The light fantastic

The streets of Dartmouth are dappled year round with interesting light and shadow, but the low angle of the winter sunshine creates the most pleasing effects of all.

The long view

We’re here between Christmas and New Year to stay with Chris’s father and his wife in their candy coloured, terraced townhouse, enjoying views from our bedroom over to the Royal Naval College and up-river. It’s a time of seasonal drinks parties and long, lazy pub lunches, with occasional rambles to work off the excesses.

 Drinks party aspect

The town winds down the steep hillsides on either side of the mouth of the River Dart, offering up views in captivating slices.

 Slice of life

Down by the quayside, a cobbled stretch of road is backed by a row of houses in pastel shades. This part of Dartmouth frequently stands in for 18^th-century ports in Poldark-style costume dramas. It’s not too hard to imagine tricorn-hatted seafaring types striding purposefully along the waterfront.

Dartmouth’s old quayside

One day we walk the few miles overland to Dittisham, a tiny village clustered around a bend in the Dart. Its pub, the Ferry Inn, juts out over the shore and at peak times all human life jostles up and down the jetty, from daytrippers out of Totnes and Dartmouth to children baiting crabs, buckets and legs dangling over the sides.

Chris and the Jubilee Beacon

Looking towards Torquay

Dittisham’s Ferry Inn

We stay so long in the pub that it’s dusk by the time we catch the boat up river to town. On the way, someone spots a pontoon-load of chubby seals, who lazily glance over as we motor by, the dark water swirling and Dartmouth’s lights twinkling in the distance.

Seals bedding down

One of the Dart’s many boatyards

Some guy

I always enjoy spending Halloween and Guy Fawkes back home. Here we don't Trick or Treat – we go guising. Guising in Scotland dates back to the 19th century and involves visiting your neighbours in fancy dress and performing a turn to earn sweeties. When I was little, we'd sing songs or recite poems, but these days a quick joke seems to be more the norm. No doubt it was this tradition that was exported, then gradually Americanised, by Scottish and Irish emigrants. So far, guising holds sway north of the border, but it can only be a matter of time.  

Muffins that Fungus the Bogeyman would be proud of

In the old days, before the Americans sent us pumpkins, we carved our Halloween lanterns out of turnips (for turnip, if you're English, think swede ). As a veg, it's a toughie. Each lantern was a good few hours' work and the smell, when lit, was like something from the bottom of the compost heap.

Guisers, walk this way

With our jolly pumpkin perched on the gatepost, a steady stream of children call at my brother's place in Nethybridge. Jokes are told, outfits explained (because it's never quite clear what they've come as), treats distributed, and my green muffins turn out to be quite revolting.  

Jokes recited, sweets earned

A few days later, it's Guy Fawkes and I must say, the bonfires up here are just that little bit more menacing. I'm taken along to the display at Boat of Garten where the bonfire reaches an extraordinary height. The guy on the top is so lifelike, we're quite unnerved to see flames licking around his feet, then taking off up his trouser-legs. 

Crowds at the Boat of Garten bonfire

Spookily realistic guy takes to the flames

Burning was too good for the real Guy Fawkes, but he saved himself from the horror of being hung, drawn and quartered, by jumping off the scaffold to his death. Tonight we toast his failure with mulled wine...

Go with the flow

The River Findhorn, which flows from the Monadhliath mountains to the Moray Firth, is one of the longest rivers in Scotland and its turbulent waters are a big hit with anglers and canoeists. But I'm here to explore a section roughly half way along, and to learn a little of its eventful history.

It's the perfect season for this woodland walk. Rainy mist hangs in the air, the river is dramatically high, and through the trees we glimpse its dark waters swirling noisily. Underfoot is a thick carpet of rich autumn leaves, with bright evergreens poking through.

Highland autumn colours

High above the Findhorn's curves

At one point the river has carved a dramatic gorge and the path branches off to precipitous lookout points with ancient looking railings to keep you from plunging to your doom. 

Lionine shapes below the gorge

The entrance to the gorge, and the narrowest section of the river, is known as Randolph's Leap, named after the Earl of Moray, Thomas Randolph. Back in the 14th century, a family of disgruntled nobles decided to attack Randolph and gathered a 1,000-strong army, crossing to their opponent's side of the river. Randolph ambushed the army and forced the ringleaders to retreat by jumping back across the river at this narrow section.

Randolph's Leap

Water awaits the next surge in dark pools

There are two memorials, or Flood Stones, to be found along this section, which commemorate the Moray floods of 1829. Following three days of rain in early August the River Findhorn and its tributaries rose to an enormous height, causing devastation throughout the valley. At Randolph's Leap the level rose by 50 feet, and is marked by in two places by Flood Stones. The power of the water must have been phenomenal – huge boulders transported upriver as if made of balsa wood.

Flood Stone marks the highest water in 1829

This section of the river runs through the Logie estate, owned and managed by descendants of Sir Alexander Grant, a canny baker who ended up running McVitie's biscuits –famously inventing the Digestive. Back in the 1980s, the family turned disused farm buildings into a hub of retail and workshop spaces, with a heritage centre for those curious about the history of the area. Logie Steading has become a huge draw, and if you've been tramping the ups and downs of the Findhorn's riverside trail, in true Sir Alex tradition, its cafe does baked goodies to die for.

All to the Good

In this country, September is about the latest month you can get away with an outdoor festival that involves tent and campfire activity. Nevertheless, when we (the London Bulgarian Choir) are invited to join Cerys Matthews at her new festival, the Good Life Experience, Veronica and I pack our Wellies and our cousin Liz, visiting from the States, and set off without a backward glance.  

Costume fitting under canvas

Held on the Hawarden Estate in Flintshire, north Wales, it's been planned as a celebration of the outdoors and we're promised the chance to learn the basics of everything from axe-throwing to butchery. The music line-up, curated by Cerys, is eclectic, with Romanian fiddle band, Paprika, offbeat comedy poet, Murray Lachlan Young, and of course, a Bulgarian choir. There's a fabulously colourful vintage fairground, too.

You don't often see a Helter Skelter these days...

Or chairoplanes...

We're on stage early and the crowd gathered in the yellow warmth of the marquee seem intrigued and entranced in equal measure by our hiccups and harmonies. Then, still in costume, we dance in our Welly-booted feet to the rest of the evening's line-up, singing along to a couple of Paprika's Balkan numbers we recognise.

Joining the audience

Paprika get the joint jumping

View from the loo

When the music finishes we make for a campfire to sing some more. Gentle songs to suit the midnight hour.

Late night campfire sing-song

The following morning we discover a team of chefs cooking slap-up breakfast on rotation, right by the campsite. It's a huge relief as there are no shops nearby and we haven't brought any food.

Life saver

We also learn that the estate is owned by the Gladstone family – descended from the former PM, William Ewart – and that there are all sorts of stately sights to be seen in the area. We start at the Gladstone Library, Britain's only Prime Ministerial library, built in 1889 when WEG's home could no longer accommodate his collection of some 32,000 books.

Cousinly clinch at Gladstone Library

It's said that Gladstone read a book a day and his collection – complete with his own hand-written margin notes and underlinings – is open to all. Battered old leather armchairs are tucked into alcoves where you can curl up with a book that might be brand new, or 400 years old. 

Atmospheric reading room

Gladstone sat here?

We order delicious homemade soup from the Food For Thought cafe and eat it out in the grounds where stone sculptures are dotted around. 

'Love' in Welsh

Before we leave for home we take a drive past the Gladstone mansion, just outside the village of Hawarden. It's palatial. And hard to believe there wasn't room for all those books.

Fellow singer Kalina – to the manor born

Village wedding

Vernham Dean could be the dashing hero of a Mills & Boon novel. It’s actually the Hampshire village where my friend Steve grew up, and where he and Tanya are having their wedding.

Steve and Tanya both sing with the London Bulgarian Choir, which is decamping en masse to the countryside, turning one of the village’s cricket fields into a campsite.

Best wedding accommodation ever

With tents pitched and gladrags donned, it’s time for the do. The ceremony is a blessing, held in the village pond – now drained thankfully. Our friends have already tied the knot officially, but want all their friends and family to seal the deal, spiritually. This involves reading declarations out loud together, which has the bride dissolving into fits of giggles as she thinks of Life of Brian. ‘You are all individuals,’ she says. 'We are all individuals,' we reply. 

Here comes the bride

'We are all individuals'

True to country tradition, the reception is at Steve’s uncle’s pub, The George, with a hog roast and lashings of local cider. 

Chris takes on the cider challenge

Me and Tanya

Then it’s off to the village hall for a knees-up to a live ceilidh band and a slice of a wedding cake that four different people have baked remotely and assembled on site.

First dance

Wedding cake – with figs!

Next morning, breakfast for the campers is in the cricket pavilion that Steve’s father built, to do something positive for the community following the loss of his wife. It’s a lovely place to sing as we munch on our toast.

Mr East's pavilion

Breakfast tunes

A walk takes in a glimpse of the newlyweds at the window of their room above the pub, the atmospheric grounds of the local church – at the gate is an old water pump hailing from the river Clyde in Scotland – tree-lined brideways and rolling Wessex downs.

The newlyweds are sighted

Et voila!

Sunshine and graves

Pump it up

A last yomp before we head for home on the M4 takes us up to an ancient hill fort at Fosbury, for a little more singing and one hell of an album-cover shot.

Climbing up on Fosbury Hill

Walking the fort