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      An alternative guide to Leeds: a city with an independent spirit

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 07:00

    A book club in a disused petrol station, an electronic music hub in an old bus garage … Yorkshire’s largest city is a hotbed of grassroots creativity

    ‘Leeds has an independent, thriving arts scene,” says Emma Beverley, the director of programmes at last year’s cultural showcase, Leeds 2023. “A lot of that is grounded in an artist-led movement that is pretty pioneering.”

    In 2017, Leeds had put in a bid to become European capital of culture, with £1m already invested, which hit the buffers when Brexit automatically ruled any British cities out of contention. In typically stubborn Yorkshire fashion, the city pressed ahead with its own year-long celebration of culture.

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      Connecting with my south-Asian roots on a traditional Indian yoga retreat in the UK

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 20 March - 07:00

    On a weekend break in rural Lincolnshire, the ‘smiling yogi’ takes this ancient practice back to its origins, with an emphasis on mantras and mindfulness

    Often when I’ve turned up at various yoga studios in London, the groups I’ve encountered have been overwhelmingly white, svelte and middle class. Perhaps I’ve not found the right class, but as a south Asian woman, it always felt like I was in somebody else’s space.

    Yoga originated in ancient India, and I wanted to connect with my Indian roots, so I started looking for an authentic Indian yoga teacher in the UK. I thought it would be a lot easier than it was. In a 2020 report about UK yoga, 91% of practitioners who responded to the survey were white, and south Asian instructors regularly speak out about the lack of diversity in the industry.

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      In the company of wolves and kings: Suffolk’s new medieval cycle trail

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 19 March - 07:00

    The Wolf Way – a magnificent, not too hilly, cycling route – takes in the county’s myths, market towns and Gainsborough landscapes

    It was an inauspicious start. Having cycled no more than a few metres, from the steps of the Angel hotel into the grounds of St Edmundsbury Cathedral, I fell off my bike.

    I blamed the wolf: in dismounting to take its photo, I had kicked my own pannier and sent myself sprawling. The good passersby of Bury St Edmunds came to my (embarrassed) aid. Saint Edmund himself, sculpted in bronze, standing beside the wolf statue, looked the other way.

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      Hot ticket: 10 of the best pop-up saunas in the UK

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 10 March - 11:00

    There’s never been a better time to embrace your inner Scandi with a cold plunge and a steam clean

    Open-water swimmers will never want to leave Pool Bridge Farm, where there are three mirror-like lakes to paddle in as well as two wood-clad saunas, once old shepherd’s huts now lovingly restored, waiting on their banks. Winter weather needn’t stop the splashy fun, either: swim under the farm’s strings of festoon lights on dark early mornings and frosty winter nights. Bring your tent in warmer weather – there’s a six-acre campsite lined with ancient oak trees on site, great for gazing up at this corner of Yorkshire’s dark skies from your sleeping bag.
    Sauna and swim sessions £6. Camping from £35 ( poolbridge.co.uk )

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      Riding the Daffodil Line around England’s ‘golden triangle’

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 7 March - 07:00 · 1 minute

    The Herefordshire-Gloucestershire border is famous for its spring flower displays, and a new community-run bus service is the perfect way to explore

    When Clare Stone’s local bus service was abruptly axed in 2022, she “got quite cross” and co-founded protest group Buses4Us . In the early 20th century, daytrippers used to come by train to see the displays of wild daffodils that carpet the forests and meadows of the so-called “golden triangle” on the Gloucestershire–Herefordshire border. The railway (now long gone) became known as the Daffodil Line. Clare’s group channelled the spirit of the early Victorian investors who had raised the funds to build the railway: “They wanted the railway so they decided to get on and do it themselves,” she tells me. Buses4Us raised money from councils, businesses and individuals and in April 2023 launched a bus called the Daffodil Line (AKA bus 232 or simply “the Daff”).

    The original railway also transported harvested wild daffodils to cities such as Birmingham. Now visitors can use the bus to see the flowers still growing along its rural route, which winds between the Herefordshire towns of Ledbury and Ross-on-Wye. Each spring, local villages organise walks, teas and celebratory daffodil weekends.

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      12 of the best UK breaks to celebrate spring

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 3 March - 11:00


    From blossom trails to bluebell woods, and foraging to farm stays, we’ve picked some of the finest seasonal getaways

    This is cider country, and the Brockhampton Estate, near the Worcestershire border, is the largest orchard under the National Trust’s care, with over 145 acres of damson, pear, quince, cherry and apple trees, which blossom in great frothy clouds from late March through April.

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      New life buzzes from all directions: why Pembrokeshire in spring is a nature-lover’s dream

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Saturday, 2 March - 07:00

    South-west Wales is a naturalist’s playground, and early spring is the perfect time to explore its coastal paths, wild flowers and treasured birdlife

    Edward Thomas’s In Pursuit of Spring, published more than a century ago, is a classic in the nature lover’s library, a lyrical account of the poet’s journey from London to Somerset seeking signs of the coming season. Setting out from a rainy Wandsworth in March 1913, shaking loose a long winter, Thomas yearned for apple blossom and cuckoo flowers, “the perfume of sunny earth”, and the nightingale’s song. “Would the bees be heard instead of the wind?” he questioned anxiously.

    This was a relatable pursuit – come March we are all leaning towards the sun – yet rarely might we think of spring as a “place”. For Thomas, it was the rural south-west; for me, the returning spring is best embodied by Pembrokeshire.

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      The British seaside is full of charm – even when you’re dodging dog poo and drizzle | Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 28 February - 11:00

    Is there anything better than a wintry coastline, in all its grey glory, paired with excellent fish and chips?

    Last week, I ventured to Southend-on-Sea with my partner. Rather than spending a rare day off together sitting in front of Netflix, we decided it would be much more enjoyable to see a bit of the British coastline, in all of its grey, tacky glory. It will be fun, we told each other. It will be nice to see the sea.

    And yet, setting out from London in the car, against one of those endless grey skies that forecast a cool, penetrating drizzle, I had a slight feeling of dread. The last time I had visited Southend was as a child; I remember being blown away by the scale of the rollicking rollercoasters, too scared to go on them but enamoured of the environment: the sticky twirls of ice-cream, the noise, the fun. Would returning in the depths of winter kill a dear memory? Earlier this month, another British seaside spot, Falmouth, was crowned the UK’s most depressing place to live , while Southend was shortlisted.

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      Wicked Littlehampton: surf, sand, cafes and art in West Sussex

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 27 February - 07:00

    Olivia Coleman’s latest film – Wicked Little Letters – has put the spotlight on an English seaside town that is ‘set for a summer boom’

    It’s not often that Littlehampton, a small seaside town on the Sussex coast, makes the news. In the five decades since I was born there, I can count the times on the fingers of one hand: Nik Kershaw making the video for The Riddle in 1984 (oh, the teenage excitement); Anita Roddick, the town’s favourite daughter, being made a Dame in 2003; and the opening of the Thomas Heatherwick-designed East Beach cafe in 2007 (known to my family as the Rusty Tin).

    This time, it’s for a poison pen letter scandal that rocked the town in the 1920s, now the basis of a major new film, Wicked Little Letters , released last Friday. Set on the streets of Littlehampton (although filmed in nearby Worthing and Arundel), the movie pits prim Olivia Colman against Jesse Buckley’s feisty Irishness in a battle to prove who is writing the letters.

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