Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we dine: Slow Travel is alive and kicking in Piemonte. Not everyone knows that the Slow Food movement was born in the small Piemontese town of Bra, back in 1986. It was founded by Italian food journalist Carlo Petrini in protest against the opening of the first McDonald’s in Italy […]
Fez. You might love it or hate it, but indifference is unlikely. You’ve never seen a place like Fez. Think of the medina as one huge treasure-hunt, a life-size labyrinth to lose yourself in, and don’t venture in without a ball of string. Few places are so difficult to understand and yet able to get […]
I’m the least likely candidate when a week long hike is mentioned at Trufflepig. But what is travel if not a challenge to your norms? Aren’t those experiences the most rewarding? And to be fair, hiking with Mountain Lodges of Peru is far from an uncomfortable experience. It was with some trepidation that I joined […]
I have cycled through the “City of London” many a time. The “City” refers to the financial centre hugging the north bank of the Thames between Tower Hill and Fleet Street. It is a weird region, teeming self-importantly during the week and eerily still at the weekend. During my time traversing its thoroughfares and alleys […]
“It’s imported.” The phrase has a certain cachet, doesn’t it? Imported caviar from Russia, imported Italian sports cars. Especially in New York City, it seems there’s nothing you can’t have if you’ve got the cash and you know the best source. And boy do we have an addictive source for you. We can’t really justify […]
Separating fantastic fact from the equally legendary fiction in the life of Frederick Courteney Selous is no easy task. Getting a full and accurate account of his life may never be possible, but let’s be frank, it doesn’t really matter. When you count the likes of Cecil Rhodes and Teddy Roosevelt among your friends, an […]
I’m a sucker for an accent—it’s like a lens through which everything is filtered. And on a recent trip to America’s Lowcountry, while literally basking in the expansive local drawl, I fell head over heels for the Inn at Palmetto Bluff. First off, the sheer scale of the property is astounding. A 22,000 acre private […]
“Vamos a la playa!” is perhaps my favourite phrase in the Spanish language. It is a little like the Brits saying “let’s have a nice cup of tea shall we?”, meaning let’s forget what ails us and focus on something else. In Spain and the Spanish-speaking world of Latin America, this is totally justified—it conjures […]
Together with Kate Hill of the Kitchen at Camont in France’s Gascony region, Trufflepig is offering the grand prize for the craziest food phenomenon ever to hit the web: the aptly-named Charcutepalooza. Read on for details of how to win a food trip that’s really worth its salt. It hardly needs pointing out that at […]
Although there are many things that make the internet great, one of its shortcomings is the way safari companies often exercise their right to poetic licence. A small amount of embellishment is fine, outright fabrications are not. To help you see what I am on about, I need to get a little dull for a […]
Remember summer? It’s fun at the time, but I enjoy it even more in the winter, scrolling through photos of bright blue and bright green with the odd glass of pastis gleaming in the foreground. Uh oh. My body is in January in the office; my mind’s in July in Provence. And not in just […]
I grew up in England’s glamourous northwest (home of Coronation Street and Take That), where excitement was not particularly varied. Playing in a motorway median was the highlight—like an extreme sport, the adrenaline came from car-dodging over four lanes. So whenever I find myself in a new city I look for an excursion that is […]
If the kids are already bored with their Christmas presents, I know a collector who might be interested. Toys are just one of his obsessions, and like any pig worth his weight in bacon, this collector has much more up his sleeve. To seek is to find, but to stumble upon is pure bliss. On […]
I’m torn—a big part of my job is to convey to you the amazing places that I go, so that you can go there too, and see just how amazing it was. Sometimes, however, I find a place so special that I’d really rather keep it to myself. So if I tell you about my […]
If trekking in the tropics with weird and wonderful wildlife is your thing, pack your hardcore hiking-boots for Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula. This 43,000-hectare park preserves the largest tract of Pacific coastal rainforest in Central America. The stats are impressive: over 500 species of trees, 400 species of birds (including most […]
On a trip to Africa you’re likely going to want a healthy dose of big-ticket wildlife. Stick with me, that’s coming, just not quite yet. The thing about a trip to Kenya is that the experience goes way beyond the safari. As I began to explain a few weeks ago, it’s about exposing yourself to something […]