Travel

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 2 March 2017

And the losers are… La La Land was mistakenly announced as winner of the Oscar for best picture before the error was corrected in favour of the film Moonlight. Some other announcements which went terribly wrong: — In 2015 Miss Universe host Steve Harvey announced Miss Colombia as the winner. Two minutes after she had been crowned Harvey came back on stage to apologise that he had misread the card and in fact Miss Philippines had won. — In January 2016 Heart FM newsreader Fiona Winchester mistakenly announced that David Cameron, then prime minister, had died, before correcting herself and saying that David Bowie had died. — In December 2015

Thursday

Christian Wolmar

Let me take you through the night

As a child, I used to travel with my mother from London to Cannes, a journey that took slightly under 24 hours. The strangest part of the trip was the three or four hours in Paris, where the train trundled between the Gare du Nord and the Gare de Lyon along the Petite Ceinture, giving us a view of rundown parts of Paris which tourists never normally saw. Sometimes we would cheat and take a cab, giving us a couple of hours off the train, during which we enjoyed a relaxed steak frites in the Train Bleu restaurant with its elaborate belle époque decor. I often wondered why the train

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 26 January 2017

‘If life is a race, I feel that I’m not even at the starting line,’ I said to the doctor in French. (I’d composed, polished and rehearsed the sentence in the waiting room beforehand.) She was a sexy piece in her early fifties with a husky voice. She listened to my halting effort to describe my depression with a smile playing lightly over her scarlet lips as though I were relating an amusing anecdote with a witty punchline lurking just around the corner. I further explained in French that I had been properly but briefly depressed once before, about 15 years ago. Here my tenses let me down badly, and

Thursday

William Cook

Morocco: A match made in heaven

I’m sitting by the pool in a lush Moroccan garden playing chess with Nigel Short, and I feel like an amateur boxer who’s stepped into the ring with Mike Tyson. This is the man who took on World Chess Champion Gary Kasparov. He could destroy me in an instant. Actually, there’s no need. In a few moves I’ve destroyed myself. After this chess weekend at Ezzahra, a chic retreat in Marrakech, I’d hoped to show Britain’s greatest grandmaster how much I’ve learnt. Instead, I end up playing like a complete idiot. Thankfully Nigel is a perfect gent, accepting my abject resignation with good grace, and my humiliation is soon forgotten

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Italy: I’ve got Rome on repeat

My year was topped and tailed with trips to Rome. In March, as the blossom unfurled along the Tiber and the city’s churches prepared for Easter, I met four girlfriends from university, one of whom was working as a chef for the Rome Sustainable Food Project based at the American Academy. Then, in late November, I went back by myself and stayed at the Villa Spalletti Trivelli. It’s hard to say which was more pleasurable; Rome is Rome in every season. In spring, we all crammed ourselves into a bedsit in an old pasta factory in the fashionable Trastevere district. During the day we pretended to be a bunch of

Conor Flynn

Sweden: Multiple thrills, minimal risk

All too often in life there’s a gap between expectation and reality. Not with driving on ice. The expectation is tantalising, but the reality is demanding, exhilarating, and so much fun you’re surprised it’s legal. I’ve been doing it for 13 years, taking groups of around 15 on an annual trip to Sweden. Every single time it’s an absolute joy to witness the hilarity, thrills and sense of satisfaction that our guests enjoy in just three days. We start each visit with a little bit of theory for the technically minded — though nothing really prepares you for driving on a frozen lake. The fundamental skill to master is how

Thursday

William Cook

Zurich’s wild side

On the green edge of Zurich, where this neat and tidy city melts into neat and tidy countryside, an icon of Zurich’s hedonistic heyday has been reborn. The Atlantis Hotel reopened last December, restoring an old landmark to the city and reconnecting prim and proper Zurich with its rebellious past. If you’ve only ever been to Zurich on business, you may find it hard to think of this staid city as rebellious, but bear with me: Zurich really does have a wild side, and in the 1970s and 1980s the Atlantis was where it could be found. From Eric Clapton to Elton John, from Freddie Mercury to Frank Zappa, the

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

In Trump’s Texas, the oil men awaken to hope of new prosperity

 Houston, Texas It’s hard to find anyone in polite society here who admits to having voted for Trump, even among the oil men. But 4.7 million Texans did so, giving him 53 per cent of the popular vote. In redneck rural counties the Donald carried four fifths of the ballot, but Hillary Clinton was ahead in urban Houston, whose citizens pride themselves on good relations between white, black and Latino communities and on the welcome they offer to newcomers — including, a decade ago, a quarter of a million refugees from hurricane-hit New Orleans. But still this is predominantly an oil town, and an industry that has suffered losses and slashed

Sara Wheeler

Up where the air is clear

Robert Twigger’s father was born in a Himalayan hill resort and carried to school in a sedan chair. His son, born in 1965 and long fascinated by the region, has produced a social and cultural history of the mountains. It is a hybrid volume — and why not? Twigger leaves no mountain path untouched in his bookish reportage. Topics covered in this long book include crustal formation and destruction, the pre-Buddhist Bon religion (even today 10 per cent of Tibetans are Bon-worshippers), shamans, yeti, Colonel Francis Younghusband (‘the first mountaineer’), altitude sickness (which fascinates Twigger), the 19th-century exploration of Nain Singh, that bloody annoying Madame Blavatsky and much else. Chapter

Thursday

Mark Palmer

Bordering on insanity | 3 November 2016

There are lots of signs at Gatwick about how it is unacceptable to be ‘rude or abusive’ to Border Force staff. One poster warns that losing your temper or gesticulating in a threatening manner could be a criminal offence. Keep a lid on it, is the-message. My wife Joanna and I recently had plenty of time to study these missives and just about kept a lid on it after returning from a weekend in Spain. It was a Monday evening that became a Monday night at Gatwick’s north terminal as thousands of travellers snaked back and forth for nearly an hour at passport control in an atmosphere that swung from

Thursday

Stephen Bayley

Contours of the mind

In Australia, I have been told, the female pubic area is sometimes known as a ‘mapatasi’ because its triangular shape resembles a map of Tasmania. And since we are discussing cartography and the nether regions, it is wonderful to find in the British Library’s new exhibition, Maps and the 20th Century, that Countess Mountbatten wore knickers made out of second world war airmen’s silk escape maps. Maps certainly colonise our imaginations in many different ways. The allies in Iraq had a ‘road map’ rather than a strategy. So much of personal value can be lost in the creases and folds of our own ‘mental maps’. And couples who often travel

Maggie Fergusson

Tormented genius

Married as I am to an antiquarian book dealer, and living in a house infested with books and manuscripts, I’m constantly having to edit my own little library so as to be able to breathe. But three volumes have survived successive culls — Pax Britannica, Heaven’s Command and Farewell the Trumpets — Jan (or James as she was when these books were written) Morris’s trilogy about the British empire. It is, Morris says, ‘the intellectual and artistic centrepiece of my life’, and it opens on the morning of 22 June 1897 with Queen Victoria visiting the telegraph room at Buckingham Palace on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee. She was,

Thursday

Patrick Marnham

Japan Notebook | 20 October 2016

Tokyo is visual chaos everywhere, the antithesis of the Japanese interior. It is a multilevel jumble of overpasses, neon signs, electric pylons, railway lines and traffic lights. The pavements are empty, not a pedestrian human in sight. And the leader of North Korea is still lobbing ballistic missiles right over Japan and cackling away about his collection of nuclear warheads. Drinking beer in a sushi bar in Ginza on our first night, I ask my neighbour whether people are worried by the behaviour of the lunatic child across the water. ‘No,’ he replies. ‘I am far more frightened by our prime minister. He really is dangerous.’ Shinzo Abe is proposing to repeal

Thursday

Brian Hancill

Mississippi hospitality

Driving into Greenwood after dark, we pull into a gas station and ask directions to a late-night grocery store. ‘Sir… I have a suggestion,’ says a young man in the queue. ‘I’ll be going that way in this big old box.’ He waves towards a magnificently clapped-out Chrysler at the fuel pumps. ‘Y’all just follow me.’ Our convoy proceeds to the store at 25mph with no turn signals. Then, with another wave, our Good Samaritan turns and rumbles back towards the gas station. He wasn’t really going our way at all. A little later the Crystal Rooms restaurant reopens its just-closed kitchen for our small party. ‘We’ll feed y’all… come

Mark Mason

Beautiful city, beautiful game…

The secret to keeping any relationship going is, of course, to see as little of each other as possible. We all know what familiarity breeds, so there’s no point pushing your luck. Imagine my delight, therefore, on discovering a holiday company that specialises in separating you from your other half while you’re away. Well, for a couple of hours anyway. Footballbreak.co.uk offers trips to European cities whose teams play the beautiful game particularly beautifully: Madrid, Munich, Paris and the like. As well as organising your flights and hotel, they also arrange tickets for the match. So while the female(s) of your party swan off to hammer the credit card, the

Thursday

Chris Mullin

Diary – 6 October 2016

Any day now, the government will make its long delayed announcement on whether a third runway should be built at Heathrow or Gatwick. Personally I am against both. During my 18 undistinguished months as an environment minister, I learned one thing about the aviation lobby: their appetite is voracious. They want more of everything. Runways, terminals, you name it. I also learned that in the end, often after initial resistance, governments always give way. Although from time to time industry representatives hint that they would be prepared to make concessions on the handful of night flights that come in over central London each morning, disturbing the sleep of several million

Philip Marsden

Over hill and dale

When it comes to speaking of foreign affairs, Rory Stewart is one of the few MPs who does not peddle bland abstractions. Many of his parliamentary colleagues inhabit a blah-blah land where terms such as ‘peace process’ and ‘international community’ have meaning. An upbringing in the Far East, where his father was a diplomat, as well as years spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, have given Stewart direct experience not only of nations but of town quarters, villages and individuals. Walking was his preferred method in Afghanistan, where he tramped across the country with a dog and a Punjabi fighting stick. The dog couldn’t keep up and died, but here for

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

A free vote on the Heathrow runway? Don’t be so wet, Prime Minister

Hinkley Point — for all its flaws and the whiffs of suspicion around its Chinese investors — has finally received Downing Street’s blessing. Meanwhile, ministers hold the party line that High Speed 2 will go ahead according to plan, backed by news that the project has already bought £2 billion worth of land; and investors hunt for shares in the construction sector that might benefit from the multi-billion-pound infrastructure spree widely expected in Chancellor Philip Hammond’s autumn statement. But still no decision on a new airport runway for London — the one piece of digger work, short of tunnelling under the Atlantic, that would signal Britain’s raging post-Brexit appetite for

Thursday

Oliver Balch

Writing on the fly

Bogotá airport, immigration form in hand. Tourist, migrant, businessman? Andrés Neuman ponders the descriptors, unsure which to tick. He opts for the second. ‘I’d like to be a migrant.’ The decision is telling, and frames much of what follows in this curious, delightful, if disjointed book. Neuman is hot property in contemporary Latin American literary circles. A former winner of Spain’s prestigious Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize, he is tipped (by Roberto Bolaño, no less) to be one of a select ‘handful’ to take up where the ‘boom’ generation of Márquez, Cortázar, Fuentes and Borges left off. His widely acclaimed novel Traveller of the Century (his fourth book,

Mark Mason

The Douro Valley

They’re called quintas, Joana tells us, because the rich families who owned the land along this stretch of the Douro river used to let others work it in return for a fifth of the profits. And in this part of northern Portugal, ‘work’ means only one thing: wine. We’re here in the Douro Valley to learn more about it all, including this trip to Quinta do Bomfim, the winery where Dow’s port is made. The valley also produces Cockburn’s — but don’t worry, the Portuguese needed those TV adverts telling them that the Scottish name is pronounced ‘Co-burn’ too. The Americans just dispense with the ‘ck’ — hence James Coburn,