Shutter & Stove

Campfire Spiced Apples

Wed, 01 Sep 2027 00:00:00 +0000

Autumn caught up with us and the evenings turned. There’s a particular kind of contentment in a warm pudding when it’s gone cold and dark outside and the van is the only lit thing for miles. This is about as much effort as I’m willing to give a dessert after a day on my feet with the camera, and it’s plenty.

Switchbacks and Ragù

Sun, 15 Aug 2027 00:00:00 +0000

The van does not love a hairpin. Three and a half tonnes of home does not want to be flung up a mountainside one tight bend at a time, and it told me so, loudly, in second gear, all the way up.

Alpine Mushroom Ragù

Sat, 14 Aug 2027 00:00:00 +0000

We’d driven a road with more hairpins than I could count, parked up where the air was thin and the evening came in cold off the rock, and what I wanted was something dark and slow and warming. No butcher for miles, but a roadside stall had mushrooms the size of my hand. This is what they became.

The Dolomites at Altitude

Thu, 12 Aug 2027 00:00:00 +0000

Pale stone towers going pink at dusk, the alpenglow they’re famous for. Worth the hairpins.

Brittany, Salt and Stone

Sat, 10 Jul 2027 00:00:00 +0000

Granite coastline, oyster beds at low tide, and a light that softens everything it touches.

Buckwheat Galettes

Thu, 08 Jul 2027 00:00:00 +0000

A woman at the market in Cancale sold galettes off a hotplate the size of a dustbin lid, folding each one into a neat envelope with a flick of a little wooden rake. I watched her for an embarrassingly long time, bought two, then went back to the van determined to get close to it. This is close. Hers were better.

Crossing the Channel

Fri, 02 Jul 2027 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a moment, rolling off the ferry ramp into France, where every instinct you own about which side of the road to be on quietly files for divorce. We crept out of Roscoff at a stately fifteen miles an hour, both of us saying “right, stay right, right” like a mantra, and somehow didn’t hit anything.

An Office With a View

Mon, 28 Jun 2027 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a photo my husband won’t let me publish of him on a video call with the whole team, dead serious about a deployment, with a goat investigating the wing mirror just behind his head. The goat won the meeting.

One-Pan Skye Fish Stew

Fri, 25 Jun 2027 00:00:00 +0000

We bought the fish off a man at Portree harbour who’d landed it that morning and seemed faintly amused that we were cooking it in a van. This is the stew we made that night, rain on the roof, all the windows steamed up, the best kind of cosy.

Skye, and All That Mist

Thu, 24 Jun 2027 00:00:00 +0000

The Quiraing came and went behind the cloud all morning. We waited.

The Four AM Alarm

Sun, 13 Jun 2027 00:00:00 +0000

Four in the morning, in a layby in Glencoe, and the alarm I set the night before now feels like a personal insult from a past version of me who clearly hated sleep.

Glencoe, First Light

Sat, 12 Jun 2027 00:00:00 +0000

A 4am alarm, a flask of bad coffee, and the glen turning gold.

No-Knead Skillet Bread

Wed, 02 Jun 2027 00:00:00 +0000

I missed bread more than anything when we first moved in. Not toast, proper bread, the kind with a crust that shatters. We don’t have an oven, so for a while I assumed that was that. It isn’t. A heavy pan with a lid is an oven if you treat it like one, and the loaf that comes out steams up every window in the van.

Wild Garlic & Potato Hash

Sat, 22 May 2027 00:00:00 +0000

We pulled into a car park near Betws-y-Coed and the whole place smelled of garlic. Turns out the bank beside it was carpeted in the stuff. I picked a bagful (only ever where it’s growing thick, and never the lot), and this was breakfast the next three mornings running.

First Proper Mountains

Fri, 21 May 2027 00:00:00 +0000

The wipers were going full pelt and the map was telling me the view to my left was spectacular. I had to take its word for it. You couldn’t see fifty feet.

Snowdonia, in the Rain

Thu, 20 May 2027 00:00:00 +0000

Wales did what Wales does. The light, when it came, was worth the soaking.

The Shakedown Trip

Tue, 18 May 2027 00:00:00 +0000

The first night in the van, properly in the van, with no house to retreat to, we lay there listening to a cupboard door we’d hung slightly wrong tap-tapping against its frame in the wind. Neither of us said anything for a bit. Then we both started laughing, because what else do you do.

About Shutter & Stove

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

How a semi-pro photographer and a stubbornly enthusiastic cook ended up living in a Ford Transit.

Prints

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A handful of the landscapes are available as prints, archival paper, ready to frame, shipped wherever you are.