Author | Writer | Photographer
Following on from my feature in the June 2015 issue of Writers’ Forum about how to take an author photo, one of the biggest moans publishers and magazines have is …
The June 2015 issue has one of my photos for it’s Viewpoint section. It’s an image of the Long Mynd, taken from ragleth Hill in the evening sunlight (proof that …
Keeping our writing business afloat isn’t easy. Simon Whaley chats to two writers who’ve found diversification has led to calmer seas.
Check out the May 2015 issue of Country Walking magazine for an interesting piece of the delights to be found on the area covered by the Ordnance Survey’s Sheet 201 …
No writer worth their weight in text is without ideas. But sometimes conjuring them up feels more challenging than pushing a brussels sprout up to the top of Snowdon using …
My latest story, Seventy Two Feet, has just been published in the May 2015 issue of Woman’s Weekly Fiction Special, out now. Grab a copy now in the shops while …
Sign of the Times was published in Australia’s Great Walks magazine (Feb/Mar 2015)
Britain’s countryside offers some fantastic walking experiences, but in the past a wander through the great British outdoors could sometimes be spoilt by a hostile pub landlord, or an antagonistic landowner. Being told to, “Get your muddy boots out of my pub,” or finding the path purposefully blocked by rubbish and barbed wire can ruin what was, until that point, an enjoyable day out. And if you’ve travelled half way round the world an experience like this could spoil your entire break. Thankfully, things are changing. A scheme launched into 2007 to make walkers feel more welcome has picked up its pace and is now marching across the country. With some careful planning, your next walking trip in Britain could be the most enjoyable yet, and it could also take you to some of the quieter, yet just as outstandingly, scenic areas you may not have considered visiting.
Well, I can’t quite believe it, but my first book, One Hundred Ways For A Dog To Train Its Human, has now sold over a quarter of a million copies …
As flowers blossom along the route, take a drive through black-and0white clad villages in a tour of architectural history, with Simon Whaley.
The heart of an oak tree is almost as hard as iron, making it the ideal house-building material. Herefordshire’s 40-mile Black and White Trail is the perfect opportunity to see a forest of these traditional timber-framed buildings, and with daffodils, flowering magnolias and the first sight of the county’s blossoming orchards, this Black and White Trail is anything but monochrome.
Timber-framed buildings are constructed in a way that if you could pick them up and turn them upside down they would remain intact. At the tour’s start in Leominster, the intricately-carved timber Grade II listed Grange Court may not have been picked up like this, but it was moved from its town centre location and, in 1859, rebuilt beside the Priory Church.
In 1925, Clough Williams-Ellis spent less than £5,000 buying a parcel of land, which he described as, “a neglected wilderness.” Today, on its 90th anniversary, we call it Portmeirion.