beach at Monreith and the comfortable charms of my friend's cosy cottage.....

8 Comments

Simply..restoration....

9/1/2022

That could be a good word for the year, along with Fun, Finish and Fulfillment...Any more to share? Tthey don't have to begin with F!)

It is a constant on York Minster, which always has a part covered n scaffolding. The medieval craftsmen would have thought the lit star was a miracke.

The East end was covered in scaffolding for many years. It's wonderful to see it so beautifully restored and to know that the skills still exist.

2 Comments

Simply..wellie sticks....

10/5/2021

There was an 'incident' with the incoming tide at the causeway which joins Oronasy to Colonsay....thankfully we survived to tell the tale!

6 Comments

Simply..freedom....

10/5/2021

Apart rom on the ferry and in the one shop on Colonsay, there was no need for masks or social distancing and we were relishing the freedom....

4 Comments

Simply..holiday....

9/5/2021

I mistakenly typed joliday - but in fact that was quite accurate. We had a wonderful week.

There is quite a variety of habitats on the small island of Colonsay (population 135). Sandy beaches and rocky shores, mountain and moorland, forest and woodland, machair and salt marsh, and on the estate of Colonsay House formal gardens, so there is a corresponding variety of wildlife and flora.

The island also hosts a remarkable number of small festivals. See here.

Beaches to ourselves. Beautiful Kiloran Bay

Claytonia, or purslane flowers in deep shade

exotics in Colonsay House Gardens

Lots of sunshine.

A couple of meals out! The Hotel is currently for sale if anyone is up for a new adventure...

4 Comments

Simply..living simply....

5/5/2021

..but with all mod cons.

2 Comments

Simply..island life....

2/5/2021

17 Comments

I am on the lovely island of Colonsay! A holiday cancelled from last year, but after two Covid tests, a lot of planning, a drive through heavy rain to sunny busy Oban and a beautiful early evening two and a half hour sail on MV Hebridean Isle we finally got here.

However broadband is slow/intermittant/non-existant, so posts and photographs may have to wait until I get back home..... have on our first day had warm sunshine and heard corncrake and cuckoo, and seen violets on the sand dunes and bluebells in the woods, and marvelled at the skeleton of a fin whale which was washed up on the shore in 2017 when we were last here.

A storm is forecast for today, but then more sun. It's exciting and beautiful to be here.

Have a good week wherever you are.

17 Comments

Simply..doing what we can....

18/9/2020

I am doing my best to focus on what I can do, within the rules and restrictions, and consider myself very lucky indeed to have taken a short holiday when I did, as from today, we in Scotland are being asked not to travel unless necessary!

Areas dependent on tourism are between a rock and a hard place as they say, and areas such as the Black Isle are doing their very best to function in a safe way. Many holiday cottages are letting only alternate weeks to be safer, all the shops are well organised with hand sanitisers and restricted numbers etc.

We stayed in Kelpies Cottage (owned by a primary school friend of mine!). It is really beautiful and filled with lovely things. Helen has a great eye for design and a wonderful antique shop in the town. Enjoy a leisurely browse in this Aladdin's cave here.

Have you managed a holiday or an outing?

How did it make you feel?

6 Comments

Simply..the good news....

17/9/2020

I really liked the look of these structures in the Cromarty Firth, and I liked them even more when I learned that they are for wind turbines in the North Sea. They are being welded onto the deck of the ship which will tow them out to position. The centre of the ship can be submerged and the turbines floated off and anchored to the sea bed with concrete (produced in uk, instead of steel made in China). Only the yellow part will be above water.

Scotland is doing well with renewable energy production. See here.

If I had been staying longer I would photograph them in different weather conditions and times of day..

2 Comments

Simply..fascinating.....

17/9/2020