If you climb the steps of the Royal Academy and hand over your hard-earned cash this month, you will enter the Summer Exhibition 2008. Long running, often criticized and slowly evolving, the Summer Exhibition has become a national institution.

Here you will see a video of a woman using barbed wire as a hula hoop, amidst a painting of the M25, a flying lemon, and portraits of cats. Where else could you get such an eclectic selection of art or get proof of British eccentricity to such a degree? Possibly nowhere. But I still find this exhibition fascinating and well worth a visit.

Among my favourites were the cracked egg (a popular favourite) that beautifully reflects its RA surroundings, a book with a hole burnt through its pages, a map cut out to resemble arteries, tiny flags pinned onto a white background (Lost in Translation) and a painting of smiling jammy dodgers.

Red Road Arteries, Susan Stockwell

PJ Harvey, Miles

Transmission 8, Yoshimi Kihara

Centre: Lost in Translation/Colour of Departure, Chuya Ikeda

Zenith, Mimmo Paladino

I’ve not been doing much painting recently but I have been visiting a lot of places and taking photos. One of these is Paxton Pits Nature Reserve in Little Paxton, Cambridgeshire. It is off the tourist trail, so the only people you’ll meet are locals with their dogs.

You will see lots of dragonflies, damselflies, wild flowers, butterflies and birds if you decide to visit in July. Visit in April for the best time to see nightingales, visit in August for bat spotting in the evenings. There are two walks to do that are well signposted and either of which will take you around one of several lakes past meadows and among trees. This is a great spot for fishing too.

The only odd thing was that on one part of the walk, the path borders a housing estate and you walk past people in their back gardens. It also goes past some allotments. So don’t imagine you are in a nature reserve out in the wilds of nowhere. Here are a couple of pictures I took on my mobile phone. Enjoy.

I’ve just got back from a holiday in Egypt, where I saw some of the places I’ve always wanted to visit but just got to read about them in books instead. One of those places was the Valley of the Kings. In reality it was very, very hot (40-45 degrees), the sun was so bright it made your eyes water if you didn’t wear sunglasses, and you were hassled for money by the “guards”. However, it didn’t disappoint as I gazed in wonder at paintings carved into the walls that were thousands of years old. I could only guess at their meaning, but their effect on visitors is awe-inspiring.

Other visits included temples for the living. Queen Hapshetsut’s Temple (which aligns directly with her tomb at the other side of the mountain), Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple. I even managed a short trip by boat down the Nile.

The Red Sea is amazing in a different way. It’s like swimming in a fish tank full of tropical fish, but the tank never comes to an end.

I want to return to Egypt and fulfil my other dream of seeing the pyramids and the artefacts taken from Tuthankamun’s tomb at the Egyptian Museum. Watch this space.

To read more and see my pictures visit my Egypt page

I’ve been to lots of car boot sales, both as a seller and a buyer. If you are an artist, you will find lots of interesting objects being circulated on the second-hand market. At one car boot sale that I visited, there was a man selling nothing but old postcards. I ended up buying one with an animated haggis on it running up a hill (don’t ask)!

Car boot sales are much more interesting than going to the shops, because you never know what you are going to find. Whereas shops are incredibly predictable and you see the same designs and colours repeated again and again. Sometimes after I’ve spent a few hours clothes shopping, I lose track of which shop I’m in as they all begin to merge into one.

The value of second-hand objects can change from worthless to desirable, depending on how long they’ve been around. At first they are items to be discarded, as they are “out of season”, “so last year” or just not liked anymore. After a while, though, they become desirable again. They transform from second-hand cast-offs to “vintage” collectables.

I’m selling at a car boot sale this weekend, releasing more second-hand goods into circulation and probably bringing back some curious items too.

The National Portrait Gallery is a great place to visit whether you want to browse their permanent collection or see one of the many temporary exhibitions. Vanity Fair photographs are on display at the moment, but it was sold out when I went (so book ahead if you want to see it).

We ended up on the 2nd floor looking at portraits from the 18th century, which I found just as fascinating as the contemporary portraits on the ground floor. There are many famous faces and you hear cries of “Oh is that what Byron/Mary Shelley/insert famous author/politician/scientist looked like?”

If you want a quiet life head for the top floor and work your way down. If you want something busier visit the ground floor and try to get into the temporary exhibitions…

Never thought I’d see snowmen in London during April, but here they are:

It is quite refreshing to find a contemporary artist whose work is vibrant, interesting and actually looks like something you can recognise. You can see Peter Doig’s work from 5 February to 27 April 2008 at Tate Britain.

Doig’s paintings often feature isolated figures, such as the one shown above. The bleached texture of the paintings reminds me of a postcard that’s accidentally been left in the back pocket of a pair of trousers and then put through a cycle in the washing machine. Here’s some more below:

Among its list of bullet points describing this property, the National Trust says it has: “Ghostly goings on: hazy figures, music and a strange herbal smell”. This slice of information is left unexplained, however, and I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what they mean by it. During my visit to this property, the only hazy figures I saw were fellow visitors caught up in the pouring rain, or others squelching through mud to get to Prospect Tower (more of later). As for music I did hear the occasional song from one of the many robins that have become so used to visitors to the Secret Garden that they will come right up to your feet if you chuck them a few crumbs from your half-eaten sandwich.

Robins will venture as close as your feet, if the prospect of a few crumbs is likely.

Perhaps the “strange herbal smell” comes from the garden, but all I noticed was the smell of dampness that only a January day in England can bring. The garden has a huge sign with Secret Garden and an arrow pointing to it, so I’m not sure why it has this name as many people obviously know it is there and if you don’t you soon will do. If you visit this garden, you must sit as I did in the small wooden shelter that gives you a great view of the Tamar River and Calstock Viaduct below. Here you will receive visits from the previously mentioned robins, especially if you sit and eat your sandwiches. What could be more English than to sit in a wooden shelter on a damp January day and eat egg and cress sandwiches while looking at a view and feeding stray robins? (I’m sure I’ve committed a great crime against grammar by saying looking at a view, but I have neither the time nor inclination to look it up and write the “correct” grammatical phrase, so tough.) The gardens are covered in snow drops, crocuses, daffodils and other January/February flowers. The gardeners have obviously thought about us late winter visitors and provided a bit of colour as I’m sure they have throughout the year.

I got some great photos of robins, who seem happy to perch and pose for the camera.

The house is closed during the winter (when I visited) so I didn’t get to see its Tudor interior or tapestries, which I’m sure are worth seeing. The most surprising aspect of this visit was discovering Prospect Tower, a folly that exists within a muddy field nearby. It certainly is a folly to visit it wearing white trainers, as I did, as they soon became caked with mud and will never be the same again. The strangest thing about this building is that it is triangular and the walls are concave, which is difficult to capture in a photograph as it just looks like a conventional four-sided construction, when in fact it isn’t. It is entered through a wooden door at the side and the more adventurous can climb the spiral staircase inside to admire the view. There isn’t much light inside so it is not for the claustrophobic or those with vertigo or those afraid of the dark, but if you are all of those things then maybe you need a bit of a challenge. If you want to take daft photos of friends peeking out of the top of it, then you will also need a good camera with a zoom lens, otherwise they turn out as a small dot on top of a grey thing in the distance.

Prospect Tower is situated in a muddy field close to Cotehele House.

You can get your friends to pose at the top.

Access to Prospect Tower is through a mysterious wooden door and up a spiral staircase.

I was lucky enough to visit two Landmark Trust properties recently and Danescombe Mine was one of them. I drove down from North Devon through the Dartmoor national park to reach Calstock, making the journey itself a worthwhile venture. As I drove through Dartmoor, snow had reached the higher parts and it was more beautiful than I ever imagined, as I always thought it would be a bleak, foreboding place.
Danescombe Mine was restored by the Landmark Trust in the 1970s and has seen many visitors stay there, who have managed to get through several log books saying how wonderful they think the place is. It is located in the midst of a quiet wood and Cotehele House and Gardens (a National Trust property) can be found nearby.Danescombe Mine wouldn’t be everyone’s idea of a holiday, though I think it is wonderful. It is, as the name suggests, a former copper/arsenic mine and the accommodation is in what would have been the engine house of the mine. Other ruins of buildings are nearby and the National Trust have also restored two cottages that originally belonged to the mine up the track. When I say “track” that is a good description of the road that you need to drive on to get to the property. I don’t recommend driving to it in a sportscar, unless you want to smash up the bottom of your car on the large stones and potholes en route. I also wouldn’t recommend that you splash in the puddles, just in case you fall down a disused mineshaft. You can see blocked off tunnels to the mine near the buildings, but any sign of mining activity has long gone. All you will hear are the calls of owls at night and perhaps you might come across an occasional bat.
There are two bedrooms in the property and a kitchen and living area on the ground floor. The double bedroom at the top has a magnificent view from its panoramic windows.

Calstock is distinctive because of its viaduct that can be seen for miles.

You enter the mine up some steep brick steps.

This is the engine house of the building, now converted to living spaces, and would once have housed the wheel for the mine.

This mineshaft is very close to the property and you can see quite far down it through a grate and with the help of a torch or camera flash.

The Landmark Trust is a charity that restores interesting, historical buildings. To find out more visit their website landmarktrust.org.uk

For all you gardening buffs out there, this is a must see place to go. Or even if you are just interested in photography or sketching, it offers great vistas and photo opportunities. I especially like the many robins and other birds that are resident here. I took a very sweet photo of a robin on top of a garden tap.

The garden is created to have interest year round, meaning that even in winter you will see some plants that are blossoming and many types of colourful copper, silver and red barks that are planted to deliberately offer a contrast to other plants nearby.

I am no gardening expert, but even I could see the hard work and lots of thought that has gone into designing and maintaining this garden. I particularly recommend the woodland walks, especially in February when the low winter sun casts a misty light among the trees, making it look very atmospheric.