Category Archive: TRAVEL
Clunes is a Closed Book
Post Office (closed) (photo Mattinbgn)
Winter of 2015 We had come to Clunes, with its massively wide main street (where scenes from Mad Max were filmed) in 2010, during the town’s famous Book Fair. There P listened to an entertaining talk by Malcolm Fraser, launching his political Memoirs, and had a copy signed by the former PM along with co-author Margaret Symons. (Had there been a follow up to this launch, The Varnished Culture might have asked whether vast tracts of the work might better be classified as fiction, but no matter.) On a wintry Monday, The Varnished Culture returned to this charming hamlet, overlooking the fact…
Continue Reading →‘Stolen’ Towels and Sweet Revenge
Vines at Lyndoch: apart from its Barossa locale, they have nothing to do with this story
The Barossa Valley is justly beloved of wine buffs and travellers to South Australia, but from time to time, a local hostelry will just not come up to scratch. Best to shrug philosophical shoulders and move on, but we are all prone to cut up after particularly poor experiences, which stick like a bone in the throat. Many years ago, friends of The Varnished Culture suffered such an experience, having bought a couple of nights via an ill-advised travel auction. R felt compelled to write a letter of complaint. Redacted appropriately, this letter, dated 28 February, said as follows: “Dear__________ My…
Continue Reading →Egypt and Nubia
(Written by William Brockedon, lithographs by Louis Haghe, from drawings made on the spot by David Roberts RA) (1847) It may not be the most propitious time to visit Egypt or indeed the Sudan. Cheaper and safer to buy this sumptuous single volume Folio edition with the remarkable plates of David Roberts, a Member of the Royal Academy and a high master of in situ painting and (back at the studio, obviously) lithography. and today…
Continue Reading →The Witchery
Edinburgh, summer, 2013 If you are staying in Edinburgh, book dinner here. Ensure that you book ahead. You may need to be content with a late booking. We wended along the Royal Mile, ascending towards the Castle. L negotiated the cobbles expertly in her high heels. By 9.30pm we were past Boswell’s walk and ready to descend to the secret garden, our way lit by candles on each step (ladies with long gowns, beware). The day had been dry and sunny, with a bone chilling wind. From our cosy vantage, the sky was an arctic blue and pink and you could…
Continue Reading →Amalfi Coast
Painting by Edmund Berninger, 1929
(May 2013) We started the day well, with a very fast and comfy train, replete with champagne, from Rome to Naples. But then we were emptied at Naples station where an old gent showed us to a shop, where a young fellow, probably the grandson, sold us tickets on a local caboose to Sorrento. P spent the trip standing at 10 degrees off perpendicular, and L was groped. In Tasso’s town, we caught a hotel jalopy that took us up a 60 degree slope on a nerve-twanging single road to the Art Hotel Gran Paradiso, a chichi, vaguely Bohemian pile…
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