Category: Travels

The tour ended nearly 3 weeks ago and after a lot of catching up on other things, now is to time to catch up on what happened after the last post (the last blog post that is). The morning after the final show with Oysterband and June Tabor, we were setting off in what we…

As you drive south down the M11 and after the M25 junction, the skyline of the City and Canary Wharf suddenly appears and you know London is not far now. Then it’s the confusion of roads and roadworks and navigating towards the destination. North London was home for Ray for some twenty four years. Back…

You may not believe this but we had a lovely drive north up the M6 then across into the West Riding of Yorkshire and into the market town of Barnoldswick known locally as Barlick. The town dates back to Anglo Saxon times and lies close to the Yorkshire Dales National Park. It is said to…

The logistics of one tour are normally challenging enough. On this visit to the UK, Ray has two interleaving tours – eight dates with Oysterband and June Tabor plus ten solo shows. The solo tour was almost booked up when Oysterband asked him to join them because Adrian, their regular cello player, was going on…

Friday night is the regular night for the St Edith Folk Club in Kent where Ray has played many times. They use a number of different venues and tonight they invited Ray back to play in St Dunstan’s church in the small country market town of Cranbrook, on the edge of the High Weald Area…

It’s always a pleasure to visit the Green Note Cafe. Ray lived in this part of London for many years and has played here almost every year since he went solo. He had many friends in the audience. Since our last visit, Camden had put new parking restrictions in place which actually helped us because…

It’s nearly time to get on the road again. Even though the UK is no longer politically in Europe, we feel Ray’s touring is continuing along Europe’s roads.  For Ray, the ten solo dates are interspersed with eight shows with Oysterband and June Tabor. It makes the tour logistics somewhat interesting. Many thanks to Martin…

On Sunday morning, Ray drove me to Hamburg airport to fly home. He then drove on to Elmshorn for a house concert. Then the next day he had the long drive north to his home in Sweden. As I’ve written before, touring in Germany is relatively easy although there can be some long drives. The…

It was only an hour and a half drive to Brockel. There are many storks living in this area and we spotted two in a field. We also saw a sign “beware of low flying storks” but we didn’t see any flying. As soon as we arrived, we saw that this was going to be…