Greece without the Crowds - Sifnos

For our June holiday this year we decided to travel to Greece, somewhere we travelled quite soon after we arrived in the UK and we've always wanted to go back to.

Last time we visited in September, and chose the islands of Santorini and Paros in the Cyclades. It was harder to choose this time, we were tossing up between the Sporades, which are lesser known islands quite close to mainland Greece, and the Cyclades which have the classic beautiful Greek look with the white houses and blue roofs.

We originally decided on the Sporades islands of Skopelos and Alonnisos, so we booked our flights from London to Thessaloniki, which is the closest airport on the mainland. You can also fly to Skiathos, which is the biggest of the Sporades, but unless you're doing a package holiday we found that this was much more expensive.

Having booked our flights, we then changed our mind and decided to visit the Cyclades, due to the high percentage of wasps that visit the Sporades between June to October! The thought of battling wasps whilst trying to lie on the beach was not appealing, so we changed our plans about three weeks before we were due to leave.

Instead we booked cheap flights with Ryanair from Thessaloniki to Athens, and caught a ferry from Pireaus port in Athens to Sifnos, a beautiful island free of the hordes of tourists that frequent the larger Cyclades islands of Santorini and Mykonos.

Despite having to fly to Athens and then ferry to Sifnos, we actually ended up having extra time than if we'd chosen the Sporades, so it all worked out in the end!

Provence - L'Isle Sur La Sorgue, Fontaine De Vaucluse & Gordes

Every Sunday, the beautiful town of L'Isle Sur La Sorgue holds the largest market in the Luberon area. Locals and tourists come from miles around to explore the market which winds through the streets of L'Isle Sur La Sorgue and alongside the Sorgue River.

The town is known as the Venice of Provence with the river flowing alongside the town, with lots of tiny bridges leading from the main road to the town itself. The market has everything you could imagine, but is most famous for its antiques, with one of the largest antique dealerships in France.

We were mainly there for the food and to grab myself another basket, a natural coloured one this time to go with the blue basket I purchased at the markets in the Perigord.

Provence - Lourmarin, Bonnieux, Menerbes & Oppede les Vieux

Today was spent visiting some of the prettiest towns in the Luberon, four towns all super close together. Menerbes especially is on the tourist trail after being the setting for Peter Mayle's book A Year In Provence. Peter moved from England to the area in the late 80's, and the novel is all about his first year there. I read it a few years ago when I found a copy in a Used Book store in Kensington, and I've wanted to visit ever since.

We started our day in Lourmarin, the furthest town from our B&B and where Peter Mayle lives currently. The road to get there is long and windy, with many twists and turns taking you through the Luberon mountains. We got there relatively early, knowing that it can get busy later in the day.

The town was quiet when we arrived, with most people lingering in one of the many cafes in the town square over their morning coffees.

Blood-Swept Lands and Seas of Red - The Poppy De-Installation

This morning Bradley and I joined a team of volunteers to help de-install a small part of the 888,246 ceramic poppies planted for the Blood-Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London. The installation has been slowly growing since the Summer due to various volunteers helping to plant the poppies until the final poppy was placed on Remembered Day on the 11th November. Every poppy planted represents a British fatality during the First World War.

We applied to be volunteers through the Tower of London website at the end of October, but were originally told we had missed out due to the volume of people who had applied. A week later we were excited to receive an email saying that due to several cancellations, we would be able to volunteer after all!

We arrived at the Tower of London just before 9.00 a.m. dressed in our best outdoor clothes - warm jackets, woollen jumpers and waterproof boots. The Poppy Team sent us an email last night saying that due to the rainfall over the last week, the moat around the tower was starting to resemble Glastonbury with the sheer amount of mud, and pools of water everywhere.

The forecast was for clear skies, but of course as soon as we arrived the heavens opened and it rained for the first hour we were there. We were sorted into groups upon arrival, and led into the moat to begin removing poppies. We were given gardening gloves to wear, which were soon soaking wet and absolutely freezing, making it almost impossible to use our hands to do anything useful.

The first part of removing the poppies involved yanking them out of the ground, and sliding off the washers holding the flower in place. The washers, posts and flowers then went into several different buckets and wheelbarrows ready to be sorted by the other teams. Halfway through we swapped duties, though by far the best duty was the flower removal! Removing the top washers from each post was much harder than it appeared, and trying to use zip-ties to tie the posts together was almost impossible with my too big gloves on.

I don't look too muddy here, but it got much worse as the morning went on!

All the volunteers were really positive and excited to be there, it's not everyday you're able to go right down into the Tower of London and there were lots of opportunities for photos.

There are three shifts each day, with each shift lasting between 2-3 hours. after about 2 1/2 hours we were told we were all done for the day and we could stop what we were doing for the next shift to take it up. Our shift managed to remove 8,000 poppies, so it was a great achievement. The time went super quickly as well, especially the poppy removal in the beginning.

We took a lot of photos of ourselves on the way out, a bit hard since we were completely covered in mud. Luckily there are bathrooms right next to the Tower, so we popped in and washed as much off as we could before heading to GBK Burgers for lunch. We must have been successful since we didn't get too many weird looks!

So despite the rain and cold, we had a great time. It was awesome to be a part of such an amazing installation, especially at the Tower of London, one of our favourite places in London.

I did learn two things though - the first is that I am not at all cut out for manual labour. I am so sore and I haven't been able to get the dirt out from under my fingernails despite repeated hand-washings today. The second is that I'm glad we were the first group, everyone after us had to wear the same gloves as we had on, I can't imagine how horrible it must feel to put on sopping wet and cold gloves at 3.00 p.m. in the afternoon!

Provence - Roussillon, Goult & The Colorado of Provence

At the end of May we took a trip to Provence. We planned the trip for Spring to avoid the hordes of tourists that descend on Provence in Summer, usually from mid June to mid September to see the famous Provencal Lavender. 

Unfortunately traveling so early meant we'd miss the Lavender completely, since the Lavender Season is from June to August, but we were hoping to see some red poppies which luckily for us are in Season in Spring!

We flew into Marseille airport where we'd also arranged to pick up a hire car. You can see Provence without hiring a car, either by bike, train or by day tours with a guide, but if you want to see the smaller towns and have your own itinerary then a car is the best option.

We were staying at Le Verger B&B, about a 15 minute drive from the beautiful town of Gordes. We wanted the stay in the countryside, but also wanted to be close enough to a town so we could go out for dinner without worrying about a long drive back afterwards.

The location was excellent, we were never more than a half an hour drive from any of the nearby villages, and it was about an hour and a half from Marseille airport. We took slightly longer though since we got completely lost and came across the B&B almost by accident. We actually arrived at the complete wrong entrance, and the owners came to let us in the back gate where we then drove down a long and bumpy driveway. Very embarrassing but they were very gracious about it!

The beautiful town of Saint Emilion

Saint Emilion is definitely one of my favourite places I have ever been. It is also one of the most beautiful.

Saint Emilion is easily done as a day trip from Bordeaux, by either car or train, but we decided to stay one night before heading back to London. It is one of the most popular towns in the area, and can get quite busy with busloads of tourists during the daytime. The best time to visit is in the morning or the evening when the crowds are gone and you can stroll the streets in peace.

We didn't stay in Saint Emilion itself, as a lot of the B&B's and Hotels are quite expensive, so instead we stayed a 20 minute drive away at the Beau Sejour B&B, in a tiny room with sloping floors and a lovely view out over the garden.

The Prehistoric Sites of the Perigord and Aquitane - Lascaux II and La Roque St Christophe

The area around the Aquitaine and the Perigord has a huge amount of prehistoric sites that are open to the public to visit. Before our trip, I had no idea about a lot of this side of France's history, so we spent a full day exploring caves with some amazing prehistoric paintings and a large Troglodyte fort.

Our first stop was Montignac, a small town north of the Perigord in the Aquitaine region of France. The town itself is pretty and deserves a visit, but most people just stop to pick up tickets on their way to Lascaux II, a replica of the famous Lascaux cave.

The original Lascaux cave was discovered in the 1940's by Marcel Ravidat who was only 18 and who literally stumbled across it. The cave had some of the most well preserved Palaeolithic cave paintings ever discovered, and is most amazing due to the details of the animals, many of which seem to be in motion.

The cave was closed to the public in the late 1930's to preserve the art, but an exact replica of the cave was opened in 1983 so visitors could still get a glimpse of the amazing artwork.

The beautiful towns of the Black Perigord - Beynac, Domme & Saint Cyprien

We realised in the middle of planning our holidays for 2014 at the start of this year, that whilst we have spent the last four years exploring various parts of Europe, we had completely neglected France.

We've been to Paris twice, which we hated the first time, but loved the second, and did a quick hop over the border from Germany to Strasbourg, but other than that it had just completely dropped off our radar.

We decided to rectify that with two trips to France for each of the May Bank Holidays. The first would be to the Black Perigord region and the towns along the Dordogne, and the second would be further South to Provence.

So at the start of May we flew into Bordeaux, hired a car and drove a couple of hours East to the Perigord. Bergerac airport would have been closer for the region, but flights are a bit more sparse to Bergerac from the UK as they are to Bordeaux.

We arrived in the late afternoon and hoped to arrive in the tiny town of Vitrac before dark. This would have worked out wonderfully had we not driven in circles around Bordeaux for over an hour wondering why all their bridges looked the same... the answer is they don't, it was the same bridge we went over about three times.

When we finally managed by a fluke to get the right road out of Bordeaux, it was a beautiful drive alongside hundreds of vineyards and tiny towns. Having lost so much time, we stopped at the McDonalds just outside Bergerac for dinner to take a break before continuing to Vitrac.

We stayed at the beautiful L'Ombriere Bed and Breakfast just outside Vitrac in the even tinier town of Montfort. We stayed in the top room which had a great view out over the back garden.