felt

Trewley-Precious opened up about the pressure she felt to stay in her marriage because of her culture, admitting she was left feeling ashamed after walking away

A Channel 4 star has opened up about her love life.

The Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives star broke down in tears as she said that she felt like a “failure” after leaving her marriage. Trewley-Precious made a return to our TV screens tonight (August 10) for another episode of her Channel 4 reality show, as she yet again allows cameras into her family life.

She attempts to forge a career online, while balancing the expectations of her traditional Traveller family. During a heartfelt moment, the reality star revealed she married at just 19 and left her husband three years later, admitting she felt a huge amount of shame because of the expectations placed on her within her culture.

In some Traveller communities, traditional expectations can place a strong emphasis on women marrying young, settling down and having children.

Trewley was discussing her life with a friend when she was asked how her family felt about her being a “rule breaker”, with her friend pointing out that, “realistically”, she should probably have been married with three children by now.

Speaking to the camera, Trewley explained: “Yeah, I’ve done one of those things. I was in a relationship for four years, I was a wife. To be married in our culture means that you’ve been given to a man without church and you’re set for life.”

The star went on to reveal that she had married her husband when she was just 19. “I got married to him when I was 19 and then I left him when I was 22,” she said. “I got out of there, it just wasn’t good, it wasn’t the nicest thing.” But despite leaving a relationship she says was not good for her, Trewley admitted she struggled emotionally with her decision.

“I felt a lot of shame when I left him, just because it felt like I had failed,” she said. Later, back in bed with her friend, Trewley became visibly emotional as she reflected on how long she had remained in the marriage. To think I was in such a bad place being in that marriage for so long,” she said. “I should have left that two years prior to everything and I didn’t because it was a shame.”

Fighting back tears, Trewley explained that the experience had fundamentally changed the way she viewed relationships and, most importantly, herself.

“It taught me that the only thing we had in common at that time is that we both didn’t love me and now I do,” she said. “I’d never be in something like that ever, ever, ever, ever again.”

Trewley went on to discuss the expectations she had grown up with about marriage and standing by a husband “through thick and thin”.

“I’ve seen a lot of women survive their marriages, survive this and that but I’m not doing that,” she said. “I’ve just been raised that you stand by a man through thick and thin but now that I’m older, I’ve also realised you show a man that you’ll go through anything with him, they’ll put you through everything.”

Her comments appeared to bring up painful memories of her own family, with Trewley becoming overwhelmed as she questioned how her mum had endured so much.

“How could my mum put up with so much, do so much, I can’t,” she said through tears. “In my head, I just couldn’t do what my mum did. So I failed.”

But her friend immediately reassured her that leaving an unhappy marriage did not mean she had failed. “No you haven’t failed. You know your worth,” her friend told her. Trewley admitted that learning her own worth had taken time. “I didn’t for a long time but it took me ages to get it back,” she said.

And it appears the experience has completely changed what she wants from a future relationship. “The next person I will be with, they will tick, tick, tick,” Trewley said.

You can catch up on Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives on Channel 4.

In a darkened room in Maldon, Essex, a ship’s lantern illuminates the laundry drying on a web of ropes suspended from the ceiling. Between piles of sailing memorabilia, 86-year-old Barry Pearce is flipping through a yellowing logbook, watched by his mongrel, Winkle. It feels more like a ship’s cabin than a terrace house. Pearce is one of a handful of surviving skippers who delivered freight on the Thames by sailing barge, the flat-bottomed trading boats famous for their striking red sails that were endemic to the river’s estuary until the 1960s. He remembers the names of every vessel he worked on – Remercie, Edith May, Colonia.

In the 19th century, the ochre sails of thousands of Thames sailing barges pierced the skyline as the craft carried cargo from the Thames estuary and beyond in and out of London. Their shallow draft allowed them to snake far upriver in as little as a metre of water (bargemen would boast that they could sail anywhere there had been a heavy dew). Their ingenious rig, with sails that could be set and stowed with the help of winches, meant around 150 tonnes of cargo could be shifted by just a skipper and mate – often accompanied by a guard dog. This efficiency allowed them to outlive all other commercial sailing vessels, surviving until the 1960s, when Pearce himself took the helm.

Today, only about 30 Thames barges are still sailing, either as private homes or leisure cruisers. Two of them – Pudge and Centaur – lie like beached krakens on the oozing mud of Maldon’s Blackwater estuary. Both are owned by the Thames Sailing Barge Trust, a charity run entirely by volunteers, including Pearce. Every summer, both vessels can be hired as private charters for groups of up to 12, or you can book a berth on one of their one- to three-day public sailing cruises. They also offer events such as children’s art days throughout the year.

I’m here on a scorching evening at Hythe quay to spend the weekend exploring the River Blackwater and Essex coast aboard Centaur, a barge built in 1895. Itineraries are flexible and based on passengers’ interests. For us it involves sailing up the Blackwater, a Pimm’s at Tollesbury Marina, and a swim off Shingle Point and wander around West Mersea on Mersea Island. Our motley crew consists of three trainees overseen by skipper Chris Martin, who teaches boatbuilding at vocational training organisation Circles Alternative Education.

There are also six passengers, ranging in age from 18 to 76, in five cabins, which are basic but comfortable (each has a wash basin). Although I am the only one who is not a competent sailor, Martin makes it clear that helping to handle the barge is optional.

Unwisely, given our 3am departure to catch high tide, I sink several pints with the two youngest members of Pudge’s crew in the Little Ship Club on the quay. A behemothic man wielding a squeezebox sings sea shanties as salty couples slow dance nearby. “I only know of one or two people my age who are into barging, and I find that disturbing,” yells 25-year-old Charlie Francis over strains of Bound for South Australia. “Barging was the lifeblood of the east coast. We should be proud of our heritage and celebrate the communities working to preserve it.”

After a few hours in my bunk, I make it on to deck at 4.15am. The moon is a slice of radish in a lilac sky. We’re bearing away from the wind and, having set the sails, the crew is already on their second round of tea and custard creams.

As dawn paints its peachy palette, Martin turns the great wheel. He points out Blackwater landmarks that only a local would know: the green buoy known as the Doctor, where early 20th-century fishers left spirits for the alcoholics supposedly drying out at Osea Island’s temperance resort; the pub where, as recently as 20 years ago, Martin witnessed a smuggler wordlessly deliver two dripping bags while regulars stared determinedly into their pints; the hulking trawler, Ross Revenge, which is still home to Radio Caroline, the former pirate station – another relic kept alive by volunteers of the Blackwater.

Where the river opens into the silvery sea, the wind picks up and the barge rocks gently against the tide. My eyelids are heavy and the slowness of the whole experience is working its magic on my screen-frazzled brain. Martin calls for the staysail to be unfurled, a 20-minute task that rewards the barge with another knot and a half of speed. “This life is the antithesis of the digital age’s obsession with instant gratification,” he says. “Sailing barges may not be able to teach us much about cargo any more, but they can teach us the value of slowing down, doing things with our hands and spending time in nature.”

As we make our stately, seven-knot progress, 370 sq metres of rust-red canvas billows above and fingers of salt marsh slide by. With so little distraction, the coffee tastes lip-curlingly bitter, the bacon sandwiches as saline as the deep. I settle on a coil of rope to scan the horizon for porpoises, but soon drift into sleep.

A swim from a sandbank near Tollesbury is followed by a meander through West Mersea at golden hour. Clapboard cottages framed by hollyhocks sit beside sailmakers and chandleries converted into trendy cafes. We drop anchor in the Blackwater estuary and beneath a blazing sunset tuck into lasagne on deck. I haven’t felt this present for months. It’s all such a delight I begin to feel concerned about the trust’s future. Sailing barges cost between £30,000 and £100,000 a year to keep afloat. The trip I’m on costs just £220 including meals, while the Trust’s annual membership is only £37.50.

Although the trust offers training in many of the skills needed to maintain the barges, sourcing the timber is becoming increasingly difficult – and expensive. “Centaur’s exterior planking is pitch pine from the Mississippi basin, which is incredibly durable, but has been virtually exhausted,” says Martin. “And so much of the timber trade has been replaced by plastic.”

The trust also offers free training for future skippers, including the mate on our trip, 18-year-old Ben Weldon, the son of a local shipwright. However, it typically takes 2,000 hours – or 10 years – and the dropout rate is high.

While the trust has recently been awarded £28,090 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to develop a bid for the £4m needed to restore Centaur, it seems wrong that responsibility for keeping this thread of Britain’s maritime story from unravelling rests on so few shoulders. Sailing may be associated with privilege, but we are a seafaring nation and this inheritance belongs to all of us.

On Sunday morning, our last on board, a westerly fills the sails, and the tea-coloured Blackwater wrinkles beneath the bow as we beat our way back towards Maldon. “Lee ho,” Martin calls, showing me how to spin the wheel to help the crew tack. “So far we’ve used less than a gallon of fuel to do 50 miles. Pretty extraordinary, given that a family car does about 30 miles to the gallon.”

When I asked Pearce at the start of the trip why keeping Thames sailing barges afloat is worth the fight, he looked blank, as if such a question had never occurred to him. He showed me a pencil sketch of a barge he had drawn at the age of 15 in Greenwich, left half-finished when his skipper had poked his head through the hatch and invited him below for dinner. Now, more than 70 years later, he bends once more over that drawing as though no time has passed.

Eventually, he half-whispers: “Well, they’re just lovely, ain’t they?” He glances toward the window. Nearby, Centaur waits on the mud for the returning tide.

The trip was provided by the Thames Sailing Barge Trust. The next weekend aboard Centaur departs on 14 August, £220 for two nights’ full board; three-night trips depart on 3 September (£350 on Pudge, £320 on Centaur) and 18 September (£290 on Centaur). A variety of one-day sailings are also available
from £55 to £125pp

Tucked away in the English Channel between England and France, Sark is often described as the jewel of the Channel Islands. Saskia Rowlands took a trip to Sark to see for herself

We’re told time travel is impossible.

But after spending a day on the tiny island of Sark, I wasn’t so sure.

Tucked away in the English Channel between England and France, the island is often described as the jewel of the Channel Islands. With no cars, winding country lanes and horse-drawn carriages, it feels like stepping back to the 1950s. My mum and I visited during a stay in nearby Guernsey – and months later, we’re still talking about it.

Getting there was an adventure in itself. After surviving a very choppy ferry crossing from Guernsey, we pulled into Sark’s tiny harbour. Walking through a stone archway, we were greeted by one of the island’s most charming traditions, the ‘toast rack’ – a tractor-drawn carriage that ferries visitors up the steep hill into the village.

As we trundled through the winding lanes, lined with hedgerows bursting with wildflowers, the stresses of life vanished. The only sound was the distant clip-clop of horses’ hooves and the occasional ding of a bicycle bell. There wasn’t a single car in sight. And that’s because there aren’t any. Private cars have never been allowed on Sark and are actually banned by law.

The only motorised vehicles permitted are tractors – used for farming, deliveries and transporting visitors – and a tractor-pulled ambulance. Instead, Sark’s 500 residents and visitors explore the island by bicycle, on foot or by horse and cart.

So in true local spirit, we headed to Avenue Cycles, where we hired two mountain bikes. With maps tucked into our baskets, our Sark adventure had officially begun. The island measures just 3.5 miles long and 1.5 miles wide, so you can easily explore every nook and cranny in a day. There are no paved roads, and the tracks are quite rocky, so it’s not the smoothest ride, but it all adds to Sark’s charm.

Our first stop was one of the island’s most famous landmarks, La Coupée – a narrow strip of land connecting Big Sark and Little Sark. The dramatic isthmus, formed from sedimentary rock, is now protected by railings, but it wasn’t always so safe. Until 1900, there were no barriers at all, and on windy days, local schoolchildren would reportedly crawl across on their hands and knees.

It’s easy to overuse the word “breathtaking,” but standing above the bright blue sea as waves crashed against the rocks below genuinely took our breath away. Repairs meant we could only walk halfway across before turning back, but it was still one of our highlights.

Back on our bikes, we headed for another of the island’s quirky attractions, Sark Henge. Built in 2015, the modern stone circle is made up of nine standing stones, each carefully aligned with either a local landmark or the position of the sun, marking the winter and summer solstices and spring and autumn equinoxes.

After taking a moment to soak up yet another spectacular view, we began feeling peckish, so we made our way to Sark’s one and only supermarket to pick up lunch. More like a traditional village shop than a supermarket, we were surprised by just how much was packed inside, including an impressive selection of Waitrose products.

We kept things simple, picking up freshly caught Sark crab, lemon and cress, and a packet of crackers before finding a bench next to Sark’s famous gold Royal Mail post box. We visited just before the island geared up for its busy summer season, but the stylish café Sark Yard looked like the ideal place to stop for coffee or lunch when it’s open.

No trip to Sark would be complete without a visit to Caragh Chocolates, one of the island’s best-loved spots. What began as owner Caragh’s hobby of making chocolates for her family in 1989 has since grown into an internationally acclaimed business.

The charming stone cottage chocolate shop makes its treats using cream from Sark cows and also has a café overlooking a pretty garden. We parked our bikes outside and headed in for cups of Earl Grey and chocolates. It was superb.

Sadly, our time on Sark was drawing to a close, but there was just enough time for one final stop at Lorraine’s Pottery and Silver Studio. Run by local artisan Lorraine Nicolle, the charming little workshop sells hand-thrown stoneware and silver trinkets, along with offering pottery lessons.

After one last cycle through Sark’s winding lanes, our adventure had come to an end. We wheeled our bikes back and made the walk down to the harbour, where the ferry was waiting to take us back to Guernsey.

As we looked back at the island disappearing into the distance, it was hard not to wish we could stay just a little longer. Sark felt like somewhere out of a storybook. Its magic will never leave us.

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July 17 (UPI) — A 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck off the Mexico-Guatemala coast in the Pacific Ocean on Friday, being felt as far as El Salvador.

Authorities said there were no casualties or major damage from the quake.

The epicenter was located some 36 miles off the coast of the Mexican state of Chiapas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Four people were injured in Chiapas, and authorities have also responded to reports of minor structural damage, CNN reported.

President Claudia Sheinbaum said emergency protocols were activated in several Mexican states.

“Authorities from all three levels of government are conducting inspections on the ground to assess any possible structural damage and coordinate preventive measures,” Sheinbaum said on X.

In Guatemala, President Bernardo Arevalo said the quake caused landslides in the city of San Pedro La Laguna, but no major incidents were reported.

“We are already clearing the affected section and taking steps to ensure public safety,” Arevalo said on X.

Officials in El Salvador, where the tremor triggered evacuations, said no major damage was reported.

Gov. Salomon Jara Cruz, of the Mexican state of Oaxaca, said the quake was felt “with moderate intensity.”

FEW pics of celebs make me green with envy like their holiday snaps. 

The likes of Beyonce, Victoria Beckham and Kate Moss lounging on a cool boat in the Med while I sweat off my suncream on a sandy beach towel onshore, really make me question my career choices in life. 

But it turns out, you don’t need to be an A-Lister to get a taste of the high-life. 

On my recent trip to the South of France I discovered Samboat, a website that’s essentially the AirBnB of boats, which lets you hire people’s personal luxury speedboats and yachts for the day. 

What it means in practice is that rich people can lease out their boats when they’re not using them, for some extra cash. 

Samboat does have locations in the UK with boats on offer, but it really comes into its own in places like the French Riviera, where there are loads of millionaires with boats lying idle in the marina. 

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GET OUT MOOR

I went on a family narrow boat holiday with UK countryside and pub stops

After scouring the website for the best boat for my mum friend and I, plus our three seven-year-old boys, I decided upon a Jeanneau Merry Fisher 900 Cruiser motorboat – massive at 9m long – that could fit up to 12 people. 

It was HUGE. With a large shaded area for lunches, an enormous bow that was bigger than my living room at home, and even an indoor living room downstairs. 

Because they have so many boats in the region, we were able to pick one that was just 10 minutes drive from our campsite, in Port Grimaud. 

The plan had originally been to moor somewhere around midday and grab lunch at a beachfront restaurant, much like Kate Moss and co. do when they disembark their yachts for magnums or rose and seafood towers at Club 55. 

But our skipper suggested our time would be much better spent picnicking on the water in a secluded bay, so we stocked up on supplies at the marina supermarket (turns out marina supermarkets that service posh boat owners are LOVELY – we got freshly-baked pastries, perfectly ripe brie, some very nice rose wine and plenty more goodies before setting out). 

And thank goodness he had put his foot down, because there was no way we would have got our boys off that boat with the promise of a boring restaurant meal. 

Instead, they loaded up on madeleine cakes and cheetos, while intermittently jumping off the side to ‘wash their hands’ of the cheesy crisps. 

There was one hair-raising moment where we discovered there wasn’t a bottle opener onboard for our wine, which meant a swim to one of the other posh boats in the bay to beg for a bottle opener – but hey, it’s all part of the fun, right? 

And our amenable neighbours had been curious who the people on the big boat blasting ‘Crazy Frog’ three times in a row were anyway. 

I’ve always considered boat day to be the best day on holiday – seeing the shoreline from the sea, getting some proper breeze and jumping into crystal-clear, deep water is always the perfect way to spend several hours. 

But when you join a group boat trip, that inevitably means a lot of waiting around and limited space to kick back and relax. 

With our own boat, we could set the pace. Which meant snail’s pace. 

We spent six hours in that cute little bay, floating on inflatables, practising our diving and snorkeling over the marine forests. 

Then on the way back, our skipper took us into St Tropez’s marina, to ogle the enormous billionaire’s yachts and grab an ice cream from the famous Barbarac on the marina promenade. 

Watching my son take in the beauty of the famous seaside town as we cruised into the port on the bow of the boat was a perfect holiday moment. 

Then we were dropped back to our local port, in time for a fish and chip supper. 

Hiring your own boat isn’t cheap. 

The prices for our particular boat start at 913 euros (£776) for the day, including the skipper, plus you have to pay for fuel, which worked out around 300 euros (£255). 

But if you filled the boat, that would work out at around 100 euros (£85) per person for the whole day, and there are plenty of boats on the website that work out much cheaper.

And when we arrived back in the UK after our holiday, the one memory we’ve not stopped talking about was boat day. 

I’d swap out several pricey attractions on land for eight hours of bliss at sea, where I can pretend I’m VB on her summer break (minus the designer holiday wardrobe) .

PERRIE Edwards has admitted she felt “embarrassed” after suffering her first miscarriage, confessing she was convinced she had “imagined” the whole pregnancy.

The Little Mix star, 32, suffered an early miscarriage during her first pregnancy, before welcoming ‘rainbow baby’ son Axel in 2021.

Recalling the time in a candid new interview, Perrie explained that, despite having multiple positive tests, a medical professional had told her there was no baby.

This led to the singer convincing herself she had imagined the whole pregnancy, despite it actually being a miscarriage.

She told Jamie Laing on his Great Company podcast: “The woman said to me, she was like, ‘There’s no sack, there’s no baby’, and I thought, ‘How embarrassing, I’ve imagined the whole thing’.

“I was starting to think, ‘Did I read it wrong? I’m sure it said pregnant, I did so many of them’. So, I was then convinced that I’d made the whole thing up. So I was then going a bit crazy.”

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Perrie then explained how she went for another appointment to her gynecologist, where she was informed there was a baby, but she had sadly miscarried.

“He sat me down and was like, ‘No, no, there’s no baby’. I was like, ‘I understand that, I’ve been told that, but was there ever a baby? I’m really confused.’

“And he was like, ‘There was a pregnancy, darling, but now it’s gone, you’ve miscarried.’ And I was like, ‘Ohh’,” said Perrie.

Following the harrowing situation, Perrie and her footballer partner Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain then welcomed their son, Axel, in August 2021.

And less than a year later, they found out they were expecting another child.

But Perrie again suffered a devastating miscarriage, which this time came much later in the pregnancy at 24 weeks.

She described the loss as the “worst day of my life”, recalling how distraught it left her.

Perrie then fell pregnant again in 2025, announcing the sweet news to her fans in September.

In January this year, she and Alex welcomed their baby daughter Alanis Valentine.

‘Exploring Finland with our baby was a delight’

Finland has been named the world’s happiest country for nine years running, but arriving in Helsinki, dishevelled from one of my first flights with my nine-month-old baby, I was less interested in national rankings and more in having a nice nap. My husband, Jake, and I had emerged from the fog of newborn life and the idea of a holiday felt possible again. My ambitions were small: a sunset beer, a walk in the woods, reading a few pages of my book uninterrupted.

But Finland, with its famously family-friendly culture, made exploring with my tiny new travel companion a delight. Finnish parents are supported with generous, gender-equal parental leave, affordable childcare, and free healthcare and education. No one bats an eyelid at a pram parked beside a restaurant table or a baby snoozing outdoors in the cool air, and the terrifyingly efficient public transport system is a dream with children.

In Helsinki, we found ourselves in the cool neighbourhood of Kallio, where locals spilled out on to terraces in the late evening sunshine. We stayed at Hobo Hotel, which, despite attracting a hip crowd, was kitted out with travel cots and highchairs. At a bar aptly named Holiday, my daughter, Sylvie, sat happily chewing a spoon while we drank paloma cocktails in the long golden evening light of July, when the sun barely seems to set at all.

Part of Finland’s appeal for me lies in jokaisenoikeudet, or “Everyman’s Right” – the law that gives everyone freedom to roam the country’s forests and lakes. On the southern coast, we hiked through pine forest and over moss-clad rocks towards Lake Kukuljärvi, with Sylvie snoozing, strapped to my front. At a traditional laavu – a simple wooden shelter with a communal fire pit – Jake and I cooked sausages and boiled coffee over open flames. Sylvie eventually deigned to wake from her nap and gnawed on flakes of pink salmon like a tiny woodland creature. Then I handed her to Jake and jumped from the rickety jetty into the lake for a swim.

In summer, Finns are all about escaping to remote cabins. At Santalahti in Kotka, simple self-catering wooden cottages were just steps from the sea, but my favourite tiny houses were Majamaja, four minute off-grid cabins perched on rocks on the Baltic Sea. A stay here felt truly wild, yet we were a 10-minute drive from Helsinki if we ran out of nappies.

On our last day, we boarded a little ferry which chugged the 15 minutes from Helsinki to Lonna island, a tiny military outpost turned summer escape. Now uninhabited and carpeted in wildflowers, it has a wood-fired sauna overlooking the sea. Inside, women of all ages sat side by side as steam curled from the stove. Finnish children grow up going to saunas from infancy, and two locals showed me how to plonk Sylvie into a bucket of cool water, where she spent the entire time grinning with her four newly minted teeth at the sauna-goers smiling back at her. “She’s Finnish now!” one woman laughed.
Sian Lewis

‘I struck gold with the Vespa tour’: Naples with my teenage son

On a wing and a prayer, I took my 13-year-old son, Ned, to Naples. Just the two of us. He was old enough to carry his bags, young enough to bunk in the same bed and keep the cost down. I’d booked a small apartment in the centro storico with decent wifi in case single parenting got the better of me and we simply needed to play Fifa.

My worry didn’t last long. I struck gold by booking a Vespa tour with Michele and Luigi at NeaTour, who took our brief – “Show us where you wouldn’t normally go” – as a personal challenge. We wove through the city under balconies dripping with washing, past giant graffiti and smelly fish stalls, and shared fruit with elderly women sitting outside on old chairs. We stopped at Bar Nilo to pay homage to Maradona and check out a lock of his hair, then scootered on to a towering mural of the icon himself.

Michele handed Ned a cornicello, a small red charm to ward off bad luck. Legend has it they only work when given as gifts, and we bought into it immediately, wandering off into the Quartieri Spagnoli (Spanish quarter) despite all the warnings of theft and danger. Doors were open everywhere. It was tempting to peep in. One family were inside finishing lunch. Without ceremony, they invited us in. Wine appeared. A Pepsi for Ned. Three generations shifting to make space for strangers who weren’t strangers any more.

Naples worked like that. You needed to give in quickly. We took the smallest alleyways, watched football with the locals, stayed out until the early hours. Not because of the place itself, but because of the interruptions: conversations, offers, eye contact that turned into something wonderful.

Of course, it wasn’t all a success story, despite the cornicello. It was a terrible idea to climb Vesuvius in the midday heat. Blisters, lack of water, wishing we wore hats. Then, on the same day, Pompeii. Crowds, dust, exhaustion and the surreal shock of carved penises everywhere.

Capri proved the antithesis. Beautiful and polished. Botox clashing with bougainvillea. We neither wanted nor could afford the restaurants or designer shops, but lovely assistants indulged us as we tried on sunglasses and handbags costing more than my monthly salary.

Sixteen years earlier, I’d photographed boats arranged like petals outside the Blue Grotto, and wanted to see if we could make it happen again. What I never expected was the same boatmen agreeing to recreate it, carefully positioning themselves into a floating flower.

Trusting local knowledge, we left everything on the old iron stairs leading into the water and swam through the tiny cave entrance. The azure blue was so dense, like liquid moonlight lit from within. After diving and GoPro posing, we swam to the back and sat watching the regulars in their cave cathedral.

As we climbed back up the cliff, salt-dried and tired, Ned turned to me and said, “That’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

“Me too,” I replied.
Jill Mead

‘One for the family album’: glamping with granny in Norfolk

Sitting on the veranda with a glass of rosé, my mum and I watched rabbits hop through ferns while birds of prey soared overhead. We decided the view from our “safari” tent was pleasingly wholesome – the only howls were coming from the teenagers inside …

Last summer, I took my twin daughters, my mum and my dog, Miss Babs, on holiday to north Norfolk. Aged 19, the girls are fully embroiled in their own lives – Lola has the travelling bug, Nancy’s away at university – so it was a rare opportunity for us all to get together.

We stayed on the edge of the Sandringham estate, the royal family’s Norfolk retreat, where Experience Freedom, the glamping arm of the Caravan and Motorhome Club, has smart safari tents for us commoners to enjoy (from £69 a night).

While a week in Norfolk is not quite “Ibiza with the girls”, the twins adore their granny and jumped at the chance to come along. A child of the 70s, I grew up holidaying with multiple generations. Every year, my very extended family would head en masse for a week at St Margaret’s Bay holiday camp near Dover. We went the full hokey cokey, joining glamorous granny contests, donkey derbies and a highly competitive fancy dress competition. I adored those holidays with my beloved grandparents, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins, plus aunty Joan and uncle Dick, my nana’s neighbours, who always came, too.

This trip didn’t involve such a large crew, but we had a lovely time in Norfolk. I enjoyed early morning dog walks through the Sandringham estate while the twins slept in. My mum cooked us a full English breakfast every morning, drawing the girls out of their beds with the smell of sizzling bacon. Afternoons were spent on the beach at Old Hunstanton or bobbing around the twee villages that dot the north Norfolk coast. We’d head back to camp in the late afternoon for a glass of rosé on the veranda, when the girls would entertain their grandmother with some inappropriate TikTok reels. One night after dinner, Nancy and Lola challenged us to a game of Cards Against Humanity, only to be utterly horrified when their grandmother won.

Sating the different wants and needs of teenagers and a septuagenarian was not always easy. Tensions did rise, particularly when the sisters snipped at each other or bickered over doing the washing up. More than once, I had to throw the girls a stern look when they dropped the F-bomb in front of their grandmother. And as the unelected leader of the pack, by day three I had decision-making fatigue over what to do, where to go and what to eat.

On our last afternoon, we popped to the main house to see our royal neighbours. Sandringham House is not dog-friendly (unless you’re a corgi or an assistance dog), so Lola stayed back with Miss Babs. Wandering through the hallways of the royal family home, I watched Nancy and her nana, arm in arm and nattering happily, and thought: “This holiday is definitely one for the family album.”
Tracey Davies

‘We would have happily carried on going to who knows where’: Interrailing to Turkey with our boys

I was due a sabbatical, my wife, Vicky, is a teacher and so gets long school holidays, and our boys Tom and Jack were nine and 11, which created an opportunity for an adventure beyond the usual Cornwall. So, in the summer of 2023, we took the train – to Asia.

I never did the Interrail thing in my youth, so why not in middle age? And kids up to 11 go free. (You still have to pay for reservations, and sleepers; it’s really not a cheap holiday). We got passes that give you 10 days travel within two months, and on an August morning we set off with backpacks to the tube, the boys mortified at the prospect of being spotted by their school friends.

Our route in brief: Eurostar from St Pancras; a couple of nights in Paris; Stuttgart; the first sleeper to Budapest (paprika chicken and a thermal bath); another overnight to Brasov, where we got off the train and spent a week travelling round Romania (Carpathian hiking, Ceaușescu opulence-ogling, birding in the Danube delta). Then on through Bulgaria to Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Selçuk. Ancient ruins (boo!), waterparks (yay!), the best breakfasts and bazaars, then cooling off in the Aegean. Back via Vienna and Amsterdam.

The trains were more than just a way of getting from A(ustria) to B(ulgaria), they were a big part of the whole thing. They started off lightning-quick, smooth, pointed at the front, with western Europe flashing past on fast-forward out of the window. As we got farther east, they got older, slower and clankier, but more romantic. We liked the ones with steps up to the carriages, and a window at the back to watch the track disappearing behind, literally a window to the past.

And we liked the overnighters – apart from a rude and rather retro awakening on the border between Romania and Turkey. There was a sharp knock on the door, then uniformed men were shining torches in our blinking eyes. “Your papers, please!” Is this a summer holiday, or a thwarted escape from cold war repression? Still, holidays are about memories, right? And now it’s one of them, and a story to tell.

That aside, there is something special about boarding a train at dusk, finding the right compartment, unpacking dinner – simit bread perhaps, interesting stringy cheese, tomatoes, a glass (plastic cup) or two of rough red, with the sun going down outside the window. Then a game of cards before pulling down our bunks and drifting off to the clickety-clack of steel wheels passing over the joints in the rails. That was the heartbeat soundtrack of our month away – that, and Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express, which I definitely overplayed.

Yes, of course there were strops and disagreements, times we longed for a washing machine, a pool, wifi. But had there not been tedious things like jobs and school to get back for, we would have happily carried on – clickety-clack, clickety clack – to who knows where. And, possibly because we were often literally on top of each other, I don’t think we’ve ever felt closer as a family.
Sam Wollaston

‘Reclaiming the spirit of adventure for all of us’: a healing family trip to Norway

“Miss Butler says there’s a real live Viking ship in Norway and you can go and see it!” Challenge accepted. I’d been looking for inspiration and found it in my eight-year-old, buzzing with enthusiasm at the school gate. There was more to it: I’d been widowed three months previously and felt as though I had something to prove. When someone you love is ill, your world gets very small: it was our flat, the hospital, and then the hospice. My husband, Jay, and I loved to travel, living in China when our two boys were toddlers; they were now six and eight. I wanted to reclaim that adventurous spirit for all of us.

Walking across Oslo in the early hours of the morning, I wondered what on earth I was doing. Bus tickets could only be bought in convenience stores, which were all closed, so we walked for miles over dark bridges between islands of white light. Our Airbnb host left directions to find a key, hidden behind a rock in a park near his flat: funny looking back, but stressful that night in the dark after too many Scandi noir dramas.

Norway is expensive, so I packed plenty of snacks and tried to keep costs as low as I could. In Oslo, a 24-hour travel pass could last two days: an afternoon hopping on boats and buses, then ensuring we were within walking distance of the flat when it ran out the following morning. We explored brilliant galleries and played games on the roof of the opera house. We took a ferry to Hovedøya island and found 12th-century ruins in the woods, before sprinting to catch the last boat back. We walked round Sognsvann lake picking wild blueberries. The Viking Ship Museum did not disappoint, the dark carved wood so beautifully intricate, gleaming in the pale light (the museum is now being refurbished, due to reopen in 2027). With time left on our bus tickets, we visited Huk on a whim, which, it turns out, is one of Oslo’s nudist beaches. All part of a European education.

From Oslo, we took a train to Myrdal, then the steep Flåmsbana line to Flåm for a night in the youth hostel, before continuing by boat along the Nærøyfjord, then two trains to Bergen. It was thrilling. The boat trip was our favourite, passing remote villages and watching thundering waterfalls tumble down the sides of the fjord.

In Bergen, the cheapest place to stay was a berthed yacht in the harbour. When our host had to change mooring, we went along for the ride. A planned quick transfer became a longer trip when he saw how excited the boys were to be out on the water. He produced fishing rods and gave them their first fishing lesson.

The kindness of this young man felt like a gentle squeeze of encouragement from the universe. It was a trip that reminded me of my capabilities as a parent, my boys’ resilience, the inherent goodness of people, and the power of big skies and new horizons to help start to heal a broken heart.
Ailsa Sheldon