Travel

Mountain biking

23 Aug 2007

You’re tired and you’re sore. Nights on the vodka still don’t mix with nights on the air mattress. Sunlight splits the trees as the smells of pine forest, fresh earth and your own Red Bull–tinged breath fill your nostrils. It’s daft o’clock in the…

Room to roam

23 Aug 2007

Summer festivals are attended by two kinds of people. Those who think camping is fun and those who think it is a near manifestation of hell on earth. If you’re the former, you revel in every muddy, messy moment. If you’re the latter, you are conflicted…

Paths of glory

23 Aug 2007

By Coach Citylink will be providing buses to and from the festival throughout the weekend and you can purchase your shuttle bus ticket at the same time as purchasing your festival ticket. This way you can sit back, enjoy the ride and take in the…

Lost Oasis

16 Jul 2007

TRAVEL ADVENTURE ROBERT TWIGGER Lost Oasis (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) Following in the footsteps of explorers such as Theodore Almasy, the inspiration for The English Patient, author and macho adventurer Robert Twigger decides to search for…

Travel - Russia

3 Jul 2007

(Image: The Moscow train) Imagine going to Moscow and not seeing Red Square. From behind the police cordon I cursed Condoleezza Rice - not for US foreign policy, but for potentially messing up my trip. She was visiting the Kremlin and as a result…

Life & Style - Travel

22 May 2007

The car rental clerk has me sussed. ‘Of course, for only an extra US$100 you can have this.’ Turning the page of his display book, he taps invitingly on the upper corner of a photograph. There, glistening in the Californian sunlight, is a Chrysler…

Travel

Life & Style

8 May 2007

(Picture: © Anne Pinniger) ‘Tropic of Capricorn’. It’s just there, written clearly on a road sign in the middle of nowhere. Dirty yellow sand in the air, the track ahead glittering with fool’s gold as though it had been chucked away. The landscape…

Also Published

7 May 2007

Also Published

Travel - Whisky galore!

Life & Style

24 Apr 2007

In almost any bar in Paris or Barcelona, you’ll spot young females drinking whisky. Not old men in tweed bunnets, swirling heavy tumblers and singing to themselves but young, fashionable women. A whisky-cola may be a very popular ladies’ choice in clubs…

Life & Style - Travel

A passage to India

10 Apr 2007

I’m sitting enjoying the shade of the imposing Lakshmana temple on a hot and dry day in Khajuraho when a party of Japanese tourists interrupts my peace. The small group stands bunched around one corner of the intricately adorned building, giggling into…

Life & Style - Excess Baggage

Excess Baggage

10 Apr 2007

Watch out for a rocky few months in the shrink-wrapped world of the package holiday. The proliferation of cheap flight websites turning consumers into armchair travel agents has hit the ‘big four’ travel agents rather hard of late. Thomas Cook and…

Travel - Magical Mystery Tour

Life & Style

27 Mar 2007

I should declare my partiality from the outset: I was born and bred in Manchester. Healthy disdain for our neighbours to the west is not so much a point of view as birthright. But perhaps I’ve judged too hastily. Change is in the air over Merseyside…

Feature - Travel Special

The Great Escape

12 Mar 2007

In desperate need of a holiday but desperately short of cash? Take inspiration from our two adventuring writers who were given the task of getting as far away from Scotland (and back) as they could in 24 hours for under £50. Read on to discover what…

Loch Fyne

Love in a cold climate

31 Jan 2007

It’s not always easy doing nothing, but that’s what we’re here to do. Stop, relax, get away. And Loch Fyne, a blue grey landscape cut in two by an opaque, metallic body of water, gives the impression we’re hundreds of miles away from home and not just…

Fawlty Towers Experience

The hotel inspectors

31 Jan 2007

A swarthy waiter pursues a hamster beneath a table of dinner guests, chased by a tall, quiveringly angry man with a moustache. The diners erupt with laughter as the waiter re-emerges, accidentally displacing the wig on a female guest’s head. The furious…

Rome on a budget

The cheap life

16 Jan 2007

The Romans have a saying: ‘you’d need a lifetime to see all that Rome has to offer’. This seemed a laughable notion as my partner and I only had a few days in Italy’s capital. After not having taken a holiday in over three years, I was determined to…