Travel

Nothing beats bathing in Bath’s waters

As beautiful as Bath is, it is more interesting underground. This is where the ruins, the gods, and the waters are: the steps to the temple of Sulis Minerva near the Pump Room, the Victorian tunnels, and, in the eerie plant room below the Gainsborough Bath Spa Hotel, the water from the ancient springs, waiting to be purified before it flows into the Gainsborough’s private baths. The three springs of Bath – The Cross, the Hetling and the King’s – formed when rainwater fell on the hills 10,000 years ago, descended 2500 metres and rose through the limestone to the city. They produce one million litres a day, at a

Secret France: the hidden havens worth discovering

Vive la France! Our beloved Gallic neighbour has reopened its borders to the casual tourist once more and, as travel slowly yawns its way back to something resembling normalcy, it is the perfect time to hop across the channel. France, in my half-French-totally-unbiased opinion, is never a bad idea. The diversity of the country is staggering – offering you undulating valleys dotted with vineyards, luxurious beach breaks or quaint Provençal villages; the eternal allure of Paris and majestic snow-capped peaks. But why not discover its lesser known enclaves? Seasoned Francophiles may like to take this opportunity, after a miserable time apart, to discover hidden France. So, here are my top

The crowd-free European city breaks to try this year

Finally, it looks like we might actually be able to go on holiday in Europe again. I’ve been overseas a few times since this pesky covid business began, but it’s always been for work, not leisure, and it’s always been a nuisance: tests on the way out, tests on the way back and yet more tests when you get home… However now travel restrictions are loosening up, a trip to the Continent no longer feels quite so fraught, and that magnificent indulgence – a short-haul city-break – seems like a practical option once more. So where to go? Well, you’re bound to have your own favourite destinations – but if

Will I ever go on holiday again?

Last night I dreamt I went on holiday again. It seemed to me I stood by the departure gate, and for a while I could not enter, for I kept setting the metal detector off. Then, like all unvaccinated dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed through the barrier. The boarding tunnel wound away in front of me, its sides covered with weeds. As I pulled my hand luggage on squeaky wheels, I lost sight of the open door of the plane, and then it appeared again, the smiling stewardess beckoning. I came to the door suddenly with my heart thumping. There was a British

The Canary Islands are a Mecca for Europe’s lockdown escapees

Those looking for ancient culture will find it in abundance on Fuerteventura – a canary island known more for its beaches than its heritage. I’d ended up in a hostel run by an Italian couple deep in the island’s outback. Looming over the hostel was the holy mountain of Tindaya, on whose summit indigenous islanders once left their dead. It also has the most important set of podomorph engravings in the world — 300 pairs of foot-shaped engravings, the left and right soles with attendant digits flush together, carved into the rock. These simple and rather touching imprints struck a particular chord with me after my extended Camino across the Iberian Peninsula following the

Why work from homers are buying in Barbados

Life in the world’s newest republic is sweet. It’s peak season in Barbados, and another wave of Covid hasn’t stopped the rum sundowners flowing on the Caribbean island’s sugar-sand beaches. Given half the chance, many of us might well prefer to spend January wafting between beachfront restaurants and sun loungers, as the packed front-end of planes heading there during December have proved. Many of the island’s predominantly British holiday home owners have been heading to their properties on the West Coast of the island – and there will be no doubt a few villas changing hands too. ‘In the early stages of the pandemic there were a few nervous owners worrying whether

Italy: where to combine culture and coast

Holiday makers tend to divide themselves into two camps – those seeking culture and those for whom a holiday is not a holiday without a chance to flop on the beach or by the pool (with a good book and a cocktail for company). The good news is that in Italy you rarely have to sacrifice the former for the latter. Travel abroad has been slowly cranking into action again since September. And, whilst Omicron might have put a dampener on immediate holiday plans there’s still plenty of opportunity to dream about next summer. Fully vaccinated travellers are currently allowed into Italy without the need to isolate which bodes well for a

Europe’s secret beaches: from Constanta to De Haan

As winter drags on and on, and warm sunny days become distant memories, discussions in our family always turn to summer holidays. We only go away together once a year so our trip has to tick all the boxes. My daughter won’t fly long haul, my son craves excitement, I like exploring places that are off the beaten track and my wife just wants to drop and flop. It’s a tricky combination but, as we’ve found out down the years, there are plenty of European seaside towns in unexpected places – places where you can do all the usual seaside stuff and still have a few adventures while you’re there.

How to drive to Greece

Readers of a certain age might recall the days when people ‘went for a drive’ as a form of pleasure. Yes, as unbelievable as it sounds now that combustion-engined cars are demonised, fuel prices are at an all-time high and unwittingly straying into a ‘low emission zone’ can cost you the price of a plane ticket to New York, there really was a time when people got behind the wheel and went somewhere simply for the joy of it. And do you know what? I still do. Yes. I am shameless. I still love that feeling of slipping into the driving seat, shutting the door and heading off on a vehicular adventure.I

The windswept Devon island adored by Agatha Christie

Burgh Island certainly knows how to make an entrance. As you descend the hill at dusk into Bigbury-on-Sea the white hotel drinks up all the light. Like a flashy piece of costume jewellery, it’s the only thing you notice on the skyline. But, then again, it’s used to making good first impressions. Despite its diminutive size, the island appears in Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun before any of the novel’s characters, upstaging even Hercule Poirot. The reader is never in any doubt that the book’s murder will hinge entirely on ‘the little windswept gull-haunted promontory – cut off from land at each high tide’ and the ‘comfortable and most exclusive hotel’ on its

How to spend 48 hours in Rome

Contrary to the title of this article, do not spend 48 hours in Rome on your first attempt. Unless you have legs of steel, high levels of determination and a desire for non-stop sightseeing. The two pivots about which the city’s history turns – the Vatican and the Roman Forum – are best taken a day each and visited early, fuelled by €1 coffees and sweet, crumbly pasticcini off sticky local bar counters: 48 hours, done. But to focus on these titanic monuments of European history alone is to miss the real chatter of the city: couples meeting for Monday drinks by the Ponte Sisto, watching the sun go down

The secret to exploring Istanbul

Two weeks before Covid began to hit Europe, I stood in the Basilica Cistern beneath Istanbul, steadily getting dripped on. Built during the reign of the Emperor Justinian I in 532, just before another deadly pandemic – the plague of Justinian – the cistern lies beneath Istanbul’s tourist hotspot, and despite it being damp, dark and having stands of 007 merchandise at its entrance and exit, it is one of the most enchanting places in a city that has captivated its visitors for over a thousand years. ‘If the Earth were a single state,’ Napoleon once pronounced, ‘Istanbul would be its capital,’ and upon visiting you begin to understand why. Istanbul is

Fit for 007: the filmic destinations that feature in Bond

Birds eye shots of Aston Martins cruising along hairpin roads, steamy scenes on chalk-white beaches: the choice of James Bond filming locations has the power to put new holiday destinations on the map. Here we round up the best places to visit from No Time To Die – and rediscover old favourites from the archive. Puglia, Italy Some of the most nail biting scenes in the latest film involve Bond jumping from an aqueduct into a ravine to escape his pursuers then hurtling round the sidestreets of an ancient Italian town on a motorbike. Most of the scenes are shot around the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Matera in southern

Who let the dog out?

Caroline and I are just back from a weekend break in Scotland and, nice though it was, I hadn’t realised how difficult travelling anywhere is at the moment. We had originally planned to drive, but the fuel crisis put paid to that, so we had to book a last-minute flight. EasyJet from Luton to Edinburgh was £475.92 for the two of us — ye gods! — and three days in the mid-stay car park was a whopping £128. To cap it all, the bus that takes you from the car park to the airport wasn’t running — Covid, obviously — so we had to walk about half a mile carrying

The thrill of running late

‘Dad, why is it that whenever we go anywhere, we’re always running to catch a train?’ asked Charlie, my 13-year-old. This was just over a week ago and Charlie and I, along with 16-year-old Ludo, were running from the Holiday Inn Express in Birmingham to Snow Hill station in the hope of catching the 7.25 p.m. to the Hawthorns. Miss that and we’d be in trouble because the next one wasn’t until 7.57 p.m. and we’d be late for kick-off. We were there to watch QPR play West Brom and the match started at 8 p.m. Charlie’s right. He and I have vowed to go to as many QPR games

End of the line: it’s time to rethink the queue

Flying to Kalamata this week, I did my own little bit to reduce the terrible queues at Heathrow Terminal 5. Heroically, I stacked up the grey luggage trays once they’d been emptied by passengers coming through security. As a result, there were more loaded trays for people to pick up, and a smaller tailback of passengers — including me — waiting to pick up their unloaded trays. It was just a tiny example of the hundreds of things that could be done to reduce queues in airports, hospitals, train stations, supermarkets… The British may be famous for their patient queueing but it doesn’t mean we actually like doing it. So

Portrait of the week: Gas prices soar, cabinet reshuffled and a green light for travel

Home To prevent a shortage of meat, which relies on carbon dioxide in its packaging, the government gave millions of taxpayers’ money to an American company to reopen a fertiliser works at Stockton, Co. Durham, that produces the gas as a by-product. The plant had been shut down because of a rise in wholesale gas prices caused by calm weather preventing rival wind-energy production, a fire at an interconnector reducing electricity supplies from France, and Russia putting up the price of its gas exports. Gas-supply companies began to go bust because the government price-cap prevented them from charging as much as they paid for gas. There was clamour for money

At last, Biden’s cruel travel ban is ending

For many Brits and Europeans with ties to America, human relationships have been put on hold for an insufferably long time during the Covid-19 crisis. Today, at last, that changed. White House advisor Jeffrey Zients announced that anyone fully vaccinated from anywhere in the world will be able to enter the U.S. with a negative test result from November. To say this was a comfort to millions who felt trapped in or outside of the US seems to trivialise the consequences. Look at the Twitter hashtag #LoveIsNotTourism to see the real-world effects of enforced separation.  Upon hearing the possibility of the ban’s lifting, I booked a UK trip for November, almost two years since my

Only Iain Sinclair could glimpse Hackney in the wilds of Peru

It seemed like a preposterous proposition. For decades, Iain Sinclair has been an assiduous psychogeographer of London, an eldritch cartographer mapping ley lines between Hawksmoor churches and Ripper tours, skulking around the torque of the M25 and fulminating about the Millennium Dome and the gentrification (and gerrymandering) around the Olympic Stadium. So when I learned that his new book was about a journey to Peru, I sarcastically imagined he would be attempting to find the grave of Paddington Bear. Not so, and this is vintage Sinclair. His great-grandfather, Arthur, was a botanist and author. After sojourns in Ceylon and Tasmania, he was sent to assess an area by the ‘corporate

Why there’s never been a better time to see Venice

You’re never going to see Venice quite like this again. Usually swarming with tourists – not to mention the enormous cruise ships that dock in its waters ­– the city has been given a serious breather by the coronavirus pandemic. Those lengthy queues to get into its most famous hotspots have disappeared; the picturesque back streets lie empty and a dramatic fall in water traffic has seen the sediment in its 150 canals settle, allowing their vibrant colour to return. La Serenissima – much to many of the locals’ relief – has become serene once more. Where to stay Belmond Hotel Cipriani In a city where five-star luxury errs towards