Category: travel
-
Interview with Colonel Fitzwilliam
I have a special guest today, an all-around favourite with so many of us. He’s dashing and charismatic, and everyone loves a man in uniform. Please welcome Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, here to talk about his recent adventures as recounted in the novel A Soldier’s Tale. Col F: Thank you, Riana. It’s a pleasure to be…
-
A Visit I Will Forever Remember Taking: Part 2
This past September, my husband, aka the Marine, and I went to England for a day to see Stonehenge, then we traveled the next day to Romania. I shared of my visit to the lovely England countryside, and the busy Romanian Old Port in the first post. Here I continue my adventure. Our first two…
-
Launch Week for Muslin & Mystery!
The trunks are loaded, the mailbags are sealed (securely this time), and our packet ship has sailed!. Muslin and Mystery launched on Monday! This voyage began with a question: what if some of Jane Austen’s most composed and self-assured characters found themselves crammed together on a small ship, far from home, with nothing to do…
-
Packet Ships, Peril, and Persuasion: Setting Sail in 1813 (+ an Excerpt)
There’s something gloriously impractical about sending a lady to sea in the Regency era. The skirts! The cockroaches! The chamber pots that slid everywhere! Yet by 1813, Britain was bursting with people doing exactly that—soldiers, diplomats, merchants, and, occasionally, their wives—rattling around the globe in those sturdy little packet ships I’ve been describing lately. My…
-
Paths Retraced: Travels and an Anthology
As I write this post, I’m still dusting the final vestiges of jet lag from my shoulders, almost but not quite back into the routine and—yes—time zone of my normal, everyday life. We returned just a week ago from another visit to the United Kingdom. We were there to help my daughter settle into her…
-
Sailing with Style and Salt Pork: A Look at Regency Packet Ships
In a Jane Austen novel, sea travel usually happens offstage. A letter arrives, Tom Bertram returns, Captain Wentworth is promoted to captain—that sort of thing. But if you lived in Austen’s world and needed to get to the Continent (or the West Indies, or the Cape of Good Hope), you would likely have found yourself…
-
The Author Travels: The Origins of a Tale
As I write this, I’m sitting in a lounge at the airport, waiting for my flight. My husband has a conference on the other side of the country, one which happens every year. Last year it was in Montreal. I am probably the only person alive who hates Montreal, but there you have it, and…
-
The Woman Who Left England-and Convention-Far Behind
What if Elizabeth Bennet had never married Mr. Darcy? What if, instead, she packed a few essentials, headed off to the Middle East, donned turbans and pantaloons, read ancient prophecies, and hosted Bedouin chieftains in a mountaintop fortress? Of course our favorite fictional heroine never did that. But Lady Hester Stanhope, a real life contemporary…
-
No Phones, No GPS: How People Navigated England Before Maps Were Standard
One of my favourite 1-star reviews of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice was left on Amazon in July of 2010. It reads as follows: “Just a bunch of people going to each other’s houses.” Now, can you argue with that, really? It’s a very apt description of the main action and plot devices in our…