Our final short break of the year took us to uncharted territory: Maidenhead. While the main reason was a friendship visit, at least the river frontage of the town has always looked alluring, even at high speed, on our rail journeys further west….

… so we booked for a night into the Thames Riviera Hotel, ideally situated on the Thames bank, between the 18th century stone road bridge and Brunel’s 19th century brick railway bridge. The hotel was very comfortable, if uncannily quiet, and did provide us with a sumptuous evening meal: for two of us, lamb shank at its melt-in-the-mouth best.

Next morning we explored the river and its environs. After a sharp frost, it soon got really quite warm in the solstitial sun as we ventured over the border into Buckinghamshire at Taplow. Down leafy lanes, Ivy berries were ripening nicely for late winter bird food and Old Man’s Beard was catching every drop of the low light in its shaggy halo.

Our breakfast destination was the Lake House Café, overlooking a watersports lake, and so probably a whole lot more relaxing at this time of year when the only residents were the ducks, Cormorants and Coots! Breakfast was excellent, as were the views, ever-changing cloudscapes reflected in the tranquil waters.

Then we walked up-river, alongside the Jubilee River, a major flood-relief, only 25 years old but merging seamlessly and naturalistically into the landscape, in a series of habitat improvements designed to offset the effects of developments within the river valley:

Willows and roses were covered in overwintering gall structures, Mistletoe was everywhere, and Red Kites wheeled and mewled around in remarkable numbers, some taking time out in the bankside trees…

Then it was back to the Thames and its islands and locks. Ray Mill Island had more kites, Egyptian Geese and sweetly scented Winter Heliotrope, flowering alongside a remarkably late blooming Ivy bush.

From there it was a very pleasant stroll through the back lanes into the town centre. What of Maidenhead? Well at least it has a clock tower …

Actually, that is unfair. We thought that might be all that there is to it, until in our last hour when we scratched the surface and discovered the waterways that reach into its heart, right up to the High Street, providing interesting photos and mind-bending reflections, along with Grey Wagtails…

Then there are the sculptures, ranging from this Green Man to a hanging gaggle of bats, the latter to celebrate the filming of a Dracula film in the nearby Bray studios (and the sourcing of rubber ‘models’ from the local Woolworths!)….

And a few interesting buildings like the church below, plenty of shops, and a fine pint in the Bear, an old pub still with atmosphere and life (and cheap beer, being a Wetherspoons).

All in all a very fleeting visit but a worthy end to our catalogue of short breaks in places less visited. Roll on 2025!!

Planning short breaks in the winter months is always beset by the short days and of course the risk of inclement weather. For the December trip in our first year of monthly short breaks by train we decided to ignore the weather risk, and simply accept the inevitability of short days (the above ‘sunrise’ photo was taken well after breakfast!) … indeed to face it square on by heading north into even shorter days, and return to Dundee after our fantastic couple of days there last year. The answer is to make the most of good food and drink when it is dark (is that why whisky was invented?) and to take advantage of good short-term weather forecasts and the shelter afforded by museums, churches and trains (and pubs!) to avoid rain, which we did pretty successfully.

With long train journeys bookending our four-day break, it is important to enjoy the travelling. And going north up the East Coast mainline, it is impossible not to enjoy the journey of cathedrals (Peterborough, Durham, York), castles ( Durham, Lindisfarne, Bamburgh, Edinburgh), bridges (Newcastle, Forth, Tay), islands (Farnes, Holy Island, Bass Rock), the Angel of the North and a whole lot more.

So another two nights in the Premier Inn right on the bank of the Firth of Tay: what’s not to love with the low sun only just rising above the horizon, but lighting the Firth in dramatic spectacle?

And it just happens to be a couple of hundred metres from one of our favourite buildings ever, the utterly magnificent V&A. A whale from one angle, the prow of a ship from another, and walking underneath it has all the echoing wilderness of a dripping Scottish sea-cave:

Surrounded by water, it is equally as impressive in reflection…

… and the delights continue after dark.

So impressive that going inside the building is almost disappointing, though the ‘strata’ and (genuine) fossils are a magnificent touch.

As a building the V&A really benefits from the sun creating an ever-changing interplay of light and shade, so it is fortunate that our day and a half of daylight were under blue skies, also great conditions to stroll along the Firth to the Railway Bridge:

The sunlight showed the many monumental buildings in the city centre to their best effect…

… a city centre also filled with public art and sculpture:

Churches, pubs (here the Trades House) and the museum provided us with culture and sustenance…

And for us one very special place was the graveyard known as the Howff, a beautifully unmanicured space, where Death begets Life.

But apart from the gulls and Shags on the Firth, the main other wildlife interest was in the adornments of lichens on pretty much every street tree:

Our next move came about at the recommendation of a friendly street-sweeper who out of the blue came up to us and suggested we visit Broughty Ferry, even giving us the details of how to get there by bus. And as we had a couple of hours before the anticipated arrival of rain, it would have been rude not to. A very lovely peaceful fishing village, with harbour and castle, this kept us very happy.

Rock Pipits, Turnstones and a partially albino Carrion Crow fed along the beach, where Sea Mayweed and Sea Rocket were still clinging to flower, and again lichens added their splashes of colour to the harbour walls:

And as the first rain arrived it was into the delightful Ship Inn, where we tucked in to the very best bowl of Cullen Skink just before the kitchen closed, and essentially decided the treat we would try and recreate for our Christmas lunch this year!

We’ve still not done with Dundee! We will be back again. Even though it sits astride the National Cycle Route 1, the very same as I worked with Sustrans to deliver as its first stage through Wivenhoe some 30 years ago,  we are perfectly content to let the train take the strain!

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All too soon, it was time to head to Perth, the destination for our final night, with dire warnings of Storm Darragh ringing in our ears. Amber warnings were everywhere, for snow just to the north, wind just to the south, and rain all over! And even though the rain came, we largely missed it in the pubs and other place of shelter…

Perth was clearly once a place of considerable wealth, to judge from its buildings, but now it feels as though it has seen much better days.

The same sense of faded glories ran through our hotel (the Salutation), the sight of which on a TV programme originally piqued our interest to stay there – but the excellence of its breakfast in the palatial dining room was undeniable.

The mighty Tay still flows on through Perth, as it has since the city’s heyday, under a lovely sandstone bridge, in which erosion of the sand matrix has left pebbles embedded in relief, like natural braille… what are the rocks trying to tell us?

Lichens once more adorned the rocks and walls, and trees were filled with tseeping Redwings…

And in the backwaters of the mill races (leats) that run though the city, we had excellent views of a Kingfisher, a shaft of brilliance on the dreariest of days.

St Ninian’s Cathedral provided both shelter from the showers and plenty of interest, as did the newly refurbished museum, with some excellent exhibits including the Stone of Scone/aka Destiny in its new permanent home. Similarly the Art Gallery was just the right size, not too big but with enough fascinating art (much by William Gilles) to pass a happy couple of hours.

But lunchtime arrived and it was time to head homewards via Glasgow and the West Coast Mainline as the storm raged further south. Yes, we could see the snow settled on higher ground between Perth and Stirling, and quite a lot of flooding, but for us just a few minutes’ delay. Then into England, a points failure at Penrith added to the delay, but all in all it amounted to just two hours. Not bad really given the severity of the storm and the dire warnings that preceded it – and of course, it meant we got our money back!

Our monthly short breaks often have their genesis from a single place or sight or activity we want to experience, padded out into a two- or three-night stay with other things we think might be of interest in the vicinity, or at least easily accessible by public transport. November’s trip was no exception: for this, we need simply look back to the televised rail journeys of Michael Portillo. Love him or hate him as a politician, it cannot be denied that he opens the eyes of many to the abundant delight of rail.

A few months ago he alighted at East Midlands Parkway. A station in the middle of nowhere – except for that fact that the platform is almost within touching distance of the iconic cooling towers at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station….

For this one we were hoping for fine sunny weather, and as we left St Pancras, it seemed we were in luck. But by the time we reached Nottinghamshire, the anticyclonic gloom of the past few weeks had closed in again. We shouldn’t have worried: against blue skies or grey, so close up those iconic megastructures cannot fail to inspire awe.

And yes for a few precious moments, the towers lit up as a few shafts of sunlight broke through …

To hear that these cathedrals to power generation are due to be demolished, we knew we just had to visit. And just in time perhaps, as the power station ceased generating at the end of September this year, the very last coal-burning power station still operating in this country.

Of course, it is wonderful to know that such power stations are no longer polluting our world. But do their most obvious manifestation, the cooling towers with their almost sensually curved shape, need to be wiped from the face of the Earth? Surely there is still space for these iconic buildings, if nothing else as a memorial, Lest We Forget the damage inflicted to our planet and its future over the past three or four generations, and the damage inflicted upon human communities by heartless political dogma without effective transitional help towards low-carbon economies.

Every step we took, we were overlooked by the eight brooding, tamed beauties, even down by the River Soar at Redhill Marina, just about the only place within walking distance to find an afternoon cuppa.

A few hundred metres short of its discharge into the Trent, the river here is canalized, with locks, towpaths and barges, the stiller waters rampantly colonized by invasive Floating Pennywort.

In common with seemingly everywhere this year, the valley grasslands abounded in fungi, including fresh cowpats with the orange discs of Cheilymenia stercorea.

There just past the lock was the red hill after which it is named, quite a surprise in the flat valley. And the rocks really are very red, a type of friable mudstone with numerous ramifying seams of fibrous gypsum, up to several centimetres thick.

It could be the gypsum that is imparting a calcareous influence to the soil, with seepages encrusted in tufa, and the slopes festooned in Old Man’s Beard.

Then, after a happy three hours in the middle of nowhere, it was back onto the train and onwards to Nottingham.  What a revelation! As the light stated to fade we were back among canals and warehouses …

… including the welcome Canalhouse Bar, in a former canal museum and still with a narrowboat on show inside the bar.

The Premier Inn, also by the canal in the Island Quarter, was conveniently situated just along from Binks Yard restaurant, which provided us what has to be the very best meal of the many we have tasted on our monthly travels this year. For me it was free-range local pork chop with sautéed potatoes, seared hispi cabbage and a delicious honey mustard dressing, while Jude went for the rainbow salad with all sorts of magical ingredients, topped with fried halloumi strips. We finished off with the richest possible salted chocolate tart, with blood orange sorbet, though pleased we ordered just one with two spoons! And very reasonably priced even with a splendid bottle of Tempranillo… I don’t usually put such foody detail in these blogs, but that really was one of the best of the best, one to be savoured vicariously over years to come.

Next morning, the grey had given way to blue as we headed back along the canal, the sunlight showing the distinctive red bricks to advantage, and contributing to some lovely reflectascapes …

… which were rendered even more exotic by the extravagance of displaying Mandarins.

But there is another side to the city, perched on the red sandstone hills: castle, cathedral, churches, municipal and other monumental buildings looking down over the canal.

Then built into the cliff is the art gallery, Nottingham Contemporary, continuing a centuries-old practice of expanding the city underground into hundreds of caves hewn out of the soft rock.

Used for storage, shelter and industry, we visited the ‘City of Caves’. Perhaps the tours under the castle would have been better organised, albeit no doubt more expensive, but we were left a little disappointed, especially when the wifi signal dropped out and we were left without commentary half way through …

Still we got the drift, and emerged blinking into the bright sunlight into a pop-up garden, full of dahlias, and even in very unprepossessing concrete surroundings, teeming with insect life!

And all that was left to do was head to Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, built into the Castle mound, for a good lunch within the beating heart of the underground city.

Next stop further up the Trent valley was Lichfield. Again we had few preconceptions about the place, but very soon realised it is all about the Cathedral, the three spires from every angle looming large over the city and its other historic attractions.

It soon got dark, and even though it wasn’t illuminated, the cathedral made its presence felt, like something from the brushes of Atkinson Grimshaw, the master of nocturnal painting,

Overnight rain came as a bit of a surprise, but by breakfast the sun was out and the skies cobalt blue. First stop of course was the cathedral: up close its many statues, figurines and external decoration lend it an intricate Gothic scariness, the sort of thing we have felt previously in cathedrals such as Cologne.

And no doubt it was not so long ago even more forbidding, before most of the stones were cleaned of the grime of the centuries to reveal the natural red sandstone, which now with lower aerial pollution levels is allowing colonization by mosses, lichens and ferns.

And so inside. The space feels vast, and it comes with all the requisite pillars, ornamentation, stained glass and wall paintings, but both of us felt it lacked a certain indefinable something. We couldn’t fault the warmth of the welcome, but the fabric of the building simply didn’t have it for us.

Out again into the sun, time to stroll around Stowe Pool for lovely reflections, visit Dr Johnson’s house, walk past Erasmus Darwin’s house, and settle down in the Angel pub for a fine local ale. And before we knew it, back to the station and home. But only three weeks until our next trip!

During school holidays, we always like to take our granddaughter Eleanor, aged 6, away for at least one night, to start to show her the world. This week it was to London: always busy, but buzzing and vibrant. And despite the half-term crowds, the only time we were queueing was right at the start, to get on to the cable-car across the Thames. But in fact the wait of nearly an hour was quite fortuitous: we started queuing in heavy cloud and light rain …

… but once aloft the sun came out …

… and by touchdown it was clear blue skies! At least for a few minutes, until the grey gloom settled in once again.

After lunch, it was back under the river to Canary Wharf, the glass cathedrals to business now softened with the newly created and very attractive Eden Dock garden.

Time then before it got dark for the playpark in Greenwich Park before we headed to the Greenwich Premier Inn for a very comfortable night. After breakfast next morning we took the opportunity for a walk around the back of the hotel and a view over Deptford Creek, one of those tidal tendrils of the Thames, once so important for trade and commerce. It may be hemmed in by development, but it must look quite impressive at high water. And there were Mallards and a Grey Wagtail to brighten up the dull day, as well as a team of Large White caterpillars demolishing a cabbage!

The Horniman Museum and Garden was out destination for the second day.

Situated in Forest Hill, it really is on a hill, and we were very pleasantly surprised at the views of London from the top of the garden, snapshots of familiar places between the trees.

What attracted us there was the butterfly house, thinking Eleanor would find that exciting. As of course did we: a great place for taking photographs (once the lenses stopped steaming up) of unfamiliar butterflies and caterpillars, along with tropical flowers and even a Cottony Cushion Scale-insect.

Although the end of October, it was still mild outside so there were insects there as well in the lovely gardens, with ecological plantings, interesting flowers and autumn colours:

Yes, Eleanor did enjoy the butterfly house, although as much for flowers and foliage as for the butterflies as her photos show:

But what really seemed to inspire her efforts with Granny’s phone camera was the garden. We do rather forget that those of smaller stature see the world very differently to us, framed by fences and barriers that we quite literally overlook.

She was clearly taken by some of the more showy flowers …

… but also the colours, patterns and textures of the leaves around her. It is a privilege to share some more of her photos – the world as seen through the eyes of a child!

And then all that was left was a visit to the playpark across the road (‘fun’ is always needed, as well as ‘interesting’), serenaded by squawking hordes of Rose-ringed Parakeets, and home after a lovely couple of days.

And so on our second afternoon we headed down from Tunbridge Wells to the coast of East Sussex, taking in Bexhill, St Leonards and Hastings, all conveniently linked by regular and always prompt trains.

We stayed in Bexhill, simply because of a gig we wanted to see at the iconic De La Warr Pavilion – Oysterband and June Tabor, on their final ever tour. Yes, that was very good, as was an Italian meal at Trattoria Italiana preceded by a restorative walk in the dark along the prom listening to waves on shingle, but otherwise we couldn’t find much to recommend it…

In fact most interesting spot apart from the Pavilion was the railway station, both as a way out to pastures new and in sunshine at least providing lots of opportunity for interesting photos of receding vistas:

A couple of times we had chance to wander around St Leonards where the feel was very different, careworn maybe, but not tired, and seemingly with more pride in itself. And the Dandelion Deli provided an excellent breakfast!

Our second visit was as the weather was starting to break on our final day, but ‘bracing’ is a positive attribute for any seaside town, and the waves and sea-foam were quite spectacular.

We have been to Hastings before, a couple of years ago: we enjoyed it then, and with a sunny day in the forecast it seemed a good place to spend our full day on the coast. Not just for the food of course – outstanding fish and chips at Maggie’s, on the beach among the iconic sail-lofts, – but that helped!

We started the day walking the sea-front of ‘new’ Hastings, down to its pier. ‘English Seaside Architecture’ on one side, the large shingle beach, complete with beach-huts, and expansive views of the Channel. Sadly, between the two, a busy road: whoever though it a good idea to sever a town from its main asset?

The waves were lapping up the shore, enough to fill the air with shingle gently clashing followed by the gurgle of each wave sinking into the beach. Sea Kale was growing along the very upper beach where waves so rarely reach, along with Red Valerian, and patches especially on the prom of Water Bent, a newly arrived grass on our shores, spreading rapidly but not it seems displacing anything much – it helps green the arid cracks where nothing else lives.

Around the town, there was plenty of art to be found, both in the form of official installations but also ‘found’ art created by the transient interplay of sunlight with concrete…

Out then to Old Hastings …

… where the split-level street provide a wonderful habitat for attractive wall plants, from Polypody and Mexican Fleabane to Shaggy Soldier and Trailing Bellflower.

Under the gaze of the cliffs and castle, all the trappings of a seaside destination were there, very attractive until you lower the line of vision to car-park level….

Thankfully at the eastern end, Rock-a-Nore cliffs are still unspoilt and majestic, home to Peregrines above, Rock Pipits among the collapsed boulders, and sweeping views, along to Dungeness nuclear power station, some 40km distant but reaching up defiantly from below the horizon. The Earth really is spherical!

The sandstone cliffs were a picturesque mix of strata, faces and colonising vegetation …

… with plants including Tree Mallow and Rock Samphire, but worryingly large amounts of the aggressively invasive space-filler Hottentot-fig. Once our winters were too reliably frosty for it to survive without protection, but no longer it seems.

And then all that was left was to wander back along the shingle beach among the fishing paraphernalia, the iconic sail lofts and of course, Maggie’s fish and chips! A great finale.

Well, not quite the last act of our break. On our way home by train, we had decided to stop off for a few hours in Battle. Clearly a famous historic site, but the weather by then was such that we thought spending money to wander round a field in the wind and rain not especially enticing. So we took refuge in two lovely pubs (the Chequers Inn and the King’s Head) and listened to the incessant roar of busy traffic on the A2100. Another part of the south-east where car is clearly king: there are not even any pedestrian crossings to easily explore the other side of the street: heaven forbid that a motorist should be inconvenienced by a mere pedestrian. But, as we demonstrated, a visit by public transport, helping support local hostelries, is perfectly possible!

For other blogs in this series see:

An autumn break in Kent and Sussex: part 1 – Tunbridge Wells | Chris Gibson Wildlife

An autumn break in Kent and Sussex: part 2 – Eridge Rocks | Chris Gibson Wildlife

After a very comfortable night (and outstanding breakfast) in the Royal Wells Hotel, we headed out again under blue skies by bus across the border into East Sussex to the village of Eridge. The bus stop was outside the local church, and as the churchwarden was just opening up it would have been rude not to have had a look around…

A bit Arts & Crafty on the outside, the inside was delightfully simple, with some glorious modern stained glass, very reminiscent of the Chagall windows at Tudeley we had seen a few years previously…not surprising perhaps as that is only some 20km away.

Plenty to see in the churchyard too, from lichens on the gravestones to waxcap fungi studding the springy turf, and Red Admirals nectaring on the flowering Ivy in the hedges.

But our real reason for being here was the Sussex Wildlife Trust nature reserve just down the road, Eridge Rocks. This was Jude’s first and my second time here – and my visit six months ago was in very different circumstances, both wet and windy. Heading down the lane there is little sign of the wonderland therein…

But as soon as you enter, the world is transformed. Rocks and cliffs, caves, cracks and crevices, enfolded by trees and dripping in mosses, liverworts and ferns as befits this south-eastern outlier of the Atlantic rain-forest.

It is the province of goblins and wood-sprites, the petrified heads of lizards and giants, entwined with garlands of Ivy and Bracken. It may be the same Wealden sandstone rock formation as we saw yesterday at Tunbridge Wells Common, but here it is imbued with the spirit of bountiful, even pagan, Nature.

In places the rock faces are etched with the signs of millennia of the gritty wind erosion characteristic of deserts (as we have seen previously in Menorca and West Bay in Dorset), each face a unique honeycomb of geological history.

Elsewhere, the trees have melded with the rocks, moulded into such contortions it is difficult to see where wood ends and stone begins.

The older trees are Yews, perhaps the longest-lived of all our trees, harking back to an age before there were any churchyards for them to be trapped within. And the tips of many a shoot were swollen into the almost mini-artichoke form of the gall caused by the the midge Taxomyia taxi. Although the national distribution of this gall is very sparse and patchy, we do seem to find it in many places, including this nature reserve and Eridge churchyard.

And there is the life to be found on the rocks, carpets of moss and lichen. sprouting ferns from each crevasse. Some deep overhands had the green baize ceiling carpet of Killarney Fern gametophyte and, just where I found it in March, the Tunbridge Filmy-fern, denizen of the lowest light-levels imaginable.

And yes there were a few insects and fungi …

… but really centre-stage were the bones of the land, a journey back into the depths of pre-history, almost enough to mask the distant but incessant roar of the A26….

For other blogs in this series see

An autumn break in Kent and Sussex: part 1 – Tunbridge Wells | Chris Gibson Wildlife

An autumn break in Kent and Sussex: part 3 – to the seaside at Hastings, St Leonards & Bexhill | Chris Gibson Wildlife

It may have been the height of autumn, but the weather for our October short break in Kent and Sussex had other ideas: for three of the four days, blue skies, light winds and warm sunshine kept the memory of summer very much alive. We started at Tunbridge Wells, Royal Tunbridge Wells no less, with appropriately Regency architectural styling all held together by the distinctive and appealing red brick and tiled pavements…

From residential terraces to the historical heart at the Pantiles, the concentration of impressive buildings was remarkable, centred on the original chalybeate (iron-rich) mineral well-spring. Full of shops selling high-end coffees and diamonds, it was admirably traffic-free, at least to the eyes. But to the ears – an ever-present rumble, rising to a crescendo every so often as if to prevent one from becoming habituated.

In the other half of the town, nearer to the railway station, there were again some remarkable buildings, many repurposed for commercial use, such as the Opera House (now a Wetherspoons), others in civic use, like the museum – all you ever wanted to know about Subbuteo, the football game, which originated here. And real shops selling real things, not just aspirations and fripperies…

In any town, open spaces are of course a refuge, and those we visited all gave us that, from the bustle and the traffic. In The Grove the parkland trees held lots of birds including roving multi-species tit flocks, plus several Chiffchaffs, and one of the trees had a fine, if worrying, sprouting of Ganoderma fungal brackets.

Calverley Grounds was much larger, with more formal gardens, but plenty of space to breathe…

But it was Tunbridge Wells Common that impressed us the most. Running uphill from the edge of the busiest road, the value of trees in suppressing sound and enhancing the air was immediate. Robins were singing. Nuthatches and woodpeckers calling in the still air, as Speckled Woods made most of the sun-flecks.

Trees and scrub gave way higher up to grass and heath, even a little bit of Heather, and then Wellington Rocks, an outcrop of the local sandstone worn by eons of water and wind, (and centuries of childrens’ exploration) into white sand, the home of ground-nesting Bee-wolves and Ivy (or perhaps Heather) Bees.

The rocks have such a pleasing profile they kept us happy with our cameras for most of the afternoon, the sun moving round and shadows progressively revealing more and more detail in the faces of the rocks.

Cracks and crevices, sometimes enlarged into chasms provided shelter for plant life…

… the north-facing walls with ferns and liverworts, the southerly with lichens and orange Trentepohlia algae.

And then right at the top of the Common was our splendid, and well-priced hotel, the Royal Wells, complete with views over the town. After an indifferent start, the town for us was saved by this hotel and the Common, such that we will actively seek to return to continue our explorations of the Wealden landscapes.

For other blogs in this series see

An autumn break in Kent and Sussex: part 2 – Eridge Rocks | Chris Gibson Wildlife

An autumn break in Kent and Sussex: part 3 – to the seaside at Hastings, St Leonards & Bexhill | Chris Gibson Wildlife