The Best of My Favorite Things Part 5 – Favorite British Places
As those of you who are regular visitors to my website or my Facebook page know, I’m a huge Anglophile and over the last few years I’ve been lucky enough to visit every year. In fact, while I’m writing this ahead of time, when I actually put it up, I’m going to be in the Hebrides on the west coast of Scotland. Yay, lucky me. (Update, no, I’m not, I’m still in Australia. It hasn’t been a year for travel, as it’s turned out!).
So this month’s best of posts talk about some glorious places you can visit in the British Isles.
My first best of post goes back to June 2011 and talks about my visit to the beautiful Scottish island of Iona. The photos date from a trip in 2004, before I was published, when I had four months in the U.K., wandering around location spotting. Although of course, that wasn’t what I thought I was doing as I’d given up any idea of ever being published at that stage! Little did I know… Here’s the start of the article on Iona:
I think we’re due for a couple of travel pieces to give you a break from books and music. So this month, I’m talking about the gorgeous Isle of Iona off the west coast of Scotland and next month I’m talking about the most romantic British historic house (well, in my opinion), Haddon Hall in Derbyshire. There are two sacred islands off the British coast. One is Lindisfarne which is a mystical and wonderful place (and will probably form the subject of a future My Favorite Things) where St. Aidan established a monastery in the Dark Ages. The other is Iona, a tiny island off the larger island of Mull (which is my favorite place in the world – lots of favorites in this post!) in the Inner Hebrides. Read more…
And would you believe it? The next of my best of posts is that very piece on Haddon Hall that I mention in the Iona introduction. This is the most romantic house I’ve ever been to and well worth a detour if you’re up looking at Chatsworth or the Peak District. The post comes from July 2011 and here’s the start:
As anyone who has had any extended contact with me via the Internet or real life knows, I adore old houses. My father loved architecture – in fact he often said that if he’d had the opportunities available to people now when he was a schoolboy in the 1940s, he would have become an architect. I suspect he would have made a really good one – he had an eye for proportion and a great facility for cutting through the fog of received wisdom to devise practical solutions. My mother loved old and elegant things like fine china and classic movies. So really, I was born to love old houses, wasn’t I? Read more…
My next favorite British places piece goes right back to 2009, although like the Iona photos, the pictures date from 2004. We’re going to the glorious Garden of England, Kent, where I was lucky enough to visit in springtime when the whole world had turned into blossom. Heavenly. Here’s the opening:
Apologies for the awful pun. Well, actually, not really! I LIKE awful puns! I picked this month’s Favorite Things topic because it ties in with Tempt The Devil, which is a January release from Avon. Seemed a good opportunity. And I’ve long wanted to share some of my pictures from my travels with you as well. Hopefully you’ll see more in coming months! All of these shots come from a magical visit I made to Kent in spring of 2004. I still remember how enchanted I was by this beautiful county not far from London. It was like the whole world was bursting into flower. Read more…