Great Scottish Indoors
Contemporary Scottish Living
If anyone is free over the weekend of 12th-13th October I can think of nothing I could recommend more than joining a mixed media workshop, including painting and collage, at my beautiful friend, artist, Kirstie Cohen’s, family studio, just outside North Berwick. Kirstie lives in Glen Affric, in the Highlands and her paintings reflect the […]
Not a day goes by without my thinking what a beautiful place we live in and how lucky I have been to bring up my children here. Forgive me if I sound smug or braggy – I assure you I have experienced plenty of misfortune, but bringing up my family in East Lothian, on Scotland’s […]
I have just returned home from a women’s walking and yoga weekend, in the French Alps, feeling incredibly refreshed and nourished. Losing friends to a des-res Alpine village brings with it a mixture of emotions: the fact that you can’t get together for a coffee and a natter is compensated wildly by the fact that […]
A home and business is a dream for many of us. Who would not want to find a property in a fabulous location with lots of characterful outbuildings that you could convert into gorgeous holiday accommodation?Throw in the upheaval of needing to thoroughly renovate said property as well and most of us would probably find […]
Well I have had a week of self discovery. I have been on a short interior design course at Juliettes Interiors a top end furniture retailer and design studio in London’s Kings Road.They asked all the participants to focus on a room that they wished to redesign. As my cousin was kindly putting me up for […]
Living in the countryside and being a total home lover, venturing out is not something I do a lot of. I love village life and walks along the beach and being a writer, I do have to be careful: unless you are actually sitting at your desk for long periods of time, not a lot […]
Following on from my last post about guests arriving – just in case you do not have enough room, why not relocate the whole family to a remote castle in the Highlands for a week? Wardhill is a fairytale castle, pictured here from a distance, with its magical spires and turrets. Up close, the creamy, […]
Also in the recent June issue of Ideal Home was this stunning contemporary home, called The Net Store Located on the far north west coast of Scotland. Some of the road trips we have undertaken in the creation of the Great Scottish Indoors have been truly remarkable. My love of this scenery is what inspired me to […]
Continuing with my theme of travel, but back in Scotland now, I thought I would cover a summer destination in the gorgeous seaside village of Elie on the East Neuk of Fife. A truly stunning property and very much a ‘home from home’, suitable for an extended family or a large group of friends. It […]
Anyone following my Instagram stories will realise that I have been treated to truly wonderful press trip to Soldeu, part of the Grandvalira ski resort in Andorra. Andorra has in the past been perceived as a younger sibling in the ski world, somewhere families went to learn to snowplough, but inevitably, a bit like all […]
I would like to follow on from my post about Ballintaggart Farm, a Perthshire cookery school, with a story about an equally brilliant, destination cook school, this time in the French Alps: Chalet Savoie Faire. It appeared in the January issue of Period Living magazine and to be honest, visiting it was one of the […]
A little bit about me – I was born into quite straitened circumstances: my parents were a middle class, educated couple, who, somewhere along the line, had taken a vow of poverty: they met at a communist party meeting in Hampstead – cute I know. This weekend was a nostalgia trip for me because I […]
Stunning feature in this months Coast magazine. It was one of the most intense weeks of our life, starting with my nephew’s wedding in Oxford on the Saturday. My brother invited us to eat as a family on the Friday night so we left Gullane at about 9am, expecting to easily manage a shower and […]