Jess and I lived in Edinburgh for four years, and I’ve stood at and photographed every castle on this list myself. Scotland doesn’t make shortlisting easy. There are castles on sea cliffs, castles on islands in lochs, castles that are still family homes and castles that are three crumbling walls and a view. This guide […]
Archives for August 2026
Best Castle Hotels in Scotland: 9 We’ve Paid to Stay In
For a good few of the years we lived in Scotland, my birthday worked like this: sometime in January, Jess would disappear into a browser for an evening, and in February we’d find ourselves checking into a castle. February in Scotland is nobody’s idea of peak season, which worked well in our favour. The rates […]
How to Spend 2 Days in Mobile, Alabama: A Detailed Itinerary
Mobile is the nearest coastal city to home for us. We live in Montgomery, about two and a half hours up I-65, and when we want salt air, live oaks and a proper plate of oysters without crossing a state line, Mobile is where we point the car. It’s also one of the most historically […]
Visiting Gulf Shores & Orange Beach, Alabama: Our Visitor’s Guide
We live in Montgomery, which puts the Alabama Gulf Coast about three and a half hours down the road from our front door. Gulf Shores and Orange Beach are our closest real beaches, we’ve stayed down there several times, and we were back again this August. In this guide I’m going to cover what those […]
Things to Do in Greenwich, London: Sights, Costs and Tips
I’ve been writing UK travel guides since 2010, and Greenwich is one of the places I most often suggest people add to a London trip. It has royal history, a famous sailing ship, the line where east officially meets west, and what I think is one of the the best free views in London, all […]
The Best Hotel Booking Sites: What We Actually Use and Why
During my old corporate job I lived in a Marriott long enough to be invited to the staff Christmas party. I suspect that says more about my travel schedule back then than about my charm, but the habit stuck. These days Jess and I still book a lot of hotels, enough that I hold Marriott […]
Google Photos Alternatives in 2026: A Photographer’s Guide to Getting Out
If you’re leaving Google Photos and want the closest thing to a straight replacement, it’s Ente. It’s end-to-end encrypted, open source, and it has a step-by-step import path for Google Takeout archives. If what you’re moving is a real photo archive rather than a camera roll, no single app will do the job. You want […]
Best Tablet for Photo Editing in 2026: A Photographer’s Verdict
I’ve been shooting travel photography professionally since 2010, and in that time I’ve bought into the tablet-as-editing-machine idea twice. Both times I ended up back at my desktop. Things have moved on a lot since then, and the tablets in this guide are far better machines than either of mine were, but my position hasn’t […]
The Best Tour Booking Sites: GetYourGuide, Viator, Klook, Tiqets and ToursByLocals Compared
You’ve found the tour you want. The problem is that it’s on GetYourGuide at one price, it’s on Viator at a slightly different price, and the operator’s own website has a third number that may or may not include the same things. You’ve got three tabs open, and you’re wondering whether the cheap one is […]
The Best E-Reader for Travel in 2026 (And Who Shouldn’t Buy One at All)
I’ve been a full-time travel blogger since 2010, and for years a Kindle came with me on our tris. I had the original model, and later upgraded to one with a built-in light so I could read in the dark. Then, once phone screens got big enough, I stopped packing it, and these days I […]
What to Do With Your Travel Photos After a Trip: My Whole Workflow
I’ve been a working travel photographer for more than fifteen years, and I still come home from every trip with a memory card holding two or three thousand frames. Taking photos is the easy part. The bit where most people get stuck is what to actually do with them once you’re home, sitting on a […]
Best Travel Headphones in 2026: What I Pack (and What Stays at Home)
I’ve been flying long haul since I was a teenager, when boarding school in the UK meant a flight back to the Seychelles at the end of every term. Add a travel blog that has kept Jess and me in the air regularly since 2010, and I’ve spent a decent chunk of my life at […]
The Best Portable SSDs for Photographers in 2026
The best portable SSD for most photographers right now is the SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD V3. If you shoot on a Mac, the Samsung T7 Shield is the better buy, for reasons that catch a lot of people out. I have a computer science degree, I’ve been building my own computers since I was 18, […]
Day Trips from Rome: 9 Trips Worth a Day (And 3 to Skip)
I’ve been visiting Rome since I was 15, and Jess and I have taken every one of the nine day trips in this guide ourselves, from the ruins of Pompeii to a plate of truffle pasta in Civita di Bagnoregio. There are dozens of places you could reach from Rome in a day. Nine of […]