Written by My sister and I are lying on slabs like flounders in a fishmonger’s. Instead of a bed of ice, though, we’re stretched out on heated marble. We move between three hot rooms, each resembling little chapels with vaulted ceilings, chatting quietly in the cooler one, applying face and hair masks in the middle one, and simply lying still, […]
Wakefield Actors say “rhubarb” to appear to be chatting. It’s easy to say the word quietly. Here in the national capital of this tasty perennial the stalks are – right now – growing, blushing, sweetening silently in the dark. The harvest season starts in mid-February, when shed doors are prised open and the gathering-in commences, […]
Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire Inside one of Waddesdon Manor’s Rapunzelesque round towers is a room named after the Ballets Russes stage designer Léon Bakst. In 1913, Bakst painted the seven panels here showing scenes from Sleeping Beauty. This year both house and illuminated gardens have Sleeping Beauty-inspired installations. Artists involved include the theatre designer Tom Piper, […]
Blickling Hall, Norfolk Blickling Hall is a handsome house that boasts gothic architecture and plenty of atmosphere. However, the old Tudor house that once stood here is what truly made its ghostly name. It is said that Anne Boleyn continues to haunt her childhood home, carrying her own severed head as she walks the corridors. […]
When the Mediterranean makes its first appearance, it’s through chilly sheets of rain. I spot the not-very-blue waters between the buildings of Marseille as my train from Paris pulls in. By the time we reach Nice the skies are still grey and I’m starting to wonder how far south I’ll have to go before I […]
You couldn’t make it up. As early autumn darkness deepened around Whistlewood Common – tealights a-flicker, guitars twanging around the campfire – I found myself sitting between Peter Wood and Gill Forrester. It was a pincer movement of nominative determinism: Wood, a woodworker and teacher of heritage crafts; Forrester, community and wellbeing manager at the […]
At 8.45am, I stroll down the steps of The Queen at Chester hotel and into the midweek flow. The roads are full of delivery vans, the station is lined with taxis and the pavements are busy with commuters. I move among them lightly, a roamer bound for distant lands. Well, distant-ish: I’m a coffee to […]
Rare rainforest in the Lake District Autumn is often wet – so why not embrace this, and visit one of Britain’s temperate rainforests in Borrowdale, near Keswick. Such forests are rare globally as well as in Britain. Not only can you observe the gorgeous autumn hues from the leaves of ash, birch and oak but […]
Ports, rivers, canals, railways, pilgrims’ pathways: these oft-overlooked, deeply engaging towns grew around transport and, as they expanded, created local networks. We usually think of leisure travel in terms of long-distance trains, cars on open roads, coaches from A to B and country walks. But suburban bus trips, urban hikes and commuter trains offer rich […]