I have actually solved the problem (finally) :) It seems that the footer setting on the customisable aspect of the theme had on default, the colour 'black' hence all hyperlinks were turning black where the text happened to be on a black background.

This is found on in the footer options > link colour section. Having changed the colour to grey, the issue has now been resolved.

Hope this helps someone somebody at some point :)

Thank you so much for your advice and signposting to your website. I have have given it a stab and have more or less managed to get to grips with generating hotspots. Admittedly, it took several attempts to get the coordinates right having had to resort to going through a somewhat manual process of trial and error to figure things out. Whilst not responsive, I am not too fussed as I have fixed the size of the image on the website for now. The only problem is the resolution of the actual image has since dropped following adding on so many hotspots on to the image... is there a way to bypass this?

Thanks again and much appreciated!

you might get really annoyed with me now - this is the problem i found- they are not responsive.
after doing a little digging there is a plugin - which you will kick me for called Image Hotspot by DevVN.
the help has not been translated into english, but if you watch the video then you get the gist.
if you need a hand with this give me a shout.
but the essence is that you make up a small image for the pointer and then place them on the larger image and they give you a call out and are clickable.
once you have added the pins image to the main image then double click each pin and you can add the relevant data.
if you want people to go around the pins in a certain order when using tab then number them with the id.
the pins aresort of responsive - just tried shrinking my browser and they stayed in almost position - better than by hand believe me.
I hope you get on with this plugin, but at least you know how to do it manually.Paul.

Thank for taking the time to reply and my apologies for the delay in getting back. Actually, I sorted out the poor resolution thing by actually cross referencing the jpeg detail with and without the hot spots. For some odd reason, I seemed to have had acquired a random number in the jpeg file and once I deleted this the resolution of the image went back to normal! The lack of a responsive element to this hotspot has been a bit annoying (on one occasion I downloaded a plug in to see if I could add the magnifying function to the image. Not being able to get the function I wanted, I deleted the plug-in and since, then the hotspots have all misaligned. Fortunately, I had kept the original coordinates for the hotspots in Word, so backtracking a bit, I did some trial and error again to get the hotspots in the right places (for some reason the coordinates were in a different place to the original) . In essence, all in good order so thank you again.

Thank you so much for your super prompt reply phil1944. I played around a bit more and ultimately found out that whilst nothing was showing on the opening pages, only when I actually published my posts (as I have put everything in draft mode), I could then see excerpts of these posts on the opening blog. Hence, all resolved. Thanks!

Ahha! I always complete a post and publish it immediately before moving on to the next one.