Scotland was recently voted the most beautiful country on earth and, for those who have visited, it is easy to see why. Despite the weather, it can be a stunning destination with natural beauty, the warmth and humour of the people and the fantastic food and drink scene all making Read more…
I’ve been a big fan of the West coast of Scotland since going up there as a kid and staying in a place with a boat on Loch Shiel. There was nothing much to do other than drive for days out around the beautiful and remote roads and villages. Taking Read more…
Our camper van trip to Belgium was a long time in the making. We first hatched the plan several years ago but then, various things conspired to get in the way of our much-discussed voyage. However, in 2017, the stars finally aligned and we started to plan our trip. Massive Read more…
When we heard about the first Vangollen festival at the Royal International Pavilion in Llangollen, we were excited. We’d been camping in that area before and had seen a very impressive hot air balloon festival on the site. So the idea of vans, bands, extreme sports and balloons sounded like Read more…
A couple of years ago, I was asked to put a talk together on ‘Websites for International Audiences’. The slides on Slideshare (below) have had over 5000 views so I thought it may be time to pick this up again. Since then, I’ve been conducting some research into what engages Read more…
We’ve always loved our music festivals, ever since we first visited the Essential and V Festivals in 1997, but it wasn’t until Solfest in 2005 when we experienced our first festival with a VW van and our first child Summer who was just a few months old at the time. Read more…
Boarding the ferry at Kennacraig
It was partly the words of Jim Morrison, but mainly the Whisky Lounge that led us up to the Island of Islay in Scotland. We had taken our vans to a wet and windy Beacons Festival 2014 last year and it is there we had properly discovered the delights of Whisky. The Whisky Lounge was set up in order to educate the world about the “water of life” and the how best to drink it. They ran several events at Beacons Festival and had an amazing set up complete with Chesterfield chairs and settees and a whole lot of top quality whisky. We enjoyed it so much, we attended several of their talks over the course of the weekend. (more…)
Back in 2013 we got wind of a little festival called Beacons at Funkirk Estate near Skipton on the Yorkshire Moors. We didn’t know too much about it other than a band called the Savages were playing. We did a bit more research and got ourselves booked in. We took our VW vans along and had one of the best weekends on record. The festival was relatively small but it had an amazing blend of interesting arts things combined with some really well chosen acts that kept us entertained and amused from start to finish.
Lining up for the VW drive out
Back in 2011, we had the opportunity to check out the Circle Yer Wagens VW festival on the Isle of Man. The Isle of Man VW Club had arranged a brilliant deal with Steam Packet for £280 to get your van over from Heysham, entry into the festival and 3 nights camping on the Michael United football ground. We had an incredible time on our 5 night stay on the Island and we vowed to come back soon. (more…)
Alex Fenton and Aleksej Heinze at the European Search Awards
Back in blighty, my head is spinning from everything that just happened in the last 24 hours. It all started when my colleague at Salford Uni, Dr.Aleksej Heinze asked me if I wanted to get involved as tech lead for a project Salford Business School were working on called Passport to Trade 2.0. It sounded like a really cool project, researching business and social media culture in Europe and producing a website for businessculture.org with text, images, animations and videos with the results aimed at helping people to do business in different countries. (more…)