I love flying, I love aeroplanes, I love the feeling as you speed towards the end of the runway and whoosh you're off, your head is pinned back in your seat as you temporarily feel a tiny bit of the G-force and the next time you look out of the window you are in the sky and on your way to your very next adventure.

I've been lucky to travel quite a lot in the last few years, my adventures to France, Spain, Italy, Gran Canaria and Amsterdam have all been written about on this very blog, at the moment Abigail and I are in the planning stages of this year's summer holidays, I wanted to cruise, she wanted to go to one place for a week so we've settled on Amsterdam, there's just so much to see and do and I haven't stopped evangelising about how much I love it since we were there last May, this time I am resolute, our first museum has to be the Kattenkabinet which as you can probably work out from the title is a museum chronicling the history of cats in art and culture, they even have their own cats.

Looby and her daddy are going to Tenerife in the summer holidays, they fell in love with the Canary Islands back in 2013 when we all spent 2 weeks in Puerto Rico, Gran Canaria, it was one of those moments where the whole holiday felt like a swan song to our relationship and it was, in the end, the last holiday we had together but I still have the best memories of our brilliant family adventure, and of course seeing dolphins in the wild and a tropical whale on the horizon, a truly lifetime experience watching the happy dolphins leaping out of the water and alongside the boat, I will never forget that.

Last year, one of the main highlights of summer was my trip to Barcelona with Harriet, the first time I'd ever been on holiday with a best friend and I can't wait to do something similar again this year to Italy or France, who knows, I know though that there's just something magical about being on holiday with your very best friend, it's a shared experience with absolutely no pressure at all, we simply did the things we wanted to do from the ridiculous to the sublime, the Magic Fountains of Montjuic, the Jamón Experience and Tibidabo where my most favourite sunset ever happened, a magical time and a glorious expedition.

Let's not all forget my first solo cruising experience at the end of 2015 where I started to find myself again, I will always remember sitting at the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the tears rolling down my cheeks as I realised just what I'd done, I'd travelled through 4 countries on my own, from agoraphobic to world traveller, 4 flights in 5 days is not for the feint of heart but that brings me to my next point, each journey I have ever made has begun on an aeroplane, and it's been made more comfortable, pleasurable and relaxing by the wonderful work that the flight attendants do, it can't be the easiest job, I mean I can miss my mouth with a cup of coffee, I can't imagine having to pour 2 hundred cups whilst being thousands of miles up in the air and not spilling it over everyone!  My friends at Opodo have shared a nifty infographic about the History of Flight Attendants, it's really very interesting so do go and take a look and then appreciate just what an amazing job they do, it's only because of them that we arrive at our destination ready to take on the world and have the most amazing adventures.

I hope I get to share many many more of mine in this coming year of travel for whilst it's dark and wintery at the moment, just around the corner are lighter, brighter days and summer adventures all over the globe.

Italy and Amsterdam from above

I'm sitting here on my sofa, it's 8am and it's the 1st of December, the rain is throwing itself at the ground in an angry tantrum and I'm looking at a smooth silky beagle sitting in front of a sparkly festive 7 foot Christmas tree!

How did this happen dear reader, how can it be, for example, that on Saturday I was wearing a summer dress and flip flops in Palma de Mallorca and now I'm back in freezing cold wintry Newcastle thinking I really must start the Christmas shopping.

I have to say that I had the best adventures in Europe whilst on assignment for Cruise International magazine but if you want to know the low down on my adventures in 4 countries in 4 days you'll have to queue up to buy the magazine on 20/2/16 as I can't talk about it until then, I promise though that it will be worth the wait.

What I can do though is share something I shot from the aeroplane on my way to meet the Norwegian Epic in Rome.  I had great seats on my KLM flights on the way there, not so much on the way back, I couldn't even see out of the windows but oh my, I managed to book 2 comfort seats on my journeys from Newcastle to Schipol and then Schipol to Rome and you know I love to view places from above, well you just can't get much higher up than an aeroplane, the world looks so beautiful and peaceful.  When we took off from Schipol the weather wasn't great but as we flew towards the verdant coloured canvases of  Italy below it was like the summer had returned,  if only for a brief respite.

I love that it's really obvious which photos are beautiful Italy in the sunshine and cold, stormy Holland in the rain, it sort of makes me want to up sticks and leave but to be honest I found that the people of Italy are so ambivalent towards tourists I'm not sure I'd want to reside there.  The tour guide at the leaning tower of Pisa told us he'd had enough, we should go now and then went and hid in a cupboard, I kid you not, you'd never get away with that kind of behaviour if you were a tour guide at a British attraction!

November was a crazy month on the whole, lots of bad weather got in the way of outdoor photo shoots and I feel that I've been forever trying to play catch up and of course it now means that January is already filling fast for portrait sessions.  I mostly get excited when I see I have an indoor session coming up and as we veer towards Christmas I think indoor photos in front of Christmas trees always have the most magical qualities.

Now here we are on the very first day of December and it promises to be a brilliant month both professionally and personally, I have a deadline for my cruise article of 20/12 but I need to get on to that in the next week really so I can clearly remember every detail and I can't wait to tell you all about it but for now it's back to the rainy cold reality of December, the promise of Christmas lies teasingly peeking around the corner inviting us in to the most wonderful time of the year.