Homepage not updating and admin bar not showing on homepage

[moderated to fix link]

My website is https://www.reluctanttourist.com

It’s a travel blog that I’ve been keeping for years. A while back I tried to change things round and think I’ve done something that has affected the homepage. (Have I deleted it’s template or something?) It is now no longer updating with new blog posts and also doesn’t show the admin bar when i’m logged in- instead it shows a white bar and ‘??’

I’ve read various issues and gone through the help suggestions. These seem to treat the two issues above of not having an admin bar and not having a homepage that’s updating separately and don’t seem to cover when they occur together. I’ve made sure everything is up-to-date and deactivated all plug-ins, emptied caches on various computers and iPhones/iPads. I’ve also looked to see if ‘WP-footer’ is correct in the templates which it seems to be but I’m not sure if I’ve looked in the correct template?

I’ve also set up two new pages (‘welcome’ and ‘blog’) and tried to make the site have a static homepage of ‘welcome’ and then the blogs showing on the ‘blog’ tab.

I’ve installed the redirection plugin and tried to redirect the broken homepage to the blog page but this doesn’t seem to have worked (though I’m not sure if I’m putting in the correct pages in the correct formats)

This however hasn’t worked and whenever you go to the site it just goes to the older broken version where the most recent post is ‘king of the mountain’

See https://www.reluctanttourist.com

If you click from here onto one of the other menu tabs (say ‘bedrooms’)

See https://www.reluctanttourist.com/bedrooms

You can then see the full site and current pages. ‘welcome’ and ‘blog’ both appear as menu items.

If you click on ‘blog’ https://www.reluctanttourist.com/blog

You can then see what the current opening page should be like with the most up-to-date blog ‘hell on earth’ showing.

If you then click back on home or on the picture bar at the top it takes you back to the broken homepage.

So the question is how can I get rid of the broken homepage and replace it with the blog page. When I go to my pages in admin there is no ‘home’ page tab. When I look at the url that the ‘home’ menu item points to it says it’s a custom link and shows:

‘https://www.reluctanttourist.com’ – the broken homepage

I don’t seem to be able to amend this at all.

Any help would be much appreciated as currently I’m stuck!!!

Thanks