Happy New Year! Welcome to 2026 and all the adventures that it may bring us!
I very much enjoyed 2025. Myself and my husband had several short breaks, which of course involved the odd location or two. Some I actually managed to write about for this blog – the pub from ‘Trainspotting’ in Glasgow, and The Dark Hedges from ‘Game of Thrones’ in Northern Ireland. There were many others I’ve not got around to yet, such as our pilgrimage to Richmond, near London for the locations from the Apple TV series ‘Ted Lasso’.
I did managed to post 6 blogs, but that fell rather short of my ‘blog a month’ target I mentally aim for. It’s not that I’m short of ideas, I have a backlog going back many, many years which would make some great posts. I just struggle with focusing on getting them written, and I honestly enjoy planning the trip and experiencing the location more than the analysis afterwards.
I’ve always been quite content with this blog being tucked away in a corner of the internet with just a few subscribers and occasional viewers. Out of curiosity I’ve kept an eye on the statistics page and it’s been some consolation that since I started it – back in October 2016 – it’s had a little more traffic every year. This year though has seen a remarkable increase in visitors and this has motivated me to actually take the blog more seriously. Take a look at this graph;
That’s very nearly 5000 visitors and 15,000 views! Quite a step up from 1035 visitors and 1397 views in 2024. Below is a list of the most viewed posts;
What happened this year? I’m calling it the ‘Andor effect’. The Disney+ television series ‘Star Wars Andor’, about the backstory of a character that was introduced in the prequel film ‘Rogue One – A Star Wars Story’ and promptly killed off at the end of it, shouldn’t have worked. I remember thinking when it was first announced, why are they making a show about this character and era of Star Wars? Then we watched the first season and it was brilliant, and then we watched the second season and it was stunning. One of those rare gems in television where the combination of writer, cast and production create something that an audience embraces wholeheartedly. Especially rare in an era where the old adage ‘no-one hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans’ has never been more true.
What does this have to do with my blog? Well I visited the Barbican Centre in London back in 2024 knowing that they’d filmed some of the first season there and had returned for season two. After making this post the blog went from a couple of visits a month, to several visits in a day! I honestly don’t think I’ve gone a day since that blog post went up that I haven’t had a least one new view or visitor. It just goes to show that there are a lot of people that want to know where Andor was filmed.
Another clear demonstration of the ‘Andor effect’ is what’s happened in Cleveleys. The north-west coastal town was used for some scenes in Andor’s first season back in 2021 which I wrote about here . There is now a plaque commemorating it on the floor in the area used as a filming location. There’s also an annual Star Wars meet-up and mini Comic-Con held in a nearby hotel. The community is proud to celebrate its dual existence as an English seaside town and Star Wars holiday planet ‘Niamos’. https://www.discoverwyre.co.uk/events/event/308/star-wars-meet-up-niamos
Looking at the figures for my other blog posts I’ve noticed that December saw a rise in people searching for locations from ‘In Bruges’ and happening upon my January 2025 post about the film’s locations here. Forget ‘Die Hard’ I’m claiming ‘In Bruges’ as an overlooked Christmas film!
So what will 2026 bring to this little film location travel blog? I’m going to keep going – I will do a post a month. I have a few ideas lined up from places I’m been to already, and a few from places I’m hoping to get to in the next few months. One post will be very local, another a little more exotic, and I’ve at least one more Indiana Jones blog to come, so keep an eye out for those.
Thank you to all of you who’ve visited my blog over the years, I’d like to think it may have inspired a few trips. Please let me know in the comments if you’ve visited any of the locations I’ve written about or if you have any on your personal bucket list that you’d love to see in person one day.
From scene to seen 