How to spend a weekend in Manchester for the International Festival
July 9, 2021*Map via The i Paper The Manchester International Festival is now under way across the northern-powerhouse city. If you’re planning a visit, then you might just find my guide to what’s new and interesting around Manchester useful. Amongst the highlights is the exhibition Use Hearing Protection: the early years of Factory… Read more
Why Liverpool could survive loosing its Unesco World heritage status
July 2, 2021It looks like an own goal for Liverpool — not Klopp’s team facing the wrath of The Kop but the announcement by Unesco that it could strip Liverpool of its World Heritage status. The port city of Liverpool is currently one of 32 Unesco World Heritage sites in the UK.… Read more
Facebook Live ghost tours live-streamed for the Chester Heritage Festival
June 24, 2021The Chester Heritage Festival kicked off last weekend with a series of live and online events across the city. My contribution was a pair of short Facebook Live videos from two haunted locations around the city. It was based around my Haunted Chester audio tour, bringing a frisson of ghost-story… Read more
How to drink to English Wine Week at the Carden Park Hotel in Cheshire
June 21, 2021Cheers! It’s English Wine Week. I went to raise a glass at my nearest vineyard, nestled in the Cheshire countryside at the Carden Park Hotel and Spa estate [pictured above], for a national newspaper feature. * The edited article was published yesterday in the Sun on Sunday. This is my… Read more
20 good reasons to spend your next UK staycation in Chester & Cheshire
June 15, 2021UK staycation? Of course you are. So it’s timely that I had a two-pager in the Daily Telegraph at the weekend as part of the Staycation Nation series. It was packed with my local-knowledge tips about summer events and activities around my home patch of Chester and Cheshire. From Storyhouse’s… Read more
Walking Offa’s Dyke Path National Trail as it marks its 50-year anniversary
April 5, 2021This year marks 50 years of the Offa’s Dyke Path National Trail. There are local walking festivals to look out for and a revamped visitor centre in the Welsh border town of Knighton to open later this summer. An ITV series about the Path, Wonders of the Border, will be shown… Read more
Download my new Haunted Chester audio tour — now available via VoiceMap
March 5, 2021My lockdown project is complete. I used quieter time over the last few months to tinker away at a creative project, creating a new audio tour to my home city of Chester. The result is Haunted Chester, a 60-minute circular walking trail based on the tours I lead for Chester… Read more
Ten wonderful Welsh break to book as travel opens up from mid April
February 26, 2021Travel is starting to open up. The post-Covid road map put forward by the Westminster Government earlier this week provisionally allows for self-catering breaks in England from April 12. The Welsh Government has previously stated its hopes for staycation breaks in Wales around Easter. Cue the scramble of tourism operators… Read more