On a recent trip I had it all—the best room, the best guide, the best meal, and yet something was missing. What has happened to me? Have I become that complicated? Quite the opposite in fact. If you take an old tree and cut through the rings of time, you will find at its heart the […]
Some say that if we were meant to fly we’d have been born with wings. Perhaps. But I doubt those naysayers have been to Milford Sound. And I’d bet a golden grouse they’ve never seen it by helicopter. The truth is New Zealand’s epic fjord land can only be appreciated fully if seen from the […]
Clothes may make the man. But the car he drives… well, that will tell you all about him. Likewise, the cars of a country can provide entertaining insight into the character of the local culture. So, let’s say you’re planning a trip, you love cars, and you’re looking for a fun way to turbo charge […]
Crossing the border from Nicaragua into neighbouring Costa Rica you may well be tempted to ask the question: what in the name of Anastasio Somoza Garcia happened here? For where Nicaragua can be likened to the black sheep of the family – dishevelled, temperamental and prone to disaster, Costa Rica is surely the family swot […]
There’s a reason Grandma’s been hoarding the sherry. Turns out she’s been keeping the best drink in the cabinet all to herself. It’s time to loosen her bony grip on the Amontillado. Here’s everything you ever needed to know about sherry but were too young to ask. There are five horsemen of the sherry apolcalypse: fino, […]
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom for travel in Europe are: food, wine, architecture, art, music, landscape and experimental alcoholic concoctions. Overflowing in all of the above, it’s no wonder that Jerez is my latest crush. After a dalliance with Córdoba and a brief fling with Úbeda, I didn’t expect to be swept off my feet so completely by […]
“You have destroyed something unique, to create something commonplace,” said Charles V, when his bishops crashed a Gothic cathedral right into the middle of Cordoba’s amazing 8C Mosque. The result was an amazing layer cake of Spanish historical flavour. I’m on a jaunt around Andalucia, getting to grips with the ebb and flow of Christian […]
Parts of Croatia and Montenegro’s Adriatic coast combine some of the most stunning landscape and villages in Europe, with the very worst that cheap mass tourism has to offer. How do you see past the café umbrellas and postcard stands, to the original character of the place? Since the likes of Dubrovnik and Kotor decided […]
It’s that time of year when any self-respecting Brit recognises his deep cultural debt to the sun-kissed city of Seville by rolling up his sleeves and sharpening his paring knife: it’s marmalade-making season. And perhaps the best time of year to visit Andalucia. What what?! You’re not British, or—worse still—you don’t make your own marmalade. […]
‘Marché’ means ‘market’. ‘Gras’ means ‘fat’. Welcome to the awesome ‘Marché au Gras’—the Ugolino’s Tower of every vegetarian’s worst nightmare, but the Bower of Bliss on my quest to understand authentic French country cooking. The Marché au Gras is where those of us who aren’t the wives of traditional peasant farmers buy our fattened geese […]
You’d never know it with a casual stroll through its charming streets, but Jerez de la Frontera, in Cadiz province, is home to perhaps the best flamenco scene in all of Spain, if not the world. If you are unfamiliar with this art form (i.e. if you think the Gypsy Kings or Ottmar Leibert are […]
Close your eyes (enough to allow for some mental visualization, but not so much that you can’t read this). Now, imagine that you’re standing on an 18th century rampart overlooking the sea. The air is humid and heavy, the sun warm like a pancake on your forehead. Seagulls are swooping around, making noise, in their […]
Whenever possible, we try to bring you the unique, the quirky and the off the beaten track. Occasionally though, we can’t help but point out the obvious—things that everyone knows about but that are so good we just have to mention them. Angkor Wat is one of those. Chances are if you went to Southeast […]
I slowly navigate my ATV along a winding path, through coarse salt grass and lonely stands of palm trees. The sun is low in the sky and the desiccated landscape is bathed in that magical golden African light. All of a sudden the path widens and I’m there on the edge of the Makgadikgadi Pans. […]
If you like to think about food as much as you like to cook it, eat it, grow it, discuss it, find it, dig it up, hunt it, forage for it, bottle it, ferment it or even shoot it, read on: we have the trip for you. La Petraia is a bio-dynamic field-to-fork agriturismo high up […]
The stretch of the Thames that runs from Oxford to London is an almost uninterrupted perfect run of weeping willow’d prettiness, unspoilt villages and top notch pubs. No better way to discover it than by plying the river in a 100-year-old rowboat with a few friends. Jerome K. Jerome’s 120 year old book “Three Men […]