After yesterday’s rather special immersion in Göran’s Småland, this morning began with breakfast overlooking the water at our extraordinary Björn Ulvaeus-owned hotel in Västervik. Göran joined us before we finally said goodbye and set off on the next stage of our journey: Stockholm. Rather than heading immediately for the main road, we took the prettier…
Today Sweden changed. Not dramatically at first, but as we drove north from Karlskrona the open agricultural landscape of the south gradually gave way to something that felt much more like the Sweden we had imagined before coming here. More trees, more lakes, more red wooden houses and, eventually, great stretches of forest disappearing off…
Today was one of those road-trip days when the journey itself turned out to be every bit as interesting as the destination. We left our lovely farmhouse B&B outside Ystad after breakfast and began heading east along Sweden’s southern coast, with Karlskrona as our eventual destination. Our first stop was Ales Stenar, high on the…
Our first full day in Scandinavia began with what, for me at least, was always going to be the day’s biggest challenge: picking up the hire car and remembering that everyone else was driving on the wrong side of the road. Our car for the next few days is an Audi A3, grey and reassuringly…
Birthdays are probably as good a day as any to start a road trip, though for a while this morning it looked as if the M40 had other ideas entirely. We left home with what I thought was a sensible buffer for Heathrow, only to hit delays that were just irritating enough to trigger some…
I have been revisiting The History of Youth Work in Europe, the remarkable series developed over a decade through the partnership between the European Commission and the Council of Europe. The seventh and final volume is co-edited by my good friend Howard Williamson, alongside Tanya Basarab, and it is one of those books that prompts…
“Let’s go to Wittenham Clumps,” suggested Mark. He was right. If you are going to watch the most significant solar eclipse visible from Britain for more than 25 years, there can be few better places than one of Oxfordshire’s most familiar landmarks, looking out across the county from a hilltop that people have been climbing…
Over the last couple of days, my inbox has taken an interesting turn. I have received a growing number of emails asking Cats Protection to campaign for the mandatory neutering of owned pet cats. They come from different people and addresses, but the text is identical. This is clearly a coordinated campaign, although despite some…
Local government reorganisation is, by its nature, a conversation that can very quickly become dominated by structures. Which councils will exist? Where will the boundaries fall? Who will be responsible for what? How will services transfer? What will the new governance arrangements look like? All of those questions matter enormously. Here in Oxfordshire and West…
Today, 8 August, is International Cat Day. Which seems as good an excuse as any to write about Blenheim. Not that I generally need much of an excuse. Living with Blenheim is one of the great joys of my life, but it is also a useful daily reminder that loving an animal and understanding an…
