Well here’s an absolute treat of a little place to stay: The Gunton Arms in Norfolk. It provides what is, arguably, the perfect low-key country escape. If you yearn for remoteness and the chill whip of an autumnal wind as you stomp across fields with your hound in tow then you will love The Gunton….
It normally takes me about two years to get around to writing up my hotel reviews (it’s well over a year, I think, since I visited the Bedruthan in Cornwall and I still have the notes fresh in my mind, as though I visited yesterday!) but I’m trying to be more organised and proactive and…
As I began to write this hotel review I realised that I’d talked about the London Edition before; a rather extensive (completely fantastical) post about the story behind the creepy portraits that hang in every guest room. You can read that post here: The Woman In The Wall, but to precis, I said that I although…
What’s this thing with loofahs in hotel bathrooms? It seems to have become a standard thing, now, to provide one along with the cotton wool pads and buds and complimentary shower cap. And sometimes there’s a loofah even when all other basic commodities are conspicuously absent – no q-tips, no toothbrush, just a flat, rectangular…
Never before had I been in such dire need of a break. Avid readers will have heard me bang on about my desperation to go on holiday many times, this year, but somehow – what with work commitments and baby stuff and Mr AMR never being free at the right moment – time for a…
Bonus post! Here’s what I packed in my new suitcase for my trip to France. (The first one. For the second I might well be taking my little carry-on case, so that wouldn’t be an interesting video. It’s only large enough to hold one pair of shoes, one book and one frugal, fair-weather sort of outfit.)…
I went to afternoon tea with my Mum last week, very kindly organised by the ladies at Karen Millen after we had finished our mother-and-daughter styling session. We went to The Capital hotel in Knightsbridge, which is (literally) a stone’s throw from the side entrance to Harrods but somehow manages to be very peaceful and…
If I didn’t have a house renovation happening (aka “the money pit”) and a baby about to emerge, then I would one hundred percent be going on holiday right this very minute. You know when you get to the end of your tether and the only thing you want to do is run away and hide on…
The wisdom behind hoisting a heavily pregnant woman up onto a narrow, high table that’s been fitted with a slippery water-filled mattress seemed questionable to me at first; I must have looked like a very pink, slightly anxious whale trapped in low tide as I clambered aboard. But then, at around three minutes into my New Beginnings massage…
I had the great pleasure of staying at the Pig Hotel near Bath, last weekend. It was a bit of an impromptu booking; I was going to a wedding in the area and my sister was supposed to be putting me up, but her husband came down with something unknown (man flu?) and I didn’t want…
You can probably guess from the random title that I made a “vlog”: which is, to those who are (quite blissfully) unaware, a kind of video diary. Lots of people ask for them, I rarely have a day that’s interesting enough to make one. But yesterday I dashed about from pillar to post doing all…
I’ve just returned from a wonderful week in the Peloponnese, a region of Greece that had previously escaped my attentions, despite having taken my hols in various parts of Greece for the last ten years. I stayed at the Kinsterna Hotel and Spa, which is just a few miles from the famous medieval town-in-a-rock, Monemvasia,…
Ciao! I went on a little trip to Tuscany last month and it was wonderful. I hadn’t been to Tuscany for almost twenty years (the last time was a school trip when I was fourteen, we did a big tour starting in Florence and ending down in Sorrento, via Rome and Pompeii and Naples) and…
And so begins a whole slew of travel posts, because I have been here there and everywhere, recently, and I have lots to report. But I must begin with a little trip back in time – February, Les Etangs de Corot, with my Mum – because we had such an amazing break together, and as often happens…
A very quick post today as I’ve spent all of my time messing about with “behind-the-scenes” jobs that needed urgent attention. Once the general structure of the site is back to normal, posts will get a lot more wordy! This is a video that I put together a few weeks ago – I promised that…
I can’t quite believe that Mr & Mrs Smith have made their entry-level membership FREE! I posted about BlackSmith membership ages ago – it’s one of the best loyalty schemes going. Even if you don’t ever end up booking a hotel room through them, Mr & Mrs Smith will give you all kinds of discounts…