This is going to be a very busy summer in England with the Diamond Jubilee celebrations and the Summer Olympics, which are just 2 1/2 months away. Can you believe it?

It is difficult for little ol’ me to keep up with all the news and events going on and then share them with you on this blog. I love this blog, but it is very time consuming to write blog posts about everything that is going on.

Social media gives me a platform where I can quickly share with you all the news of the day. Even better, you can leave comments and take part in conversations with other readers. We have some very lively discussions on my Facebook page. I also post fun things like trivia, quotes and contests. I really enjoy my Facebook community. If you aren’t there yet, please consider joining me.

I’m also on Pinterest. Who doesn’t love Pinterest? If you’re not there and want to be, leave me a comment with your email and I’ll see if I can send you and invite. Just promise you’ll follow me.

Lastly, I’ve been on Twitter for almost 4 years now. I used to enjoy it more than I do now (I love interacting on FB) but it’s still a great tool for meeting new people and finding new sites to follow.

I hope you’ll consider joining me at one or all of these social media sites. If you like my blog, please share it with your friends and followers. The more readers this blog has the more likely it is that I will be able to continue offering great giveaways, and indeed better giveaways.

To follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, click on the individual icons below.

I thank you from the bottom of my tea-stained heart!

Melissa x

We’re Hidden Britain, we want Britain to stay green and pleasant so we work with destinations to reveal Britain’s little known treasures and create sustainable trips. We’d like to teach you a few tricks for enjoying British traditions, landscapes and activities, while enjoying local culture.

The basics, 5 simple steps to a hidden experience:

1. Meet a local – Many towns have local volunteer tour guides to reveal hidden histories and experiences in the town and who knows what you’ll hear on the grapevine.

2. Have a Pub Lunch – There’s nothing like settling into a country pub for lunch, it is a fabulous opportunity to try out delicious locally sourced food (and local brews), and you can often hear a few village tales.

The Bridge Inn, Santon Bridge, in lovely Cumbria

3. Take Afternoon tea – Partly habit and partly tradition, we Brits can’t get enough of our tea, which is only improved by combining with a large variety of cakes, biscuits and sandwiches. Most places will have a tea room of sorts, once your there the only issue is deciding what to spoil yourself with.

Home made cake and English breakfast tea

4. Do something eccentric – Only Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, an element of truth as there are hundreds of quirky and quintessentially British events, from bog snorkelling to crafting. Find out what is happening locally and get stuck in.

5. Use local transport – If you want to get an authentic experience hiring a bike or jumping on a bus is an exciting way to get about. If you have somewhere specific to go to, check the timetables, and if not be daring and head into the unknown.

Isle of Sheppey, Kent

These 5 tips could be used for a full day trip or spread across an entire holiday. We’ve got tonnes more tips and itineraries to share with you so watch this space.

Most people associate Liverpool with its famous football team or The Beatles. But did you know that it has a rich and fascinating maritime history too?

Liverpool is now a UNESCO world heritage area – just like the Pyramids, Angkor Wat, or the Taj Mahal. Unfortunately UNESCO can’t do much about the wet Merseyside weather – but the maritime past of the city is fascinating, as is its cultural ambition; no sooner did the shipowners get rich, than they started building art galleries and museums, as well as the impressive mercantile buildings of Pier Head.

Liverpool’s docks are impressive not just in their length – over a mile along the side of the Mersey – but their diversity. There are the Three Graces of Pier Head, expansive, assertive buildings which recall the age of the Titanic. There are the fine Victorian buildings of Albert Docks, squat and severely functional and yet with the great arcades facing the water giving them a feeling of power and presence (they were the first buildings in England ever built without wooden supports in the structure, purely of cast iron, brick and stone). Then there are also the modern buildings of Princes Dock, gleaming and austere. Other parts of the docks are not so well restored – warehouses still sprout buddleia from their cornices, a few windows are still boarded up and big graffiti letters ask: ‘Do you believe in God?’

The towers and chimneys of Birkenhead loom on the other side of the river and the Mersey ferry scoops out a massive curve of wake in the grey waters as it heads into the shore. Look over the side of the quays and at low tide you’ll see nothing but mud – glutinous and deep.
I particularly like the mix of old and new buildings in Liverpool’s dock area.

The quilted sides of the Museum of Liverpool and gleaming black glass of the Mann Island buildings show off the red brick of the Great Western Railway terminal buildings, and the porous stone of the Canning Dock dry docks, huge stepped round-ended tanks where ships would be brought for repair.

Now that the shipping has largely moved elsewhere – though the Mersey ferry remains – the docks have been taken over by museums. There’s the Museum of Liverpool, there’s Tate Liverpool and the Museum of Slavery, and the Maritime Museum. And there are statues everywhere; a statue of Billy Fury that has become a shrine with flowers laid by fans, a monument to the working horses that pulled carts at the docks, war memorials (including a poignant and unusual one to the Chinese sailors who fought for Britain in World War Two), and a lively statue of Captain Johnnie Walker, the famous anti-U-boat captain.

Wander down Wapping and you’ll find the Baltic Fleet pub, an elegant nineteenth century building marooned in the middle of nowhere; the lifeboat and ships’ regalia in the bar show its maritime associations. Not far away is the Scandinavian seamens’ church, a wild mix of red brick romanesque, gothic, and modern, with a sort of stave-church spire and the flags of all the Scandinavian nations hanging outside; and round it, deserted warehouses awaiting redevelopment.

London Docklands was like this once but now it’s all been rationalised and buffed up. Liverpool’s dock area on the other hand retains its rough edges and is all the more lovable for it. While visiting Liverpool, Andrea was a guest of Base2stay Liverpool (within walking distance of the Liverpool docks area), currently the highest-rated of all hotels in Liverpool according to TripAdvisor.

*This article was brought to you in partnership with London Hotels Insight.

Kingston Lacy is one of those hidden away stately homes of England. Located a couple of miles from Wimborne Minster, it is probably one of Dorset’s less obvious attractions.

First-time visitors and regular holiday makers to the county understandably head for the glorious Purbeck and Jurassic coastline and then the heritage of Thomas Hardy’s novels. But if you have time you can step back to the 17th century to visit the home of the Bankes family.

On a grey day you will doubtless marvel at the art gallery which contains works by masters such as Tintoretti and Rubens, and stand agog at the huge collection of artefacts taken from Egypt. These come from the explorations of William Bankes, known as the “Nubian Explorer” who spent several years form 1815 in Egypt. Amongst the places he re-discovered were the temple of Dendur, which dates from about 15 BC. In 1963 it was presented by Egypt to the USA and is now in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Back at Kingston Lacy, the grounds have plenty to offer as well with their immaculate gardens and rolling countryside. My favourite part of the 8,500 acre (3,443 hectare) estate are the lovingly tendered allotments, growing a huge variety of produce. There are 118 allotments here that are for the use of the general community. Victorian glass houses have been restored, land has been reclaimed and new generations are able to experience the wonderful satisfaction of growing their own food.

The restored Japanese tea garden is also a very tranquil part of the estate. Japanese Gardens became en vogue in Edwardian England (and the UK) around 1910, and can be found in the grounds of many British stately homes. Better examples than that at Kingston Lacy in my opinion are at Torosay Castle on the Isle of Mull in Scotland, the Garden of Wales at Llanarthne in Carmarthenshire, Biddulph Grange in Staffordshire, Tatton Park in Cheshire and Compton Acres in Dorset.

With open–air theatre, tractor trails for children and tours of the house, Kingston Lacy has much to offer, especially in the spring and summer months. We simply enjoyed a happy break here as we started our day of homeward travel. It was difficult not to admire the symmetry and grandeur of the house as we soaked up the sunshine and walked around the gardens. It was all very quiet and we almost had the place to ourselves late on a summer morning. A good time to visit!

Chrissy Brand is a Londoner who lives in Manchester. She is a freelance writer who blogs about her adopted home city at Mancunian Wave- glimpses of Greater Manchester, a photo a day: http://mancunianwave.blogspot.co.uk/

Please take a moment to visit the blog and check out the other Super Bloggers while you’re there!

Thank you to everyone who entered. This ended up being one of the most popular giveaways in the history of this blog and I promise to come up with some more fabulous giveaways for you in the future.

If you haven’t already, check out my latest giveaway.

Adele, the main character, is in search of herself and questioning what she’s doing with her life. She hits the road with her best friend and unexpectedly finds her Prince Charming in Vegas.  Their time together is short and they must part ways but not before agreeing to meet up again in four months. While they are apart they keep in contact through email and end each message with three questions. Some of the questions are lighthearted and some of them are very deep but the most important question remains unanswered: Will time and circumstances see fit to bring these two lovers back together in the end?

Admittedly,  I had  a special interest in Three Questions because I’m friendly with its author.  Meagan’s blog The Lady Who Lunches was one of the first blogs I ever read and she has written a few guest posts for Smitten including “British vs. American Weddings.”  We’ve been ladies who have lunched and social media friends for over three years now. She’s a great writer and above all a lovely person.

As I stated earlier, this is Meagan’s first novel so I thought it would be fun to get the scoop on what inspired her story and how it feels to be published so I sent her a written interview. If you’re an aspiring writer you might find some helpful advice here.

Me:  Hi Meagan, Congratulations on your first novel.  Have you always wanted to be a writer?

Meagan: I have always wanted to write. I don’t think I knew that it could be a profession, though. Ever since I was little, I’ve wanted to capture moments forever, and I think that I thought writing was a way to do that. I actually wanted to be an actress my entire life, but realized that I had more power to create my own characters as a writer.

Me: You have a British boyfriend and this book is about a girl with a British boyfriend so may we assume this story is based on your life?

Meagan:  That’s a pretty good presumption. This story is loosely based on my real life, and when I say loosely, I mean “closely”. My British boyfriend is quick to say “it’s fiction!” and if you’ve read the entire book, you’ll understand why. There is no way it could all be real but I had to start somewhere! The characters all have an anchor in real life, absolutely.

Me:  How much of the story is accurate?

Meagan: I like to say that 60% of the story is real. I obviously changed most of the names (although I couldn’t let go of my middle name – trust me, I tried lots of other first names for the main character, but Adele just stuck. I used to hate my middle name, but ever since Charlize Theron’s character named Adele in the movie “The Legend of Bagger Vance”, I’ve loved it. To me, it represents a strong headed, complex woman who knows who she is and fights for what she believes in. The name Adele actually means “Noble”.)

The exchange of letters in the novel are based off real letters that my boyfriend and I sent each other while he went traveling through Africa, and the title “Three Questions” came from how we got to know each other and how we fell in love. He asked me three questions each letter for four months until we finally met in Chicago.

Me: How does you beau feel about the twist at the end?

Meagan: What twist at the end?? There’s a twist?? He knows how hard I struggled with the ending of the novel, and how it kept me up at night. He knew that I wasn’t happy with a cliche ending, and ultimately, he knows that the character isn’t him. I don’t think he took it personally. At least that’s what he tells me!

Me:  Do you have a new book in the works?

Meagan:  That’s a GREAT question. Yes, I do have a book in the works, but I’m finding it much more difficult to find the time to write it while also running my own business. It’s not like when I was a lady who lunched in England! My new novel follows a woman who got torn from Cuba in the 1960’s, but takes place in present day. Her time in Cuba haunts her and dictates the life she leads today. There will be love, loss, and triumph!

Me:  How does your family feel about reading such an intimate story? Was it difficult to share?

Meagan: Honestly, they’ve all been more supportive than I could have possibly imagined. Everyone has a story about how they got to where they are today, and no one in my family is ashamed of that. I think they own it, and they also realize that it’s just one person’s perspective on how things went down. They probably don’t agree with everything I wrote, and nor should they since some of it was fiction. I had to change things to fit the story, etc.
My mom knows that she was the best mom she could have ever been, and we are the closest today than we ever were. My dad and I are the same (although he wasn’t able to finish it, last I checked – he says he couldn’t get past the intimate nature of some of the chapters, but who knows!)

Me: Is there a moral to your story or did you intend there to be one? What message(s) would you like readers to come away with?

Meagan: This is always a tricky question because I don’t want to give readers any notion of what they “should” come away with. I think it’s a different experience for everyone, and I wouldn’t want to take that away from them. I know what it meant to me, but every reader is going to bring their own story to the table and come away with something completely unique and special…hopefully more than I ever intended.
I guess if I had to say one message that I tried to convey – it’s that you aren’t your past, you aren’t your family, and you aren’t your mistakes. At least that’s what I’ve always struggled to know. This story was one way of helping me to figure that out.

Me:  In your book we read that Adele and Guy suffered from some language barriers. Did you have the same issues with your British Beau? What other barriers did you have to cross?

Meagan:  Yes! I thought that I was SO worldly and cultured before I met him, but I never knew just how different the British are from the Americans until I was with a Brit 24/7. I would say that my learning curve with dating a British man for four years can be summed as the following:

Year 1: The Accent: Figuring out what the hell he was saying
Year 2: The Words: Figuring out what the hell he meant once I understood what the hell he was saying
Year 3: The Culture: Figuring out why the hell he acted like he acted
Year 4: The Resignation: Figuring out that I loved the man despite his Britishness and because of it.

Thank you Meagan for agreeing to the interview and providing such thoughtful answers!

Are you interested in reading Three Questions?

Meagan has agreed to give away a copy of her new novel  to one lucky reader.

Here are the rules:

1. Anyone can enter, doesn’t matter where you live. Yay!

2. Just leave a comment below about why you think you’ll enjoy Three Questions and include a link to your email or your email address in the text of the comment.

3. Enter by midnight next Friday, 18 May. I’ll draw the winner by random.org and announce the name the following Monday.

Good luck!

More about Meagan: 

Meagan Adele Lopez is the writer of the novel, “Three Questions: Because a quarter life crisis needs answers”.  She is passionate about finding a way to communicate with other humans – purely and simply. (Although, in real life – she finds it more of a challenge than on paper.) When she was young and fancy free, Lopez was an actress and starred in Los Angeles and off-Broadway plays, independent films, acted alongside Judd Hirsch, and was directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

When Lopez is not writing, she spends her time trying to perfect the art of publicity and social media as co-founder and Vice President of Accounts of social media agency, SocialKaty. Say hi on Twitter, @meaganadele or at her blog!

Watch Charles Windsor: Weatherman in action:

To toast HRH’s 60-year reign, Leeds based baking brand Dr. Oetker has teamed up with food artist extraordinaire, Prudence Staite, to recreate a 6m² ‘Cupcake Queen’ portrait of Her Majesty with over 2,012 hand-decorated cupcakes.

Red, white and blue were the order of the day as the culinary artist used the Dr. Oetker home baking range to decorate the edible artwork, including ten cans of Gold and Silver Shimmer Spray, 60,000 Silver and Gold Soft Sugar Pearls and over 140 white Wafer Daisies to adorn the sparkly diamond-encrusted crown featured in the original image.

Prudence, who has been creating edible art for over 12 years, spent over 300 hours on the colourful portrait. She said: “I was excited to be given the chance to create such a meaningful portrait to celebrate the Queen’s reign. I have been working with savoury food and chocolate for years, but this was a whole new challenge. Decorating over 2,000 cupcakes was no mean feat, but the Dr. Oetker range of products were so easy to work with. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much icing in my studio before!”

Gill Davies, Marketing Director at Dr. Oetker, said: “We wanted to create something remarkable to mark this special 2012 celebration and as baking is the cornerstone of how the British celebrate such occasions we thought we’d take this to a grand scale. It was a pleasure to see this work of edible art being created with range of ingredients and decorations that home bakers across the UK work with on a daily basis.”

The ‘Cupcake Queen’ was built in Prudence’ studio in Pamington, Gloucestershire and also featured 20kg of Plain and Milk Chocolate Chips and 30kg of Easy Swirl Cupcake Icing, which were used to define the Queen’s face. A video showing Prudence working on the masterpiece was produced and sets out how she built the artwork on this impressive scale.

Watch the video below: