My Life in Travel. First Holiday Memory?
My parent's photos show it as I remember it: always on the beach and always sunny. My sister in a swimsuit with attached pleated skirt and me with a toy Dalek. |
Best Holiday?
I love snow. A rented a log cabin in Lapland, soft dusty snow, skis and snowmobiles and the Northern Lights flickering across the sky. Best research trip had me crossing Arizona in an open topped Mustang following a rodeo circuit. Hugely fun but I've never felt so detached from a culture. |
Favourite Place in the British Isles?
This is a winter/summer thing. The Cuckmere Valley in summer. My family have lived in and around this beautiful green part of Sussex for generations and I now spend summers working from a tiny studio here, painting local cattle. And, in winter, Brighton seafront. I use the Two Kats and a Cow Gallery (shared with artists Katty McMurray and Kathryn Matthews) as a studio. It's a converted fisherman's arch on the beach and the seafront is at its romantic best out of season. 
Photo by Tizzie Knowles, 2007
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What have you learnt from your travels?
Cows are not all the same. They vary from field to field and country to country. |
Ideal travelling companion?
Either or both of my children (Charlie 16 and Harry 12). |
Greatest travelling luxury?
Not painting. It's all I do, so not doing it makes everything else seem like a guilty pleasure. |
Beach bum, culture vulture or adrenalin junkie?
I cannot relax away from home. Ever. I hit the floor running. Every moment is filled with pre-planned ‘must-do’s’. This makes me a terrible travelling companion and, as a result, Sheila, my wife, won’t travel with me. Ever. The final straw was a trip to the Combat de Rein in Switzerland we drove and walked miles to watch an arena full of cows nudging each other, with cheeses and bells as prizes. |
Holiday reading?
Guide books and maps. I hate to miss anything. |
Where has seduced you?
A family holiday on Lake Sunapee in New Hampshire. This is the embodiment of the almost mythical ‘Small Town America’. Perfect flag waving 1950’s White washed clapper boarded houses line the shore, each with small boats tied to docks. Everyone is wildly friendly. I’d move there, but I’m not American! |
Better to travel or arrive?
Travel is a pain! Being there is everything. I've always travelled economy class but was upgraded recently on a return flight from New York. I now know that luxury eases the pain! |
Worst holiday?
In a moment of madness I went on a solo cycling trip across the Polderland in Holland. The rain flew sideways in gale force winds and, with no trees or buildings to shelter behind, on day five I collapsed exhausted and was taken to hospital by a passing motorist. |
Worst travel experience?
As a birthday treat for Charlie I took him to Paris - he broke his ankle on the steps of the Sacre Coeur and we spent the rest of the day in the truly awful A&E department of the hospital next to the Gard du Nord. |
Worst hotel?
No real disasters, but I'm always vaguely disappointed to never get the room in the photo. |
Best hotel?
The London Ritz. Without a doubt. I booked this as a treat after my first Cork Street Cow Show. Beautiful decadent Rococco kitsch, I loved everything about it. |
Best meal abroad?
A wedding party in Tuscany. Home cooked, seven courses and a garden full of old friends. |
First thing you do when you arrive somewhere new?
Explore. I rarely unpack, at all. Day or night I like to go out and see where I am. |
Favourite walk/swim/ride/drive?
The two mile cycle ride between my studio and the village shop. I do it daily in the summer, to get lunch, and it never fails to cheer me up. |
Dream trip?
I'd love to have a go at yaks in the Himalayas - though I doubt I'd ever be brave enough to make make the trip. |
Favourite city?
Venice is so beautiful it makes my head spin. But, it has to be New York. I feel comfortable in the buzzy, crowded and friendly (yes, really) streets of Manhattan. |
Where next?
Course Landaise (a cow dancing festival) in Marciac, South West France. Essentially this is European Rodeo, the participants do acrobatics around and over cows, and at the end the audience is invited to have a go! I went last year with friends and have promised myself to make it an annual trip. |
| Two Kats and a Cow is open weekends. An exhibition of the latest cow paintings is planned for The Fairfax Gallery, Chelsea. 4-18 October 2007. |
