How the Light Gets In

Sonia Purnell looks back on a year of travels which helped her reflect on all the UK still has to offer

This time last year, I spent a memorable 40 minutes in a recycled whisky barrel buffeted by a brisk winter wind wearing nothing but a swimming costume and a woolly hat.

It’s not quite as mad as it sounds.

Neck-deep in 40°C water laced with flakes of local Halen Môn sea salt, plus ochre fronds of bladderwrack (seaweed), I was looking out from the island of Anglesey over the narrows of the Menai Strait to the north Wales coast and the glowering mountains behind.