I finished off my first ever Christmas Cake last night by adding the icing and the decorations.

I wanted to go nice and traditional and used Mary Berry’s Celebration Fruit Cake recipe in the Great British Bake Off book. She says to use pre-done rolled icing sugar but I felt like going old-school to make a snowy scene with Royal Icing.

I possibly may have added just a tiny bit more brandy than it said to in the recipe. So let’s raise a glass in hope it doesn’t taste rank.

After 30+ hours, one coach, three Airbus flights, four airport terminals and a dramatically missed connection we found ourselves in Siem Reap - our first visit to Cambodia.

This was our second trip to Asia as marrieds. Just over two years ago we spent our honeymoon in Thailand and had been pining to go back.

Getting to Cambodia isn’t easy. There aren’t any direct flights from the UK and transfers are long, tedious and uncomfortable. The logistics of this had previously put us off, especially as we’re never going to have the luxury of weeks travelling around and any visit would have to be reasonably short. We came to realise that nothing will come out of being travel wusses and some of the best sights do need a bit of effort to get there. So, armed with a positive state of mind and a super dooper new travel pillow we travelled the 9,000-odd miles for our 8 night stay.

We decided to keep things simple and stay rooted in Siem Reap for the entire time. Our plan was to have some downtime sitting by the pool and playing Scrabble as well as exploring the city and the nearby temples of Angkor. We split our stay up between two different hotels (Heritage Suites and FCC Angkor), just to keep things fresh (and satisfy my hotel obsession). We were a short walk (or tuk tuk ride) into the city and ideally placed to visit the temples of Angkor.

We didn’t laze about. More than once we rose at 3.45am to travel to spots to see the sunrise. We even braved the roads on shoddy hire bikes, cycling to Tonle Sap lake, Angkor Wat and through villages in the pitch black dark. Considering I point blank refuse to ride the roads of Bournemouth, and Siem Reap’s roads appeared to be Highway Code-less and full of lorries and suicidal chickens this was a massive achievement. These days were definitely the highlight of our trip, even if we were slightly bricking it at the time.

Our “proper” cameras stayed at home for this holiday. We’d already maxed out our cabin luggage and we wanted the freedom to be able to explore without being weighed down by kit. As we did so much cycling and spent hot days clambering up temple mountains this was definitely the right decision. So, we stretched the legs of our Fujifilm FinePix x100 compact camera instead.

Here are some snaps we took on holiday… Somewhere in there you’ll see pictures of a Khmer wedding. I wish there was some way of getting in touch with this wedding party to give them their photographs!

At the start of the year we made a promise to ourselves we’d get out and do fun things on our day off. That was fine, and was working, until wedding season got underway and I started drowning in editing. At the end of last week I realised the only time I’d physically been outside in days was to go and vote, and to put the bin out. Not good…

So, we needed to nip that bad habit in the bud, get out and go somewhere to get some fresh air. And where better to do that than… errr… a dark and damp cave?

When I was little we didn’t go on holidays abroad (unless you count the Isle of Wight). Instead, we’d have a week where we’d do day trips and we’d each have a say where we’d like to go. It was the best type of holiday, because you knew you’d be doing something completely different every day. Top of the hot list for me was always Cheddar. I’m not sure why… I liked looking around gift shops and coveting semi-precious metals, so it ticked two boxes before even paying for a ticket to go inside. It’s a pretty amazing place I think.

So, after our stormy weekend we filled up the Thermos, packed a lunchbag full of Nutella sandwiches, armed our memory stick up with the day before’s Adam and Joe podcast and we made our way to Somerset.

They have a Costa at Cheddar now. Crazy days! This guy had given up waiting for his panini a LONG time ago. Ian says it’s not a real skeleton. I’m not so sure…

We took the audio tour handset phones around the caves with us, which gave us an insight to the process of “Cheddaring”, and also how the Victorians mastered the art of illuminating the caves for maximum visual effect. So all the lighting in these shots is lit by the show lamps only. We did see someone else taking photos with their Nintendo DS. I wonder how those came out?…

We chickened out at the prospect of doing the “Crystal Quest”. Last time we did that someone in costume jumped out at us, so we weren’t going to fall for that again. Not without a small child to push down the path in front of us at least. So, we headed straight for Jacob’s Ladder and limbered up before climbing the 274 steps.

It was windy up there but the view was amazing. We also chased goats.

But I was such an enthusiastic amateur Rambler the sole of my boot fell off

Ian - dangerously close to the edge.

Now both dangerously close the edge and risking having our camera nicked by the onlooking goats with a self-timed shot.

When Ian isn’t papping weddings with me, he makes pretty websites. When he’s not doing that he’s a mean cook and when he’s not doing that, he’s not bad at DJing. He’s a bit of a night owl you see, and I’m not. So whilst by 10.30pm on the average night I can barely keep my eyes open, he’s wide awake and out on the tiles donning his headphones to get lost in music.

Along with his good friend, Lee [below, pictured left] they make up the DJ Duo Geek Chic Soundsystem.

On Thursday 1 April they’re going to be entertaining the crowds at Fabric Nightclub, London (Room One). Ahead of their performance they needed to hand over some promo shots to the club so we quickly whisked a few up whilst the weather was still good near our home at Boscombe Pier. They wanted something that was like a Pet Shop Boys promo… but with beards.

How handy it is to have a wife with a camera.

If you too are a night owl and are in London Town on 1 April you can find out more about Adventures in the Beetroot Field at Fabric, here.