Written by The Zabola estate’s wrought-iron gates swing open and an avenue of chestnut trees stretches before me. Beyond them lies a serene Transylvanian landscape of rolling hills, lakes and gardens surrounding a grand yellow-ochre castle (which has the comfiest beds I’ve ever slept in). I instantly feel myself relax – this place, hidden in a forested valley in […]
The Urdaibai Bird Center has been cutely styled like an international airport terminal, with multilingual boards marked Arrivals and Departures, and a raised observation platform resembling an air traffic control tower. Through a roof-mounted telescope I watch various avian species landing or taking off from little floating archipelagos on the adjoining lagoon. I am not a […]
I step out the door of Guirdil bothy at 2am to the guttural roar of a stag and the sound of the ocean lapping on the beach before me. It’s the height of the rut here on Rum, a Hebridean island where red deer outnumber people, and stags have been bolving all night. The skull […]
You couldn’t make it up. As early autumn darkness deepened around Whistlewood Common – tealights a-flicker, guitars twanging around the campfire – I found myself sitting between Peter Wood and Gill Forrester. It was a pincer movement of nominative determinism: Wood, a woodworker and teacher of heritage crafts; Forrester, community and wellbeing manager at the […]