Travel

At 3 a.m, with sleepless hours slipping by as storms besiege my tent, it’s easy to ask: why? Why swap the security of a home for a pilgrimage on foot with no itinerary beyond a smudged path on a 14th century map? And no comforts beyond those carried on my back or offered by strangers? Back on the bright path next morning, though, the question answers itself. The way is its own reward: the land resonates; the past speaks; my soul sings – and so do I. But my departure had not only been inspired by the pull of the open road. There were push factors, too. The economic attrition

At first glance, I wasn’t sure if an email I got recently about ‘adults-only flights’ was a joke. I’m a parent of two teenage boys who has observed with dismay the growing intolerance for children in the public square in recent years. But I’d never heard anything like this. So I reviewed the study of 1,000 adults conducted by PhotoAID, and while I don’t know how scientific it was given that it was carried out by a company that sells passport and visa photos, the results are striking. Eight in ten survey respondents said they want adult-only flights, and 64 per cent said they’re willing to pay a premium of 10 to

Strolling around the Belgian Comic Strip Center, admiring the elegant artwork of Hergé (creator of Tintin), I wonder for the umpteenth time why so many of my British friends are so disparaging about Brussels. It’s one of my favourite cities, but most Britons I know wouldn’t dream of planning a break here. They don’t know what they’re missing. I’ve been here countless times, yet on each visit I discover something new. It’s full of quirky shops and exquisite restaurants, and there are some excellent museums too. If your idea of fun (like mine) is nosing around art galleries and antique shops, with plenty of pitstops en route, you’ll have a

Last weekend, Beyoncé was paid $24 million (£19.5 million) to perform for 1,500 invited guests in Dubai. Somehow, I was among them. Her set, which was her first live performance in four years, was 85 minutes long. That’s £230,000 a minute or £13,000 per head. And those millions are the mere tip of the air-conditioned iceberg. Queen B’s record-smashing fee barely surpassed my own champagne and beluga caviar bill that evening – covered by the host. This was all in aid of the opening of a hotel – Atlantis The Royal – which cites itself as ‘the most ultra-luxury resort in the world’. Never has a ribbon-cutting ceremony been so

It’s every skier’s holiday nightmare. You turn up to the slopes and, instead of fresh white powder, you’re greeted by a mass of sludge slowly liquefying into green-brown mud.  The Alps have had a torrid season, with higher-than-average temperatures and heavy rain forcing many resorts to close, sometimes within weeks of opening. For long stretches it was too warm even to operate snow cannons, which can magic up artificial snow but require low temperatures to work. While snowfall has picked up in time to save the season in some places, in Italy alone there are now 200 fewer ski resorts than in the 1980s.  But there are still some pockets

Europe’s ‘winter heatwave’ has left large parts of the Alps and Pyrenees bereft of snow over the past fortnight, causing grassy pistes and cancelled ski holidays. So where to go for a guaranteed winter wonderland? Well, Tromsø in Norway is 350km north of the Arctic Circle, so reliably snowy. In an average winter, it sees 160 days with at least 25cm of snow on the ground – and at the moment locals are having to dig out their cars. This small yet sophisticated city on the periphery of continental Europe is well worth a trip, especially if you’re after some wintry pursuits a little less high octane than downhill skiing.

Imagine dividing up your holiday time between your farmhouse in Tuscany, your villa on the French Riviera, your Mallorcan townhouse, your cottage in the Cotswolds and your apartment in Chamonix. Instead of dealing with the hassle of renting such properties, or the upkeep of owning each one of them, you just turn up and everything is ready and familiar.  Belgians Hilde and Henrik love the concept of co-owning five holiday homes, enjoying two or three weeks in each a year. ‘Everyone treats the house as if it’s their own, and we even found the fridge half full of beer when we arrived at Soller [in Mallorca],’ says Henrik, in his

Spending Christmas Day abroad is, as they say, ‘Marmite’ – you either love the idea, or you hate it. But it seems there are plenty of us who love it. The Association of British Travel Agents estimates that five million Britons will escape abroad for Christmas and new year this month, with yesterday expected to be the busiest day for departures. Many are destined for sun-soaked destinations such as the Canary Islands, Southern Spain, Turkey, Barbados, the Middle East and Mexico. And I know exactly what the appeal is. My husband, young son and I have spent six of the past eight Christmases overseas – most of them at our second home

There was arguably no better advocate for holidaying in Britain than Queen Elizabeth II. Her Majesty loved to spend her summers in Scotland, having stayed at Balmoral each August since she was a girl. But could the next generation of royals favour the warmer climes of Cornwall over chilly Scotland? It certainly seems so. After Charles became King, William inherited the Duchy of Cornwall estate from his father. Not only is he now responsible for the Duchy’s extensive portfolio of Cornish property and farmland but he also inherits the 500-year-old Restormel Manor in the heart of Cornwall. Situated only a few miles from the house that inspired Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, it

Oh, Vienna. Home to Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Freud, the Danube, waltzing and coffee house culture, to name but a few. Famous for its history and culture, the Austrian capital’s cobbled streets fizz with stories of ages past.  In my opinion, there is no better time to visit than in the winter – and the run-up to Christmas in particular. This city knows how to do Christmas. The streets are lit with a plethora of Christmas lights, some of which have acquired fame in their own right (I am told a friendly rivalry exists between the fans of the chandeliers on Graben – designed to create the impression of a gigantic

The faded splendour of 1980s Margate is the backdrop for Sam Mendes’s new film Empire of Light, starring Olivia Colman and Colin Firth. Coming to UK cinemas on 9 January, it’s about a romance in the north Kent seaside town and the revival of a striking 1930s cinema with a distinctive brick ‘fin’ tower. Renamed briefly as the Empire Cinema during filming in the spring, Margate’s Grade II-listed Dreamland Cinema takes a starring role. In reality it’s part of the Dreamland amusement park complex that’s had 102 years of rollercoaster fortunes. The park underwent a £25 million makeover in 2017, and its relaunch contributed to the reinvention of Margate into

No disrespect to the hotel industry: staying in a hotel room, especially when there is someone nice with you, can be exciting and sexy. Staying in a hotel room on your own, though, can be exceedingly sad, boring and unsexy. Unfortunately, I’ve experienced more of the latter type of hotel stopover (a squalid hotel room in Addis Ababa as the occupants on the other side of the thin walls went at it like gangbusters being a particular abject experience that lingers in the mind). It makes paying a wad of cash for a lonely night even more galling. So thank goodness for hostels, which today are a far cry from

Ambling through the Christkindlmarkt, Munich’s biggest Christmas market, feeling distinctly tipsy after my third (or maybe my fourth?) mug of Glühwein, I experienced a strange sensation, something I hadn’t felt in ages. For the first time in a long while, I realised I was feeling rather festive. Back in Britain, I’m the archetypal Christmas grouch – but leave me in a German Christmas market for a few hours and I become a big kid again. This is the first year since Covid that Munich has been able to mount a proper Christmas market season. That might not sound like such a big deal to Brits, but it’s headline news in Bavaria.

Many things about Belgium are impenetrably mysterious to the incoming foreigner: the commune system, which language to use, how to politely eat moules. But few are as cryptic as the menu of sauces that accompany Belgian frites. Ketchup, tartare, barbecue and mayonnaise seem fine. But what is Samourai? Andalouse? Mega?  Unlike many great Belgian things that have successfully been exported (Trappist beer, chocolate, Tintin, speculoos biscuits, Audrey Hepburn), frites can only be experienced on home turf. And my, aren’t they so Belgian. First, the friteries or fritkots in Dutch – chip shop kiosks found wedged on to street corners and in city squares – are totally egalitarian and the service

As we all know, the Swiss love their clocks, their cheese and their chocolate. They also adore their railway. The trains are clean, comfortable, convenient and you can set your (Swiss) watch by them.  The system is 175 years old this year, a fact recently celebrated by the running of the world’s longest train through the Swiss Alps. It was quite a feat and took years to plan. The 1.2 mile-long train comprised 100 carriages and passed over 48 bridges and through 22 tunnels during its 15-mile journey, setting a new Guinness World Record as it did so. If you’re exasperated by British trains with the constant strikes, delays, cancellations,

If you’re going to visit Costa Rica, my advice is to steer clear of all the stuff that looks most exciting in the brochure: the zip-wires, the thermal springs and the white-water rafting. I’m not saying you won’t enjoy it. Nor realistically – especially if you’ve kids in tow – are you likely to be able to avoid it. Just be aware, though, that the best bits, as always, are the ones most tourists don’t see. Corcovado National Park in the remote south-west, for example. Well, I say ‘remote’. But actually, oddly enough for a country swathed in rainforest, hardly anywhere is truly inaccessible because of the remarkably good roads

I wanted to hate it. In the weeks leading up to my trip to Paris, I was told incessantly about how much of a dump it was, about how I’d be faced with overflowing bins and skilled pickpockets. I was even warned against drinking the tap water.  According to some, to be properly British means hating the French. And there’s plenty to take against: rude waiters, deliberate incompetence in maintaining their side of the Channel crossing, awkward double-cheek kissing, obsessiveness about cheese, astounding corruption in farming subsidies. My trip to France had one rule: do not enjoy it. Do not let them win. But I have a confession to make. It