The Double Red Duke, Oxfordshire

Yesterday I visited the Cotswolds for a press preview of The Double Red Duke, housed in a wisteria-covered former coaching inn dating from around the 17th century. The building has been extended by its new owners (Country Creatures, who have two other hotels in the area: The Swan Inn at Ascott-under-Wychwood and the The Chequers, Churchill) to include a light-filled garden room and restaurant. This new addition is in Clanfield, about 25 minutes’ drive from Oxford, at the southern end of the Cotswolds.

It’s a perfect getaway from London: cosy, romantic, beautifully designed, and with a menu overseen by former Hawksmoor group head chef Richard Sandiford — cooking over fire and sharing plates feature heavily. The older part of the building is a maze of snug little sitting rooms where you can hole up when the weather (inevitably, or so it seems right now) turns blustery. Even in May the log fires were welcome (as were the complimentary wellies).

Deal, Kent

Deal on the Kent coast is a seaside town close to Dover and Ramsgate, an easy day trip from London and only 25 miles across the Channel from France, which you can see on a clear day. It has a Tudor castle (Deal Castle) overlooking the seafront, and the streets between the beach and the high street are full of charming old houses, winding lanes and quaint pubs. The couple of times we’ve visited, the streets have been quiet and a pleasure to photograph, full of pastel houses and old signs. For eating (and to stay, from 17th May), try The Rose, a boutique hotel housed in a 200-year-old pub, and for coffee and casual food we really liked Popup Cafe, down the slightly less posh end of the high street.

Jane Austen's house in Chawton

During the summer we paid a visit to Chawton Cottage, the house in Hampshire that Jane Austen moved to in 1809, and where she lived for the last eight years of her life. I’d always meant to write about it on here, because it was a wonderful experience for an Austen-lover like me, and the recent coronavirus lockdown has really brought home to me how very circumscribed the lives of women have been throughout most of history — confined mainly to their homes and villages and with only their immediate family and relatively small social circles around them. And it’s some comfort to think that confinement (and boredom!) can sometimes give rise to creativity, as it did for Jane Austen (even if in my own case the endless meal planning and preparation and childcare and homeschooling doesn’t seem to have resulted in a surge of creativity — yet!).

Before moving to Chawton, Jane Austen lived for 25 years at the rectory in Steventon where she was born, the youngest of six children. When her father retired in 1800, he moved his wife and their two daughters to rented accommodation in Bath, and her brother James inherited both the rectory and the living at Steventon.

Her father’s  sudden death in 1805 meant that Jane, her sister Cassandra and their mother were effectively homeless, and spent several years either staying in rented houses or with friends and relatives. Only in 1809 did her brother Edward offer them the rent-free use of Chawton Cottage, part of an estate he had inherited along with the much grander Chawton House nearby, an Elizabethan house now run as a museum.

During her more unsettled living circumstances in the early 1800s, Jane Austen did not produce much in the way of manuscripts, unlike the 1790s, when she drafted three of her novels: Northanger Abbey (published 1818), Pride and Prejudice (published 1813), and Sense and Sensibility (published 1811). It is impossible to know to what degree her reduced output was due to unhappiness (or perhaps what we would now call depression), and how much to the more socially demanding life she must have led whilst staying in Bath and as a guest of various family members.

What we do know is that after she moved to Chawton, she produced three more manuscripts: Mansfield Park (published 1814), Emma (published 1816), and Persuasion (published posthumously in 1818) and revised the drafts of her earlier novels, which she now saw published.

The rectory in Steventon was demolished in the early 1800s, and so the house at Chawton is a wonderful resource for understanding more about Jane Austen’s domestic life. The cottage is a 17th century house situated at the crossroads leading into Chawton village (it was at one time used as an inn).

During Jane Austen’s time the gardens would have included a kitchen garden and orchard, and you can still see the bakehouse and kitchen, and the bedroom Jane shared with her sister Cassandra.

A number of Jane's personal belongings are on display in the house, including jewellery, a quilt she made herself, and the surprisingly small writing table at which she is thought to have worked.

Jane Austen’s writing desk — grandfather clock for scale!

For any Austen fans, the house and the village of Chawton are well worth a visit, and are within 1.5-2 hours drive of London so can be easily visited as a day trip.

EASTBOURNE AND THE SEVEN SISTERS CLIFFS, EAST SUSSEX

Last weekend my husband and children departed for Scotland to visit the grandparents, and I found myself alone for the first time in what felt like forever. I decided on the spur of the moment to hop in the car and drive down to the East Sussex coast. I grew up in Sydney, beside the water, and the longer I live in London, the more I miss that sense of freedom and expansiveness you feel living by the sea. I needed fresh air and big horizons, and to be reminded that I do actually still live on an island!

Those of you who have followed me on Instagram for a while know that I love British seaside resorts in the off season — there’s something about their slight bleakness that appeals to me. I typically go to the Kent coast for my dose of sea air, but this time I went a bit further afield to Eastbourne, with its pier and shingle beach.

After a wander round the town I drove up to the white cliffs of Beachy Head on the South Downs, overlooking Eastbourne. 

And then finally I drove around to Cuckmere Haven, which has a wonderful view of the Seven Sisters cliffs. You could do this as a walk from Eastbourne or you can drive and then walk about a mile down to the beach. 

These lovely houses were originally coastguards’ cottages, built in the 1820s, and they’ve been used as a filming location for movies (the final scene of Atonement is filmed here) and TV series (Luther, Foyle’s War). They’re at risk of erosion and there is an ongoing campaign to protect them. 

It’s a beautiful and atmospheric spot, even more so because I was there at sunset and there were only a handful of people on the beach — I imagine in the summer it’s packed. 

I watched the moon rise over the beach until finally, reluctantly, I made my way back to my car and back to London.  

A visit to the new V&A in Dundee

I’ve visited Dundee many times over the course of the last 12 years or so since meeting my husband, who was born and grew up in nearby St Andrews. He is a longtime supporter of one of the two Dundee football teams (I won’t say which one — the local rivalry is pretty fierce) and so I’ve spent many a cold winter’s afternoon in Dundee watching the football and learning exactly what a macaroni pie is.

So when I heard a couple of years ago that the Victoria and Albert Museum had decided on Dundee as the location for the first design museum in the UK to be built outside London, I was keen to visit as soon as I could after it opened in September 2018.

Over the last couple of years you could begin to see the hulk of the building taking shape on the banks of the Firth of Tay, the body of water that separates Fife from Tayside, revitalising a waterfront that was once known for its shipbuilding — the Discovery, the boat that took Scott and Shackleton to the Antarctic in 1901, was built in the Dundee shipyards and is moored next to the new V&A, which from this vantage point resembles the prow of a ship.

During the nineteenth century Dundee was one of the wealthiest cities in the UK, known for the “three Js”: jute, jam and journalism. The jute industry arose because of Dundee’s whaling industry — whale oil, a by-product of whaling, makes the spinning of jute possible, and so from the 1830s a substantial jute industry grew up in the town. Dundee's association with jam stems from the supposed invention of marmalade by Janet Keiller in 1797. Mrs Keiller is said to have created the recipe after her husband bought a cargo of bitter Seville oranges from a Spanish ship. Her son James later industrialised the production of Dundee marmalade in the 19th century. And finally, journalism: family-owned publisher DC Thomson has been based in Dundee since the 19th century and publishes several newspapers and comics, including The Beano, The Dandy and The Broons. It’s still one of the largest local employers in the city.

All of this gives some context as to why Dundee, which reached the height of its prosperity in the nineteenth century, might be well suited to hosting an outpost of the Victoria & Albert Museum. The original V&A has stood in South Kensington for more than 150 years and is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design.

The Dundee museum houses exhibits from the V&A’s permanent collections combined with loans from elsewhere. The highlights include The Oak Room, originally constructed by Scottish architect and desginer Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1908 for a tearoom in Glasgow, and restored from over 700 original parts that were stored by Glasgow City Council for over 50 years, and the Scottish Design Galleries, which feature permanent design works from across Scotland. Currently the museum also hosts an excellent temporary exhibition on the golden age of ocean liners, called Ocean Liners: Speed and Style.

Designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma and drawing inspiration from the craggy cliffs around Arbroath on the northeast coast of Scotland, the museum drew crowds of over 100,000 in its first three weeks, far outstripping expectations. Part of the intention in building the museum was to create a public space for Dundonians and visitors, and there’s an excellent cafe and shop as part of the entrance hall. The disappointment, for me, was the lack of a view, apart from on designated viewing platforms. Given its impressive location overlooking the broad expanse of the Tay, I kept hoping for a glimpse of that view from inside the entrance hall, whose walls rise steeply on an angle. It seems a shame to deny visitors that sense of space and water and sky.

Dundee has gained an impressive landmark, and hopefully one that will help revitalise its waterfront and bring visitors to the city. It’s already being touted as a must-see destination by everybody from Lonely Planet, Conde Nast Traveller and Bloomberg to the Wall Street Journal, and I can only agree. It’s not the most obvious place people think to visit when planning a trip to Scotland, but it’s easy to get there from Edinburgh and Glasgow, and well worth at least a day trip.

A weekend at Marshal Wade’s House in Bath

In early February we were lucky enough to spend a weekend at Marshal Wade’s House in Bath, a Georgian townhouse owned by the Landmark Trust. If you’ve never come across the Landmark Trust before or looked at their website, you’re in for a treat — they’re a charity who rescue historic buildings at risk, sensitively restore them, and then let them out as holiday homes. Most of their properties are in the UK but they also own a few in France and Italy. They’re all buildings that are full of history and character, and surprisingly reasonable if you’re travelling as a family or with a group of friends. I’d been on a tour of one of their properties in Spitalfields before, but had never actually stayed in one.

Marshal Wade’s House is in the very heart of Bath, next door to Bath Abbey and opposite the Roman Baths and Pump Room. It was built in the 1720s in the Palladian style for George Wade, an architectural enthusiast and an officer in the Scottish Highlands — it was acquired in the 1970s by the Landmark Trust and restored. The ground and first floors are let to the National Trust and currently house a shop, and so you climb up to the second and third floors to access the property, which has quite simply amazing views over the Abbey. 

From the windows of all the rooms you feel like you can almost touch the wonderful facade of the church, with its angels climbing up Jacob’s ladder. To watch the town gradually come to life in the early morning light as you eat breakfast and listen to the Abbey bells toll the hour is an experience I won’t forget in a hurry.

I’d been to Bath​ several times before, but only as a day trip from London. Staying in this very special place was the perfect way to experience Bath for a slightly longer visit. I really can’t recommend it highly enough if you’re looking for somewhere to stay that combines a central location with a sense of history. There were wonderful details, like the glass-fronted bookcase filled with everything from 19th century encyclopedias to editions of Jane Austen novels (and Claire Tomalin’s excellent biography of Jane Austen, which I started while I was there but didn’t finish, and so now have to buy!).

The Landmark Trust properties don’t necessarily come with all mod cons (so, no dishwasher or TV, no fancy shower, no wifi) but even though I was travelling with my two young children (who frankly enjoy a bit of telly!) I found this to be refreshing rather than difficult. My eldest daughter in particular was desperate to stay longer, and I think we would all have quite happily stayed there for a week. 

Bath is full of things to do — we walked up to the Royal Crescent and The Circus, visited the Fashion Museum and Assembly Rooms, walked across the Pulteney Bridge, and stopped at cafes at regular intervals to escape the rain! We’d visited the Abbey and the Roman Baths the previous year, so didn’t go this time, although I’d highly recommend both if you’ve never visited Bath before.

All in all, a really special weekend in a truly magical place, and one that I’d highly recommend.

The corner of Gay and Circus. Hands down the best address ever.

Disclaimer: my stay at Marshal Wade’s House was provided by the Landmark Trust on a complimentary basis. All the views expressed in this blog post are my own.

A weekend in Zurich’s old town with Marktgasse Hotel (sponsored)

In mid-November I travelled to Zurich as a guest of Marktgasse Hotel, a historic boutique hotel in the heart of the old town. It started life as two adjoining 15th-century inns and the current building incorporates some of those heritage elements into a design-led minimalist interior that is both cosy and welcoming. Rooms are decorated with attention to detail, with welcome flourishes like Aesop products in the bathrooms and art books by the bed. In the communal area you’ll find a book-lined library and adjoining salon, a selection of teas and coffees from Schwarzenbach, whose lovely shop is just around the corner, and a fabulous selection of travel and design books and magazines for you to sit and leaf through. I ate at both its restaurant, Baltho, and its café, Delish, which was packed most of the time with locals. I thoroughly enjoyed my stay and would recommend it both for its convenient location and its comfortable charm.

A room with a view - looking out from Marktgasse Hotel

The hotel is surrounded by the winding streets and alleys of the historic old town centre by the Limmat river. I’d never been to Zurich (or indeed Switzerland) before, and it was a bit of a revelation – I hadn’t expected to find such charming streets, full of old buildings which give a flavour of Zurich’s history as a centre of trade (many of the historic guildhalls still remain) and also as a centre of religious reform. Its Protestant cathedrals are well worth a visit, both for the views (the tower at Grossmünster church has wonderful panoramic views of the city) and for their modern stained glass, with windows by Giacometti at Grossmünster and by Marc Chagall at Fraumünster.

The thing I most enjoyed was simply wandering the streets of the old town – some of the highlights were the Villa Tobler, a mansion built in 1853 with an adjoining park that is open daily to the public for free, and the streets around it, in particular Trittligasse, Neustadtgasse and Frankengasse.

The beautiful Villa Tobler

Towards the river I found that the best streets for photography were Predigergasse, Neumarkt, Augustiniengasse, and Spiegelgasse. On the other side of the river you’ll find the lovely area of Schipfe, which is well worth a wander on your way up to Lindenhof, a park at the top of a hill which overlooks the city and has wonderful views, in particular at sunset.

The view from Lindenhof

As far as cafes go, I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Confiserie Sprüngli, where I tried their café gourmand – a tasting menu of little cakes and the chocolates they’re famous for. It was hugely popular with the locals as well as tourists, and their shop on the ground floor was like an Aladdin’s cave – my children would have loved it! As it was I stocked up on honey cakes and chocolates to take home with me, as well as their famous macarons, or Luxemburgerli as they’re called.

Café Schober and opposite it the café at Schwarzenbach Kolonialwaren were also lovely places for a coffee stop near the hotel.

I feel like I only scratched the surface of Zurich, and would have loved to spend longer there exploring the areas beyond the old town – as it was I had time for a brief trip to IM Viadukt and to Frau Gerold’s Garten, but would have liked to explore those areas more. I’d also have loved to visit a few places that were recommended to me but that I didn’t have a chance to try: ACID cafe, Bank, Juicery 21, and Kindli in particular. Something to go back for!

Disclaimer: I travelled to Zurich courtesy of Marktgasse Hotel. However the views and opinions expressed in this blog post are my own and it has not been drafted in collaboration with the hotel.

The view from Grossmünster

The old town and the Limmat from Grossmünster

Augustinienstrasse

Teddy bear shop on Neumarkt

Brunch spot: Milchbar café

Schipfe

Memories of summer in the Cinque Terre

Last summer I went on the holiday of a lifetime – 6 weeks driving around France and Italy with my husband and our two daughters, aged 2 and 4, staying a week at a time in places we’d never been to before. The very first part of Italy we travelled to was Cinque Terre in the province of Liguria – a series of five fishing villages connected by a hiking route, a ferry, and a little train line that seems to cling to the very edge of this spectacular part of the Italian coastline. I’d longed to visit this region of Italy for years, for the rugged scenery and for the ingenious way the villages are built into the sheer rock faces of the coastline.

We based ourselves in Riomaggiore and explored the rest of the villages (Vernazza, Monterosso al Mare, Manarola, and Corniglia) by ferry or train as day trips, as well as some of the coastline further on – Portovenere was a particular favourite.  For me, the most accessible villages for young kids were Vernazza and Monterosso, mainly because their beaches were slightly more sheltered and easier to access and the towns were less steeply terraced and easier to navigate.

Manarola I loved for the views from the coastal walk back towards the town, where you could watch swimmers leaping from towering rocks in the harbour down into the crystal blue waters below. (Oh, how I envied them as we hoisted our little ones on to our backs for the umpteenth time in 30 degree heat!) All five of the villages are visually spectacular, with the pink and ochre-coloured buildings that are characteristic of the region.

The Cinque Terre is deservedly popular as a tourist destination, and the crowds can be intense. I would say that if you prefer a quieter holiday, then consider staying somewhere further down the coast like Portovenere, Levanto or Lerici and visiting the Cinque Terre by ferry as a day trip. Or plan your visit for May/June, before the summer crowds reach their peak.

Travelling in this sort of steep terrain with small children was definitely a challenge – sheer cliffs mean hundreds of steps for tiny feet to clamber up and down, and we ended up using a back carrier most of the time for our youngest daughter. Strollers and buggies are no use when faced with a thousand steps back to your holiday apartment! (Let’s just say we ended our holiday much fitter than we began it.)

But the benefits of our little eyrie became apparent at night time, once the kids were in bed and we could finally relax on the terrace with an Aperol spritz, watching the sun go down until eventually the sea and sky were black – so black that you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began, or whether the little twinkling lights that appeared on the horizon were boats or stars. As night fell, one of us (let's be honest, usually my husband) would make the trek down into the village to buy paper cones of tiny fried fish and local seafood, and we'd sit for hours on our terrace with that spectacular view in front of us.

This was the most memorable part of our holiday – a chance to unwind and relax, for my husband and I to lie back on deck chairs still warm from the heat of the day and make the most of our time alone together, once the demands of the children had faded away and we could be together, alone. For me, it’s not just the place that makes a holiday memorable – it’s the people too. This was the first time we’d had the luxury of such a long holiday as a family, and to be suddenly transported away from the daily grind to this magical place, and to be able to experience it together, was an incredibly special experience.

British Airways Holidays has teamed up with HuffPost Travel to celebrate those amazing little moments that make your holiday unforgettable. Share your favourite holiday moment and you’ll be entered into a draw to win a city break in Rome.

This post was created in partnership with British Airways Holidays.

A weekend in Barcelona with Casa Batlló

In late April I was lucky enough to travel to Barcelona as the guest of Casa Batlló, the iconic modernist house designed by architect Antonin Gaudí and now designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. Each year for the festival of Sant Jordi (St George), the patron saint of Catalonia, the house celebrates by decorating its façade with red roses in reference to the saint’s legend, and partners with a charity to promote a cause – this year it was Donor Sang, the Catalan blood bank. The tradition on Sant Jordi’s day is for people to exchange gifts of books and roses, and the streets of Barcelona were lined with booksellers and flower sellers while we were there — the perfect combination as far as I’m concerned!

During the course of the weekend we visited two modernist houses — Casa Batlló and its next door neighbour Casa Amatller. Casa Batlló was designed in 1904 as the rebuild of an existing house, which had been built in 1877. It’s immediately recognisable by its irregular shaped windows and the flowing organic shapes of the stone work on its façade, which is decorated with a kind of mosaic of broken tiles. It was intended as a family home and was commissioned by Josep Batlló, a wealthy textile industrialist, and the family remained living there until the 1950s — part of it is still used as a private residence, which is amazing when you consider how many tourists visit the house every day! The line of the roof is very distinctive and looks like a dragon’s spine, in reference to the legend of Sant Jordi.

We also visited Casa Amatller next door, another modernist house originally designed by Josep Puig i Cadafalch in 1898–1900 as a family home for the Amatller family, who were well-known chocolatiers. I loved the interiors here — the way the house divides into more masculine and more feminine spaces, and the lovely light that pours in from huge stained glass windows.

The other highlight of our trip was a visit to the Palau de la Música Catalana, the concert hall in Barcelona designed by another great modernist architect, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, in 1905. Like the other modernist houses we visited, the building uses curved flowing lines wherever possible, and is remarkable for how quickly it was built, using what were then very modern techniques. The basic steel structure was assembled very quickly, and stucco was used rather than stone for much of the interior decoration as it was quicker and easier to work with. The walls of the concert hall itself are made of stained glass panes set within arches on two sides, and above is an enormous skylight of stained glass designed by Antoni Rigalt — an inverted dome which immediately draws the eye upwards and means that the hall is filled with natural light during the day, unlike many other theatres I've visited.

We were lucky enough to be allowed to watch part of a rehearsal of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by the Orquestra Simfònica del Vallès and to meet the orchestra director. Later that evening we got to attend the performance proper — to be able to experience such beautiful music in those wonderful surroundings was a real privilege.

It was the first international “Instagram trip” I’d ever been on, and I was incredibly grateful for the opportunity to explore some of Barcelona’s best loved attractions and to get a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes at some of these. I’m left with a desire to go back to Barcelona and spend more time there exploring the city — it had a real festival vibe when we were there and it's the sort of place you could easily spend a week exploring.

Alexandra hotel

El Nacional restaurant

* Disclosure: I travelled to Barcelona as a guest of Casa Batlló, who arranged accommodation at the Alexandra Barcelona and all meals, including lunch at El Nacional. This blog post is not sponsored, however, and the opinions in it are my own.

Edinburgh in a day

In early April I spent a day and a night in Edinburgh, a city that I love and that I've been to a few times before, but feel that I don't know nearly well enough. My husband is Scottish and grew up only an hour or so from Edinburgh, so we travel back to Scotland quite regularly, and now that my appetite for Edinburgh has been whetted I'm determined to get back there again before too long.

As it was, we had only a short time to explore the city, so I tried to pack in as much walking and photography as possible. To help me plan a walking route I downloaded the Pathport guide to Edinburgh by Marta Beres-Karpinska, which has some great spots in it. Some places I didn't have time to visit, or I'd been to before, so my route was really planned with an eye to avoiding the more obvious touristy places (I've been to Edinburgh castle and Arthur's Seat before, for example, so I didn't visit these again, as lovely as they are).

Instead, I took the train to Haymarket and started there, heading first to Stockbridge to visit Circus Lane. It's a small crescent much like a London mews street, but with a lovely curve and a perfectly placed church tower.

After wandering around Stockbridge and stopping for coffee and raspberry Swedish buns at the Soderberg bakery on Deanhaugh St, I made my way along the Water of Leith to Dean Village. Historically this was a centre of grain milling, but these days it feels like a peacful oasis only a few minutes from the city centre but with the feel of a rural village. The river runs through it and provides some beautiful views.

It's also where you'll find Well Court, which was built in the 1880s on the site of old tenements, which were cleared to make way for this new form of social housing for local workers. It's now a World Heritage site and has a wonderful communal courtyard where residents still hang their washing on sunny days!

Next up was a walk towards the Royal Mile via Cowgate and Grassmarket. I spent quite a lot of time exploring the many "closes" (narrow alleys) leading off the Royal Mile, which leads from Edinburgh Castle down to the Palace of Holyroodhouse and the Scottish Parliament at the bottom. It's the centre of touristy Edinburgh so there are woollen mills and whiskey shops galore, but you really can't miss it. The closes themselves are very atmospheric and characterful - you really get a sense of history when you wander through some of them.

I made a quick stop at the National Museum of Scotland for some lunch at their brasserie (cullen skink and a smoked salmon sandwich, yum) and to check out the views from their rooftop garden.

And our final destination was Leith: this is a part of Edinburgh I'd never visited and I wish I could have spent longer there. It's what used to be the docks, and it's still a busy port today, although mostly leisure craft these days rather than the shipbuilding of days gone by. It's undergone a regeneration in recent years and is home to a number of cafes, bars and restaurants. We had a wonderful meal at Martin Wishart as well as trying a few of the bars. Not a bad end to our day!

A week in Umbria

Last summer we did a big Italian road trip, and I'm loving that I now have an excuse to post my photos of Umbria on this blog! We stayed in a tiny village a few miles outside Assisi, on a farm, where the owners' children and their friends roamed about in total freedom. I really envied them their lifestyle - the children, although young, seemed competent and confident, pitching a tent in the field one night for a sleepover with all their friends, fetching wood for a campfire, and dismantling the tent easily by themselves the next morning.

Anyway, as we were travelling in August with young kids (4 and 2), we tended to leave straight after breakfast to visit one of the Umbrian medieval hill towns nearby, see as much as could in the morning and have lunch out, then make our way home while the kids slept so we could spend the afternoons by the pool. Not a bad life!

Our biggest trips were to Assisi, as there was so much to see. While we were there I was contacted by the Mayor's office to see if I'd like to be taken on a tour of the lesser known parts of the city (um, yes please) and afterwards I was taken to meet the Mayor - the first woman ever elected in this traditionally conservative and religious town, on a centre-left environmentalist platform. What a treat it was to be shown around by a local - one of the wonderful experiences Instagram has brought me over the past year.

We also visited Gubbio, Spello, Spoleto, Perugia, Bevagna and Montefalco, and of course Assisi. I loved the feel of these medieval towns, and in general I found Umbria a bit less touristy than other regions we visited.

A week on the Amalfi coast

Last summer we were lucky enough to get 6 weeks off work, and we spent most of that time road tripping around Italy and France (I know, it's a tough life). We decided to spend a week each in the Amalfi coast, the Cinque Terre, Tuscany and Umbria. Travelling with small children was not without its challenges, but like most things, even though it was hard sometimes it was worth it to see new places and have new experiences as a family.

On the Amalfi coast we stayed in a small village called Conca dei Marini, about a 10-minute drive from the town of Amalfi. We booked very last minute, and in retrospect we chose a pretty topographically challenging location, high up a hillside with what felt like a thousand steps to navigate up to our little house. The house itself had spectacular views over the Mediterranean and down the coast towards Positano, but one key lesson was learned: when travelling with small kids, try and stay somewhere relatively flat! (Holiday in Holland, anyone?)

The beach in Conca dei Marini was accessible only by catching a minibus down to the bottom of the hill and then walking down a number of huge flights of stairs. It was such a challenge that most days we ended up driving early in the morning to Amalfi, which had a large underground car park and is mostly flat in the town itself, and swimming at the town beach there.

We also did a number of day trips in the region — my favourite was probably Ravello, in the Amalfi hinterland, but another highlight was a long-awaited trip to Pompeii, which I'd never been to. (Top tip for parents: don't bother with buggies or strollers as Pompeii is mostly cobbled, and you'll spend the whole time wishing for a back carrier!) That aside, it's an incredible place — I've never visited a Roman site before where you get such a sense of people's daily lives.

Ravello

Villa Cimbrone, Ravello

Pompeii

Conca dei Marini