We spend much of the school holidays touring with our two pre-teen kids and dog in our VW California campervan around Europe, and over the more than 6 months we’ve spent in the van in the past 3 years, we’ve amassed a load of gadgets, gizmos, additions and curiosities that make our camping more fun. In this post I’ll share a few of our...

As an amateur runner, I was an enthusiastic user of the Stryd running power meter (that’s it above, it clips to your running shoe), but I recently fell out of love with it, and ditched it completely. To be clear, I love the idea of running to power, just I think Stryd doesn’t offer enough to keep me there. Here is my thinking: • As an ...

In this review, I’ll give you my thoughts – as a pretty experienced home cook who’s nonetheless quite new to pressure cooking – about the WMF Perfect Plus, a high-end German-made pressure cooker that I’ve been using for the last few days. I’ve cooked a potful of dried beans, a chicken soup, a lamb curry, and a chicken & rice dish so fa...

I've found a great little Mac app that runs system-wide with any browsers you happen to use, managing your cookies for you, called: Cookie. So as a reminder cookies range from the useful (keeping you logged in), to the unnecessary, to the pernicious (tracking you, basically). Also, we have sites we trust, those we're ambivalent towards...

No, I do not want to sign in with Google. (Or Facebook, or Microsoft, or any other big tech firm offering me this fantastic favour.) Apparently, the way to stop the “Sign in with Google” prompts that many big websites have decided to allow Google to pester their users with (Quora, TripAdvisor etc) is to – wait for it – sign in with Goo...

POST ORIGINAL DATE JAN 23 This weekend I decided I'd finally had enough of the closed ecosystem that is Kindle, and that I wanted to move my 600 books bought on that platform over the past 11 years into something I have more control over. I own my physical books, yet I felt I did not truly own my Kindle books, because I absolutely hate...

Surveillance big-tech is creepily, surreptitiously and super-effectively taking over our phones, computers... and attention. You've probably felt it, and are probably uneasy about it. What to do? Well, at the very least, use something like NextDNS 24/7 and have a VPN (I use NordVPN) for when you need it. But what are the alternatives f...

It's been a carefree, fun, lazy (for me anyway - taking a break from running), and often silly few days, as the picture here of the "boobies" cactus that we all laughed about on a walk around Mojacar typifies. Not an adventure, or activity packed, or "new ground" holiday, but just a simple break. Today we packed up and set off by 1pm h...

The kids looking at the "view of the pyramids" as the locals call it, north from the village of Mojacar (the "pyramids" - small hills - are actually out of sight, although the kids are sat on one). Days like today are what a relaxing Morse family holiday is all about. We simply chilled in the sunshine, reading, watching YouTube, playin...

Can't believe a cat picture has made its way into my journal, but I couldn't resist this one, taken in the old town of Mojacar - no filter. It poured with rain overnight, with thunder and lightning, but obligingly stopped at precisely 8.20am when we emerged, to give us a rapidly improving day with clear skies and warm winds. Gotta love...

We're working a few hours each day as usual when away - "maintenance hours" we're calling it. Today, we had the team meeting at 2.30pm. But just as we were kicking off, sat outside with my iPad as the Zoom client, Skye spotted a tiny little stray kitten that has been hanging around the campsite. She watched it as it approached, she wat...

Getting to know our campsite and our neighbours. It's mainly Brits and Germans, although we have a Belgian couple next to us. All motorhomes, not a tent in site and we are the only campervan. Our kids are the only kids. Our immediate neighbours, a relatively youthful couple in their early 80s called Alan and Paula, have taken a shine t...

Our pitch under the mountains in Camping El Quinto. Back to the simple life. Up and breakfast, and time to move on. We drove through the curious, messy hills of the Almeria coast towards Mojacar, and arrived at Camping El Quinto, just below the town of Mojacar (which is on a hill, of course), at about 1pm. Campsite is small and cheerfu...

Off we go again, half term on the road in the campervan. Plan is to head to Cabo de Gata, the coastal national park in Almería, to chill for a week - just a couple of hours of work a day to keep on top of things, and apart from that, reading, relaxing, walking, running, and hanging out together in the autumn sunshine. We left Gibraltar...

Ronda's famous bridge at dawn, no tourists in sight... So, final run of the whole trip for Faye and me this morning, us both choosing to head into Ronda, which is a truly beautiful city in a stunning location - unlike anywhere else. Breakfast including fresh bread from the campsite out of the way, and it was time to move. Like a well-o...

Maya pleased with putting the ball into the hole on the crazy golf course. Sometime before dawn this morning saw Faye clambering over a rather large locked sliding gate across the road at the front of the campsite, heading off on her 20-mile run into the hills. It's been a bit of a theme of this trip, happening more than once - I under...

View from a bridge - the bridge - first thing this morning. Faye and I both ventured into Ronda today, Faye on her morning run, me on my bike to get a few supplies. We both ended up crossing the iconic bridge right in the centre, and for me it brought back great memories both of cycling into town many years ago with Faye, pre-marriage ...

We implore the kids to be quiet when they go to bed, but this was pretty cute… I spotted them playing together with Maya’s “Slothy” at bedtime in the pop-up roof on my way back from the toilet this evening. So we’re getting closer to home, heading today to our final campsite. I did a repeat of yesterday’s run down the valley and back a...

Dylan and Maya waiting to cheer the Vuelta a España riders to the finish line. Amazingly, the Vuelta a España is in town! The trucks we heard as we tried to go to sleep last night were huge articulated lorries with hospitality, mechanics and support staff on board, and as the day went on, literally hundreds of people arrived in countle...

The walkway along the "main" road out of the village, taken by Faye on her early morning run. The hen party girls were loud as you like till 11pm, then in true Spanish "polite" style, we didn't hear a peep out of them again. That said, as is always the case in Spanish towns of any size (and despite this being mountain country, we are s...

Our new campsite tucked under the hills on the outskirts of the village. I shirked my run this morning, wanted to wake up with everyone else and play with the dog on the big double bed instead. Either that or I was feeling lazy. Anyway, first time all trip I've done that so I won't feel too guilty. We hoovered up what we could find for...

Sunset over the dehesa today - best I could manage on the iPhone! A really hot day again today, probably the hottest of all two months for our final day here - great for us, not so good for the livestream, which took all of our effort to make happen. Variously, the iPhone, router and cameras all told us they were shutting down through ...

The town square of Horcajo de las Montes. Faye headed off on her mammoth 28-mile run at 5am, loaded with water, and returned by 10am reporting it to be easy but very boring running along a single road with literally not a person around - we really are in the middle of nowhere here. Apart from the tedious road running, though, we are lo...

The kids have been enjoying having the play park, table tennis, table football and other games at hand to wander off and do, as well as the swimming pool, which Faye and I have been taking it in turns to jump into with them. Meanwhile, us adults have been working as usual, just the morning session before it gets too hot, before doing a...

The simple things: A quiet plot, a good view... We were just discussing today how it feels like everything we love about the campervan life has come together right here, right how. We are in a gorgeous hilltop location, looking over rolling countryside. The site is small, well run and low key, with just enough to keep the kids happy. W...

Looking down from the old railway viaduct above the village of Hervas, at dawn. I followed in Faye's footsteps and headed up into Hervas village for my run at dawn, picking up the trail she found, which it turned out was an old railway, complete with a ghost station, signalling apparatus, cuttings, and a viaduct - you could still see t...

Playing with the dog in the reservoir. Faye reported some good trail running this morning just up the hill in Hervas, which I’m looking forward to discovering tomorrow. So it was “back to work” today, and it felt good to get things moving again. I’m deliberately growing my beard super long as I know it irks Steve, so that was fun in ou...

We had a little bit too much bickering and arguing from these two rascals today, so here is some proof that they love each other really. Yes, the UK-style site in the field was a great place... but with no shop (including in the nearby village), no pool for the kids, and no data on our phones, it was unfortunately only ever going to be...

The sun rising over the Tormes. I shook off yesterday's restless mood with a trail run along the Tormes river, past all-night fishermen and people tending their allotments in the early morning cool, and onto a place called the "Isla de Soto" - a river island that has been converted into a maze of running and cycling tracks. It was cool...

Sunrise over the Salamanca countryside. Faye woke at 4.50am and headed out on a mammoth 37-mile run this morning, getting back midday-ish just before it got really hot. She spent some of her time running around the streets of Salamanca, randomly, as a "jogging tourist", observing the stragglers still out from the night before as the ci...