Tag: travel
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Burns Night 2025
The birthday of Robert Burns on 25 January is an opportunity to celebrate Scotland’s southern-most whisky distillery. We probably all associate Robert Burns with his love of whisky, but we sometimes forget that he was also an excise officer – fighting the smugglers and illicit stills. Poetry wasn’t big business in those days and when…
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St Andrew’s Day 2024
St Andrew’s Day and time to celebrate a Scottish gin. I was in Galloway last week and took the opportunity to seek out the Dark Arts distillery in Kirkcudbright. It’s a wee gem. It’s part of the Johnston – a former primary school – which also houses the Dark Space planetarium. You can’t miss the…
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Lancashire Day 2024
Dare we say it but it’s Lancashire Day on 27 November Celebrate everything that’s great about Lancashire with one of its gins. My book GINS of the NORTH WEST tells the stories of Lancashire’s gins and their makers … so you can pick the gin which suits your toast to Lancashire! To name a few: Batch,…
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French spirit
Amazing what gin you come across on a short break in France. Pays basques is home to several … and people were proud to show them off. Charente (home of Cognac) also gets in on the act. First up is Brana and in particular it’s espelette flavoured gin. You can’t visit Biarritz or St Jean…
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Yorkshire Day 2024
Celebrate all the good things in God’s Own Country on Yorkshire Day on 1 August. What better way to toast them with a Gin made in Yorkshire? Pick one with the help of YORKSHIRE’S GINS – the definitive guide to the county’s gins and their distilleries and makers. Available at independent bookshops and stores or…
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Cheshire Day 2024
Cheshire might be famous for its cheese, a grinning cat and being one of the cradles of the industrial revolution … but more importantly it is home to a lot of gin. As I wrote in my book GINS of the NORTH WEST, a Cheshire market town is home to the oldest gin in the…
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Gin stories
About the author I’m the author of three gin books – GINS of the NORTH WEST, YORKSHIRE’S GINS + The GIN CLAN. The GINS of the NORTH WEST features the gins and their makers and distilleries in Lancashire, Cheshire, Cumbria, Manchester, Liverpool. I’m also a journalist writing about a wide variety of things from tech,…
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Behind the scenes
AUTHOR AT WORK: LIGHTHOUSES In January, I set goals for the year and developing a portfolio of travel writing was one of them. By the end of the month I’d made a good start with a visit to Angus. Gradually through the pandemic the fruits of January’s trip were published – mostly in print so…
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Author escape – Angus
NEXT ADVENTURE I sent the last text for my next book Yorkshire’s Gins to the publisher in January, and immediately set off to the East Coast of Scotland to do research for some articles based around the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath, the document asking the Pope to recognise Scotland’s independence and acknowledge…
The GIN CLAN 