Andrew Greenhalgh

Squint or you’ll miss the balloon in this pic… taken early this morning.

Traffic passing the house at 7am doesn’t usually make me run outside in my dressing gown. But I heard the burners… saw a load of hot air balloons quietly drifting past… and went for a better look from the garden.

There’s something slightly magical about balloon flight. Almost silent, apart from the occasional roar of the burner. Peacefully going wherever the wind dictates.

I can’t help but recall seeing recent fiery footage of a balloon tragedy. Seems so at odds with this gentle scene in front of me.

Safe landings… and time for breakfast.

In 2021 I bought this modern classic – a 1998 Jaguar XJ8 – as a fair-weather commuting car between Shropshire and Surrey.

The old Jag has just come back from its annual service and MOT, so after five years and 60,000 miles, here are the numbers.

Purchase price: £8,000
Initial repairs & preventative maintenance: £6,000
Servicing, repairs (wheel bearings.. twice, A/C condenser, power steering hose, radiator repair, right hand catalyst) and MOTs: ~£3,500
Insurance: ~£1,500
Road tax: ~£1,600
Six tyres: ~£1,500
Petrol: ~£14,650
Sundries: ~£200

Total: ~£36,950

That’s averages about £7,400 each year.. or 61p per mile.

Wise motoring… or ruinous folly?

You decide.. (but I’m keeping it.)

If this pic of Highland Cattle had been taken in Scotland it wouldn’t have been worthy of note. Highland Cattle… in the Highlands. Normal. 

But this small herd is at home within a few hundred meters of Much Wenlock town centre. In Shropshire.

Something majestic… somewhere unexpected. Always turns my head.

Driving north from the office today and struck proper rain around Birmingham.

‘Englishman drives through rain’ isn’t normally a news item. But after the dry spell we’ve had… it felt worth recording.

Annual service and MOT for the old Jag tomorrow. Let’s see how she gets on.

The front window of this french bakery was very pretty. Yet it was this scene around the side that made me stop.

A Brittany seaside resort in the morning is full of baguettes. Every other person seems to be walking home with them under their arm looking pleased. Bread for the day acquired. Mission accomplished.

But you don’t often see the baker at work. Quickly laying out the rolls of dough, giving a quick brush of water then filling another tray ready for the oven. Customers are queuing… no time to waste.

The sight and smell of a fresh baguette is usually enough to make me think of buying. Show me the baker at work and I’m not only sold… but also considering a career change. 

I sometimes daydream about owning a little gelateria in Florence. It’s a happiness business… and the ever-present tourists keep the tills ringing.

If I did, it would be somewhere like this. La Sorbettiera in Piazza Tasso. It’s away from the tourist hotspots and you’re more likely to queue with locals buying tubs for a dinner party than with visitors. That’s usually a good sign.

Ten years ago my niece fell in love with the place. There’s a children’s playground in the piazza, so she could work up an appetite on the swings first. On one visit she made my cousin Joe queue up again with her, just so she could tell the owner he made the best ice cream in Italy. 

I think about that every time I go back. Sometimes I send her a pic like this one, so she knows it’s still going strong.

I remember first using Le Shuttle Eurotunnel in July ’94, only a couple of months after it opened. Two Uni friends and I loaded our bikes into my Vauxhall Astra Estate and drove over to watch a couple of Tour de France stages.

We pulled on our Uni of Humberside CC jerseys, rode the team time trial route before the professionals arrived and somehow ended up being cheered – maybe it was jeered – on the main climb. I even signed an autograph or two at the finish… having been very badly mistaken for one of the riders.

Thirty-two years later, it was cars rather than bikes. I found myself following this orange McLaren GT onto the train. Its owner got out to clean the windscreen. I got out to stretch my legs. We struck up a conversation and spent half an hour putting the world to rights. 

A mum asked if her young lad could have his pic taken beside the McLaren… and the owner went one better by inviting him to sit in it. Nice chap. Lovely motor.

You can’t do that on a ferry. They don’t let you linger on the car deck.

My two favourite modes of transport are the car and bicycle.

The Jaguar takes me from point to point. Shropshire home. Surrey office. Surrey hotel. Surrey office. Shropshire home. 

The bike takes me out and back. It starts and finishes in this hotel car park, with an hour on Surrey roads in between. An hour when my mind can drift while my body works.

The Jaguar brings the bicycle to Surrey. The bicycle helps me make the most of being here.

Over the past fortnight I’ve passed many harvested fields, straw bales and wrapped haylage. But this, in a Hampshire field near Basingstoke, made me stop.

The gentle, rolling landscape made the towering, temporary construction of baled straw all the more striking. It looked, to me, like a fortified wall around a medieval city. 

I imagined legendary landscape painter John Constable seeing this after completing ‘The Haywain’ and musing, ‘Yes, I should do a straw one now… and skip the water.’

Mind you, they didn’t have the machinery back then to make giant straw stacks like this. And we don’t need landscape painters to capture them… we’ve all got iPhones now. 

Soon it’ll disappear into a barn. I’m glad I saw it before it does.

My old Range Rover has been enjoying a Hampshire holiday this week. 

Not by choice. My usual Surrey haunts were either booked solid or applying Farnborough Air Show rates. So I headed west. 

Bartons Mill Pub & Dining (& rooms) proved a great find. A leafy riverside location to the east of Basingstoke. Comfy room… a quality burger… and some beautiful cycling countryside to rival Shropshire.. (almost.)

I always overnight either north or east of the Guildford office.. as ‘it’s closer to home’. Which is bizarre as I never travel home from the hotel.

Time to stay south or west instead.