Travel – Jason likes to travel

Summer of culture in the city of culture – Peterborough

Hello dear readers! How are things!? Hopefully 2026 is going well so far. I’m back with another blog post and this week it’s a post focusing a little closer to home!

As I continue with the 2022 adventures, I thought it’d be fun to look back at a fun birthday weekend basking in some local culture. By pure coincidence, last week Peterborough then announced its intentions to bid for the UK’s “city of culture” in 2029. It’s funny how the timing married up but such news changed my plans for this post and now you’re treated to a much longer post – aren’t you pleased!?

Before we get to that though, I need to give you more context and a little “ProudOfPeterborough” story!

“It’s always an essay with you, isn’t it Jason?”
“Shh..”

Okay. So some of you will know that although I have spent much of my life living in Peterborough, I’m actually a Londoner at heart. It has shaped me in many ways and for the longest time caused a little caveat to make it clear that I am a Londoner!

“Where are you from mate?”
“Well.. I live in Peterborough but I’m FROM London. London, alright? I’m not Peterborough born and bred!”

Despite being so in-your-face London (myself and Danny Dyer are practically one!), I now acknowledge that the subsequent 28 years have possibly also had some bearing on my life (“take away his Londoner badge!!”).

Peterborough has repeatedly been voted the worst town in the UK to live and even with my London-tinted glasses, I’ve long felt sympathetic to such a lack of love for Peterborough. It’s not a town for starters so lets make that award null and void straight off the bat. Peterborough is a city!

The reputation has always felt somewhat harsh to me though. Don’t get me wrong, for the longest time I’ve dismissed Peterborough’s appeal myself but in true British fashion – it’s not that bad, is it?

Look, it’s not London of course! London is and always will be the greatest city in the world but every place in this world falls second to London. I blogged about and compared New York City to London a few years ago and rather fairly, I thought, judged that NYC fell just short on the grounds that “it wasn’t London”. A damning verdict but “them’s the rules” a perfectly reasonable judgment.

Anyway, point being that even as someone with no real skin in the game (“28 years Jason..”) I’ve felt that Peterborough’s reputation has been a little unjustified over the years.

One of my own gripes with Peterborough is that I’m a city boy. I’ve been to London three times already this year and it’s a city that has it all. Comparing the millions of inhabitants of London and the endless life that comes with that, I’ve always considered Peterborough a little quiet for my liking. A city of roughly 200,000, I’m practically living in the sticks, you know?

Travel plays a big part in changing your views, both globally and closer to home. I had a jam-packed 2017 of travel. I kicked off the year in Paris, I blagged a work trip to Scotland on the last day of February which spanned in to March. In April I had a multi-city break in the USA, in May I went to Germany and then I had to wait until August for the next trip!

Two travel-free months! What the fuck!? I’d be lying if I said that on June 30th I hadn’t been tempted to skip work and maintain my “trip a month” quota but being a true professional I ~~bitterly~~ went to work.

It did pose a question though.What was I supposed to do for the next two months? My other big passion was football of course and which two months of the year does football take a break? June and July – nightmare!

I could have moped around for two months, resenting how difficult life can be when you have to go two whole months without an overseas trip and having to work for a living but I did the next best thing and looked towards my own doorstep.

As dreaded as the work day is, I made the best of my lunch hours and working in the city centre and repeatedly took a little lunch-time outing over the summer.

Isn’t the cathedral gorgeous? Aren’t we lucky to have a free museum to visit? The bishop gardens are just lovely aren’t they? Who doesn’t want to spend their afternoons eating their lunch sat besides the river Nene? Peterborough is much nicer than it gets credit for.

I was inspired! I was also particularly fond of Instagram at the time and an idea came to me – a dedicated Instagram page sharing all things positive about Peterborough. There’s so much negativity about the city, particularly from its inhabitants, and yet there’s plenty to love about it. All I needed was a name – something alliterative maybe?

P.P..

I deliberated a few different P words but none of them fit just right. I was inching closer.. Pride? No, that’s not appropriate. Proud? PeterboroughProud? ProudPeterborough? ProudOfPeterborough.. Yes!

It wasn’t as alliterative as I’d originally hoped for but it rolled off the tongue nicely. Proud Of Peterborough! Instagram was very hashtag-focused at the time and I envisaged a hypothetical little community all contributing towards #ProudOfPeterborough (HA! Be careful what you wish for!).

On the 1st July 2017 I launched the account with this photo and thus ‘Proud Of Peterborough’ was born! A page dedicated solely to all things good about Peterborough.

I started with the best intentions. Alas, the travel and football lull didn’t last long. In August I went to Greece, September I visited Washington for the first time (hard to believe there was a time before Washington). In October I went to Madrid for football, followed by Germany for football in November and then a return to Edinburgh for Hogmanay / New Years. Alongside the domestic football, time with family and friends, work and other things I’d very quickly neglected ‘Proud Of Peterborough’

I think I only posted a handful of times within the first 9 months of the account and ProudOfPeterborough drifted off in to a little coma. Any time I’d try and resuscitate the bugger, I’d inevitably forget what the password was – “Never mind, just post this to my main Instagram account”

My love for Peterborough was growing but travel and football still dominated as much of my free time as humanly possible. Fast forward a few years and as some of you will remember, I decided to pack in my job and go “live” out in Washington for 3 months. Three whole months with Haleigh!

2020 was to be a year of great things. I left my job at the end of January and flew out to Washington in early February. Of course we all know what happened in 2020, it was an interesting time to be overseas and sadly I didn’t get a full three months as intended but nevertheless it was a big change.

I’m mindful I’ve not even got to the crux of this post yet so I’ll try keep this part short but long-story-short I was a Londoner going to live out in little Moses Lake for three months. Moses Lake with a population of 20,000-25,000! Fucking hell.

For those reading that don’t know me in real life, I am a quiet person. I’m not the most talkative, I am very much an introvert but there’s just something about big cities that I adore. I am fascinated by people. I love being in cities where life is happening around me and I feel a heavy dose of comfort in such cities.

London epitomises that perfectly, Peterborough has always felt a degree of too quiet for my liking. There are only 200,000 people here! Nothing happens, it’s too quiet. Blah, blah, blah.

and now I was off to temporarily live in Moses Lake? Haleigh would go off to work and what the hell was I supposed to do? I was surely going to die of boredom! My very first experience of Moses Lake three years earlier had seen me dropped off at a bus stop three miles outside of town – a good sign that out-of-towners do not visit Moses Lake for fun.

and yet I embraced it. I’m naturally an optimist. I think I’ll find the best in any situation and who knows what would happen with Haleigh, maybe Moses Lake would be a permanent home one day (it wasn’t).

I went to Moses Lake with the best intentions to make the best of it. Find some favourite hangout spots, try and acclimatise as best as I can. Just enjoy this rare experience of life somewhere else.

Truthfully, I know that this was aided by not having to work. Finance-permitting, I would retire tomorrow so three months without a job was bliss and definitely added to what was only a nine-week experience in Moses Lake but I loved it.

One of the things that struck me most about my time in Moses Lake was the community feel. I got a little swept up in it. I posted a nostalgia-heavy blog post a while back about it because there’s a little part of me that still misses Moses Lake. I know it’s not somewhere I’ll ever go back to but I have so many good memories of that place and one of the more vivid ones from that particular trip was drinking a beer in a carpet store whilst watching a rock band – one of the last “normal” pre-Covid experiences I had.

I should add that I don’t frequently spend my days drinking in carpet stores. This was part of Moses Lake’s inaugural “Brews and Tunes” festival but besides enjoyment, the overwhelming feeling was how has this happened here?

Logically, such a festival could not possibly happen in somewhere like Moses Lake and yet it had. It had because the community banded together and found a way to make it work and as a result I found myself beer-tasting my way through carpet stores, jewellery stores, estate agents and other such nonsensical locations to be hosting breweries from all over the Pacific Northwest.

I was truly inspired. Peterborough is ten times the size of Moses Lake. If Moses Lake can make me feel like this, what am I missing out on back home? There must be so many things going on back home that I have no knowledge of because I get swept up with the mundaneness of life and working.

Being in Moses Lake made me more appreciative of Peterborough and I vowed once I returned that I’d start doing more of this on my doorstep. Alas, Covid struck and soon enough we were in-and-out of repeated lockdowns which sadly disrupted my plans but the Covid experience just exacerbated everything Moses Lake had already made me feel. I was already chasing the best life has to offer and Covid keeping us cooped up made me even more determined.

2020 was a bit of a write-off really but come 2021 I was eagerly anticipating the country opening back up and trying to get back to some semblance of normality. The UK kicked off the year with yet another lockdown before things gradually started re-opening in the Spring. It was time to start rediscovering a city I’d already called home for 23 years!

In a rather strange coincidence, this new focus on Peterborough overlapped with upcoming local elections in the UK. Peterborough’s own Conservative MP was campaigining with a particularly interesting political slogan – #ProudOfPeterborough

“Wait, what!?”

Now, I’d neglected my dedicated Instagram page for almost three years at this point but Proud Of Peterborough? Is that not the name of that Peterborough page I had? Can I even remember the password for that?

I successfully logged in and BAM!

XYZ has liked your post, ABC is now following you, JCR has tagged you in this post. The #ProudOfPeterborough hashtag had been flooded with posts, mostly political posts admittedly but it was traffic nonetheless and felt like an opportunity.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t reconsider changing the name. I didn’t particularly want the Conservative association but ProudOfPeterborough rolled off the tongue nicely and well, its second coming had arrived.

In the months that followed I found that Peterborough has so much going on. It turns out that a little research and investigation goes a long way and that if you seek out all that Peterborough has to offer, it comes back at you tenfold. In addition to my own amusement, ‘ProudOfPeterborough’ went from strength to strength with more than just Conservative MP’s jumping on the bandwagon.

and that long-winded story brings us to the beginning of this particular post.

“Wait, this is the start of your story!?”

I know, I know. Sue me, I like to ramble.

The Moses Lake 2020 experience had inspired me, I’d spent 2021 rekindling love for a city I’ve loved more than probably even I realised and that continued to grow in 2022. People were far more receptive to ‘ProudOfPeterborough’ than I’d ever really anticipated and yet in my mind, I wasn’t really doing all that much.

I think we can all play roles within our communities and there’s certainly a need for different roles but my part was largely promoter or maybe “unofficial ambassador” to glam it up a little bit. Truthfully, there are so many creative and incredible people doing far more good for Peterborough than I was and whilst I helped spread the good word of some of these things going on, it felt a little strange to be reaping any praise for a fairly small effort on my part.

I wanted to step up my efforts a bit in 2022 and signed up to volunteer at the inaugural “Peterborough Celebrates” festival in the Spring. Sadly, days beforehand I caught Covid and as quickly as I’d signed up to volunteer I was then withdrawing. Typical!

One summer event I was particularly looking forward to was a touring exhibit of London’s Natural History Museum – hosting a T-Rex exhibit in Peterborough’s stunning cathedral. I sought out the dates to spread the word, jotted them down but the thing that really caught my eye was a call-out for volunteers. Sign me up!

I blogged about it at the time because I genuinely think it’s one of the coolest things I’ll ever be part of. Roaring animatronic dinosaurs in a 900 year old cathedral – incredible!

NHM T-Rex Exhibit at Peterborough Cathedral

It kickstarted a summer of local culture and fun. Volunteering every weekend was a joy and this was a summer that perfectly encapsulates why Peterborough is far more cultural and interesting than it perhaps gets credit for so here’s a little glimpse of what I got up to.

I was only going to look at August 2022 but on reflection it looks like I had a busy 31st of July so we’ll start there. Last time out I blogged about the significance of the Women’s European Championship hosted in England that summer and it just so happens that England won the final on this particular night.

The poetry scene in Peterborough is one to be particularly proud of and poet-guru and former Peterborough Laureate, Charley, was hosting another of her infamous “Freak Speak” nights at a park cafe which was bigger than I’d actually realised.

Having since been to a few poetry and spoken words events around Peterborough, it blows my mind at how talented people are in this city. This was an event that really gave people a platform to show off that talent.

It was a fun start to what proved to be a month full of fun cultural outings and topped off with news that England’s women had won the Euros – Chloe Kelly immortalising herself in to English folklore!

I was running incredibly short on annual leave by this point of the year so work was a pesky inconvenience for the summer but that didn’t stop me making the best of my lunch hours.

Peterborough’s museum is free to visit, with the occasional exhibit that has a fee, but for the most part free and with ever-changing exhibits I was curious to go and check out the ‘Proud To Be Posh’ exhibit taking place which was dedicated to the history of Peterborough’s biggest* football club, Peterborough United.

To rehash a phrase used earlier, I’ve no “skin in the game” when it comes to Peterborough United. I was fully immersed in to Tottenham long before ever moving to Peterborough but its undeniable the city reaps the reward when the football club are doing well and suffer the consequences when the football club aren’t doing well. That’s true of many cities, towns and villages across the UK.

Proud To Be Posh exhibit at Peterborough Museum, 2022

Peterborough United shirts from over the years

Photos of Peterborough United Women’s games

I thought it was particlarly interesting that a section of the exhibit had been dedicated to Posh’s women’s team – very much playing at an amateur level of football but this was very much the summer of women’s football so it was nice to see that the exhibit focused on both the men and women’s football team.

The next weekend was my birthday weekend. I kicked off Saturday morning with another morning volunteering at the coolest exhibition ever, where else would you want to be on a Saturday other than hanging out with dinosaurs in a cathedral?

Following another fun shift I grabbed some food in town and then made my way over to another edition of the “Millfield festival”. I’d attended last year’s effort but it wasn’t the best day of weather which disrupted some of the festivities. This year it was a glorious sunny day and a perfect day for such celebrations.

Millfield is a very multicultural neighbourhood / area within Peterborough that largely has a reputation for being unsafe and a “no-go” area in certain circles and was certainly something I was aware of growing up.

What Unites Us? Mural from 2021 Millfield Festival

In recent years local community group, Peterborough Presents, have worked very closely with those in the Millfield area to show off the best of the community and promote the different cultures and value that brings to the city. It was a fascinating day with a variety of different forms of entertainment to appease locals and “outsiders” alike and a credit to all involved.

Sandwiched in the middle of the festival was a typical Saturday afternoon festivity across the country – a 3pm Saturday football match. One of the beautiful things about football in this country is its pyramid system which means it doesn’t matter how small your club is or how far down the pyramid you are, you can theoretically climb to the top of the game. From the local leagues to the regional divisions, onwards to the national football league and eventually the glory of the Premier League and European competitions.

Realistically there’s a limit to what you can achieve but local “Peterborough Sports” were daring to test those limits and were quickly rising up the divisions. Peterborough is very much a “one club” city in my eyes so it has been surprising in recent years to see another Peterborough based team reach the 6th tier of English football – not all that far away from Peterborough’s “only” football team.

My curiosity was piqued and it just so happens Peterborough Sports play at an unknown stadium within walking distance of Millfield. Perhaps testament to its “no-go” reputation, I had no idea this venue even existed within the city – “the bee Arena”.

Mural of peace with the colours of Ukraine and Palestine

Quick sidenote but the photo is one of many murals in Peterborough by the infamous Nathan Murdoch who currently has an exhibit on at Peterborough’s Museum.

Anyway the “Bee Arena” is more of a local community centre, with a little playing field tucked away that they’ve made the best of. Calling it an arena is particularly kind but I couldn’t resist the temptation to tick off another stadium visit and watch some non league football.

It was a closely contested game with the home side, Peterborough Sports, coming out on top so a great way to kick off a new season. It was particularly nice to watch football with a beer on a warm sunny day, a luxury still not afforded to the bigger football games in England.

After the game I swung back past the Millfield festival to catch the last of the day’s festivities before calling it a night and heading home. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day and a good start to the birthday weekend.

Scary Millfield promoting love, hope, peace

Sunday happened to be my birthday and I was keen to go and do something to celebrate. I’d sooner do something, make memories or whatever rather than receive gifts. A birthday outing with the family was on the cards.

A big supporter of ‘ProudOfPeterborough’ over the last year or so had been nearby “Elton Hall” in a village on the outskirts of Peterborough, unsurprisingly, called Elton. They’re only open seasonally during the summer months but I vowed I’d make a visit and this was as good an excuse as any for such a visit.

Elton Hall has a long history, originally built in the 15th century, and has been owned by the same family since the early 17th century – impressive.
Myself, my parents, sister and brother-in-law took a short drive out to Elton to pay a visit and look around its gardens and the hall itself.

It’s a pretty place. It was clear that a lack of rain had had an impact but the gardens are beautifully maintained nonetheless. We spent a good while looking around the gardens and getting some photos before stepping inside Elton Hall and learning more about its history. The highlight was undoubtedly its library which was gorgeous. I don’t appear to have got any photos of the interior so I’m guessing photography is prohibited but if you want a little look, you can check out their website: Elton Hall

We wandered over to the nearby ‘Mulberry Cafe’ and Bosworth Garden Centre for a cuppa and some cake before driving over to Oundle’s “Tap and Kitchen” for a late lunch / early dinner.

Again, this wasn’t somewhere I’d been to previously but I’d heard good things, helped by the fact its next door to “Nene Valley Brewery” which means the restaurant has a few NVB beers on tap.
It’s a nice restaurant with an outdoor beer garden with a little stream running through it – very pretty on a warm day. The food was good, the beer was good and the company even better. It was nice to have paid visit to a couple of new places in the area today.

You can never be assured of good weather at any time of year in the UK but the summer months typically welcome “festival season” across the country and there were two exciting festivals still to come this month.

Firstly, Peterborough Pride was hosted in mid-August this year. It’s the latest I can recall it being hosted, it’s usually hosted in June or July, but I guess the organisers had the foresight to know I’d be blogging about it four years later and it fortunately makes the cut for this particular post.

Joking aside, it is of course a significant annual event in the city’s calendar and this particular year was no different. “The Green Backyard” hosted the event which is a local community garden encouraging all things community (obviously) and sustainability and is a real gem in the city centre.

The Green Backyard, home of Peterborough Pride

It was a lovely day. It always is. Pride is essentially all about inclusion and any event that makes everyone feel welcome is an event worth supporting. I popped along for a little while and caught some of the entertainers on show. It’s an event that, even with insufficient funding, seems to have grown year-on-year and hopefully 2026’s event in July will be back even bigger and better.

The other big annual festival in the city is Peterborough’s Beer Festival which is hosted in the penultimate week of August every year. It boasts claim to be one of the biggest beer festivals in the entirety of the UK.

I don’t know if that’s down to the number of people visiting, the number of brewers showcasing their beers or the “UK’s longest bar” that spans 100+ meters but whatever the reason for such a claim, I’ll accept that it’s true and consequently means that Peterborough hosts the best beer festival in the UK.

It’s undoubtedly a highlight of the summer and people across Peterborough and even those from further afield will visit Peterborough every August to taste a beer or two, enjoy the various bands playing throughout the week of the festival and participate in what is probably the peak of Peterborough’s social calendar every year.

Peterborough’s Annual Beer Festival – the best in England!

It’s always an enjoyable time and the only personal disappointment is that they bizarrely wrap it up before the three day bank-holiday weekend fully kicks in. I don’t think 2026’s dates have been confirmed as yet but if you fancy popping along, I’d bank on 18th-22nd August being the dates this summer.

It had been a busy summer with volunteering, museum trips, festivals galore and more but I had one final outing before the summer ended. Peterborough United hopped on the growing bandwagon for women’s football and for the first time, hosted Peterborough United’s women’s team at their stadium for a game against nearby Lincoln.

Of course there were no star players on display, with both playing at a fairly amateur level of football, but it was a great opportunity to support women’s football on your doorstep and with tickets priced at just £4 a decent crowd turned out to watch Peterborough win on a glorious sunny evening. For some reason I didn’t get any photos from the evening but 2,000+ locals went home happy.

That was it for my “summer of culture” in England’s “city of culture”. I think of all of the other things I’ve done in this city over the years that don’t get a mention here but are absolutely worthy of mention.

Music gigs, big and small. The plays, musicals and pantos at the three theatres in the city. The natural beauty of places such as “Ferry Meadows”, tower tours at Peterborough cathedral, other fantastic local landmarks. The wealth of talented artists and creatives. Art exhibits, art battles even. Poetry nights and lantern festivals and ice hockey and film festivals and book clubs and the list goes on. I could go on forever (“you already have mate..”).

The idea that Peterborough is lacking in culture is mind-boggling and I think even the locals don’t truly appreciate how many great things happen here, I was probably even one of them for a long time. This isn’t the first time I’ve blogged about Peterborough on the blog but I definitely haven’t done it justice previously.

Is it a city worthy of being awarded the UK’s “city of culture”? I don’t know. History suggests I’m probably not the most impartial person to ask but nevertheless, I do believe Peterborough is a city to be proud of and one I proudly call home.

I find the variety of things happening in Peterborough and the people responsible for making those things happening really inspiring and I think the last few years have really shown me that if you make a little effort to find it, there’s something for everybody in Peterborough.

It’s no secret that I’ll soon be leaving Peterborough, and indeed England, and heading on to pastures new across the pond. With that development I’ve since relinquished control of “ProudOfPeterborough” and the reigns have been passed over for someone else to spread the good word of Peterborough but fear not, I’ll still be keeping tabs on what happens in Peterborough from afar.

and so I end this post with my fingers crossed that Peterborough is crowned the UK’s “city of culture” in 2029, if for no other reason than some reward to those contributing so much to the current culture of the city.

Finally, I leave you with some more photos of Peterborough’s scenery and various local events over the years that best showcase that.

Peterborough’s Town Bridge over the River Nene

Peterborough’s Ice Rink, home of the Peterborough Phantoms

Charters, a Dutch barge / pub / restaurant on the River Nene

Live music every weekend at The Ostrich, Peterborough

Morris Dancing at the annual Morris Day of Dance

Six the musical at New Theatre, Peterborough

Peterborough Central Library, home of the weekly Peterborough Arts Cinema Club

Schedule for Peterborough Arts Cinema Club (2023)

Comedy nights at The Cresset, Peterborough

Brochure for Switch Festival at The Key Theatre

Brochure for the Summer Film Nights at Nene Park

Brochure for “The Table” at The Key Theatre

The monthly Good Shout spoken word night

Brochure for the annual Peterborough Artist Open Studios

I Matter Exhibition at Peterborough Museum

Piece from the Bridging Landscapes Exhibit

Tony Nero’s “Half a Pencil” Exhbit at Peterborough Museum

Piece from Tony Nero’s “Half a pencil” exhibit at Peterborough Museum

Piece from Chris Porsz’s “Reunions” exhibit at Peterborough Museum

Photo from the Ladybird books exhibit at Peterborough Museum

One of many book benches during a Peterborough Reads campaign

Doctor Who exhibit at Peterborough Museum

Doctor Who exhibition at Peterborough Museum

Artists go head-to-head in an art battle at “Battle Lines”

Artists going head to head at Battle Lines

Street Artists painting at Peterborough Cathedral

Katharine of Aragon burial place at Peterborough Cathedral

Poppy display on Bridge St, Peterborough

Poppy display at Queensgate, Peterborough

Tim Peake’s Spacecraft at Peterborough Cathedral

Shaun the Sheep Exhibit at Peterborough Cathedral

Ready to watch The Lord Chamberlain’s Men Shakespeare at Peterborough Cathedral

Sea Creatures Exhibit at Peterborough Cathedral

Tower Tour views at Peterborough Cathedral

and there you have it. A long-winded photo-heavy glimpse of just some of the things that Peterborough has to offer.

The likes of Flag Fen, Sacrewell Farm, Railworld Wildlife Haven, Longthorpe Tower, Norman Cross, nearby Burghley Estate and Stamford are just a few other places of interest that didn’t even get a mention in the post.

If you’re ever in Peterborough or find yourself curious enough to visit, feel free to give me a headsup and I’ll throw some recommendations your way. Or check out Peterborough’s newly launched tourism website: Discover Peterborough

Until next time!

Jason
aka “ProudOfPeterborough”

Sheffield – July 2022

Hello dear readers! How are things!? Last time out on the blog I wrapped up yet another Washington trip which has featured quite heavily on the blog over the years so it’s quite nice to have a few non-Washington posts coming up. First up: Sheffield!

2022 was a very busy year but this was one of those trips which I’d half-committed to quite far in advance and as a result, ended up being a bit more costly than it probably should have been. Looking back at exactly how much I spent (£425 hotel & £63 trains) I’m amazed I didn’t just sack this trip off but I guess it speaks volumes for my excitement for the weekend away.

Back in 2022, England were hosting the Women’s football European Championship and as a big football fan it was incredibly appealing to go to an international tournament on home soil. More to the point, it felt like a really seismic moment within women’s football.

Tbis isn’t exclusive to football, there has been a growing momentum behind women’s sports on the whole in recent years with a bigger and bigger appeal to many different sports with a number of rising sports stars paving the way for future generations. Maybe moreso with the power of social media but female athletes are becoming bigger household names:

Emma Raducanu, Coco Gauff, Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles, Caitlin Clark, Ilona Maher & Ellie Kildunne are just a few names that instantly spring to mind outside of the football world but in England, football is the big sport and you could already feel that momentum growing in the domestic league.

Football has always been a hugely popular sport in England and football history buffs will know that there was a time that was true of women’s football too. With the men away at war (WW1), popularity in the women’s game flourished and continued to even post-war until the football authorities imposed a ban in 1921 on women’s football. Our bruised male egos couldn’t allow a world where the two could possibly co-exist.

The ban on women’s football stood for roughly 50 years.

I don’t want to bore you to death but it’s good for you to have some context behind the history of women’s football. It’s fascinating and shameful in equal measure.

Some further context is necessary. A watershed moment, I believe, came in 2018. England were the only European country that officially put in a bid to host Euro 2022. The ONLY country interested in hosting the biggest sport in the world?

Another turning point in 2018 saw Manchester United (one of the world’s biggest sports teams) reintroduce a women’s football team having previously disbanded, whilst Tottenham (another of England’s biggest clubs) also stepped up their efforts to promote their women’s team in an effort to join established women’s football clubs such as Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City.

2019 saw Manchester United and Tottenham both promoted to England’s top football league as the league expanded from 11 to 12 teams. A cynic might suggest that that expansion probably doesn’t happen if benefiting smaller football clubs than those two but that couldn’t possibly be me! A football cynic? Never!

I promise I’m getting to the actual trip soon but 2019 saw efforts stepped up further. It was probably the first season that started to resemble something of a professional set up and with an international tournament arriving imminently, the game was being heavily promoted.

In 2019 I attended Tottenham v Arsenal in what was, at the time, a record attendance of 38,262. It was a landmark moment and you could really see and feel the momentum growing behind women’s football – particularly in this country. Attendances have since gone on to even bigger heights, with the record attendance now standing at over 91,000 for games in Barcelona.

Women’s football was evidentally on the up. You could see the demand growing, you could see the standards improving and that brings us back to the summer of 2022.

I knew I wanted to go to at least one game, maybe more but at the very least one. Unfortunately I knew 2022 would be a busy year and would strip me of the opportunity to go to any midweek games so my only requirements were to go to a weekend game somewhere in the country and preferably to a stadium I hadn’t previously been to before.

Sheffield’s “Bramall Lane” ticked the right box and on the 9th of August 2021, I blindly booked myself a ticket unaware of which teams I’d even be watching the following summer. That was a concern for a later date, as was my accommodation and travel. My main concern was saving for a wedding – this Sheffield weekender was not a concern whatsoever.

That was probably a mistake. By the time this trip rolled around, I’m not really sure I could actually justify it financially. Sometimes you’ve just got to say no to things but who wants to say no to the fun things, right!? Say yes to all the trips!

Leaving my planning to the last minute meant I paid the price – literally. It was so fucking extortionate going to Sheffield for a weekend at the last minute, particularly in a city hosting a big international event.

Financial irresponsibility aside, you don’t regret it do you? I know that’s probably not the moral of the story I should be sharing here but I had a bloody good weekend.

I caught the train from Peterborough up to Sheffield on Friday night. By the time I’d arrived in Sheffield there wasn’t time to do much of anything – other than get lost.

Honestly, I don’t know what it is about Sheffield but I just can’t seem to get my bearings with that city. I’d been there a couple of times previously so thought I had a vague idea where I was going but absolutely not, I never know where I am in Sheffield. We have a little “in joke” within the family where all roads lead to Sheffield but I swear, on a personal note I’d still struggle to find my way around if that were true.

Fortunately the next morning I had myself the guide of a local. Well, a local of sorts. A friend of mine, Jenny, moved up from Peterborough to Sheffield and meant that I had a friend that could actually stop me from getting lost.

We spent the morning wandering through the city whilst Jenny showed off the “sights” and relayed her new-found knowledge of Sheffield. The highlight for me was undoubtedly the Peace gardens next to Sheffield’s town hall and also the indoor Winter garden which was beautiful. It was nice to wander and catch up with a friend that I hadn’t seen this side of Covid.

Such was the magnitude of the tournament, Jenny would also be attending her first ever football match this evening as Sheffield welcomed the Netherlands and Sweden women’s teams to Bramall Lane. One other notable sight on our morning excursion was seeing the wave of Dutch orange and Swedish yellow spreading across the city as more and more fans flocked in to the city.

It’s quite bizarre but one of the things I always associate with international football tournaments is the colour of the fans in the stadiums and it was just really cool to see more and more orange and yellow throughout Sheffield as the day progressed.

Jenny had some things to do before the football so we went our separate ways and said our goodbyes. I went in the search of lunch and found a nice pub to grab some grub at. It was a lovely summer day so I made time for a little solo-exploring afterwards before turning my attention to some pre-match fun and meeting up with a friend.

A friend of mine from London, Natalie, was pretty much attending as many tournament games as humanly possible. With the exception of games kicking off at the same time, she’d arranged to go to a game every day throughout the tournament and I think this would already be her fourth game of the first weekend of the tournament – bonkers!

We went and had a couple of pre-match pints at a quiet little pub near my hotel. After a couple of beers and a catch-up we wandered over to the stadium together. Jenny had kindly pointed me in the vague direction of where I needed to go and the closer we got, the easier it was to just follow the orange and yellow.

Bramall Lane is one of the old-school English stadiums, retaining the character and history you lose with newer stadiums. It was nice to tick off another stadium on my list and better yet, I’d be catching up with another friend.

I’d mentioned earlier that I’d blindly bought my ticket for the game. I didn’t know which teams would be involved at the time of buying a ticket so I was pleased after the draw to learn the two teams participating would be the Netherlands and Sweden – two of the better teams.

Sweden was particularly significant because I then extended the invitation to my friend Sarah, of Northallerton fame, who I mentioned in a recent blog-post was a lover of all things Sweden (hence the Abba themed birthday party!).

“Hey, I’m going to be in Sheffield for the Sweden game.. you should come!”

I was due to be sat on my own but Sarah popped down from Northallerton for the game and unluckily for her, but luckily for me, Sarah’s sister couldn’t make the game so I ended up nabbing her ticket and sitting with Sarah and her dad to enjoy the game.

We were unsurprisingly sat among the lively Swedish supporters who made a good racket, aided by a strong first half performance from the Swedes. The game finished 1-1, a fair result with Sweden having the better of the first half and the Dutch responding with a good second half performance.

More interestingly was the attendance – 21,342. This has likely since changed but I think at the time was another record – the biggest crowd at an international tournament for a game not featuring the hosts. The England games were unsurprisingly all sell-outs but 20,000+, predominantly women and young girls, here to support this game-changing tournament in Sheffield for two foreign nations – wow!

I can’t say that, at the time, I was familiar with too many of the players. Arsenal’s (now Man City’s) Vivianne Miedema was undoubtedly the highest-profile player on display and one I was looking forward to watching again but it’s really interesting to look back at the two teams that day and realise how many players have since gone on to have a good career in English football.

It was a significant tournament in women’s football and one I found to be quite emotional. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with football, more often than not I loathe it, but it’s quite sad how many are turned away by the culture of it in this country.

They’re fundamentally the same sport but men’s football and women’s football are so different culturally. By all means hate the sport itself but it does sadden me that for a lot of people it’s that uncomfortable and often intimidating culture that is the bigger issue and the real reason that people “don’t like football”.

I’ve heard too many stories of women feeling invalidated when it comes to men’s football because of lazy stereotypes or worse, suffering the sexism within the sport. So it was quite heartwarming to see first-hand how transformational this tournament was for women’s football.

England went on to win the tournament. It wasn’t really a great surprise, the hard work of the last few years had paid off and I think they were overwhelming favourites to win the tournament on home soil but it was a seismic moment nonetheless.

Football has been such a big part of my life and I think knowing that this tournament had introduced and welcomed a new audience of supporters to the game made me feel warm and fuzzy. I can’t even imagine what it meant for girls and women, generations and old, who now had a trailblazing generation of heroes to fall in love with. It was hard not to be swept up in the emotions of it all.

Post-game, myself and Natalie reunited and walked back in to town to chat and enjoy a couple more beers. It was the perfect way to round off the day.

The next morning I again met up with Natalie for a quick drink before she headed onwards for yet another game in nearby Rotherham, whilst I waited for my train home to Peterborough. Before my train I had time to go and get myself lost one final time in Sheffield as I seeked out a pub to grab a Sunday roast dinner.

I eventually found somewhere suitable, enjoyed the food and then wandered back in the vague direction of the train station to catch my train. I definitely did not have the money to justify this trip but I’d spent the weekend catching up with a few friends, watching football and enjoying a few beers along the way so what does it matter, right?

P.S – please don’t sell your house and book a round-the-world cruise on the back of reading and making light of this financial irresponsibility!

Anyway, all in all it had been a lovely weekend and the bank balance eventually recovered. 2022 was a year filled with many memorable moments and this weekend was definitely another one to remember.

Until next time!

Jason

A Washington surprise – June 2022

Hello dear readers! How are things!? Look at me sharing yet another blog-post, I’m really getting back in to the groove of posting regularly! Last time out on the blog I was writing about a little weekend away in the North of England – a few weeks later, I was off on my travels again!

Long time readers will know I’ve spent much of recent years back-and-forth between London and Washington due to a long-distance relationship with my, now wife, Haleigh. This (2022) was the year we’d got married and then within a matter of weeks it was back to the ol’ long-distance whilst we figured out the next steps of actually living in the same place.

I don’t buy in to the idea that things drastically change from one day to the next so that age-old question of “how’s married life?” for any newlyweds feels a little silly to me. Some couples might well argue otherwise but surely it shouldn’t be that different to how it was before you got married?

Anyway, my point being that I don’t really think being married changed anything in terms of a relationship but with some contradiction, it felt a little strange to get married and then go back to being apart again. I kind of have that image in my head from the TV show Friends where Ross is joking with Rachel about the unknown whereabouts of his wife Emily and there’s definitely an element of that ridiculousness in a long-distance relationship.

“How’s married life then Jason?”
“Why are you asking me? I don’t see my wife..”

I was probably more conscious about it in those early weeks of separated marital life. I’d seen Haleigh as recently as May but with her visa application forcing her to hand over her passport, I wasn’t sure when I’d next see Haleigh and didn’t want to have to wait until Thanksgiving in November.

2022 was an expensive year, with a lot of plans, but I still pondered if I could go over to Washington sooner and maybe visit her in the summer sometime. The idea was planted, the more I thought it over the more I was determined to visit even if only for a short amount of time and then the idea popped in to my head that maybe I could go and surprise Haleigh for her birthday – wouldn’t that be nice?

I was committed and booked myself a short trip to go and see Haleigh and then kept quiet. I told Haleigh’s mum and brother that I’d be visiting but that it was to be a secret as far as Haleigh was concerned. It’s then that things started to unravel.

The obvious problem with a surprise is that the person you’re planning to surprise is none-the-wiser. People are free to do their own thing and make their own plans. It turned out that Haleigh was thinking about going out of town for the birthday weekend which was leading to a scenario where I’d fly all the way from England to Haleigh’s hometown and her not even be in town! Ridiculous!

Haleigh’s mum tried to keep the ruse alive, insisting that she’d need to borrow Haleigh’s car that weekend, scuppering any birthday plans, but the jig was up. I didn’t want to be the cause of unnecessary family friction. I came clean and told Haleigh that I was coming to Washington for her birthday.

She went out of town anyway.

Ha, only joking. Haleigh wouldn’t have done that to me (Right?).

Jokes aside, the nice thing abiut planning a last minute surprise was that we then didn’t have long to wait to be reunited. I’d only booked the trip a couple of weeks in advance which meant soon enough I was making my way back to Heathrow and flying in to Seattle.

SEATAC’s swanky new arrival hall for international arrivals

I’ve inevitably flown to Seattle a lot in recent years. I’d flown in to Seattle as recently as March so I was a bit surprised to find a new international arrivals hall just three months later. I think this was partially in mind of country-wide changes to the arrival process in the USA where you pick up your luggage before going through immigration but it was a nice surprise. It has literally just occured to me that that makes me the only one that was surprised on this surprise trip.

Swanky is the word I’d best use to describe Seattle’s new arrival hall. In a somewhat ironic sense, welcoming is the other word that springs to mind and feels most appropriate for Seattle’s arrival hall. It’s light, spacious and has some beautiful artwork from the famos Dale Chihuly of Washington. It’s an impressive space to arrive in to and much nicer than the space you’d previously first encounter on arrival.

As it was quite a short trip I had no usual luggage and just a carry-on which meant I was through quite quickly and on my way for an afternoon flight over to Walla Walla. The schedule of the flight times doesn’t usually allow me this luxury so I was able to sit back and actually enjoy some daytime views over the mountains for a change.

After six weeks of married life apart, me and Haleigh were reunited. It’s definitely the shortest between trips we’ve gone without seeing eachother but it was still nice to see my wife (that’s right, I said wife!). The first night I don’t think I did much beyond adjust to the new timezone – to be fair this wasn’t as long a travel day as it usually is but it’s still a killer heading West with the eight hour time difference between Washington and the UK.

The next day we went to see some of Haleigh’s family whilst I was temporarily in town. In the evening a few of us rode out across the border for an evenng trip to the Wildhorse Resort & Casino in nearby Oregon.

Quick sidenote but to my recollection this is only the second casino I’ve been to and both have been in nearby towns in neighbouring states to the one I’ve actually gone to visit. Whilst in Texas me and some friends drove up to Oklahoma to visit the Choctaw casino in Southern Oklahoma and now in Washington I was visiting a casino in Northern Oregon. Strange!

We had some family younger members with us anyway so we weren’t there to gamble, we were here to bowl! We could have just gone and bowled somewhere in Walla Walla I suppose but it was a fun little drive out and an impressive resort to boot.

Out of curiosity I’ve had a quick look on Google to see what other amenities they have on site and they apparently have a casino (obviously), a golf course, a cinema, a children’s entertainment centre, seven restaurants, hotel rooms and a nearby Native American museum / facility.

There’s not much else nearby, it’s very much out of the way of bigger cities but it was a fun little outing for the evening and rather bizarrely I think the third different place I’ve bowled in Oregon – of all the things to see and do in Oregon, bowling is seemingly number one.

The next day we drove out to nearby Dayton (Washington) to check out their annual car show. I’ll be honest and say my car knowledge is pretty non-existent. That said it was still pretty cool to see Dayton’s main street shut down so they could line it up with a big display of classic cars on show.

It’s so easy to fall in to the trap of “back in my day..” but cars were just better in the olden days, aesthetically at least.

American cities and highways are now sprawled with ugly monster trucks (and don’t even get me started on the hideous Tesla’s) and I can only assume that the main purpose of this is to retain some admiration for the classics. In all fairness, Haleigh’s car is actually quite pleasing on the eye but I’d say that’s typically the exception to the rule as far as American roads go.

We wandered up and down Dayton’s main street, admiring the collection of cars on display and nabbing a few photos along the way. I’d passed through Dayton on a few occasions, primarily on the way to see friends over in Pullman, but this was the first time we’d actually stopped to look around. It’s a nice little town, typical of small-town America which a lot of international tourists don’t really ever see. I don’t know that I’d ever want to live somewhere that small but it does have its charm.

The rest of the trip was mostly spent celebrating Haleigh’s birthday, a rare birthday spent together, and then spending time with family. There were two other notable moments during my time in Walla Walla.

Firstly, I seemingly found myself with an evening to enjoy my own company. I can’t recall what the reason for this was, I guess Haleigh might have been working or had pre-arranged plans prior to my surprise visit but I ended up with a few hours to amuse myself.

I kicked off the evening by treating myself to dinner at a Greek restaurant (Yamas) downtown. I hadn’t been here previously so thought it’d be nice to give it a try. The reviews are pretty positive and I enjoyed my visit but for some reason it was pretty quiet when I popped in.

After some good food I wandered on over to Crossbuck Brewing. They share their building with the Walla Walla Steak Company, which is not cheap, so I’m glad I’d grabbed food already but it was nice to go and sample a few local beers in town. Unfortunately it looks like Crossbuck has since closed so I guess I won’t be returning but I had a nice evening and enjoyed a couple of beers before calling it a night.

The other moment of note was my final night in Walla Walla. The time always goes far too quickly, another short and sweet trip had passed but we did go and grab drinks and enjoy some live music on my last night at the Big House Brew Pub.

It was a really nice evening. It was mid-summer so perfect for sitting outside, soaking up the atmosphere and enjoying the music, beer and of course the company – the perfect way to round off the trip.

The Brew Pub has been a more frequent place to grab a drink and food over the years but sadly this also appears to have closed as the local college have seemingly acquired it and not only has a Walla Walla favourite potentially gone but I presume a favourite beer disappears with it – the “Walla Walla Foggy Foggy Hazy Hazy IPA” was a favourite of mine and I think independently brewed here which sadly means I’ve probably had my last such beer. Very sad!

Anyway, beyond mourning drinking establishments I can only reflect back on the trip positively. June is such a nice month to be in Washington anyway because the weather is good and the days are at their lightest but it was particularly special this time and nice to spend some more time with Haleigh.

Sadly things had to come to an end and early the next morning I was flying back to Seattle. I sometimes like catching the early flight to Seattle because I can have a little wander in to downtown Seattle for a few hours and take the opportunity to explore a little bit.

Strangely on this occasion I had a lunchtime flight home, every other time I’ve flown home from Seattle it has been an evening flight but for some reason I was leaving at 1:35pm on this occasion – very unusual.

I still ventured in to downtown Seattle because I figured it’d be more fun than sitting in the airport and I could go grab breakfast somewhere in Seattle. Being June was an extra perk because unlike previous situations such as this, I knew I wouldn’t be arriving in to a miserably dark Seattle. In late June, even at 7am it’s pretty light out and I knew it’d be the perfect opportunity to explore Pike Place in all its glory without the daytime crowds.

It was lovely having it all to myself and watching the market traders setting up. I had a little wander and of course checked out the infamous Gum Wall before deciding to go and grab breakfast somewhere.

The last couple of times I’d had breakfast in Seattle I’d eaten at the 5 point cafe and I thought I’d use this as an opportunity to try somewhere else on this occasion. With limited time in Seattle I’d wisely decided to do some research ahead of time and two places had rave reviews, both close to Pike Place so I figured I’d check ’em out.

I walked by, what I now believe to be, ‘Biscuit Bitch’ and before the doors had even opened there was a long line of people queuing with ridiculous waiting times for 7:30 in the morning. It may well live up to the hype but I’m not enough of a foodie to have the patience for the nonsense.

Across the road was “Bacco Cafe” which was the other place I’d mapped out and although they were busy too, they were able to seat me immediately so it was a no brainer. Admittedly, had I had company I probably would have had to wait for a table but this is one of the perks of solo dining I suppose.

Breakfast was good and I vaguely remember their juices being particularly good, I’d happily recommend it and I’d probably go back there on a future trip to Seattle.

On that note, it’s particularly interesting how we travel these days. I’m never going to be the person that stands and queues that long for the latest Instagram-fad of a restaurant but it’d be a lie to pretend that online recommendations and reviews don’t heavily influence the places we sometimes visit on our travels. Even as somewhat of a blogger I’m guilty of doing it too and reflecting on the places I’ve personally been.

“All the closed places you mean?”

Alright, touche but you get the point.

It’s strange thinking back to the “olden days”. I’m now imagining a bunch of a travelers in an internet-blackout starving themselves because they haven’t been able to Google the menu or the reviews in advance – “I guess we’ll just go hungry and hope we’re online again soon..”

The Link in Seattle with views of Mt Rainier

As ever, I’ve allowed myself to get sidetracked and all that to say that breakfast in Seattle was good. Afterwards I had a little wander, popped my head in to a couple of shops and art galleries (I don’t know why because I had no intention of spending any money) and then made my way back in direction of the nearest Link station to head back to the airport.

The trip went far too quickly, unlike this post which I feel has been more of a ramble than anything. I returned to England for married life without a wife and began counting down the days until Thanksgiving.

Before that though, a few non-Washington adventures that’ll be next up on the blog!

Stay tuned!

Jason

Newcastle – May 2022

Hello dear readers! How are things? Last time out on the blog I wrapped up that wedding trip of 2022 and now I’m cracking on with the rest of the adventures for the year. How anybody blogs in the moment is beyond me, I’m “only“ the three and a bit years behind!

Anyway, after six weeks in the USA it was time for some more adventure. A friend of mine, Sarah, was celebrating her 30th birthday by having herself a little party in the town where she lives, Northallerton, and what better excuse to get away for a couple of nights!?

Northallerton’s a small town up in North Yorkshire. I’d been there once previously and it doesn’t have a huge amount going on so I figured rather than stay in Northallerton, I’d base myself in nearby Newcastle for the weekend.

The one and only other time I’d been to Newcastle was back in April 2015. Tottenham had kindly offered to fly their supporters up to Newcastle for our visit to the North East and better yet, they’d fly us up there free of charge! All we had to pay was the £1.25 booking fee each way, just £2.50 to go up to Newcastle and back. I loathe taking a domestic flight for such a short journey when I’d much rather have taken the train but with bank-breaking train fares in England, it was a bit of a no brainer.

St James’ Park is an iconic football stadium in this country and Newcastle also has its reputation as a fun city shall we say? As far as football away trips go, Newcastle is considered one of the better ones despite sticking the away fans up “in the Gods”.

I was excited to be going up to Newcastle for the first time but a friend had planned his Stag Do for the night before and it wasn’t an occasion I was going to miss. A group of us ended up going out for a buffet, followed by a Saturday night on the town – frequenting a few Peterborough favourites along the way.

I’ve never felt as rough as I did that following Sunday. I’m sure the abundance of alcohol didn’t help matters but I’m also certain I suffered food poisoning from eating at that buffet restaurant (another friend had similar suspicions). Needless to say, I’ve never been back.

Unfortunately it resulted in a largely miserable daytrip up to Newcastle. I spent far too much of the trip visiting the toilet and as my friends enjoyed their away trip with a few beers before the game, I couldn’t bring myself to touch anything other than water. The one positive was that Tottenham did at least win – it’s usually the football that is the letdown on such trips!

Anyway.. seven years on it was time to finally head up to Newcastle and experience it properly. Even had I not been suffering on my previous trip, football away days aren’t usually the most cultural of adventures.

“Let me squeeze in some local culture alongside the football, I’ll have a Newcastle Brown Ale please”

Having ticked off St James’ Park already, this was an opportunity to see what else Newcastle had to offer.

This time I did take the train – cost aside, it’s my favourite way to travel and truthfully it was so much more convenient for me too. It’s only three hours on the train from Peterborough to Newcastle, which is probably the same length of time as flying from Stansted had taken when you factor in traveling to the airport and time spent at the airport. The airport also isn’t in the city, whereas the train drops you off in the heart of Newcastle.

Having to work on Friday, my Friday night was already a write off. I figured rather than rush up there I’d have dinner in Peterborough so had myself an Indian and a couple of beers before catching the train. By the time I’d arrived in Newcastle it was pretty lively and pretty much as you’d expect of a Friday night in Newcastle – a cauldron of noise in a city renowned for liking a drink or two.

My first impressions were that if you’re looking for a good night, Newcastle is not going to disappoint you. I however wasn’t in the mood for hitting the town myself so made my way to my hotel. Out of convenience, I booked a hotel really close to the train station and was a little surprisd to find a bouncer on the door – separating the hotel guests from the drunken riff-raff pouring out of Newcastle’s train station.

After a good night’s sleep I kicked off my trip by seeking out a local. Fellow travel enthusiast and blogger, Sam, is a native Geordie and after many chats online it was a nice opportunity to actually meet up in person. Sam suggested we meet up over in what appeared to be a rather hip area of Newcastle called Jesmond with its scattering of restaurants, cafes, shops and such. I ended up walking there which gave me the chance to see a bit of Newcastle outside of its city centre and it was a lovely walk – very green in parts.

Sam has seemingly since disappeared off the face of the Earth so I can’t link you to their now disappeared blog or socials but it was lovely putting a face to the name and we had a good chat about all things Newcastle and travel accompanied by tea.

After our tea we went our separate ways. Although Sam and her partner were kind enough to give me a lift back in to the heart of Newcastle so I didn’t have to walk back as they dropped me off close to Quayside for my first proper glimpse of the River Tyne and Newcastle’s infamous bridges.

I’d heard good things about Newcastle and I have to say, it did win me over quite quickly. I warmed to it almost immediately and it just felt like my kind of city – I added it to my list of “I could live here..” cities (of which there are many!).

The morning had suddenly passed by and I quickly turned my attention to lunch. The Quayside area along the river has plenty of good options but long-time readers probably won’t be surprised to learn that I opted for a visit to Newcastle’s Hard Rock Cafe – sadly it has since closed (as has Manchester’s!) and I dare say that HRC is probably a dying brand but nevertheless I like visiting them. Newcastle’s was by no means a favourite but it was nice to add another to the collection.

After lunch I mooched around for a little bit before getting myself ready and making my way over to Northallerton. It’s about 40 minutes away on the train and I figured I’d be better killing time in Northallerton before the party rather than killing time in Newcastle and risk running late.

My only previous visit to Northallerton I hadn’t even really gone in to Northallerton proper so I had a little time this time around to walk through the town. There wasn’t anything particularly fancy or noteworthy that I saw but it seemed nice enough, your bog-standard English town I suppose with a high street running through the heart of it.

I was still relatively early so I stopped off at some pub on route along the high street for a quick drink before making my way over to the party venue – a local theatre venue called the Forum (I think).

It was a nice venue, a good place to host a little gathering. Providing entertainment on the night were an Abba tribute band, an unsurprising choice for a lover of all things Sweden! As a sidenote, my lack of musical knowledge has led to a bit of a running joke in my family where “Abba” is my go-to answer for any music related quiz questions so this was a good occasion where the answer to “who sings this?” was without fail “Abba!”.

It was a fun evening, lovely to catch up with Sarah and celebrate her big birthday! It was nice to catch up with a couple of Sarah’s family I’d met previously and also meet a few new people. Sadly, all good things come to an end and I hopped back on the train at the end of the night and made my way back to Newcastle.

Despite its famed nightlife, I’d had a few beers already and didn’t have any real desire to extend my evening so somehow avoided a night out in Newcastle on either Friday or Saturday night. Instead I headed straight for my hotel and got myself to bed.

I was heading home on Sunday but had flexible train tickets so didn’t have to leave at any particular time. I could hang around for as long as I pleased as long as I didn’t miss the last train home!

I kicked off the day by having a walk through what I suppose is essentially Newcastle’s “old town” with its cathedral and castle. I didn’t go in either though so settled for just walking by and admiring them from the outside. From there I ventured on back to the Quayside area and was pleased to find a Sunday market with a bunch of stalls lined up alongide the river.

Across the river is ‘Gateshead’ which I was familiar with as a place and knew was in the North East but I don’t think I appreciated that it was literally neighbouring Newcastle with just the River Tyne separating the two. I crossed over but didn’t really venture in to Gateshead, I did little more than admire the view of Newcastle from this side of the river before stopping in for a drink at the “By The River Brew Co”.

A quick Google search suggests it closed in 2024 which is a terrible shame because its location was fantastic and I’d happily have gone back there on any future trip.

After a quick stop I grabbed a few photos of both the Tyne and Millenium bridges and then returned to Newcastle for a final look around and in search of somewhere for a Sunday Roast before catching the train home. I made one last stop to pick up some postcards before bidding a “see you soon” to Newcastle.

I haven’t yet returned to Newcastle but it’s certainly somewhere I saw myself returning to. I don’t know why I warmed to it so quickly, I didn’t even really embrace its nightlife which is often considered one of the best things about the city but I just really liked it. I think I could spend a lifetime walking along the River Tyne and just soaking up the atmosphere and feel of the city but sadly this was all I had time for on this trip.

Until next time!

Jason

A wedding in Washington: a trip to remember!

Hello dear readers! I hope that all is well? I didn’t mean to leave it so long before finishing this series but here we are, months later and I’m only just finishing it up!

Every January I vow to get back to blogging regularly but this year myself and fellow blogger, Sarah, made a little pact to stop procrastinating and get caught up with our travel writing so I’m going to commit to putting a post out every Thursday! Hopefully..

Anyway, we have made it to the seventh and final post of this little wedding series of blog-posts! Congratulations if you made it this far!

If you want to catch up on the series, I’ll leave links at the bottom of this post but just to remind you where we left off; it’s April 2022 and last time out on the blog I was wrapping up our time in Utah before returning to Washington for what would be my final week in the States.

Those that have been following the series will know that I’d already had one “final week” in Washington. Sadly this time it really was, it was time to go home!

Of the six weeks I had in America, this was probably the least eventful. One of the highlights of the week was meeting up with our friends Maddie and Cassie. We’d hoped to meet up after the wedding but it hadn’t quite happened for a multitude of reasons so one perk to staying longer is we were able to catch up with them.

Maddie and Cassie live over in a college town called Pullman, home of Washington State University (WSU). It’s a couple of hours away from Walla Walla and right on the Idaho border. We booked ourselves a lovely AirBnB on the outskirts of Pullman which was very peaceful and had some pretty views showing off even more of Washington’s beauty.

We met Maddie and Cassie at a brewery in town – based in an old post office which was pretty cool. Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of the venue itself but the beer was good and we had a nice catch up alongside some good food. It was a really lovely time and a definite highlight of the week.

On the way out of town we detoured over to the WSU bear centre – a centre dedicated to the study and conservation of bears and somewhere you can have a little look at some grizzly bears up close. Again I didn’t get any photos but it was a fun little detour before heading back to Walla Walla.

That trip to Pullman had broken up the week quite nicely. The rest of the week I was just trying to make the best of the remaining time that I had in Washington with Haleigh and her family.

On my final night we went out and had dinner together and then popped over to this bar in town (the Green Lantern) I’d yet to visit. One of Haleigh’s family members had said to me at our wedding that I really needed to visit so I was pleased to squeeze in a visit before leaving, particularly as my family had got there themselves before leaving town despite their limited time in Walla Walla.

I’ve yet to actually go back but it’s somewhere I’d probably consider a local favourite and had more of a pub vibe than many American bars.

After a couple of beers it was time to call it a night and head to sleep. I had an early flight out of Walla Walla the next morning so following on from a short sleep we made our way to the airport and had our first “goodbye” as a married couple.

“See you..? ”

Yeah, who knows! I truly sympathise with anyone going through the nuances and bureaucracy of immigration.

Anyway, we said our goodbyes and I had half a day to kill in Seattle. I jumped on the link and headed downtown to find somewhere for breakfast – stumbling upon the infamous “5 point Cafe”. I enjoyed some pancakes alongside some tea and then pondered what to do with the rest of the day.

There’s a few different things I’d previously done in Seattle over many trips, there are other things I’ve yet to do in Seattle but we were getting in to May – crunch time in the football season and Spurs were playing Saturday morning Seattle time.

Seattle have its own Spurs supporters club that get together and watch games at a specific bar and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity this time around. The game wasn’t until 11:30 local time so I had a little time after breakfast to go and do something if I’d wanted to but I made my way over there early as it’s a bit further North of the downtown Seattle area.

Good idea? Bad idea? Was it the best use of my layover in Seattle? I don’t really know but I enjoyed the football, enjoyed a few beers and made some new friends in this busy ol’ Seattle bar. On Tuesday morning I woke up in England with a scratchy throat.

I’d tested negative Tuesday morning, I’d tested negative on Thursday morning but on Friday my suspicions were confirmed – a positive test! Covid had finally caught up with me.

I can’t say for certain where and when I’d caught it but I’m pretty confident it happened after leaving Walla Walla and before arriving in London. Maybe it was in the airport, maybe it was on one of the two flights I’d took, maybe it was elsewhere in Seattle but the likelihood is that after two years of avoiding Covid I’d caught it day-drinking watching Tottenham.

It wasn’t the souvenir that I’d wanted to take home with me but it obviously had no impact on my trip. If you’re going to catch Covid, do it at the end of the trip I suppose!

and what a trip it was. Six weeks, four states, two weddings! It’s hard not to look back at it with a lot of fondness and I always feel a little privileged and humbled following such a trip. It’s one of the longest trips I’ve ever taken and I don’t think any blogging or travel-writing or whatever documentation can ever really do such a trip justice – it was special.

A lot has changed in the three years since. I’ve been sitting around twiddling my thumbs for the last 15 months waiting on a visa decision that’ll allow me to move across the pond and throughout that time I’ve repeatedly been asked “why..?” – why on Earth would anyone want to move to America!?

I get it. Some of the reservations about the US are entirely valid, there are things that seem so strange to non-Americans and I think some of the things currently happening feel particularly scary and concerning.

I actually feel a heavy dose of guilt knowing that my immigration experience is likely to be much kinder because of things outside of my control. I’ve made light of previous arrivals in to the US that have been intimidating and that’s partially because it has always resulted in a positive outcome.

It’s impossible to ignore that my experience isn’t everyone’s experience and so I completely sympathise with people perhaps considering avoiding visiting the US.

I actually flew out to Seattle this past Thanksgiving and it’s the quietest flight I’ve flown on since April 2020 so the first real sign I’ve personally witnessed of changing travel habits towards the USA but man, it makes me sad to think that people won’t get to experience the best of this country.

I’m not saying that it’s perfect by any means. I think politics is as legitimate a reason as any not to visit and I feel much the same about Russia. I would LOVE to visit St Petersburg and Moscow one day but it’s hard to envisage it happening any time soon.

Hopefully there’ll come a time when foreigners do feel more welcome Stateside because it is a great country and it doesn’t make me any less sad to know that people are missing out on the opportunity to travel there.

I think when you’ve spent significant time in the country, as I have, that you see plenty of the good too. This trip really epitomised that. Admittedly I’m guilty of easily falling in love with places (and people) but as the eternal optimist, any time I’m asked why someone would want to live in the USA my natural response is to focus on the positives.

Peterborough and London are both home to me but I’d be lying if I pretended the Pacific Northwest didn’t feel a little like home too. Every time I see Mount Rainier I feel warm and fuzzy. On my most recent trip I crossed over the Columbia River and was in awe of the view with its mountainous backdrop as the sun was setting, again warm and fuzzy thinking someday soon this’ll be my every day view.

Reflecting back on this particular trip rewards me with memories of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Utah. Memories traveling along the Oregon coast and dipping my toes in the Pacific Coast, of waterfalls in Idaho and Oregon, the mountain views of Washington and Utah.

I spent six glorious weeks in the USA and it’s that America that I want people to experience. The USA that is and always has been great without the need for any presidential intervention. I’ve been to 15 states now, more than most, and I’ll be damned if I don’t visit them all one day.

Anyway, I suppose this was a long-winded way of saying that I had the best time on the trip of a lifetime. Thanks for reading along if you made it this far through the series!

Until next time!

Jason

P.S – if you want to catch up on the previous posts in the series, check the links below!
A wedding in Washington: an introduction!
A wedding in Washington: week one!
A wedding in Washington: wedding time!
A wedding in Washington: the honeymoon!
A wedding in Washington: the final week!
A wedding in Washington: Idaho, Utah and a second wedding!

2025 travel roundup

Hello dear readers, how are things? How was your 2025!? Happy New Year!

Every year I put together a little roundup of my travels for the year and so here you are – the 2025 edition!

In 2024’s roundup I said that any travel plans this year were kind of visa-dependent and here we are a year later still waiting for the US to make a decision on my visa application.

However, as some of you will have seen we’re finally starting to see some movement on the visa front so I’m pretty optimistic it’ll happen soon. Until then I’ll be blogging away (intermittently) in little ol’ England.

Anyway, back to the annual travel round-up! The only definitive plans I had for 2025 were that I’d return to Washington at some point, obviously. Here’s what else I got up to!

Malta – March 2025
The hardest thing about being in the land of visa limbo is still wanting to do fun things like travel and simultaneously feeling guilty for spending any money that I could be saving for the move.

The weather in 2024 was truly miserable and come the New Year I was itching for some Winter sunshine and a bit of adventure. I had no real destination in mind but a few hopes – the biggest being somewhere with decent weather.

I did some research and planning, started whittling down my options which included a few different European countries and Northern Africa and after much deliberation I ended up booking a week-long trip to Malta!

Truthfully it wasn’t even really in my early consideration but I think I’m learning in my “old age” that I’m getting a little more picky. I was a little conscious of my budget so thought maybe I’d book something all-inclusive. I went in to the planning phase with a few boxes to tick and Malta didn’t really tick all of them but they certainly ticked the right boxes and it proved a wise decision.

Malta is lovely. It ended up exceeding my expectations actually. Malta’s probably a little lesser known around the world but has long been a popular destinations for Brits and it’s really easy to see why. I adored it and it’s another of those places I wouldn’t hesitate to return to.

The desire to go back is quite high actually, I’ll blog about it in more detail another time but I thoroughly recommend it. I had the loveliest week and was in no rush to return home at the end of the trip.

Washington State – April 2025
This is inevitable isn’t it? I’d last seen Haleigh at Thanksgiving (2024) and I would love for us to have had a Winter getaway together or to have spent our anniversary together (April 9th) but Haleigh was so busy with work in the first quarter that we didn’t get a chance until I flew over at Easter – curse work commitments!

Having waited an eternity to see each-other, I went over to the States for two weeks enjoying the usual Washington scenery and lovely company. By this point Haleigh was a little more settled in Washington so it was particularly nice to spend some proper time exploring the Tri Cities.

However..

Idaho, Utah and Nevada – April 2025
It has to be said, I’ve spent a lot of time in Washington over the last eight years. It’s always nice going back there, it’s always nice seeing family and friends but using so much of my annual leave for time in Washington is at the expense of seeing other parts of the world.

Additionally with Haleigh’s work schedule having been so hectic for months, we both thought it might be nice to get out of Washington for a period of time. We decided to drive on down to Utah and spend time with family in the Salt Lake City area.

I’d been to Utah briefly before but on that occasion we were in town for a wedding and only for a weekend so I hadn’t really had much chance to see it properly. Nevertheless, Utah made an impression on me and I was really hopeful it was as nice as I’d previously assumed it to be based on nothing of any real note.

Fortunately I wasn’t disappointed. I adore Salt Lake City. Haleigh’s cousins spent a good chunk of the trip convincing us to make Utah a permanent home and honestly, I don’t think it’d take much convincing on my end. I think it’s such an underrated city. Again I’ll blog about it in more detail but it was wonderful getting to actually see a bit of the city and local area this time. We also drove over to Park City one day which is the perfect blend of lovely and touristy.

We drove down to Utah and broke up the trip with a night in Twin Falls on the way down and a night in Boise on the way back up so had a small glimpse of Idaho too. We’d been to Twin Falls previously but it was our first time in Boise. We didn’t really do much other than use it as a base for the night but the little we saw was nice.

We also visited the Salt Flats down in Utah which is right on the Utah / Nevada border so we had the briefest of state line crossings and dipped in to Nevada just long enough for David to leave with a souvenir (a speeding ticket!)

San Sebastian & Bilbao – May 2025!
Oh man, how did this one happen!?

Long-time readers will remember I’d made the decision to go out and “live” in Washington for 3 months back in 2020 and truthfully that timeline wasn’t really as early as I’d liked. I was trying to be really mindful with my money to take such a trip and saving responsibly and then in 2019 my beloved Spurs pulled a European adventure out of nowhere and that planning went to pot.

I’ve always adored football and I’ve particularly fantasized about European football my entire life. It was a lifelong dream to watch Tottenham play and compete in Europe so my first European game in 2006 was incredible (lies – it was a drab 1-0 but you get the idea..). I then watched my first European away game in 2014 and that was another bucketlist worthy moment that will live with me forever.

Fortunately after a painful youth starved of European football, Tottenham became European regulars and I couldn’t get enough of it with hopes that maybe, just maybe we’d emulate my dad’s youth – watching Tottenham lift a European trophy in 1984!

Then the unthinkable happened. Forget your poxy UEFA Cup final in 1984, Spurs out of all improbability found themselves going on a Champions League adventure.

Dortmund, Amsterdam and a Champions League final in Madrid! Spurs in a fucking Champions League final – what is this strange reality!?

We lost.

My dad drove us to Madrid and irrespective of the result, the journey was one of those “once in a lifetime” stories that beggared belief. A father-son adventure to the continent for Spurs! I’m still bitter about how the game went and certainly how it started but it was an adventure for the ages and with my imminent departure to the US probably the last such adventure (HA!).

I’ve severely cut back on the football since 2019 and good ol’ Spurs have made that decision much easier by being hopeless for much of that period. That was particularly true last year with the most miserable domestic campaign of my life and yet, Spurs were on the march in Europe.

Against all logic, Spurs qualified for another European final. This time it was in the Europa League (former UEFA Cup) with the final hosted in Bilbao.

“Shall we..?”

This was not on the cards for 2025. I’m leaving the country. I’m trying to save money Spurs, please stop! Where were all these European finals in my 20’s when I was carefree with money and responsibility!?

but this was our time. Dad again suggested driving and why not!? It’s not even as long as the drive to Madrid – a doddle you might say, particularly as a non-driver!

Six years earlier we’d driven down to Madrid and stayed in Biarritz for a night to break up the drive. Bilbao was slightly closer and my dad asked if there was any such place this time around. We could potentially have gone back to Biarritz but honestly, one place immediately jumped out at me: San Sebastian!

San Sebastian has been on my radar for the longest time and I’d actually been to Bilbao exactly ten years earlier (which is funny, I’ll get onto that later..) and had hoped to visit San Sebastian on that trip but I got myself horribly lost and confused with the train system and eventually gave up on the idea of visiting.

With costs in Bilbao spiralling for this trip and with San Sebastian on route, this was an absolute no brainer as far as I was concerned. We didn’t quite stay in San Sebastian, more on the outskirts in some rural inland accommodation but it was much cheaper than Bilbao and meant I finally got to San Sebastian.

Our time there was limited and we spent a day of the trip in Bilbao obviously but the Basque country is gorgeous. I’d been to Bilbao before but San Sebastian is every bit as dreamy as I’d hoped it would be.

Then Bilbao. Spurs in Bilbao. A European final in Bilbao. A WINNING European final in Bilbao. Seventeen long fucking years for that moment in Bilbao, forty one long fucking years since Spurs last taste of glory in Europe and unlike Madrid I’d nabbed two tickets for the game.

Brennan Johnson, Micky Van De Ven, Ange Postecoglou, Glory Glory Tottenham Hotspur!

Again I’ll blog about this in much more detail at a later date (“you’ve already written a novel Jason..”) but it’s a trip that will take some beating.

Brussels – October 2025
Okay, so now for the funny story!

Last year myself and Haleigh visited the Algarve together and whilst it was Haleigh’s first time in Portugal, I’d been to Lisbon ten years earlier. I started drafting a blog-post about our trip and it was weighing heavily on my mind how comparatively they were such contrasting trips and how much had changed over a ten year period. So many things stood out to me and it left me feeling really reflective.

Fast forward to Bilbao. I’d been to Bilbao on a solo holiday in May 2015 and exactly ten years later I was going back to Bilbao but this time taking my dad with me (well, he drove but you get the point..).

Having now had two Father-Son road-trips to Spain I was really conscious tlhat I hadn’t had such a trip with just me and my mum and then in passing conversation my mum threw a “so where are we going then..?” at me.

I don’t even know that it was meant in all seriousness but I was immediately receptive to it – “hell yeah, where do you want to go?” and I think it took her by surprise. A day or two later it came up again and the reality kicked in that we could take a trip together.

This visa stuff has dragged on and on and I’m always a little conscious that at any moment I could get a decision so I didn’t want anything that’d be too expensive but why not have a first mum-son adventure of our own?

We pondered a few options. Do we even necessarily have to go abroad? Do we fly somewhere? My mum mentioned she’d never once taken the Eurostar and that opened up a few options too. We considered a few different options and then settled upon Brussels – a long weekend in October 2025.

It was only a little while later that it occurred to me that I’d been to Brussels exactly ten years earlier. I’d briefly passed through on other occasions but I’d last properly spent time in Brussels in October 2015. What the hell is this 10 year anniversary tour!?

Portugal, Bilbao, Brussels – three separate trips ten years apart and three separate trips taking a different family member with me. Is this actually my life now? Am I on a ten year loop for all of my trips? Roll on New York City 2026, right?

Brussels isn’t my favourite city by any means but it’s a nice enough place to explore for a weekend and my mum had never been to Brussels so I was excited to show her around a little too.

I still don’t think Brussels is the greatest city but one thing I will say is that it’s nicer than I remember and probably give it credit for. I don’t know if it’s cleaned up its act or I joked that maybe I just needed my mum there with me to hold my hand but Brussels felt less sketchy this time around. I developed a bigger appreciation for Brussels on this trip and of the few times I’ve visited the city, this trip was probably my favourite.

Good beer, good company, what more could you ask for!?

Washington State – November 2025
and then of course, Washington.

I’m going to manifest this being the last time I travel from England to Washington for Thanksgiving. Just let me be living there next November, please!?

Nevertheless it’s an annual tradition that I use up the remainder of my annual leave for a November trip to Washington to enjoy all of the Thanksgiving festivities. Sadly I only had a week to spare this year so it was a much shorter trip than I would have liked.

One of the things that first surprised me on this trip was how quiet the flight was. I’ve heard a lot of bluff and rumour of travelers boycotting the US but this was the first time I’ve personally witnessed that in effect. I flew out to Seattle on the quietest flight I have taken since April 2020, there were rows and rows of empty seats and Seattle’s international arrival hall was also a ghost town – in Thanksgiving week!

I’m sure domestic travel numbers were still insane but this is one of the busiest travel weeks of the year for the USA. I was in disbelief at how quiet it was, although appreciative of it because I had a row to myself and practically no queue on arrival in Seattle whilst the poor Americans had to queue in their separate “priority” line.

I won’t be too critical because I’ll get a telling off in the land of free speech but man, it’s almost as if adopting hostile policies that make travelers and foreigners unwelcome in your country has real consequences.

There was actually a touch of irony that having waited 13 months for any communication about my visa that in the days before this trip I got confirmation that my visa had been provisionally approved and would now be passed over to a different agency for further processing. It was great news but not news I wanted directly before flying in to the USA as it’d potentially cause me extra hassle at the border.

“Oh, you’ve had this approved and now you’re flying here to stay forever eh?”
“No! I’m just here for Thanksgiving.. I’m genuinely going home in a week!”
“Sure you are.. entry denied!”

It had been seven long months since I’d last seen Haleigh and I didn’t want any confusion about why I was visiting. I’d waited 13 bloody months, why couldn’t the visa folks have waited another week before updating our application!?

As it was, the arrival process was so smooth this time around. I was expecting a decent amount of scrutiny, moreso after seeing how few international travelers had actually come in on our flight but the guy at border control was so friendly this time around.

Anyway, I’d arrived! Back in Washington, reunited with Haleigh. It has been a tough ol’ year for Haleigh’s family with three different family members passing away so it was a strange time to be in Washington, particularly for a family holiday but nevertheless it was so good to be Stateside again.

Thanksgiving was different but still enjoyable with good company, good food, games and an endless number of football games (NFL and college) on the TV over the course of a few days.

Being in Washington knowing this will soon be home was good too. I couldn’t help but admire the mountain views again and feeling warm and fuzzy at the thought this would soon be an every day view. I don’t know how you’d ever tire of it.

The end to the trip was a bit of a mixed bag. I was due to fly out of Walla Walla on the Saturday but severe weather delays meant I would miss my connection in Seattle so I had the inconvenience / good fortune of an extra day in Washington. It wasn’t ideal but also not the end of the world, you know? Me and Haleigh made the best of having an extra night together and were able to enjoy dinner at a nice restaurant on Saturday evening but staying longer had consequences.

Alaska Airlines once again were super helpful, going above and beyond in their duty of care to passengers. Admittedly it was their flight that caused the problems but nonetheless, their customer service always impresses me.

British Airways in contrast can get in the bin. This is the second time I’ve genuinely needed the help of their customer service and they’ve been perfectly useless on both occasions. Missing their flight wasn’t their fault but also was no fault of my own because I had no way of getting to Seattle in time and they just don’t care.

Honestly, good customer service when everything goes perfectly is meaningless. I want to know your customer service is still good when things go awry. I sadly ended up lumbered with a very expensive fee to change my flight to the following day – not the end to the trip I’d hoped for.

Experiencing BA’s poor customer service once again leaves me with a really sour taste and news of Alaska Airlines launching a direct London-Seattle route in 2026 couldn’t come at a better time and gives me hope that that might be a better alternative for the future. I adore Alaska and ironically they’ve probably been the airline that have been the cause of most of my travel misfortunes.

Domestic adventures!
I’m pleasantly surprised at how much I managed to travel this year, it was a tricky year to make travel plans for and yet I still managed to visit some pretty cool places including a new country.

I also visited some truly stunning places. Some of the scenery in parts of Malta, Washington, Utah and San Sebastian in particular were dreamy.

Beyond my overseas adventures, I’ve still tried to make the best of this year. It has been hard looking too far ahead at any point but there have been various theatre outings, a few gigs here and there, a few football matches (in three different countries!), some beer outings as part of our book club – I read more this year than I ever have as an adult with a respectable 44 books read in 2025!

My sister and brother in law had a baby this past year so I became a first time uncle. I’ve continued volunteering, I’ve tried to remain optimistic whilst life goes on in England during these times of visa limbo.

The year wasn’t without its lows of course, there’ve definitely been challenging moments and heartbreaking moments along the way but all in all I came out of 2025 with grattitude. I’m always quite mindful that others will have had a much rougher year and that I’ve had it pretty good.

Plans for 2026
As for 2026, who bloody knows!?

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t getting itchy feet. I’ve found myself in the same position I was a year ago and wanting to book myself a Winter trip and finding it difficult to justify once again.

I came so close to booking myself a trip for February or March back in November and there’s a little part of me that wished I’d just booked it. I took a more cautious and sensisble approach and was rewarded with a very unexpected and expensive end to the year. It’s a little harder justifying a Winter break when it means dipping further in to my savings than I’d really like to.

In more positive news, I’m really hopeful I’ll be in Washington by the summer so that’s the big plan for 2026 and then we’ll see what adventures follow. I really want to visit all 50 states at some point and I’ve currently only been to 15 (and a few others I don’t count..). I think I’ll be looking for any excuse to visit some new states in the coming years.

I’d love to say I’ll visit other countries at some point but I’m not sure how likely it is this year. Maybe the temptation eating away at me will allow me to squeeze in one final trip before leaving England. Northern Africa and Asia are calling my name and it just feels that little bit easier from here. Central and South America adventures can wait until I’m settled Stateside I think.

Anyway, let me stop rambling for now. I hope you all have exciting 2026 plans and if you find yourself tempted to visit Washington State, come say hi because fingers crossed it won’t be too much longer before I call it home.

Stay tuned!

Jason

A wedding in Washington: Idaho, Utah and a second wedding!

Hello dear readers! How are things? Onwards to the next of the wedding blogposts!

Alright, let me preface this by saying that perhaps I didn’t entirely think through the name of this series when I started out. “A wedding in Washington” kind of starts falling apart when you’re then talking about weddings in Utah so yeah, I didn’t entirely think that one through.

In my defence this series was originally drafted as one singular blog post called: “Six weeks, four states, two weddings” which is a much more accurate representation of the trip but really, one blog post? I have a tendency to ramble on a bit and get side-tracked so one post would have been far too long – of course you regular readers know this already.

Anyway, anyone who has been following the wedding series will know that last time out I wrapped up my final week in Washington by not actually leaving Washington. It’s a long old story and it’s easier if you just go back and read the previous post but for reasons, this was kind of supposed to be a four week trip followed by a long weekend trip to Utah a week later with a few days of work sandwiched in-between.

In the end, things didn’t quite go to plan. Circumstances changed which meant I actually ended up staying Stateside and the upshot of that was Idaho!

“Wait, Idaho was the upshot!?”

Alright, so I know that might sound strange to some of you. Who really wants to visit Idaho but it’s definitely on my mind that someday I would like to have visited all fifty states and at the time I hadn’t been to either Idaho or Utah.

We were going to Utah for a family wedding, Haleigh’s cousin (Michelle) was getting married and of course we were going to go but I found myself in a dilemma of how do I travel to Utah? In the end I decided I’d go home for a few days of work and then fly to Utah from London but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered the perks of a roadtrip and the opportunity to visit a new state.

There were other things to consider too of course which is why that ultimately wasn’t the final decision I made but the allure of Idaho was calling me and I guess fate (British Airways..) determined I should stay Stateside and do a roadtrip instead.

It was a roadtrip I’d already missed out on once. Just before Covid shut the world down, myself and Haleigh had planned to go down to Salt Lake City in April 2020 and visit family – via Idaho of course. Alas, that didn’t happen and was the first casualty of the Covid travel era.

Two years on, things were starting to get back to normal and we were ready to hit the road! The plan was for us to leave Washington on Wednesday morning and get to Salt Lake City on Thursday with a night spent in Idaho.

As far as the roadtrip was concerned, there were two clear options for where to stay in Idaho: Boise or Twin Falls. We opted for the latter as it made for a better halfway point between Walla Walla and Salt Lake City and it was also a little bit cheaper to stay there than Boise.

I’ll be honest and say I didn’t really know much about Idaho. It was nice to have the opportunity to spend some time in a new state but it’s not exactly a state that tops many European’s wishlist when planning a trip to the USA. Typically Brits and Europeans are looking at other parts of North America before planning their Idaho trip!

I think my first impressions of Idaho suffered for having spent so much of this trip in Washington, Oregon and then arriving into the absurdly beautiful Utah – honestly, how is Utah a real place!?

Perhaps I’d been a little spoilt on this trip. I went back to Idaho earlier this year and whilst it still isn’t Utah-pretty, it was prettier than I’d given it credit for. Some of it is sparse and in parts of the drive there isn’t much to look at but it’s not all bad either.

My first impressions of Twin Falls were better. It’s probably as “big city” as Idaho gets but it seemed like a nice enough place to base ourselves for the night. Interestingly I discovered that one of the things Twin Falls is most famous for is being the setting of Evel Knievel’s attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon.

I thought it worth mentioning because apparently “Evil Kin-evil”, as I’d assumed the name to be, was actually a real person! I’d heard the name of course but I’d kind of always assumed it was a cleverly named cartoonish villain – like Dick Dastardly!

My limited research suggests ol’ Evel perhaps wasn’t the nicest person so I guess the evil name wasn’t entirely wasted on Mr Knievel but I was a little disappointed to discover he was nothing more than a stunt-jumper opposed to a folklore villain. Apparently he entered the ‘Guinness World Records’ for “surviving the most broken bones in a lifetime” so you might argue he wasn’t that great a stuntman either!

The canyon itself is pretty big and one of the first things you’ll see coming in to Twin Falls – I certainly wouldn’t want to jump it! We didn’t do much more than check in to our accommodation, have dinner (at another Black Bear Diner!) and hang out but Twin Falls seemed like a nice little place. We did check out the nearby Shoshone Falls on the drive home which is gorgeous – definitely worth stopping at if you find yourself in the city!

The next day it was finally onwards to Utah! Myself and Haleigh had first talked about visiting during my “big 3-0” trip in 2018 but it just felt a little too out-of-the-way for the time we had and other places we wanted to visit so we scrapped that idea. As alluded to above, we then committed to visiting in 2020 only for Covid to scupper our plans so it was third time lucky in what felt like an overdue visit of the state.

At last, I’d made it to Utah! Having family to visit is a bonus and a wedding was a particularly good reason to be visiting but I figure that Utah was a state, no matter the circumstances, I was always likely to visit someday. You hear so many good things about the State and really, I’ve only seen a fraction of it with a lot of the national parks further South, but Utah is as pretty as everyone says it is.

I was perhaps a bit harsh on Idaho further up, the drive isn’t that bad but sandwiched in-between Oregon and Utah does make a massive difference. I read a book of Bill Bryson’s earlier in the year and he talks about how lovely Idaho is after crossing the Nevada border which, having briefly stepped foot into Nevada this year, sounds much more reasonable but it’s not long after crossing into Utah that the view spectacularly improves.

As you inch closer to Salt Lake City, the view just gets better and better and better. Salt Lake City is surrounded by 360 degree mountain views – it doesn’t matter which way you look, you will see mountains. It’s an absurdly beautiful city.

The thing that struck me most about Salt Lake City was how American it felt. Strip away the mountainous views and there’s no mistake that you’re in an American city.

It had everything that you’d expect of the USA – the big highways and cars and highway advertisements everywhere. The fast food-chains and drive-thru-everything’s, the massive malls and all of this in Austria or Switzerland-like surroundings. I don’t know why but I just found it really endearing, there was an inexplicable charm about Salt Lake City, I was smitten.

We didn’t even really do anything of note in Salt Lake City. We were only in town for a few days which was primarily for a wedding and the free time we did have was largely spent with family. There was no legitimate reason for me to hold Salt Lake City in such esteem or have such a fondness for it but I did. Maybe I got carried away with how pretty it is but it felt like a special city and one that more people should be visiting.

We happened to go back to Salt Lake City earlier this year and got a chance to actually spend some proper time there and explore a bit further and I felt a little vindicated. It’s a wonderful city!

I’ve been fortunate to have visited a few of the big cities in the US and I think Salt Lake City is up there with the best of them. When travelling I often find myself asking “could I live here?” and Salt Lake City is one of those places that I don’t think would take much persuasion – and believe me, there’ve been plenty of attempts at that!

Anyway, back to this particular trip. We got ourselves settled in to our AirBnB and then all we really did on Thursday and Friday was visit family. With the exception of the happy couple, Michelle and David, I hadn’t actually spent much time with the Utah side of the family. I’d only properly met most of them at the start of the month in the run up to our own wedding so it was nice to have more time together.

and just like that, it was time for another wedding!

I first met Michelle and David way back in February 2020 when they’d made the trip up to Washington for a few days and along with Haleigh the four of us had a little Valentine’s double date. We walked away from that evening thinking “we should go to Utah for spring break..”

That didn’t happen of course, Covid scuppered our plans but I think it’s testament to the impression both of them make. I adore them both and as soon as there was wedding talk there was no doubt I’d be in attendance (assuming that I was invited!).

I won’t go in to all of the ins and outs of the day but it was exciting to be here to see the two of them get married. We got ourselves ready in the morning and then headed on over to the venue to help with any last minute preparations so we arrived earlier than most guests.

Interestingly the venue itself was a clay shooting venue so it was quite weird to arrive to the sound of people shooting. The venue was reserved for the wedding obviously so they weren’t there much longer after we’d arrived but it was still an odd experience for someone such as myself, not entirely used to the gun-crazy culture of America.

Shooting facility aside, it was a lovely venue. The ceremony itself would take place outdoors and it was a beautiful day – again surrounded by mountain views because Salt Lake City, you know? Did I mention the city has mountains everywhere you look? I feel like I should have mentioned that.

With everything set up, we were ready to go. It was time to watch two of the loveliest people get married. I know it’s cliche and whatever, you always read or hear memorials of how wonderful a person was after their death and maybe it’s in bad taste to talk ill of the dead but just once I’d love to read the death of somebody reported with quotes of them “being an asshole”

“Dexter? Look, I loved my brother but he was partial to a bit of murder now and then – he only murdered people that deserved it though!”

As ever I’m getting side-tracked but cliche or not, these truly are just a joy to be around and it was evident throughout the day just how much love they have for eachother.

I’m a sucker for a wedding so it’s needless to say that this was another lovely day. The ceremony was beautiful and I definitely teared up a little during the vows and speeches. The venue was stunning, there’s just something special about an outdoor wedding and the mountain views help of course! The bride and groom both looked great and it was such an honour to be there to celebrate with them both. If it wasn’t obvious, I adore them both and it was great to see them so happy on their day.

Sadly, things eventually have to come to an end. We waved off the happy couple at the end of the night and promised to make future plans with our “April anniversary buddies”. It was the perfect way to round off April.

On Sunday (1st May) we made the long drive back to Washington – all in one day. We did stop off in Twin Falls again for lunch and as I hinted at above, took a little detour via Shoshone Falls which made the day a little more interesting than a full day on the road.

Soon enough we were back in Washington and this time it would genuinely be the final week in Washington. More on that next time!

Stay tuned!

Jason

P.S – if you’ve missed any other posts in this series you can catch up below!
A wedding in Washington: an introduction!
A wedding in Washington: week one!
A wedding in Washington: wedding time!
A wedding in Washington: the honeymoon!
A wedding in Washington: the final week!

A wedding in Washington: the final week!

Hello dear readers! We’re cracking on with another post in the wedding series!

In all honesty this’ll be a pretty boring post as far as the series is concerned but nevertheless, it’s an important part of the story as my time in Washington was theoretically coming to an end.

Before I crack on I’m going to give you a quick reminder on all of the logistics for this trip. I did talk about it in the first post of the series but that was a while ago so let me rejog your memories.

I think any couple getting married have much to think about before a wedding but an international wedding added some further things to think about and in terms of trip lengthy I ideally wanted four weeks in the USA – which my employers were perfectly happy to approve given the circumstances.

I figured having two weeks before the wedding and two weeks after the wedding was a good balance and allowed time for things to potentially go wrong before the wedding (me and my family all had our flights cancelled!) whilst also allowing a bit of time after the wedding to enjoy the first days of married life!

It was a perfect plan but a small spanner in the works was Haleigh’s cousin, Michelle, was getting married in Utah at the end of the month – three weeks after our own wedding.

I wouldn’t have missed their wedding for the world. They’re the cutest couple and I adore them both but it did pose some questions about what I now do about my own trip. Do I push for five weeks off work? Do I want to take five weeks off work for one trip? Do I leave myself less time before the wedding and more time after the wedding to go down to Utah? What do I do?

I’m very mindful of my annual leave each year. Our company offer a scheme that allows you to buy an extra week and with the wedding in mind I took full advantage of this to bump my leave off up to six weeks but for an entire year that is still not enough – give me 26 weeks, please!

I think this influenced my decision making a little so I stuck with the original plan. I was going to Washington for four weeks, flying home for a few days of work and then I’d fly back to Utah for a long weekend to catch the second wedding. It wasn’t ideal but any days annual leave spared this year was a blessing!

Anyway, with all that in mind, this was my final week in Washington. I’d already had three weeks on the West coast by this point so the final week was just about making the best of the time I had left in Washington before we’d separate again. Admittedly I’d be seeing Haleigh and some of the family down in Utah in a couple of weeks but there’d be other family I now probably wouldn’t see until Thanksgiving maybe.

We spent the first half of the week doing the boring post-wedding stuff. The marriage licence, name changes for Haleigh, you get the gist..

The second half of the week was spent enjoying Walla Walla, visiting a few favourite hangout spots and bidding farewell to family I wasn’t going to see any time soon. On Thursday evening myself and Haleigh had ourselves a final date night as I’d be leaving on Saturday and the Friday happened to be Haleigh’s brother’s birthday so we had a meal out planned with a number of people.

It was bittersweet to think that two weeks after getting married it was back to the long distance stuff.

‘Til bureaucracy, immigration laws and visa restrictions do us part” as the famous vows go.

On the Friday I was trying not to think about that and looking forward. Yes, I was leaving tomorrow but when would I be back? What time were my flights to Denver the following Thursday? What time were my onward flights to Salt Lake City? I did the logical thing and had a look!

Now, anyone familiar with the British Airways app will know the first thing it shows you when you open the app are the details of your next flight. I was specifically looking for my London to Denver flight information but up popped my next flight.

“Seattle to London – delayed!”

Wait, what? It’s Friday morning, my flight isn’t until Saturday evening. I can’t even check in yet, how can my flight possibly already be delayed!? I thought it was weird but okay, whatever. Tell me more, how long is the delay – *click*

I was facing a 20 hour delay! Twenty! What the fuck?

Seriously, let’s revisit the plan because what the hell do I do from here? I was flying in to Seattle on Saturday morning and now leaving some time on Sunday afternoon with no accommodation inbetween. I was supposed to be back at work on Monday but wouldn’t be landing in England until Monday lunchtime and for what, a three day turnaround? I’d be back Stateside in just a few days which was arguably illogical to begin with but a huge delay was a real spanner in the works.

Now what do I do? I had six upcoming flights to think about over the next week and a half, I had three days of work to consider and every solution was a form of unnecessary hassle. It’s worth reiterating at this point that BA had cancelled my flight coming here too so they’d inconvenienced me on both ends of the trip.

Of course this nonsense doesn’t happen when it’s one solitary flight does it? Here were my issues:

1) The flight times are what they are. With no changes, I was stranded in Seattle without accommodation for a night. Do I book accommodation in Seattle for a night?
2) If I don’t book accommodation, can I possibly move my domestic flight from Walla Walla to a day later?
3) Either option, means I leave a day late. I miss work on Monday? Is there really any point in going home for just two days of work?
4) Let’s say I don’t go home, how does that affect work? How does that affect the Utah trip?
5) Let’s say I don’t go home, I sort out work, I drive down to Utah with Haleigh and the family. How do I then get home? Do I drive back to Washington with them? Do I try and fly home from Utah?
6) Let’s say I drive down and fly home from Utah? Can I actually fly home from Utah? How do return flights work if you miss the first leg of the journey? I was flying with BA from London to Denver and then with Frontier from Denver to Salt Lake City. It only takes one of those airlines to see I haven’t traveled and not save me a seat for the return flight. That’s conversations with two airlines to make sure I’m not stranded somewhere.
7) Let’s say I drive down to Utah, drive back to Washington after the wedding, when can I actually get home? The wedding was Saturday and my flight home had been Sunday which worked fine with Monday being a public holiday in England. There was no way I could fly home from Washington in the same timeline if I stayed.

The knock-on effect of one flight delay was ridiculous. Also, 20 hours!? Come on!

After much deliberation I settled on a plan. Scrap flying home, I’m staying. I’m not leaving on April 23rd (now 24th), I’m leaving on Saturday the 7th of May. We’ll drive down for the wedding, we’ll come back, we’ll apologetically work remotely and we’ll make it work. Two more weeks in the USA – perfect!

“Computer says no.”

Alaska Airlines couldn’t have made things easier for me. My Walla Walla flight was amendable at no extra cost, infact I actually got a voucher for the difference in flight costs as I guess the flight I changed to was cheaper, and this was all doable online. Bish, bash, bosh!

British Airways? Ugh, horrendous! I could change my flight but only for a fee. Hardly my fault that this situation was not of my own making but great, I’m going to have to talk to an actual person.

“Phone says no.” – call back another time, thank you!

I’ll admit, patience was still with me at this point so I waited and called back a little later. I reached the point of being placed on hold at least and persisted with it before eventually getting through to a person.

“BA says no.”

This is a good time to add that this shit-show was discovered entirely out of good fortune. It’s only because I was investigating my next batch of flights that I even spotted this delay. There was no phonecall, no text, no email, no notification of any kind to make me aware that the schedule had suddenly changed so it’s here where things start going sour.

In fairness the phonecall started positively with a “let’s get you home” kind of attitude you want from a customer representative but it was shortlived. I laid out my demands if you will – “my flight has been delayed, can you move it to this date..” and after a first failed attempt, BA were suddenly backtracking.

“Impossible to change the status..”, “you’ll need to speak to Seatac Airport..” and “you should have contacted us sooner..” among a selection of favourite catchphrases. How I was supposed to achieve the latter is still a mystery to me given I hadn’t been informed of the delay to begin with.

I went round and round in circles with the BA rep, insistent that there was nothing she could do beyond cancel my flight with a flight voucher unlikely to cover the cost of booking a new one-way flight.

Now I’m a pretty agreeable person. It’s arguably one of my best and worst traits. I’m a people-pleaser, easy-going. Don’t make too much fuss, you know? So I’ll give myself some credit here for my persistence. This phonecall was not ending without a solution that didn’t leave me out-of-pocket. I was getting increasingly irritated at an attempt to just fob me off but when it comes to travel, I know my rights.

Many “I’ll put you on hold” instances later and my BA rep achieved what had reportedly been impossible an hour earlier. “We can’t change your flight when it’s in this status” seemingly didn’t ring true. They did change my flight, they did so at no extra cost and I got exactly what I’d asked for an hour earlier.

It was honestly infuriating. I’m such an easy-going person but I was so wound up by the end of the phonecall. I’d never want to be the person to take that out on the customer service rep but it’s not easy when you’re being told something can’t be done which seemingly can be done with enough pushback. It shouldn’t take that much pushback and it still leaves a bit of a sour taste.

After an ~~lifetime~~ hour on the phone, it was time to go out and celebrate with the birthday boy. We returned to a Walla Walla favourite, Clarette’s, and had a good time with the family. The next few days were pretty chilled. I had to work remotely for the first few days of the week of course and on UK times but it wasn’t too bad.

Soon enough the out-of-office was back on and we were heading down to Utah! More on that next time!

Stay tuned!

Jason

P.S – if you’ve missed any of the previous posts in the series, you can catch up below!
A wedding in Washington: an introduction!
A wedding in Washington: week one!
A wedding in Washington: wedding time!
A wedding in Washington: the honeymoon!

A wedding in Washington: the honeymoon!

Hello dear readers! How are things? I was really starting to get in to a blogging groove for a moment there but then ironically the little wedding series was put on pause for a a trip to the US in April.

There was me thinking I’d post again shortly after getting back and yet here we are, almost three months later without a blog post!

Admittedly another trip in May didn’t help. This wasn’t really on the cards for the year and certainly not in the budget but Tottenham in Bilbao for a European final was too tempting to dismiss and another football trip to Spain beckoned – this time with European glory at the end of it!

There is SO much I could say about that experience and believe me I will but that’s a story for another day, for now it’s back to the wedding trip! My other love!

Last time around I wrote about our special wedding day, if you’ve missed any posts in the series you can go back and read them but after a day of celebrating with our loved ones it was time to go and celebrate on our own.

I promise after this trip I’ll stop mentioning the C word, this was the last trip where it had a significant impact, but Covid made it hard to plan much in terms of a honeymoon.

We at the very least wanted to get away for a few days and decided we’d begin married life by popping over to Oregon for a few days.

Our trip didn’t get off to the best of starts. Firstly, as those who read the last post will know, we’d already had to change our plans and unexpectedly check out of our hotel in the early hours of the morning.

We went out for breakfast with the family and then a few people swung by the house to congratulate us again before we hit the road but the consequence of all this was our morning ended up being very jumbled and we weren’t really prepared to hit the road. The result of that was we left with Haleigh not really having much of anything for the trip. Oops!

We said our goodbyes, made our way out of town and shortly after came to the realisation we’d need to make a detour to pick up a few things. So our first honeymoon stop was the infamous Tri-Cities to do a bit of shopping! After a quick shopping detour, we hit the road again and stopped off in the Dalles for a late lunch / early dinner.

Truthfully I don’t know what there really is to do in the Dalles but it’s a convenient stopping point between Portland and Walla Walla. We ate at ‘Cousins’ which is a popular little restaurant in the area, serving up hearty American dishes that go down pretty well. On this occasion they sat us in the bar area which has a different vibe from the main restaurant area but it was still a good place to stop and enjoy dinner.

Between the Dalles and Portland is the scenic Columbia River Gorge – a beautiful drive alongside the Columbia River. It’s absolutely gorgeous and I don’t think any of my photos would do it justice but it’s such a pretty part of the Pacific Northwest.

I think this drive is pretty in any weather but unfortunately we didn’t have the best of weather for our journey. As we inched closer to Portland, the sky seemed to get darker and darker and the rain was pouring down. The treacherous conditions weren’t helped by having a fancy new car with a million different gadgets which seem to be customary with all cars these days.

We’d decided to rent a car for our trip which was the right decision but we probably weren’t as well equipped for bad weather as we would have liked. Which button gets the wipers to work? Which button makes the car lights come on? How does this work? Ideally these aren’t things you want to learn on route when the weather is miserable but we (Haleigh..) got through it and eventually arrived at our AirBnB – a tiny home in the Beaverton area of Portland.

We got ourselves settled in to our cosy surroundings and relaxed for the rest of the evening. We didn’t really have any plans for Portland, we’d been here previously and the trip was more about enjoying some time together. The downside to long-distance is obviously so much of our relationship has been spent apart and the first couple of weeks of this trip we’d been busy with wedding things and lots of company so it was just nice to have the time to ourselves.

It’s probably for the best we had no plans because we woke up to find snow on the ground. At the time it was the latest date on record that Portland had ever had snow. One of the few things we’d planned was a sunny daytrip to the coast and naturally the weather put some doubt on that idea – in the end we ended up extending our trip by a few more days.

Breakfast at Black Bear Diner, Beaverton

We kicked off our trip with a visit to the ‘Black Bear Diner’ for breakfast. I don’t think we realised at the time that they were a fairly big chain of restaurants, I certainly didn’t, but they had promising reviews online and were close to our AirBnB.

The funny thing about dining in America is often how large their portion sizes are and ridiculously that was something Black Bear Diner actually pride themselves upon. They have a little ‘gazette’, which doubles up as its menu, where they boasted about how many to-go boxes they produce.

The breakfast was good but it was way too much food and the idea of that being a bragging point kind of tickled me – “our portions are so big, you’ll have to take some home!” – seriously, why!?

The rest of our day was fairly chilled, literally I suppose because the snow had certainly caused its havoc. We’d considered visiting Pittock Mansion only to find the road up to it was closed and we looked at a couple of other things with a similar dilemma. In the end we made the best of the bad weather and took a stop by the Lloyd Center Mall so Haleigh could pick up a couple of bits – having only really bought summer-y outfits the previous day in the Tri Cities.

Sadly I thought the Lloyd Center felt a bit representative of Portland. It’s a decent sized mall with decent shopping options but the place was deserted and felt like a ghost-town. I think I saw more of that side of Portland on this trip. It’s always given off that hipster, edgy, run-down kind of vibe but I definitely felt it leaned more towards run-down this time around.

I imagine Covid had played its part in that but it felt like a struggling city. The number of homeless people and number of tents on the side of the road was staggering – unlike anywhere I can recall visiting – including on our last visit to Portland.

Perhaps other cities do a better job of hiding it, perhaps I was oblivious to it the first time around but Portland’s struggles felt much more noticeable on this occasion. The homelessness felt out-of-control and with that in mind it’s probably unsurprising the mall was then so empty. Obviously shopping habits have changed over time too but who’s going shopping when the population can’t even keep a roof over its head?

We had a relaxed afternoon before grabbing dinner back in Beaverton which is an area of Portland we both really liked and I’m glad we stayed in. After dinner we went and checked out a nearby brewery who were hosting a trivia night so we popped along for some Disney-themed quiz. I didn’t think my Disney knowledge was that bad but I was pretty hopeless and little help to Haleigh. Some kind folk did buy us some drinks though as “newlyweds” so that was a nice perk and the brewery was pretty nice too.

The next day we swung by OMSI – the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. I think it’s one of the best places to visit in Portland. We’d been here on our previous visit and checked out a few things already, this time we were keen to take in another planetarium showing which was good fun. Afterwards we had a little wander through Portland and Beaverton but it was another pretty chilled day.

We finished off our day by visiting a place called ‘Ex Novo’ who served up good beer and pizza which was pretty good – although again we’d made a mistake in our choice to get separate servings when we could have probably shared between us. One of the greatest things about this place however was the playlist!

I’d joked in my last post that we’d caused an uptick in Madness’ popularity Stateside after delighting our wedding guests with their music (HA), so imagine my surprise when I’m sat there sipping on my beer and Madness randomly come on! After murdering the dancefloor (you guys know Sophie Ellis-Bextor too, right!?) at our wedding, I felt vindicated! Madness rule supreme!

It’s worth adding that I’d seen a Leicester City flag on the wall at the first brewery we’d been to in Beaverton so the Brits are definitely leaving their mark on the area!

The next day we had to check out of our AirBnB. We’d extended our trip but couldn’t book extra nights where we were staying so had to venture over to a new AirBnB in the St John’s area. The area itself wasn’t as nice as Beaverton but it was a better AirBnB with more space than our tiny home so that was nice.

Between checking out and checking in, we ventured over to some pottery / paint place and created a couple of fun little mugs. Haleigh’s effort was much better than mine but given I have zero creative talent I was happy enough with my attempt!

After getting settled in to our new AirBnB, we went over to watch Haleigh’s uncles bowl in their bowling league which was a blast to the past. Me and my sister would frequently spend many a Monday night ‘watching’ our parents bowl in their weekly league. It was a fun evening and, unlike my childhood, I could enjoy watching them bowl whilst simultaneously enjoying a beer or two!

The next day was again pretty chill, we didn’t do anything particularly exciting until the evening when Haleigh’s Uncle and Aunt played host and had us over for dinner which was really nice. Our AirBnB host had gifted us a bottle of wine so we took that with us too! It was nice catching up so soon after the wedding and definitely one of the perks to having family in the Portland area.

Having extended our trip by a few days, our final full day of the trip was spent at the coast. We’d held out hope that the weather would improve and fortunately we were met with beautiful blue skies on our way over to Lincoln City – somewhere else we’d visited on our big summer 2018 trip!

We were looking forward to a day by the beach but Haleigh was also insistent that we return to the restaurant, Mo’s, for their famous clam chowder – “for lunch and dinner” – and I had no intention of upsetting the wife (that’s right, I said wife!) this early in to our marriage so two trips to Mo’s was on the itinerary for the day.

We arrived in to Lincoln City around lunchtime and immediately made way for Mo’s, somewhere that had had a bit of a makeover since our previous visit. It was now much tidier in its lobby area and also much more accessible friendly which was cool to see and of course still home to some delicious clam chowder.

Whilst Haleigh has visited many times over the years, I’d only previously been here the once and that was in August so it was kind of nice visiting in April out-of-season and wihtout the summer crowds. There was a much more relaxed vibe about Mo’s and the coast.

Inside Mo’s restaurant – Lincoln City, Oregon

We had a seat inside by the window and I could have spent a long time just sat there looking out and admiring the view. It’s a lovely setting and in April felt particularly peaceful.

After lunch we drove on down to Depoe Bay, a cute little town nearby with a pretty harbour and a few seafront shops selling bits and pieces. Haleigh was keen to visit Ainslees and acquire some salt-water taffy. I’ll be honest, I don’t really get the fascination with the stuff but I guess American’s would probably feel likewise about going to a British seaside town and having a stick of rock.

Whilst Haleigh was splurging on taffy, I had a little wander and noted that there was a little shack offering whale-watching tours. We decided as a treat to ourselves we’d go on one of the tours.

As it was, we didn’t see any whales on our tour. Nevertheless it was still nice to spend an hour or so out on the Pacific ocean, particularly on such a glorious sunny day. We missed out on the whales (who we’d agreed must have taken a lunch break) but it was still a lovely boat outing.

After our boat trip we drove back up to Lincoln City and stopped in at the ‘Christmas Cottage’, a Christmas shop selling all sorts of Christmas-related items, as you do in April..

We then spent a little time on the beach, making sure to dip our toes in the ocean. The beach itself is wonderful – nice and sandy and clean. It felt nice being at the beach in April, even moreso having started the week with snow!

We dipped our toes in the Pacific ocean!

Following a little more time at the beach spent people-watching and dog-watching (we got chatting to a couple who’d taken their puppy to the beach for the first time ever and was understandably excited!), we went back to Mo’s for dinner.

This time rather than clam chowder, I opted for Cod or Halibut or some other type of fish on the menu, I can’t remember. Sadly a final dinner rounded off our time at the coach and we made our way back to Portland for our final evening of the trip.

The next day it was back to Walla Walla – this time driving along the gorgeous Columbia River Gorge with much better weather than at the start of the trip. The views are stunning and there’s some nice little stops along the way.

We drove past Multnomah Falls, which we’d stopped at on a previous trip, but did take a little detour via Horsetail Falls which we made sure to pull over to enjoy fully. Again, this was undoubtedly helped by being out of season but it was much more peaceful and less touristy than our stop at Multnomah had been in 2018.

The rest of the drive was uneventful. The weather was smooth pretty much all of the way until we got back to Walla Walla and found more of the white stuff – the snow had seemingly deserted Portland and made it over to Washington. We made it back safely though and settled in for what was theoretically my last week in Washington.

A wedding in Washington: wedding time!

Hello dear readers! Well, well well, this is the post you’ve been waiting for isn’t it? After teasing you with a few posts building up to the big day, this was finally it! Almost.

Ha! I’ve still got to build you up to it a little bit right? For those of you that haven’t been following this series of posts, go back and read the earlier posts first (linked at the bottom) and then you’ll be all caught up!

Anyway, I’d been in Washington for a week by this point and all that was left were the final bits and pieces before the big day. One such errand to run was paying for the wedding itself.

Ooof, that was not a fun bill to settle!

This was partially in thanks to Covid stopping me doing anything fun (travel, football, events..) but saving for a wedding left my bank looking the healthiest it had looked in a long time. Our wedding wasn’t extortionate, it was reasonable but nonetheless my bank balance looked prettier than it had in quite some time and then suddenly *poof* – all gone!

“That’ll be $$$’s please!”

There was me hoping that there wouldn’t be any problems with the payment going through. You kind of wonder when paying a large transaction such as a wedding bill if those monitoring your account are going to flag it up as suspicious, particularly when it’s a transaction in another country.

Of course, there was absolutely no scrutiny on the transaction on this occasion. My bank make sure to ask me to authorise my £9 taxi booking in Peterborough every fucking time I book a taxi but a massive wedding in another country – “No authorisation needed mate. We trust you!”

So for any fraudsters reading, it’s the big ticket items you want to go and splash my cash on. Go buy yourself a car or a house instead because they’ll probably decline that batch of eggs you want from Walmart (although I appreciate those might be pricey these days too!).

Feeling much poorer, we went and met up with our DJ, David, for a quick drink. It was a chance for us to properly meet in person and also for him to get a better idea of what we expected on the day in terms of music, speeches and so on.

Although I think both of our music tastes are quite varied so we were equally happy to allow requests and were mostly hopeful that people would enjoy themselves. David was free to make his own judgment as to what songs were / weren’t working on the day, with perhaps one exception I’ll expand on later!

The rest of the week was mostly about relaxing and waiting. The biggest drama leading up to the wedding was the bridesmaid dress fiasco. Admittedly had Haleigh not had a hundred odd bridesmaids (“it was nine Jason, 9!”) it might not have been such a dilemma but there were still a few bridesmaids yet to receive their dress which caused a bit of stress. In the end Jenny’s didn’t turn up at all, nor could we find an adequate replacement at the last minute so she unfortunately stepped down – although was still a bridesmaid in spirit!

The waiting was the worst part of the week. Waiting for the big day to arrive, waiting for friends and family to arrive in to town. Haleigh had family and friends dotted all over the Pacific Northwest and Utah, plus a handful of people coming from elsewhere.

Likewise I had a few American friends that were making their way over from the East coast, plus my family coming from England too of course. We’d had some Covid scares and flight cancellations with the family but they were finally on their way and landed in Seattle on the Thursday before the wedding!

The family hadn’t really seen much of the USA. Mum, dad and Natasha (my sister) had only previously been to Florida. Pete (my brother-in-law) had seen a fraction more of the country but only on the East coast so I was excited for them to see and explore the West coast for the first time!

Those of you familiar with Washington will know that it’s stunning! I insisted that the family had to drive at least one way between Seattle and Walla Walla (Haleigh’s hometown) because the views are gorgeous – as it was they decided to drive both ways.

They landed in Seattle on the Thursday afternoon before driving over to Walla Walla on Friday morning. The excitement was building. I don’t know if that was even necessarily about the wedding. The family seemed equally enthusiastic about encountering tumbleweed for the first time and talking pedestrian crossings (“wait..”) as much as anything else!

Anyway.. everyone was keen to meet up before the wedding as neither family had met prior to the trip so after briefly getting themselves settled into their AirBnB for the next few nights, the fun could begin!

First up was the wedding rehearsal! The rehearsal was at the same venue as the wedding itself, Walla Walla’s landmark hotel – the Marcus Whitman. It’s the tallest building in Walla Walla and a quick Google search defines it as a “historic” hotel and apparently it has been listed on America’s “National register of historic places” which makes me chuckle a little because it was “only” built in 1928. Obviously the USA as we know it now is a much younger country but nobody would bat an eyelid at a 100 year old building here in Europe.

Anyway, the rehearsal was fairly casual. Our wedding co-ordinator was great and gave us the run down of how things would go, although I seemingly should have paid more attention as I definitely had a little “whoopsie” moment on the day itself.

After the rehearsal we popped over to a nearby Mexican restaurant which was the first opportunity for the immediate family to mingle and spend some time together. The food was good, the company better and we all had a lovely time before heading our separate ways – with leftovers in hand in the case of my family who were a bit unprepared for the portion sizes for meals even as simple as a salad.

“Welcome to America!”

Mine and Haleigh’s final night as an unmarried couple saw us go our separate ways after dinner. Haleigh was staying in a nearby hotel with a number of the girls so they all had their girly get-together and it was always on my mind to do a thing of my own on the Friday too – particularly as Covid had made it difficult to plan any proper stag do. With so many ever-changing restrictions there was never a good time for such an occasion so in the end I kind of decided to forego having one.

This wasn’t a stag really, more a casual get-together with a few of the wedding guests and a chance for my family to meet a few more faces. My mum and Natasha had joined Haleigh, whilst Dad and Pete had joined myself for an evening at a local favourite – the Red Monkey!

I think around 12 of us got together in the end for an evening spent enjoying a few drinks and good company too. We were the last to leave the Red Monkey staying until closing, if not slightly beyond that. Although it closed around 11pm so not as late as you might expect on a Friday night.

Some of us may have been tempted to head onwards but Walla Walla seemingly isn’t the place for a late night on the town. My brother in law optimistically asked “where are we going?” and I misconstrued that as needing directions back to their AirBnB because the reality was that there was nowhere else to go but home!

It was probably for the best anyway. I certainly didn’t want to wake up feeling rough the next morning and perhaps it was better the evening ended on a high for everyone. It had been a fun evening and a good chance for everyone to get to know eachother a little better.

Everyone dispersed in their own directions whilst I headed back to my own hotel for the night, waking up hangover free the next morning and ready to get married!

The next morning I checked out and popped over to the family’s AirBnB so we could all go and grab a wedding-day breakfast together. This being their first morning in Walla Walla I had a couple of ideas on where to take them and show them a little of downtown too.

We headed to Maple Counter Cafe – an optimistic choice for breakfast on a Saturday morning but it’s one of the best breakfast spots in the city. Unsurprisingly they were busy and the wait was longer than we’d have liked. Unfortunately you can’t book in advance either or I’d have made sure to do that.

They do have a kind of buzzer service when you arrive, where they’ll text you when your table is ready but I don’t know how well that works when you don’t have an American phone number. Rather than confuse them with our strange international phone numbers, we decided to try our luck elsewhere.

The next best option was ‘Bacon & Eggs’ which was another block over and fortunately they were able to get a table for us quite quickly. They’re another good option in Walla Walla and are actually currently in the process of moving in to a bigger building which is exciting!

It was a good choice and whilst the family went for more traditional breakfast options, I did let them try some of my ‘biscuits and gravy’ that I’d personally gone for. Always a good choice!

After breakfast we had a brief wander through the downtown area of Walla Walla. It was a chance for the family to get a small glimpse before we headed back to their AirBnB for a relatively relaxed morning. Naturally we found time to watch the football back home. An Arsenal defeat followed by a Tottenham win – what more could you ask for on such a big day?

Spurs have spoiled many a weekend throughout my life but even Tottenham had got the memo for once – perfect!

After the football we started getting ourselves ready which really didn’t take long, had some “getting ready” photos taken and then there was just tons of time to kill so myself, dad and Pete went back to the Red Monkey for a pre-wedding pint.

We extended the invitation to a couple of Haleigh’s family but perhaps it says it all about English drink culture that they politely declined in search of lunch instead. I guess it’ll just be the three Brits off to the pub then!

There aren’t too many differences between an English wedding and an American wedding, I think for the most part the events of the day are similar but there are maybe some minor differences. Even then, some of these are perhaps just couple specific rather than being about the culture.

We had a bit of a later ceremony which meant we did some of the other things a bit earlier in the day. After a quick pint I popped back to the hotel for the “first look” and some more official wedding photos. This was kind of in contrast to any other wedding I’d been to, where you first see the bride in her dress as she walks down the aisle, but it was really nice and you still have that special first moment – although I’d almost inadvertently walked in to one of the areas of the hotel where Haleigh was having some photos before we were supposed to meet! That was an awkward and immediate 180 to scarper elsewhere!

Personally I think it worked better having done some of these things earlier in the day. It meant later in the day, after the ceremony, we could just enjoy the rest of the wedding celebrations without further interruptions.

I think it’s probably credit to our wedding co-ordinator but despite getting family photos and things, we were still ahead of schedule in our timings so we had time to mingle with guests as they were arriving which was also really nice.

Eventually it was time for the ceremony – the important part I suppose!

I was asked a number of times in the period up to the wedding if I was getting nervous and there’d never been a point I’d felt any nerves. Neither on the day or the weeks / months prior, in my head there was nothing to be nervous about. I was getting married because I wanted to, you know?

However if there was ever a time that the nerves were going to hit it was going to be now, the ceremony and all eyes on the couple. I think I must have just blanked out the room walking in, I don’t remember seeing where anyone was sat when walking down the aisle.

One of the reasons you do a wedding rehearsal is to make sure all of these things run smoothly. One of the fun things about an American wedding is that you can have someone of your choosing marry you – think Joey in Friends!

You still have to go through the process of getting ordained of course but we asked Haleigh’s uncle, Rob, to marry us which he was really honoured to do but that rehearsal theoretically helps alleviate any nerves and makes sure everyone knows what they’re doing! Except the groom..

Alright, so the fault of this is nobody’s but my own. I said earlier in the post that I’d had my “whoopsie” moment and I guess I jumped the gun a little bit. People came in one by one, stood where they were supposed to and then the beautiful bride arrives and as she reaches the end of the aisle I play my part in throwing everything out of sync!

There’s a whole process, a ceremony you might even call it! Part of that ceremony is that the bride is “given away” but I’d seemingly skipped ahead and collected “my” bride too soon. Immediate confusion ensued – “too eager son, what are you doing!?”

I said previously that a lot of the burden of wedding planning had fallen on Haleigh’s shoulders because she was the one in Washington. Really I had one job – turn up and get married and I hadn’t even nailed that part!

In my defence though, this was my first wedding! Maybe when you’re several weddings in you know the process like the back of your hand but I was only planning on doing this once!

If there had been any nerves in the room, I’d instantaneously alleviated them. It was a hilarious moment, even if people were only laughing at me rather than with me, but it made for some great photos on the day! If you want candid photos of guests in hysterics, get the groom to cock up!

The rest of the ceremony went off without a hitch, except the part where we got hitched obviously. We were finally married! The only thing left to do was sign the paperwork with the confusing American dates and make it all official!

Let’s invalidate this wedding immediately by accidentally signing it the 4th of September instead of the ninth of April! Luckily neither myself, or my dad, messed things up!

The rest of the day was lovely. Food, fun and games. It was wonderful having so many come together to celebrate with us and seemingly enjoy themselves. We’d had some guests come a long way and it meant a lot to us. I mostly kept it together in my own speech but there were certainly happy tears throughout the day. Weddings are such happy occasions that I often find myself tearing up during them and my own was unsurprisingly no exception.

There were several highlights for me but one definitely worthy of a mention as a fun anecdote for the blog goes back to the DJ. As I’d said, I think our music taste is pretty varied and I didn’t really have any real preference as to what songs were played. Haleigh had put together a playlist but I think there were lots of things that didn’t end up being played in exchange for other songs people had requested, were seemingly enjoying and getting up to dance to. You know, the typical wedding-friendly songs and anthems. I didn’t care too much as I knew I’d dance to whatever. I only had one specific request: Madness!

I don’t know if this is an English thing in general or more exclusive to our own family weddings but I live by the mantra that “it’s not a wedding without a bit of Madness” – I feel like they’ve been played at every wedding I’ve been to and they’re one of those bands you make sure you’re on the dance-floor for!

You HAVE to have Madness played at the wedding! Right, right?
No? Well, you’re wrong!

It was a small request and I was sat with a couple of friends who’d come all the way from Maryland and BAM! – “Sorry, I’ve got to go..”

In America however, this seemingly has the reverse effect.
BAM – “what the hell is this!?”

Myself, Haleigh (who has been to two English weddings and is properly educated at this point), mum, Natasha and Pete made our way to the dance-floor but it otherwise empties! The only exception was little ol’ Mason attending his first ever wedding, dancing to anything and having the time of his life!

Imagine the DJ’s pain!
“There’s lots of people dancing, I guess I’m doing a good job! Wait, where are you all going!?

Now, Wikipedia suggests that Madness went on their first US tour in TWELVE years in 2024 so you might say that the revival started here and they’re now loved by Americans but that certainly wasn’t reflected in this moment. We’d murdered the dance-floor with our strange, strange English music!

It was hilarious to me. We had a room full of confused Americans looking on at a group of Brits that had seemingly lost their mind – “what has Haleigh married in to!?”

Sadly all good things come to an end and as the time passed, things started to unwind – not because of Madness I’ll add! The dancefloor did recover from that debacle and I think people had had a good time but people slowly started saying their goodbyes and heading home. We ended the night with the infamous “We Are Family” as both familes came together on the dancefloor which seemed a fitting song to end the night on.

We’d both had a lovely day and I think we’d have been perfectly happy calling it a night and retreating to our hotel but my family were heading back in to town for another drink, alongside a friend of mine (Alison) from the East coast. Haleigh was keen to join them so suited and booted we walked back over to the Red Monkey – a third visit in the last 24 hours for myself, Dad and Pete!

It’s notable to say at this point that Haleigh isn’t really much of a drinker. She’ll have the occasional drink but it’s not something she particularly enjoys and certainly not on the same scale as us Brits are used to on the pissed up island we call home. Nevertheless Haleigh thought it’d be a really good idea to have a shot with her new Mother-in-Law and on the recommendation of the waitress they both took a “Fireball” shot (I think).

We only had the one drink I think and just enjoyed eachother’s company more than anything but the fireball was not a good choice! It didn’t go down well!

Sadly it was a short and sweet trip for the family. One of the reasons we were keen to join them was because this was one of their few nights in Walla Walla. They obviously weren’t going to miss the wedding but the original September 2021 date had been better around their work commitments, moving to April meant they couldn’t visit Washington for as long as they’d liked so they’d soon be heading back to Seattle to spend a few days there.

We were meeting up for breakfast but said our goodbyes and made our way back to our fancy wedding hotel – the luxurious hotel in the heart of Walla Walla. We’d spent no more than a minute in the room at this point and arrived to find a generous collection of cards and gifts awaiting us in our room.

Unfortunately it was soon after that that the regret had hit Haleigh.
“What have I done!?”
“I’ve made a mistake..”
“I don’t feel good..”

Fear not! The marriage hadn’t crashed and burned this early! Marrying me was the single greatest decision Haleigh has ever made, obviously, but the fireball had sadly started to have its effect!

What can I say? Here we were, in our nice fancy hotel, and Haleigh wanted to be anywhere but. She felt rough. She showered hoping that might help and then we tried to sleep but with no success (ha, let’s be honest. I was probably snoring!). Haleigh just couldn’t get comfortable and wanted to go home and curl up in her own bed.

The vows of “in sickness and in health” were put to the test early on in our marriage! Admittedly, I don’t think it likely that those vows refer to self-inflicted fireball sickness but at silly-o-clock in the morning we were checking out.

“Did you enjoy your stay..?”

We made it back to the house and Haleigh rested up for a few hours before breakfast. By this point I was fairly awake already so as the good husband that I am, I let Haleigh have the bed to herself to rest up and I took the early start as an opportunity to watch some English football back at the house – I guess we all have our sicknesses, don’t we? This was mine!

Fortunately a few hours later, Haleigh was feeling much better. We freshened up and made our way to Clarette’s for breakfast with the family. Clarette’s is a staple of Walla Walla – they’re a diner that have been serving locals for more than 60 years and are an all-day favourite but we wanted to bring my family here on their first visit to Walla Walla.

Fortunately this is one of the restaurants you can make a restaurant because this is a popular breakfast spot at the weekend! We’d booked ahead and were soon enjoying a hearty breakfast, plentiful of tea (probably more than Clarette’s are used to serving!) and good company.

It was then time to say goodbye. Myself and Haleigh were heading out of town later today (more on that in the next post!) and the rest of the family would be heading up to Seattle tomorrow. They had one final day to enjoy in Walla Walla and Haleigh’s brother, Ben, kindly played tour guide and showed them the best of the “sights” of Walla Walla.

It had been a lovely few days and particularly lovely to have had the families come together to celebrate with us. I’d met much of Haleigh’s family prior to this trip and Haleigh had met some of mine but they’d yet to meet eachother so it was nice to see everyone get along. More of Haleigh’s family has since visited England and I’m sure it won’t be too far in the future before mine return to the West coast to explore more than they saw in their limited time on this trip.

Sadly, that was that for the wedding fun. Before the day was over, myself and Haleigh would be heading onwards to Oregon! More on that next time!

Stay tuned!

Jason

P.S – I’m going to include all posts from this series at the bottom of each post so you can go back and read any posts that you’ve missed.

P.P.S – enjoy some more wedding photos too!

Catch up on earlier posts in the series:
Introduction post
Week one post