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A keen-priced Asian adventure

  Here’s what looks like another great value holiday idea from the imaginative planners at Imagine Cruising: an Asian adventure with stops in Malaysia and Thailand, a cruise, and stays in Bali and Singapore. The package costs from £1,599 per person and includes a seven-night hotel stay in Bali (book a Balcony cabin or above […]

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Rivers of wine: cruising through Burgundy

Our contributor John Barr fell in love with river cruising only recently, and was thrilled to discover that Riviera Travel catered for another of his interests by offering a cruise through France’s top wine-producing region. Here is the story of his trip. ‘Wine that maketh glad the heart of man.’ The Old Testament had a […]

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The East Coast floods – 65 years on

Our contributor John Barr has vivid memories of the winter of 1953, when he was caught up in the disastrous East Coast floods. Sixty-five years on, he looks back at those dramatic days, recalls how he survived, and reflects on the lessons he learned.  There was no forewarning of the trauma to come when, as […]

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Hotel review: Lainston House Hotel

In the first of our new series of hotel reviews, regular contributors Douglas and Jackie Miller returned to an old favourite: the Exclusive Hotels group’s Lainston House Hotel, just outside Winchester. Here is their report. We were just as delighted with this seventeenth-century country manor house hotel as we had been on our first visit, […]

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The ups and downs of Canada’s far west

Our regular contributor John Barr is not in the first flush of youth and has to use a walking stick these days, so when we heard that he was off to the far west of Canada for a two-week visit we were not just impressed but also curious. How would he get on? Here is […]

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How travel specialists aid conservation

Our friend Sue Ockwell has worked at promoting the Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO) for more than 30 years, so we were surprised to hear that the organisation was adopting a new – and even longer – name. We asked her to explain. I’ve known AITO (www.aito.com), a trade organisation that gathers under its […]

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A villa holidays odyssey the Greek way

Our favourite PR man, Peter Horrocks, spends his time promoting the holiday homes marketed by Villas du Monde. His usual stamping grounds are in France, so when he we heard that he was taking a holiday in Greece (staying in Villas du Monde properties, of course) we just had to hear about it.  Villas du […]

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Malta: island of sunshine and memories

  Where have all our writers gone? Well, Sandra Brind has been taking a break in Malta – and taking a trip down Memory Lane as well. Here she recommends the island for the perfect late sunshine break. This year Valletta has been celebrating being ‘European Capital of Culture 2018’, writes Sandra Brind. So it […]

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The secret of Dentdale

When our friends Philip and Christine Ayers found themselves a holiday hideaway in beautiful Cumbria, they bought a couple of cottages there. Now they are available to other visitors on a self-catering basis, and if you want to learn more about the attractions of the area….read on. One summer during the mid-1980s we were exasperated […]

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Putting the zing back into Zimbabwe

Our writer Sandra Brind is a big fan of Zimbabwe as a tourist destination, and thinks it will it will soon become a holiday hotspot again now that President Mugabe has been replaced. Here, Sandra and her son, Simon Scotting, recall their last visit there – and yearn to return. Now is the time to […]

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