Phoebe Taplin

London

Writer at Freelance

freelance writer - currently mostly walking and car-free UK travel

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Articles

Europe’s seven best train journeys this summer, from Yorkshire to Slovenia

2 weeks ago | msn.com | Phoebe Taplin

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
Europe’s seven best train journeys this summer, from Yorkshire to Slovenia

2 weeks ago | msn.com | Phoebe Taplin

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
Europe's seven best train journeys this summer, from Yorkshire to Slovenia

2 weeks ago | inews.co.uk | Phoebe Taplin

Trains are a slow, stress-free way to enjoy a holiday. Enjoy the scenery while you sip a coffee or a beer; read a book as you travel to a festival, or visit several destinations instead of just one, as you take your time to appreciate the shift between them. Read NextRead MoreRail companies across Europe have new routes, trains and special offers to entice passengers onto the tracks this summer.
Tennyson, Virginia Woolf and Jimi Hendrix - all on a car-free trip to the Isle of Wight

Mar 20, 2025 | theguardian.com | Phoebe Taplin

The green tidal mudflats are noisy with gulls and lapwings as the ferry sails towards Yarmouth. Far out on sparkling water, a white sail stands out against misty downs. The Victorian poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson regularly tramped over those chalky hills, declaring “the air is worth ‘sixpence a pint’”. There is no need to drive for a holiday on the Isle of Wight. Regular ferries connect with mainland trains and the island has a good network of buses.
my personal pilgrimage on the quiet paths of Thomas Hardy’s Dorset

Feb 26, 2025 | msn.com | Phoebe Taplin

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
my personal pilgrimage on the quiet paths of Thomas Hardy’s Dorset

Feb 26, 2025 | msn.com | Phoebe Taplin

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Far from the madding crowd: my personal pilgrimage on the quiet paths of Thomas Hardy’s Dorset

Feb 26, 2025 | theguardian.com | Phoebe Taplin

The banks by the lane are white with snowdrops and a mistle thrush sings in the bare orchard. The writer Thomas Hardy grew up in the thatched cottage at the end of this track. His earliest poem, Domicilium, describes the house as it was in 1800 when his great-grandfather built it. The gardens were wilderness and the lane “a narrow path shut in by ferns”. This cottage, where Hardy wrote Far from the Madding Crowd, is the starting point for a 220-mile hike, the Hardy Way.
Christmas on tap: six of the best UK pubs for the festive season

Dec 21, 2024 | theguardian.com | Phoebe Taplin

The Churchill Arms, LondonIt’s hard to imagine a list of Christmassy pubs without the maximalist Churchill in Kensington. Its outside is usually covered in flowers, while inside, where Thai food and pints of London Pride are served, the ceiling and walls are hung with a strange collection of artefacts: lanterns, butterflies, 100 assorted chamber pots, second world war memorabilia and pictures of Winston Churchill, whose grandparents were regulars.
Have a stately Christmas: 10 historic houses and gardens to get the festive party started

Nov 5, 2024 | theguardian.com | Phoebe Taplin

Waddesdon Manor, BuckinghamshireInside one of Waddesdon Manor’s Rapunzelesque round towers is a room named after the Ballets Russes stage designer Léon Bakst. In 1913, Bakst painted the seven panels here showing scenes from Sleeping Beauty. This year both house and illuminated gardens have Sleeping Beauty-inspired installations. Artists involved include the theatre designer Tom Piper, who helped make the Tower of London’s poppy cascade in 2014.
A car-free trip around Aberdeenshire: I saw natural beauty I thought was out of reach

Oct 29, 2024 | theguardian.com | Phoebe Taplin

Seabirds fly below the train as it crosses the Firth of Forth with late afternoon light sparking the water. A kestrel hovers over hay meadows near Kirkcaldy. The lumpy Lomond Hills are sun-misted and the woods are touched with autumn gold. The final stretch of the seven-hour train journey from London to Aberdeen runs along the rocky Scottish shore past forts and firths. (York-Aberdeen costs from £32.30 one way, London from £68.80, lner.co.uk).