Mike Gerrard
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THE UK AND IRELAND


Online
I'm the Feature Writer for UK and Ireland Travel at Suite101, which gets over 15 million visitors a month. I write at least one piece a week on aspects of travel in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Some sample pieces include:
Book Review: The Best of English Food and Cooking
Book Review: Michelin Guide to Britain and Ireland 2009
The Best Drives in Britain and Ireland
The Top Ten Cardiff Attractions
Find Hotels near Manchester Airport

Guidebooks
Yorkshire_Dales.jpgThe first guidebook I wrote was The Yorkshire Dales in a Week, in a series published jointly by Hodder Headline and the Daily Telegraph. Later I wrote the Yorkshire Dales title in the AA's Leisure Guides series (left), and co-wrote the guide to the Lake District too.

My wife Donna Dailey and I co-wrote the Insight Pocket Guide to Dublin (and she is also the sole author of the Thomas Cook Drive Around Ireland and Drive Around Scotland guides). Donna and I also wrote and photographed the Edinburgh and Cardiff chapters for the Official Travel Guide to the Rugby World Cup 2007 (as well as most of the France section too). I'm also contributing to a new coffee-table book on Britain and Ireland from Dorling Kindersley.

Newspapers and Magazines

Some of my UK and Ireland travel pieces include;
On the Watercress Trail in Winchester (for The Times)
'Ere's yer salory and watercreases.
That, according to Peter Ackroyd's London, is what the street sellers of the capital used to cry when watercress was the medieval version of fast food, sold in bunches for people to nibble as they walked along. What spinach was to Popeye, watercress was to soldiers in ancient Greece where the general Xenophon used to feed it to his soldiers as a tonic. The herbalist Culpepper reckoned it was good for cleansing the blood, and Liz Hurley says she has six bowls of watercress soup a day to help keep her looks. Quite impressive, for something we tend to take for granted as little more than a bit on the side. The watercress, I mean, not Liz Hurley.

Custard's Last Stand: The Great British Pudding Club (for The Times)
There were giant strawberries in the bathroom, and a recipe for summer pudding on the door. A sign on the wardrobe said ‘Pick Your Own’ and there were birds and bees all over the walls. We were in the Summer Pudding Room, one of several themed rooms at the Three Ways House Hotel, home of the Pudding Club. We loved our room, though I was curious about the décor in the Spotted Dick Room.

Searching for Andy Goldsworthy's Sheepfolds (for The Guardian)

'You dragged me up here for this?' My girlfriend is not impressed. The rain and hail didn't help. 'It's just a rock in a field. This is art? This isn't art. This is a rock in a field.'
'Well,' I say, trying to look on the bright side. 'At least the rain's easing off.'
We're trudging along a green lane near Casterton in Cumbria, right on the Lancashire border, but it's the time of year and the kind of weather when green lanes are brown with mud, apart from the bits which are several inches deep in water. Ahead of us are a few confused sheep, who seem to have escaped from the field, or perhaps they don't like modern art either.

 

 



 
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Volunteer English teacher in Sudan and China 1987-91....
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