All Posts

No, we’ve not discovered a wine made from oranges. I think that Alix and I first drank “orange wine” in ‘Sam & Jaks’ one Friday night in Cirencester. It had a distinctive colour, no doubt, and a more complex taste than a straight white, but we thought no more about it. Perhaps it was fad, and a bit of fun? But a couple of weeks ago, we fell upon another orange wine, quite out of the blue, as it were. Our guests Tony and his new girlfriend Lynn had disembarked and were headed

When you have travelled around Laos for a while, one thing you notice is that there is always an ATM at the entrance to a hospital. Now I know why. Hospitals are a cash-based society in Laos. If you need an x-ray, or a bandage, or some drugs, you need first to hand over a large chunk of cash to the sister (the one I dealt with refused to smile, despite my best efforts). And when I mean chunks of cash, there are 26,000 Laotian Kip to the GBP. If you don’t have the cash at the

Re-launch, Sep 28 A lot of thoughts pass quickly through one’s mind in an acute crisis, especially an emergency occurring in a foreign, third-world land, and involving one’s most beloved. Sitting there in the dark on a Luang Prabang side-street, in a small concrete storm-channel, holding and supporting Alix (whose lower right leg was hanging at 90 degrees below the knee) was one such event. In such occasions I tend to become slightly detached, and I am almost able to think an

Seasons I and II Missy Bear and the flotilla were anchored overnight in the very large bay near to entrance of Lakki marina. It was a calm and peaceful night, except when I got up at 04:00 to investigate a loud noise. I stuck my nose through the companionway hatch to find the bow of an enormous car ferry bearing down on us. I swiftly debated waking Richard, but the anchorage is well-known and clearly marked on the charts. At that moment, the ferry dropped its bow anchor and s

We arrived in Symi to a grumpy reception from the marinero, but a warm welcome from our friends on Money Penny, and our soon-to-be friends on Infinite Blue. To be fair to the marinero, he had prepared a nice, easy berth for us with a lazy line that he could hand to us from the quay. But it was on the opposite side of the harbour – and a long walk - from our friends. And we wanted to be next to them. So, he had to jump on his moped, whizz around the harbour, leap into his ding