Figuring out where to stay in Iceland was one of the trickiest parts of planning our trips there. It’s not like most European countries where you can rock up to a town and find a dozen hotels to choose from. Outside Reykjavik, accommodation is limited, it books up fast, and it’s not cheap. We’ve visited […]
Archives for July 2026
The Best Cotswold Villages: Where to Go, and What to Skip
I lived in Bath for four years, right on the southern edge of the Cotswolds, and I’ve been going back ever since. My brother lives in the region now, so this is an area I know reasonably well. The short answer to this guide is that all the Cotswold villages are beautiful. This is actually […]
The Best Travel Daypack for 2026: Our 11 Picks
I’ve been carrying the same Osprey daypack for the best part of two decades. It has been rained on, sat on, squashed under plane seats and dragged up a fair few hills and mountains, and it’s still going strong. Osprey stopped making that exact model years ago, which tells you something about how long a […]
Visiting the Cotswolds Without a Car: Which Villages Actually Work
I spent four years living in Bath, on the southern edge of the Cotswolds, and the villages up the road were an easy day out for us. I’ve also done two coach tours through the region from London as a paying customer, so I know what the tour version of a carless visit looks like […]
Best NYC Observation Deck: Which One Should You Actually Pick?
Jess and I have been up three of New York’s five observation decks across multiple trips to the city. I’ve stood on the Empire State Building’s 86th floor at least three times now, we’ve done Top of the Rock and One World Observatory together, and I’ve spent a fair chunk of my working life as […]
Things to Do in Bath: A Former Local’s Guide (2026)
I lived in Bath for four years, and one of the side effects of living in Bath is that everyone you know comes to visit. Over those years I settled into a fairly well-worn version of the city tour: the sights that live up to the hype, the timings that dodge the worst of the […]
A Realistic 2 to 3 Day Cotswolds Itinerary (With Real Drive Times)
I spent four years living in Bath, just off the southern edge of the Cotswolds, my brother still lives there, and I’ve visited pretty much every corner of the Cotswolds. Here’s the answer most people are looking for: two days in the Cotswolds covers the northern villages, and a third day lets you add Bibury, […]
Iceland Packing List: What to Pack for Iceland in Summer
We spent four weeks one June driving Iceland’s full ring road, and we got rained on a lot more than we expected. Not dramatic, storm-chasing rain. Just steady, patient, all-day rain, with occasional breaks so the wind could have a turn. That trip taught us a lot about what belonged in our bags, mostly because […]
The Best Car Rental Sites (and When to Book Direct Instead)
We’ve been travelling full time since 2010, and over those years we’ve rented cars from most of the major chains, including Hertz, Sixt, Avis, Budget and Enterprise. We’ve booked through brokers like Discover Cars and AutoEurope, and we’ve gone direct with small local operators in destinations including Morocco, Barbados, Mauritius and the Seychelles. Along the […]
Long Haul Flight Essentials: What to Actually Pack in 2026
I took my first long haul flight when I was three years old, and I’ve never really stopped. Boarding school in the UK from age fifteen meant a flight home at the end of every term, and these days Jess and I are full time travel bloggers and photographers for whom long haul flights are […]
Scotland Packing List: What to Pack for Scotland by Season and Region
I lived in Edinburgh for four years, and Scotland has kept pulling us back ever since: repeat trips around the North Coast 500, Skye, Glen Coe, and one memorable evening in Ullapool that I’ll get to when we talk about midges. Over all those trips our Scotland packing has settled into a system, and this […]
2 Weeks in New Zealand: A Realistic Itinerary That Adds Up
I lived in New Zealand for a year, and in that time I drove just about every road in this article, some of them more than once. So when I tell you that you can see both islands in two weeks but probably shouldn’t try, that comes from adding up the actual driving hours rather […]
How to Travel with Camera Gear: A Photographer’s Practical Guide
I’ve been flying with camera gear professionally since 2010. These days that means a Canon EOS R5, a second body and a bag of L glass, and that kit has been on safari in Uganda, up to Iceland in winter, and around Europe on more budget short-haul flights than my shoulders would like. In all […]
One Day in Manchester: The Perfect Walkable Itinerary
I spent a summer living in Manchester, and Jess and I later went back for a fortnight, staying in an aparthotel by Piccadilly station. So when I say you can see the best of the city centre in a single day, on foot, without touching a tram, it’s because I’ve walked this exact loop, in […]
2 Days in Liverpool: An Itinerary Built Around What’s Actually Open
My mum grew up in Liverpool, my godmother still lives there, and I’ve been over a handful of times across the years, most recently in 2023. So before I put this two day Liverpool itinerary together, I already knew the thing that matters most about planning a visit right now: the waterfront is in the […]
The Best Binoculars for Birdwatching: My 2026 Picks
I grew up on Bird Island in the Seychelles, an island with a small handful of humans and several million nesting seabirds, where owning binoculars was less a hobby and more a condition of residence. My parents were keen birdwatchers and so were most of their friends, and I could tell a noddy from a […]
Best Cameras and Lenses for Bird Photography: Complete Kits by Budget
I’ve spent a lot of years pointing a camera at birds. The most memorable have been on trips: shoebill storks in Uganda, seabird colonies in the Seychelles and the Galapagos, and puffins in Iceland. The most frequent, by a distance, are the hummingbirds, woodpeckers and cardinals on our garden feeders most mornings, which is where […]
My Actual Travel Photography Kit (by Trip Type)
I’ve been a professional travel photographer since 2010, and in that time my camera bag has been on African safaris, out in the Arctic night in Finland and Iceland waiting for the northern lights, and around more European cities than I could sensibly list. I’ve also been a Vanguard ambassador for a number of years […]
The Best Binoculars for Safari in 2026: What We Actually Use and Recommend
I grew up on a small island in the Seychelles called Bird Island, which was home to a handful of people and several million nesting seabirds. Just about every adult I knew had a pair of binoculars within reach, and a decent chunk of my childhood was spent having the finer points of noddies and […]
Road Trip Essentials: What to Pack for a US Road Trip (And What to Skip)
I spent years as a visiting driver in the USA on my UK licence before I moved here, became a resident, and passed a state driving test. So I’ve packed for a US road trip from both sides of the rental counter, and I can tell you the packing list looks different depending on which […]
How to Read a Histogram in Photography (And What to Change When You Do)
I’ve been taking photos professionally for over thirty years, and for as long as my cameras have had a histogram, it’s been the one camera readout I check on almost every shoot. It has saved more of my photos than any other feature on any camera I’ve owned, and it’s also, by some distance, the […]
The Best Travel Tripods in 2026: A Photographer’s Buying Guide
I’ve been a professional travel photographer since 2010, and I’ve owned around eight travel tripods over the years, which is enough to know what matters and what doesn’t. I don’t buy or ask for new ones just to have them. I bring one in to test when a design does something new, the way Peak […]
The Best Camera Straps in 2026: A Travel Photographer’s Picks
The best camera strap for most photographers is the Peak Design Slide. I’ve been a professional travel photographer since 2010, I bought my first Slide back in 2015, and I haven’t used another strap system on my main cameras since. Of course, the Slide isn’t the right strap for everyone. The strap that suits an […]
2 Days in Naples, Italy: Is It Worth It? (Full Itinerary)
I’ve been travelling to Italy for over thirty years, and for most of them I treated Naples as a place you pass through rather than stay. The station, the port, a quick espresso, and onwards to somewhere tidier. Then Jess and I gave the city four nights, ate our way down Via dei Tribunali, climbed […]
The Best Packing Cubes for Travel: Our 2026 Picks and Buying Guide
We’ve been travelling and writing about it full time since 2010, and for the past four years most of our clothes have crossed borders inside a set of cheap Amazon packing cubes we bought when we were living in the UK. Jess, meanwhile, has been packing with the same Eagle Creek cubes for over twelve […]
The Best Hotels Near London Airports (And the One to Book at Each)
I lived in central London for over two years, and I’ve flown in and out of all six of its airports more times than I can count. In that time I’ve tried the 4am taxi across the city, the first train that arrives twenty minutes after bag drop opens, and the night spent airport-side at […]
The Best Travel Power Banks for 2026 (and Which Ones Are Actually Airline-Legal)
I’ve been buying, and wearing out, travel power banks since 2016. These days the one that lives in my camera bag is an INIU P63, a 25,000mAh brick I chose partly because it sits right around the airline carry-on limit, so I never have to think twice at security. Before that I carried an older […]
Amalfi Coast Itinerary: How Many Days You Need and Where to Base
I’ve been visiting the Amalfi Coast since 1995, most recently in 2023, when Jess and I based ourselves in Sorrento for the best part of a week and explored the coast from there. We’ve also done it the other way, cramming the whole coastline into a single day trip from Naples. I’ll save you the […]
Best Camera Bags for Travel Photography in 2026: What I Actually Use After 15 Years on the Road
I slipped on ice at Kirkjufell once, scrambling for a sunset shot, and the only reason my camera survived the fall was the bag I happened to be carrying. The dignity, of course, did not survive. Over fifteen years of professional travel photography I’ve put a lot of bags through a lot worse than that. […]