This year I got to finally take a trip to one of those places that had been on my list for years: Oslo. We had a tight timeframe – two full days plus travel time either side – to try to make the most of Norway’s capital city.

After choosing flights based on cost rather than actually-landing-close-to-Oslo, we arrived at TORP Sandefjord airport fairly late on a Sunday night. We’d already arranged our airport shuttle transfer to the city though, so it was time to kick back and relax on the empty coach with cinnamon buns in hand for the near two-hour-long journey.

This summer, I was lucky enough to get to work with the team who manage the hefty task of making all of the music festivals that the BBC covers each spring and summer into something that BBC iPlayer and Sounds users get to enjoy live as the festival is happening, and then on-demand for the next month or so.

With the BBC having television coverage of five stages at Glastonbury this year along with two curated live streams, there’s a lot of preparation that goes into the weekend.

After a few weeks of on and off work, I’ve finally relaunched my website/portfolio as something much more minimal — in fact minimalfyi is what I’ve sorta taken to calling it.

Went stateside. Spent loads, tipped more. Here’s a couple of photos that I took while we explored Manhattan and Brooklyn (also ever so briefly Staten Island and, while not pictured, Queens)

I took myself on the bus from Kendal on a day off all the way to Keswick to walk a few Wainwrights.

It was mostly commuters and school pupils on the morning 555 bus I caught, before changing to the X6 towards Workington outside Booths in Keswick.

Stopping off at what was once the Swan Hotel, I was perfectly positioned to begin a steepish climb to Barf, via Beckstones Gill and not the rock scree watched over by the Bishop of Barf.

Here’s a digital audio news bulletin I wrote, produced and voiced for Amazon Alexa devices for BBC News in May 2022.

Some of the items (marked more) are examples of items which could be accessed by saying “Alexa, More from BBC News” while listening to the previous story.

A quick walk up to a lesser known hill which became part of the Lake District National Park in 2019, when it was expanded to encompass an area of commons and forest to the north-east of Kendal as far as the M6 motorway.

One of my longest solo walks taking in a handful of hilltops before reaching the Skiddaw massif (286mi) and returning to Keswick via Lonscale Fell and Latrigg.

Benson Knott is, actually, a pair of lesser climbed mounds that sit on top of Hay Fell, overlooking Kendal to its north east.

It probably wasn’t officially accessible years back when Wainwright wrote his companion guides to fells sitting outside the Lake District.

To be honest, it’s still not that easy to get to today with it requiring a stretch of road walking even if you plan a roundabout route by foot from Kendal proper.

One of the tricks of the trade in newsreading is having to read a bulletin to time.

Radio is obsessed with timings and making sure things are to the second.

The listeners who come back day after day bring you into their life routine - and they might even decide to go to work based on when something happens on air, at the same time, every day.

Here’s an example of when I had to read to time on Christmas Eve, because the next programme on BBC Radio Cumbria was pre-recorded…

I was lucky to spend the best part of two years helping to create a new sound for BBC News’ smart speaker briefings as part of a joint project of BBC News and BBC Voice and AI.

The style we developed was taken on into the BBC’s current Interactive News service for smart speakers and it’s being taken into account for the future of the corporation’s radio news output.

Here’s an example of an interactive news bulletin I wrote and produced in September for Amazon Alexa devices, now with faux interactivity provided here by my slightly hacked together javascript playlist function!

The audio that’s grey coloured would usually be available when you say the words, More from the BBC, so feel free to mouth them to yourself.

One of the things I’ve really come to appreciate during my time working on the BBC Voice News team is that we can be a bit more agile that other parts of the corporation when it comes to doing new things.

I’m using the word agile specifically, bearing in mind the way it’s used in software development.

One day back in March, when coronavirus was starting to become more of a concern outside of China - we had the idea to create an regular update for smart speakers with the very latest on Covid-19 for UK audiences through the BBC Sounds skill on Amazon Alexa.

One day back in March 2020, when coronavirus was starting to become more of a concern outside of China - we had the idea to create an regular update for smart speakers with the very latest on Covid-19 for UK audiences through the BBC Sounds skill on Amazon Alexa.

At first, it was - roughly - the biggest story at the time, a UK roundup, the latest government advice during lockdown, a world roundup and whatever else we found interesting… all in between three to six minutes.

It feels like an eon ago since we’re in the middle of a global pandemic but there was an impeachment trial in the US earlier this year.

Here’s how I covered it for our BBC News interactive audio bulletin.

The Westmorland Gazette is a newspaper for South Cumbria and the Yorkshire Dales which celebrated its 200th anniversary in May 2018.

All sorts of famous writers and journalists have been involved in its history, including William Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter.

I was able to take part in a week-long series of reports marking the milestone for BBC Radio Cumbria.

First up, I went into the archives with Kendal historian Peter Holmes, where I even ended up finding myself among the pages.

It’ll take you much more than a weekend if you really want to see a lot of what’s going on in Stockholm - but that’s all we had…

We still managed to do ferries, trains, saunas, nightclubs and government-owned off licenses (but these are not all featured in the video).

I was in charge of BBC Cumbria Live on the day that the Settle to Carlisle line fully reopened to passenger trains for the first time in 13 months.

A landslip at Eden Brows near Armathwaite had moved 500,000 tonnes of earth underneath the track.