Our choice of holiday in Autumn 2025 fell to me. I was seeking a happy medium, roughly midway between our full-on, energy-sapping experience in the Swiss Alps and last year’s ‘rest and relaxation’ experiment in Cefalu, Sicily. Eventually I decided on a Saga holiday, Walking in Gran Canaria, a week long, departing in early October. … Continue reading Walking in Gran Canaria: Saga Holidays, October 2025
Tracy chose this seven-night guided walking holiday with HF Holidays, a company we have used often. The holiday runs several times across the summer season. We had booked on to the first iteration of 2025, hoping to catch Alpine spring flowers in their prime. Arrival We woke at 05:00. Our taxi arrived promptly and, half … Continue reading Scenic Swiss Alps: HF Holidays, June-July 2025
We spent the end of February 2025 in England’s Lake District, courtesy of HF Holidays. It was a four-night guided walking holiday. We stayed in the HF country house at Monk Coniston, which is at the northernmost tip of Coniston Water, roughly a mile north-east of the village of Coniston. This was our first HF … Continue reading Southern Lake District, HF Holidays, February 2025
It's been a lively year here on Eponymous (aka timdracup.com) This is my 26th post: I've been writing the equivalent of a new post each fortnight. Exactly half have been book reviews. There were also ten travelogues, one Dracup family history blockbuster and one bereavement-related post in memory of my late wife, Kate. Starting with … Continue reading That was 2024
We thought it was time to take a ‘proper’ holiday – a week devoted primarily to rest and relaxation. We wanted to discover if we could still relax sufficiently to enjoy such an experience, or whether we would be ground down by monotony and boredom. We booked our week in Cefalu through First Choice Holidays. … Continue reading Cefalu, Sicily, October 2024
This was my second trip to Madeira, but Tracy’s first. I spent a week here in November 2017, just a few months after Kate’s death. On that occasion I travelled alone, having booked with Saga (for the first time) on an all-inclusive package (also for the first time). I flew with British Airways and stayed … Continue reading Madeira, February 2024
We spent a week in Riva del Garda, at the northernmost point of Lake Garda, in late September 2023. We had booked a seven-night package with Inghams, staying in a hotel room at the Du Lac et Du Parc Grand Resort. It was branded as a walking holiday, but there was no set itinerary – … Continue reading Riva del Garda, Italy
In May 2023, we travelled to Croatia for a Dalmatian Island Explorer holiday, arranged by Titan Travel in conjunction with Saga, its parent company. Aside from our Channel Island Hopping experience of spring 2022, this was our first journey abroad since Covid restrictions were lifted. There were some problems initially. When we first booked the … Continue reading Dalmatian Island Cruise
Towards the end of October 2019 we booked onto HF Holidays’ Channel Islands walking tour, scheduled for April 2020. Then Covid arrived and our holiday was postponed for two years in succession. So, as the date of the 2022 trip approached, we couldn’t quite believe it would go ahead. It was quite a shock to … Continue reading Channel Island Hopping, HF Holidays, April 2022
Following our second HF guided walking holiday in October 2019, three of our number became members of the HF co-operative. And the two of us booked two further holidays with them, the first being a four-day festive guided walking holiday in the Southern Yorkshire Dales, from 30 December 2019 to 3 January 2020. (An equivalent … Continue reading Southern Yorkshire Dales (HF Holidays, New Year 2020)
. In October 2019 four of the six bereaved friends who had, six months earlier, ventured on a 4-day HF guided walking holiday in Northern Snowdonia, repeated the experience, this time in the Western Yorkshire Dales. On this occasion the booking went without a hitch. We successfully reserved four separate rooms at Thorns Hall in … Continue reading Western Yorkshire Dales, HF Holidays, October 2019
I was one of six friends, all recently bereaved, who in May 2019 shared a four-day walking holiday in Northern Snowdonia. The holiday was organised by HF Holidays. HF (Holiday Fellowship) has an honourable history dating back to 1913, advertising itself as ‘the UK’s only co-operative holiday provider’. Booking the holiday was problematic. An initial … Continue reading Northern Snowdonia, HF Holidays, May 2019
. In November 2017 I travelled for the first time to Madeira for a week’s holiday. This was an experiment on several counts: a first solitary ‘winter getaway’, a first all-inclusive experience and a first encounter with Saga. I wanted to reconnoitre, to see as much as possible of the Island, so getting a sense … Continue reading Funchal and East Madeira
. We had booked a fortnight’s holiday in Slovenia for July 2016, but my partner Kate was diagnosed with primary breast cancer only weeks before departure, so we cancelled. She died barely a year later and, shortly after the funeral, I decided to undertake our planned holiday alone. It felt like unfinished business - and … Continue reading Autumnal Slovenia
We spent a fortnight in Austria in late July and early August 2015, dividing our stay between the predominantly rural Filzmoos and the more urban Zell am See, both located in the state of Salzburg. They were very different. In Filzmoos tourism was low key and visitors were almost exclusively European. Only on our … Continue reading Arab tourism in Zell am See
Exmouth is located in East Devon in the South West of England and easy to reach by rail from London. Change at either Exeter Central or Exeter St David’s for The Avocet Line which operates a service every half an hour or so. Stops include Topsham, Lympstone and the intriguing Lympstone Commando. This request … Continue reading Exmouth and Environs, August 2015
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