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Summer Beach Shandy
It’s not the beach of our dreams, or even our memories. But it’s a strip of sand, and a breakwall, then another strip of sand, and another breakwall, and on ’til the channel that runs into the creek behind my mom’s house on the Northern Neck. Mirra loves to go to the beach–she’ll suck up…
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Northern Neck Crabs
“C’mon over on Friday,” said the neighbor. “We should have enough in the traps by then.” It hadn’t been a brilliant year for the crabs running on the Neck, but we’d have a couple dozen by the time the weekend rolled around to create a good crab-fest for the four of us. So we strolled…
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Surrey Hills Brewery, Dorking
It’s a bit of a puzzle to find, tucked in behind the Denbies winery on the outskirts of Dorking, Surrey…but worth it to track down the Surrey Hills Brewery taproom for a fresh taste of what they have in the works. I’d had several of their more broadly distributed beers, either at Cobbetts or other…
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Fat Tire Oasis at DEN
One frigid February morning, I stood with freezing feet in ill-advised loafers on the slushy ramp outside of the last string of the B concourse at the relatively new Denver International Airport. It was bleak out there, amongst the Mesa Airlines Beech 1900s, as I took pictures of a preflight inspection for a training module…
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BeerCascais
The shoppers had run dry…in that everyone’s low-alcohol light flashed on. We’d done our best to wander through every cork-selling, port-pushing, tile-vending loja in Cascais–which was once a fishing village west of Lisbon on the Atlantic coast, but now mainly hosts tourists on a week’s holiday (or Brits escaping the rain). I’d reached my €15…
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BierKraft, Sevilla
When the bartender totaled up my purchases, he nodded with appreciation. Buenas elecciones! So proud, I felt, after a fun evening sipping from the selection of draft craft beers at BierKraft in the heart of Sevilla. We had visited before, stopping in the afternoon with our dogs, for a respite during our regular ventures into…
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Kilmarnock Brewhaus, Virginia
What to do on a Sunday afternoon on the Northern Neck? Why, make a foray out to its far reaches, and walk around the charming towns that sit near the water, the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers as they reach out into the sea. One of these towns, Kilmarnock, features one of the Northern Neck’s new…
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Colonial Beach Brewing, Virginia
When we last visited the Northern Neck of Virginia, and had a flight with our friends at Montross Brewery, we asked them whether the region between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers held any more craft brewers for us to seek out. An affirmative yes–so we made our way to one of them, Colonial Beach Brewing,…
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Dunes Make Perfect Peaks
Friends met us in the park, but the café was closed. “Why don’t we go out to the dunas?” they asked. Why not? Every season’s different on the Duna da Cresmina, just up the coast from the town of Cascais, in Portugal. We’d walked the boardwalk in February, August, November, watching as the paths covered…
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A Toast To Normandy
We spent a week in Normandy commemorating the 75th anniversary of Operation Overlord, or, as we know it in the United States, D-Day. Everywhere we went, from our outpost in Dives-sur-Mer to the reaches of Point du Hoc, we witnessed an outpouring of emotion from the veterans making one last visit to the beaches they…