Category: Travels

The Harrison Pub advertises itself as “the best pub in Kings Cross and Bloomsbury” and they are not wrong. Officially it’s a community pub (aka “the local”), but it attracts people from afar. There was a lively birthday party going on when we arrived. The basement hosts live events most evenings. It has a capacity…

A long drive on busy English motorways is one thing but today, firstly we got stuck in a very slow moving queue on the M25 only to discover it was due to drivers slowing down to look at a crash on the other carriageway. Then we were going nicely north on the M11 when we…

As we were packing the instruments into the car, this rainbow appeared. We then had a leisurely drive through the Cotswolds to Leamington Spa. A good start. Ray has played the Temperance before so read this for background on the venue. This visit is a double header with Benji Kirkpatrick who is also on tour…

Ray drove down to Eastbourne on Wednesday to play at the Lamb Folk Club, upstairs at The Lamb Inn. The inn was built in the 16th century and has historical features dating back to the 12th. The room was packed for Ray’s show with some sitting on the bar at the back. This was a…

Although Ray continues touring this June, with further shows including two festivals and then another tour in Germany in September, I will not tour with him again until he visits the UK in November 2025. To sign off these tour notes, here is a repeat of a story from the King Winter Tour of Canada…

The last four days have been too busy to write a note so this will cover those four days and is written while I wait at Hamburg airport. The first show was a private house concert in Naumburg. There were some 30 people sat in the dining room where Ray played, in the kitchen and…

As we had a day off, we did some sightseeing. Naumburg has some very impressive medieval architecture but even more impressive, and much simpler, was the circle created nearly 7000 years ago and used for observing the sun and the stars. The picture above is taken from the Sonnenobservatorium Goseck website The site was discovered…

The picture of the castle is taken from their website: www.schlossgoseck.de Ray has played a show in Schloss Goseck most years since 2013. This year he plays there next on Friday 26th September but as we were driving nearby, he arranged for his friend Robert to show us around. It is truly an amazing place.…

Today, the drive south was though gently rolling countryside, starting with country roads usually with a cycle track alongside it, and then the two-lane autobahn. The long drive was well worth it for the gig in Wegendorf Church. The church was built in the thirteenth century and has lovely acoustics. We recorded one video from…