In over 20 travel series, Simon Reeve has hunted with the Bushmen of the Kalahari, been chased by pirates, hounded by the Mafia and detained by the KGB. He’s been to over 120 countries, ranging across deserts, mountains, jungles and oceans. Enough to complete a bucket list (or two) and perhaps plenty to permit thinking he’s a guffawing, swashbuckling, Walter Raleigh type, but when I speak to him, he’s still reeling from his son’s eighth birthday party...

This is the kind of place where dishes are tried by all staff and meticulously learned to be paired with a litany of new and frequently fascinating wines. The sommelier in charge of our wine flight had a refreshing irreverence to him and his choices. It felt like the goal was to explore the world of wine and, by extension, his passion for it...

For 30,000 years humans have been making objects from clay and hardening them in fire – from functional vessels to ritual figurines and decorative art. And you can see 21st-century design combined with these age-old techniques during Oxfordshire Artweeks...

Step off the High Street of Watlington this May during Oxfordshire Artweeks and you’ll find yourselves in India, surrounded by wall art by textile artist Harriet Riddell (Artweeks venue 283) who has just returned from a trip to the northern state of Rajasthan where she stitched the glories of the people and the places they inhabit in free-motion embroidery. Each piece shows a place with its human stories woven in...

Over the past few months The Significant Other and I have started walking. Please don’t take from this that previously we crawled or bottom-shuffled our way around town and county: rather, we have adopted walking as a pastime in order to explore some of the Oxfordshire’s lesser-spotted Nooks and Crannies...