Travel

The last time I stayed in Courchevel it was in a tatty roadside chalet a long way down the mountain. One detail sticks: pickled cockles piled high on a platter at the closing banquet, à la Fanny Cradock. That was more than a decade ago. This time, we were staying at 1,850 metres, which is another world. The resort, always chichi up top, has undergone a kind of wholesale rebranding in recent years and now the high end of Courchevel is ridiculously high-end. There’s Prada and Chanel and Gucci and Cartier. Three of France’s 16 ‘palais’-designated hotels are here. There are 12 Michelin stars (more per square metre than anywhere else

Last time I went to Thailand, there’d been something of a misunderstanding about accommodation, and my friend and I ended up in a dive on Khao San Road. In a grim room with stained mattresses and peeling paint, the thud of beats from the disco made everything vibrate gently. Stalls outside offered fake IDs, tatty souvenirs and novelty edible insects. I’m not averse to eating crickets, but these ones needed embalming fluid, not cooking oil. So we took a tuk-tuk across town to the Grand Palace, just seeking a break from sunburned students in short shorts drawling about full-moon parties. Instead, what happened next was one of the highlights of

There are plenty of places to fly to for winter sun, but only one place that offers five-star hotels for the price of a B&B in Lyme Regis. South Africa has always been good value for British visitors, even five years ago when there were 11 rand to the pound. Now that figure is closer to 23 rand. For visitors, an entire country is half price. This freak situation may not last; so there might never be a better time to visit. The choices are almost overwhelming — safaris, Anglo-Zulu battlefield tours, scenic drives in the Drakensberg mountains — but Cape Town is a wonderful place to start. There’s a

The terrible news that Henry Worsley had died just 30 miles short of crossing the Antarctic continent unsupported reached me just after I returned from the South Atlantic. We had been in the very stretch of ocean that a relative of his somehow navigated for 800 miles in a tiny boat with Sir Ernest Shackleton and four crew members after their ship was lost in the ice 100 years ago. Unlike them, we were warm and cosy in the Pharos SG, a government vessel that supplies the bases and patrols the well-managed fisheries of South Georgia. We passed the cove where the six men landed and ate baby albatrosses and

If you’ve never heard of Lake Iseo, you’re not alone. Nestling shyly between chocolate-box Como and glamorous Garda, the smallest of Lombardy’s four major lakes has quietly resisted the limelight over the centuries. Fashionistas may frolic on photo shoots in Garda’s ritzy spas, while excursion boats patrol Como’s west bank in the hope of spotting George Clooney in his front garden. But pint-sized Iseo shelters beneath cascades of forest, her charms undisturbed by tourist hordes. Iseo’s waters shimmer benignly amid nothing more disruptive than birdsong, the splashing of traghetti boats and the occasional peal of church bells. Inevitably, a few cognoscenti have rumbled Lake Iseo’s unique brand of magic over

If Italy is the elegant, over-the-knee boot plunged into the Mediterranean, then Puglia is the narrow peninsula that forms its spiky stiletto heel. The word that springs to mind regarding Puglia is trullo — miniature stone structures that look like igloos, and in my experience are the ideal devices to convince your kids to holiday with you. Why would they choose an eight-day party in Croatia when they can stay in cute white circular mini-houses, with an infinity pool in front? Even better, you could go for a trulli hotel, complete with that Puglian speciality, the beach pool. And into these beach pools wade the Italians, with their indifferent attitude

Say ‘Pisa’ and everyone thinks of the Leaning Tower. Fair enough; it’s a curiosity, and the tourist board must be pleased that Mussolini’s plan to straighten it came to nothing. It stands, or leans, next to the cathedral in the Piazza dei Miracoli, and beyond the cathedral is the Baptistry, one of the most beautiful buildings in Italy. I was in Pisa for the annual book festival, which attracts an extraordinary number of independent publishers and huge audiences (25,000 over a long weekend). Each year the director, Lucia della Porta, invites a foreign delegation, and this was Scotland’s turn. We were housed in the Royal Victoria Hotel, which dates from

Cumberland and Westmorland Wrestling is the best thing in the Lake District. I lived near Wigton, just north of the fells, for two years and escaping the shadow of the clingfilm factory to witness generations of champions, all called Brocklebank, do writhy battle on the Cumbrian turf was a delight. Fools might think that the embroidered pants worn by competitors over their white suits indicate a camp, silly sport, but they are wrong. It is a noble art and its practitioners are heroes; legends of the Lakes. The terminology is as thrilling as the bouts: swinging hype, hank, cross buttock, inside click. (The latter is a particularly devilish move.) While

Gozo — Malta’s tiny island neighbour — was once rather a crucial spot in the Mediterranean. The Knights of Malta built a wall across Gozo’s Ramla Bay to stop Napoleon invading. The clever little Corsican attacked via the undefended gully next door instead. Homer’s island of Ogygia — ‘the navel of the sea’ in the Odyssey — is thought to be Gozo. It was in a love-cave above Ramla Bay that Odysseus caroused with the honey–voiced sea-nymph Calypso. Stranded on the beach, clinging to a plank from his shattered boat, he took refuge in her arms- — for seven years. He wasn’t that desperate to get home to his darling