Wednesday 20 Oct 21 : Ovada  A different model today: a morning of appointments with various producers of mainly Dolcetto in the Ovada Consorzio office itself - half hour’s drive away to the south west. (It’s not a well known nor much appreciated denomination - but we leave no stone unturned) As we left Gavi … Continue reading Piemonte 5: Ovada DOCG : 20 October 2021

Friday 15 October 21  We left La Romana outside Nizza at 09.00 after a warm farewell from La Receptionist, (yes - they use the french!) taking a northerly deviation towards Alessandria to avoid a road repair. The plain of the river Bormida makes a dramatic contrast to the runs of hills, ridges and winding valleys … Continue reading Piemonte 4: Gavi DOCG: 15 – 19 October 2021

Tuesday 12 October Valentina, driving her beloved Cinquecento, arrived at La Romana promptly at 09.00. She freelances with the consorzio and other wine-related organisations putting her excellent English to good use as a guide and interpreter with real knowledge and love of wines, having qualified as a Sommelier. She also turns out to be wine … Continue reading Piemonte 3: Monferrato DOCG: 12 – 14 October 2021

Armed with the NHS vaccine pass, a negative covid antigen test and a successfully completed Travel Locator Form (assembling these added an extra day and shed-loads of worry to travel preparations) we set off at 07.30 for Stansted on Wednesday 6 October. The up train was late, and we lost half an hour en route … Continue reading Piemonte 2: Nizza Monferrato: 7 – 11 October 2021

This will be a brief record of five happy days in Lancashire and Yorkshire, firstly to celebrate a wedding, and secondly to try out the car! More will follow when the Piemonte adventure is chronicled!

It seemed a long wait before 17 May enabled people to eat indoors - and May was certainly a cold month. One of these two had a hot water bottle under her coat… Meanwhile the children were waiting for weather more suitable for cricket before shedding their coats - or their substitute helmets The bluebells … Continue reading At last – brief holidays and outings!

January: 2021 began chaotically. Schools opened on 5 January, only to close the next day for a second, full lock-down. Changes in Christmas arrangements had left many families disconnected, and the short, dark, cold January days compounded the misery of the stressed - furloughed perhaps, or working from home, caring for children, home-schooling - and … Continue reading 2021 – an even more surreal spring!!

I started this piece on Sunday 13 December 2020, exactly a year to the day since I woke up to the sickening news that the Conservative party, led by Clown Johnson, had won the General Election in December 2019 with a sizeable majority. It almost matched the bouts of nausea I felt in 2016 - … Continue reading 2020 – woe, woe and thrice woe…

As the summer holidays ended, schools re-opened and for many work re-started though for others work had either never stopped or worse, had completely disappeared. Masks and social distancing were the new part of the normal. So were near-empty trains and queues for shops. The National Gallery opened its postponed exhibitions - most notably the … Continue reading Autumn pastimes

It seemed a good move to organise a short break in the run-up to the Bank Holiday, and as it wouldn’t be a holiday if we didn’t visit a few wineries, we pottered east across the South Downs to visit three very different English Sparkling wine producers, en route for Romney Marshes. There are dozens … Continue reading This isn’t Italy ! August 2020