How to | Start Snorkelling

Photography by Emma and Gordon Taylor

If you’re diving in for the first time, here’s how to get started on your snorkelling adventures

• Exploring rockpools from dry land is a great way to learn about the marine environment and requires no special skills or equipment. Adding goggles or a mask and snorkel to get a closer view is the logical next step – perhaps trying a larger tidal pool, or finding a shallow, sheltered bay with no currents where you can explore in calm, waist-deep water. Relax, take a few slow, deep breaths and then lower your face into the water to enjoy those first few breaths with the snorkel.

• Remember to stay shallow while you build up your experience and confidence.

• Another great way to get started is to join an organised snorkel tour. This will introduce you to basic snorkelling skills while learning about the marine life you see. Many instructors and organisations including The Wildlife Trusts offer guided excursions.

• You can also take a formal snorkelling qualification. This will teach you how to select the correct equipment, assess a site for suitability and build a greater understanding of what it takes to be safe in the water. If you are looking to buy your own mask and snorkel do make sure it’s from a reputable manufacture since cheap, poorly-designed equipment can be dangerous.

You can read more about great places to snorkel around Britain in our feature, ‘Down Under’, in our June issue. It’s an extract from Snorkelling Britain: 100 Marine Adventures by Emma and Gordon Taylor (Wild Things). Readers can get 20%* off and free P&P with discount code SIMPLETHINGS at wildthingspublishing.com

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Recipe | Chopped Salad

Photography by Hugh Johnson

This recipe is all about the crunch. Thanks to the red cabbage and beetroot, it’s striking, too.

Serves 4–6

3 radishes, finely chopped

1 celery stalk, finely chopped

¼ red or white cabbage, finely chopped

2 gherkins, finely diced

1 mini cucumber or ¼ cucumber, diced

2 cooked beets, diced

1 spring onion, finely chopped

1 apple, finely chopped, tossed

with the juice of ½ lemon

For the dressing:

½ lemon, juiced

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp creamed horseradish or

wholegrain mustard

1 tsp thyme leaves

½ tsp sugar

1 Start by making the dressing. Place the lemon juice, olive oil, creamed horseradish or mustard, thyme leaves and sugar into a jar. Screw on the lid and shake well to combine. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper.

2 Mix the salad ingredients together in a large serving bowl. Pour over the dressing and toss to coat thoroughly. Serve immediately.

Taken from The Kew Gardens Salad Book by Jenny Linford (Kew Publishing). Recipe photography: Hugh Johnson. For more salads from Kew, don’t miss our feature, Salad Days, in our June issue.

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Books | Lighthouse Literature

We shine a light on a few of our favourite books set in lighthouses

There’s definitely something about a lighthouse that appeals to authors. Perhaps it’s the solitude and nature of life lived in a liminal space right on the edge of land. They certainly are a very visual literary trope - we all know what a lighthouse looks like, and they cut a dramatic figure on the landscape. It’s perhaps no wonder they feature in so many works of fiction. Here are a few of the most well-loved…

To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness novel follows the Ramsay family across several years and a trip to a lighthouse that feels like it may never come. We’ll be honest, the lighthouse trip itself is a bit underwhelming in the end, but the novel is so different to anything that had come before and is still in a league of its own. 

Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer

This deliciously creepy novel follows four women who have been sent to investigate ‘Area X’. They are the 12th team to have been sent; the previous 11 teams either did not return or returned utterly changed. Within Area X is a lighthouse in which they find unfinished journals and signs of a struggle…

The Lighthouse, Edgar Allen Poe

If you enjoy ‘creepy’ no one does it like the master, Edgar Allen Poe. Perhaps the creepiest thing about this work of fiction is that it is unfinished; Poe died while he was writing it. The book takes the form of a ‘diary’ belonging to the solo keeper of the lighthouse, who takes enormous pleasure in his solitude. 

Lighthouse Keeping, Jeanette Winterson

Winterson’s novel is a beautiful and intriguing tale of orphan girl, Silver, who is taken in by a blind lighthouse keeper on the coast of Scotland. 

The Lighthouse, PD James

An Inspector Dalgliesh novel, which takes place on the slightly claustrophobic Combe Island, where a novelist is found dead, hanging in the renovated lighthouse. 

The Light Between Oceans, M L Stedman
A moving and poignant story about a childless lighthouse keeper and his wife on an isolated island off Australia who rescue a baby adrift at sea and raise her as their own. Years later her parentage is discovered. A proper tale of love, loss, justice and tragedy.

The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch, Rhonda and David Armitage

One to prove that not all lighthouses are creepy… Mr Girling and his wife live in a lighthouse keeper’s cottage from which he rows out to the lighthouse each day. Mrs Girling sends his lunch over in a basket on a rope each day but have to find an ingenious way of preventing the seagulls from eating the ham sandwiches. 

The Puffin Keeper, Michael Morpurgo

A beautiful adventure for children, that begins with a shipwreck at a lighthouse and evolves into an unlikely but wonderful friendship. It’s also a homage to Allen Lane, the founder of puffin books. 

Mind the Light, Katie, Mary Louise Clifford

A historical account of 33 female lighthouse keepers. Brilliantly researched and totally fascinating. 

If you’re inspired to a lighthouse adventure of your own, don’t miss our ‘Weekend Away’ feature from our June issue in which Karen Dunn stays in a lighthouse.

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Recipe | Yogurt, cherry & passionfruit crumble jars

Photography by Rebecca Lewis

Portable puddings mean you can enjoy your dessert whenever you fancy – so start saving your jam jars now

Serves 6

300g fresh cherries, destoned

2 tbsp maple syrup

1 lemon, juiced

180g mixed nuts

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tbsp chia seeds

1 tbsp hemp seeds

1 tbsp pumpkin seeds

1 tbsp honey

450g natural yogurt

15 passion fruits

100g dark chocolate chips

12 edible flowers, optional

6 empty jam jars to serve

1 Heat the cherries, 1 tbsp of the maple syrup and the juice of half of the lemon in a small pan over a medium heat. Stir gently for 5 mins until the start to soften, then set aside to cool.

2 Meanwhile, place the nuts, cinnamon and seeds in a blender and blitz until they’ve formed a crumble-like consistency. Add the honey and give it another quick blitz to combine.

3 Place a layer of the nut crumble (using up half the mix) into the base of each jam jar, then add a layer of natural yogurt.

4 Cut and scrape out 12 of the passion fruits and divide equally between the jams jars, followed by another layer of natural yogurt.

5 Finally, add a layer of the cherry compote and top with the rest of the nut crumble.

6 Cut the last three passion fruits in half and top each jar with one half along with a couple of edible flowers.

This recipe is from our feature ‘A Lovely Arrangement’ in our June issue, a menu for a picnic surrounded by spring blooms. It also includes recipes for Rye Bread & Smoked Salmon Floral Squares, Summer Rolls, Edible Flower Salad, Pea & Goat’s Cheese Quiche and Lavender Lemonade. The recipes are by Kay Prestney and the photography is by Rebecca Lewis.

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How to | Learn to Skip

Skipping is a skill worth honing: it’s fantastic exercise, you can do it anywhere and it looks pretty cool, especially if you can throw a move or two.

The basics

Get these down and it’ll feel like less effort. • Jump low: jumping too high wastes energy and stresses the joints. • Keep on the balls of the feet: avoid kicking your feet back and up as you jump (bending the knees only slightly prevents this). • Keep elbows pointing back, hands close to the body, next to your hips. • Rotate the rope with your wrists not your arms. • Keep your rope shorter: it’s more efficient. • Avoid the double jump if your aim is harder moves.

The trickier bits

Whatever feat you’re tackling, practise without the rope first to get your rhythm right. Start by jumping side to side or forwards and backwards as you skip. Then try jumping toes and heels together (the ‘wounded duck’). The enviable boxer’s skip is simply jumping from side to side (jump right, tap left, jump left, tap right). Once you’re comfortable with your feet, play with the arms: crossing and swinging the rope and the 180˚ turn. And when you get really confident, try doing it with your dog: Purin, a beagle from Japan, holds the record for ‘Most skips by a dog and a person in one minute – single rope’ managing 58 in a minute.

If you like skipping, you might like to get back into these childhood games, this bank holiday

French elastic
Grab two friends and a length of elastic and start chanting: England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales. Inside, outside, inside, ON! You can learn to do it at the Scouts’ website.

Hopscotch
All you need is a piece of chalk, a pebble and to be able to count to ten and you have yourself aan afternoon of back garden entertainment. Learn to hopscotch here.

Cat’s Cradle
Find a length of string, look up the rules and get looping with a cat’s cradle partner.

Hula-hooping
Here’s one you can do alone (and you WILL want to do it alone until you get a bit good and can show off in the park. You can find instructions on how to hula hoop on our blog.

You can find more merriment and silliness in our Miscellany pages each month.

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Wellbeing | Tuesday Choose Day

Photograph by iStock

Make Tuesdays a Choose Day and feel instantly less ‘beginning of the week’ about it

Let’s be honest, Tuesday often isn’t much better than Monday. In fact, research from the London School of Economics found it to be the most miserable day of the week. So we propose reframing Tuesday into Choose Day, where you decide how you’re going to feel and what you’re going to get out of the day.

Start as you mean to go on by doing something you enjoy as soon as you wake up. If your normal routine doesn’t allow for that, set the alarm a bit earlier – even 10 minutes gives you a chance to do some breathing or stretches, write a few pages of a journal, read your book, or whatever makes you feel content. Now you’re feeling calm and alert, set an intention for the day. It might be, “I’m going to listen with an open mind to those I tend to disagree with in my meeting.” Or it might be more about your mindset, for example, “I’m going to think kind thoughts about myself and others.” Writing it down will help to affirm your intention. Before bed, reflect on your intention and whether it made you feel or act differently, noticing any achievements, however small, and how you have the power to shape your day.

To get you started, here are a few intentions you could choose this Chooseday…

1. Choose a change. Walk a new route to work, get your lunch from somewhere you’ve not tried before, or start a TV series that a friend has recommended but you wouldn’t normally have considered.

2. Choose peace. Make this a day when you just let things go. Choose not to respond to an aggressive comment, or to allow something small to get under your skin. Choose to be a bit zen all day and accept whatever life throws at you with grace. 

3. Choose new adventures. Make this the day you sign up for that course in Thai cookery, book a holiday, or join a sports team. If you need to start small that’s fine, too. Take a friend on a microadventure. Maybe hire a boat for an afternoon or climb a hill together. 

4. Choose to be easy on yourself. Give yourself an extra five minutes in bed, delegate a few chores, choose a meal for dinner that only takes five minutes to prepare and doesn’t involve much washing up. Sometimes a poached egg on toast is its own reward.

5. Choose to be creative. Go cloud spotting, make words from car numberplates, doodle in the margins in your meeting and spend your lunchtime reading a book or painting rather than tackling life admin. Just take every opportunity Tuesday gives you to indulge in some creativity.

Be inspired by new ways to experience every day of the week with our feature ‘Could-do Week’ by Rebecca Frank in our June issue, which is in shops now. 

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Project | Make a Scrap fabric Key Fob

If you were inspired by our ‘Scrappy Do’ projects to make a belt bag and lanyard for Summer days out in our June issue, here’s another similar, simple make you might like

You will need: 

Cotton fabric scraps in a selection of prints, each minimum size 7.5 x 46cm 

Medium-weight non-woven fusible interlining, 7.5 x 117cm  

Coordinating thread 

Key fob hardware, 2.5cm wide  

Pliers for affixing key fob hardware 

Tailor’s awl (optional) 

Cutting instructions: 

Print cotton fabric scraps:  

Cut a selection of strips, each 6.5cm wide x 4–7.5cm long 

Medium-weight non-woven fusible interlining:  

Cut one strip measuring 2.5 x 26cm, for the key fob. 

1 Lay out a selection of print-cotton strips with the right sides uppermost to create a strip measuring 30cm. Arrange the fabrics until you are happy with the placement. 

2 Begin joining the pieces of the strip together. Working from left to right, place the first two pieces together with right sides facing. Align the raw edges, pin or clip in place, and sew together. Press the seam neatly open. Continue joining each square in turn..Using the rotary cutter, ruler, and cutting mat, trim the strip to measure 26.5cm. 

3 Place the interlining strip on the strip so the adhesive side is facing the wrong side of the fabric. Position the interlining strip 5mm away from one long raw edge and 5mm away from each short raw edge. Cover with a pressing cloth and iron to fuse in place.  

4 Fold each long side of one of the strips to the wrong side by 5mm and press. Fold the strip in half so that the two long sides meet and press. The raw edges are now concealed inside the folded strip. Pin or clip in place. Make sure the sewing machine stitch length to 3. Taking a 3mm seam allowance from the edges, topstitch along each long side. Zigzag stitch across each short end to neaten.  

5 Fold the key fob strip in half and align the two short edges. Place the short edges inside the key fob hardware and secure in place using the pliers.  

Taken from Mini Quilting by Laura Strutt (CICO Books). Photography by James Gardiner © CICO Books 

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Recipe | Pavlova with Berries and Rose Petal Cream

Taking a giant spoon and smashing into a pavlova you’ve spent hours constructing feels like a radical act. But finding that child-like glee is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Bring on the spring silliness!

Serves 8

For the meringue:
4 egg whites
250g caster sugar
1 tsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp cornflour
1 tsp vanilla extract

For the topping:
250g strawberries, hulled and halved
250g raspberries
200g blueberries
3 tbsp icing sugar
350ml double cream
3 tsp rose water
Rose petals, to decorate

1Preheat the oven to 150C/Fan 130C/ Gas 2. Using a pencil, draw around a dinner plate on baking paper and use to line a baking tray.

2 Whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks, then whisk in the caster sugar, one spoonful at a time, until the meringue looks glossy.

3 Whisk in the white wine vinegar, cornflour and vanilla extract.

4 Using a spoon or spatula, spread the meringue onto the baking paper, using the circle as your template. Make the sides higher than the middle so you have a dip for your filling.

5 Bake the meringue for 1 hr before turning off the oven and leaving it inside to cool completely.

6 For the pavlova, make a berry sauce by putting 100g of the strawberries, 100g of the raspberries and 2 tbsp icing sugar in a food processor. Blitz, then push through a sieve.

7 Whip together the double cream, rose water and remaining 1 tbsp icing sugar. When soft peaks form, spread it over the meringue, top with the berries and drizzle with the sauce. Scatter rose petals over to finish.

The pavlova recipe is one of the ideas from our ‘Kitchen Therapy’ feature ‘Take It Outside’ from our June issue, which includes recipes inspired by the outdoors and that can be partly created (and definitely eaten!) outside. The recipes are by Lottie Storey and the photography is by Kym Grimshaw.

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Playlist | Great Heights

DJ: Frances Ambler
Image: Shutterstock

We’re reaching great heights for our latest playlist, taken from our June 2025 SOAR issue (on sale from 28 May).

Have a listen to our playlist here.
We compile a playlist for each issue of The Simple Things: have a browse of them here.

Make | Summer Scraps Belt Bag Template

Looking for the template to make our bag from the June issue? You’re in the right place

You can make the bag pictured above from a selection of material scraps using the instructions and kit list from our Weekend Project in our June issue. But first you’ll need the template for the bag strap tabs (the orange pieces connecting the bag to the strap) which you can click to print below and then cut out.

Click here to download the bag tab template

You can find all the instructions to make this belt bag, as well as a matching lanyard in our June issue. And look out for a similar project to make a key fob on our blog soon!

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