On the north bank of the Humber estuary, not far from the North Sea coast and deep within East Riding of Yorkshire is Kingston-Upon-Hull, or Hull, a port city and UK City of Culture 2017. The title of City of Culture is held by a city for four years and so, in early January 2020, the final year of its tenure, we headed north to visit East Riding’s only city.
A cold and clear morning in January saw us up early and on our way to Grantham to catch a train. Although not our local station, most direct services to our final destination, Hull, don’t call at Peterborough and so we had driven one stop north to catch our train. For our journey today we were travelling with the home operator of East Riding, Hull Trains.
After being lucky with the weather whilst exploring Dublin over the previous two days, I woke up early on the Monday morning to the sound of heavy rain outside the window. Thankfully before I left the BnB the rain had let up and only a light drizzle accompanied me for my walk back to the nearby stop for the AirLink bus.
Back at the end of February, I was fortunate to spend a weekend in Dublin catching up with friends and exploring in and around the Irish capital. On a previous visit to the Emerald Isle I had done a walking tour and seen some of the capital’s top sights and so on this trip I was hoping to see some more of the city as well as some of the nearby towns.
Towards the end of February, I was lucky enough to become rather familiar with Birmingham airport, flying from it two weekends in a row for international trips. The first of these trips was a short hop across the Irish Sea to the capital of the emerald isle, Dublin, flying with Ireland’s national carrier Aer Lingus.
We’ve been lucky enough to visit Athens on two occasions, first in April 2014 and most recently in May 2017. Both visits were excellent, and we discovered some amazing places as well as finding some hidden gems throughout the city. Personally, if we were to visit again, I would visit in April or September, as by the time of our visit in mid-May the temperature was rising and many of the sights offer limited shade from the scorching sun.
Flights & Times 