Days in the Dales: The Annual Kettlewell Duck Race

June 23, 2024 by Zoe Dumelow in Food, Travel, Walking, Weekends, Yorkshire

Sometimes, in life, you encounter moments which make you realise how much you’ve changed. For me, such a realization comes on May bank holiday Monday, standing outside my house and poring over an OS map with a friend as we discuss a road trip route.

‘The A59 is closed near Skipton,’ he says ‘so we’ll take a detour here and go up this road to get to the village.’

I peer more closely at the almost invisible line he’s tracing on the map, a minute thread of white amongst the green.

‘Is that a B-road?’ I ask, ‘that looks miniscule.’ He just grins. With too much glee, I think.

‘It’s a narrow road, but it’ll be fine,’ he says, ‘it’s such a nice drive.’

A British Seaside Holiday in Miniature: An Afternoon at Hayling Island.

November 26, 2020 by Zoe Dumelow in Days Out, Travel, Stories, Hampshire

‘I think I’d like a week in Lyme Regis,’ My mum says.

We’re sitting in her kitchen, in August, playing our favourite game – Post Pandemic Fantasy Holidays. Dad has opted for a return to Vienna and I quite fancy Stockholm, but Mum, who has just finished re-reading Persuasion for the third time, decides on Dorset. Having just finished reading Penelope Lively’s A Stitch in Time, which is also set in Lyme Regis, I can see where she’s coming from. Both of us are dreaming of the classic British seaside holiday – a week of days on the beach, hours spent paddling in freezing, grey-green water, sandwiches with extra sand, shell-collecting and sunburned noses. Since a week in Dorset is off the cards due to Covid, we decide on the next best thing and head to Hayling Island for the afternoon.

Rain, Cakes and Captain America: A Weekend in Whitby

December 16, 2019 by Zoe Dumelow in Travel, Weekends, Yorkshire

By the time I get to Whitby on Friday night, my parents, who arrived the day before, have a new obsession.

‘Look at this!’ my mother says, ushering me into the kitchen of our rented cottage and pointing to a treacly cake sitting in the middle of the table. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?!’ I admire the cake and notice a number of paper bags lined up on the sideboard, with the same blue and gold branding.

‘There were biscuits too,’ Mum says with a touch of smugness, ‘but we’ve already eaten them.’ My parents have discovered Botham’s Bakery. The wonder of Botham’s, in fact, turns out to be just the first of several unexpected and marvellous discoveries we made during a weekend in Whitby this past November.