It was when I was busy spewing out a long list of recommendations to a friend travelling up to the Cairngorms when she said “I’d love to see inside your brain” that the idea for this substack came about.
If we’re meeting for the first time, hi! I’m Pippa. I’ve been creating food content online for the past (nearly) 10 years now, initially on my Instagram page, eatinburgh, and latterly on TikTok too. I’m also a freelance Location Manager, finding locations for films and photoshoots with a focus on Scotland but working across the UK too. Wearing these two hats gives me quite the base for planning staycation trips in the UK and I figured it was time I opened up my brain to you guys on Substack too.
So what does that mean? Well, every 2 weeks or so I’ll be writing up a guide for an area of the UK (with occasional overseas posts too, if you’d like!) giving you the low-down on where to ‘eat and drink’, ‘stay’ and ‘do’ in those areas - don’t see it so much as a weekend itinerary, more like a rough guide on some really cool (is it lame describing somewhere as ‘really cool’? Hopefully not) spots in those areas I can recommend personally.
I think being a UK resident, particularly in the grey winter months, the urge is really to escape abroad for holidays but I’d like to champion the places we have on these strange shores that you should head to if you have a weekend free (my favourite types of trips are those you can head to on the Friday night after work and be home by Sunday evening, maximising your annual leave for those longer overseas trips!).
Being VERY type-A, I’m pretty meticulous in my travel planning but always start with where I’ll be eating, some of which will be open to both free and paid subscribers of this substack. If you’d like to see the rest of the ‘eat & drink’, ‘stay’ and ‘do’ sections though, I’ll be holding these exclusively for paid subscribers (along with access to my full archive if you’d like to reference back). Paid subscribers will also receive a weekly run down of whatever’s in my brain that week (be it the UK hotels I’m eyeing up for trips, area guides to Edinburgh - or anything requested by you!! We’ll figure it out together).
We’re kicking thing off with where I know best - EDINBURGH! So stay tuned for my ultimate guide for the best places to tick off on your next visit.