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COSY GARDEN ROOMS – THE BEST USES FOR A GARDEN ROOM

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Ashbourne’s Take on Football – (Temporary) Anarchy In The UK

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Taste Derbyshire – Rachael’s Secret Tea Room

October 25, 2018 VickyP

‘Good afternoon Ms Volley, your mission – should you choose to accept it – is to drive to a secret location in the lush Derbyshire countryside and liaise with an operative bearing an orange teapot. Should you injure yourself in a rush to get up the garden path to eat buttered scones; the organisation cannot […]

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Taste Derbyshire – Charlies Garden

September 25, 2018 VickyP

Every so often I get the urge to become a self-sufficient Earth goddess, growing gigantic marrows and making jam from fruit I have nurtured from a pip. Sadly, the only things which get to munch on my apples are worms and, once again, the rhubarb has wilted all over the path. Which is why I […]

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The Dahlias of Biddulph Grange Garden

September 25, 2018 VickyP

A little way beyond the northern limits of the Potteries, just off the Congleton road, Biddulph Grange Garden is one of those places where each season has something to offer. It is this special changing of interest and variation of plants looking their best which draws us back, time after time. This year our visit […]

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Collecting Vintage Fountain Pens

September 25, 2018 VickyP

When I was first sent to school it was de rigeur that one wrote in ink with a pen. As six and seven year olds we had cheap dip pens with a ceramic ink-well inserted into our desks, but by the time I reached prep school at ten one had to be equipped with a […]

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Kim’s Derbyshire rocked the Aussies

September 25, 2018 VickyP

ACTION was needed when Derbyshire failed to win a Championship match in 2016 so the board turned to a man who had been there and done it. During his career with the county from 1979-98 as an aggressive right-hand batsman who played in four Test matches, three of them in the heat of an Ashes […]

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Taste Derbyshire – Stella’s Kitchen Eyam

September 4, 2018 VickyP

It is 11.30am on a blissfully sunny day in North Derbyshire and a pair of holiday-makers have pitched up at a farmhouse restaurant for a late breakfast. A few bites into a ‘fluffy as a cloud omelette made-for-two’, one of them gasps. “Hot, hot, hot,” he manages to splutter. Stella Kisob Knowles, cook and flamboyant […]

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Historic Steam Railway Posters

September 4, 2018 VickyP

When I was just five Maude, my nanny, was charged to take me off on holiday to Plymouth. I have no idea to this day why my parents could not go with me, but we were to stay with a relative of Maude’s for a few days. Clearly my parents were staying behind for some […]

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The Brecon Beacons

September 4, 2018 VickyP

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Possibly the Brecon Beacons is the least known mountainous national park in England and Wales, but as Brian Spencer discovered on a recent visit, it is easy to reach and the scenery is superb. The irregular oval of the Brecon Beacons National Park stretches from the long arrow-straight ridges of the eastern Black Mountains. Barren and wind-blown, […]

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Taste Derbyshire – A Taste of North Derbyshire Yogurt

July 24, 2018 VickyP

Driving along a single-track road, which meanders through the craggy hill and grassy dales of North Derbyshire, I am forced to perform an emergency stop. It’s not a good time. I am – thanks to a Sat Nav intent on herding me back to an A-road – twenty minutes late for an appointment with yogurt-maker […]

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Images of Liverpool

July 24, 2018 VickyP

The last time I was in Liverpool must have been soon after the Toxteth riots in 1981. The very name still conjures up the smell of burned-out cars that were still littering the streets. Since then the city has gone from strength to strength and I had difficulty in orientating myself around what were once […]