Travel

I had some unfinished business in Obergurgl-Hochgurgl; the last time I had skied at this very resort was in November 2024 during the Audi FIS Alpine World Cup Race, where the likes of Mikaela Shiffrin and Dave Ryding were competing on the Kirchenkar race slope. At that time, seated upon a chair lift, Dominik my ski-instructor had pointed his ski-stick towards ‘Top Mountain Star’ and said your goal is to ski down from there.

Stepping-out from London Bridge, I crossed the River Thames, admiring London’s defining landmarks ‘Tower Bridge’ and ‘The Tower of London’, alongside several medal waving participants who had - 48-hours earlier – completed the London Marathon and, obviously, decided to stay on in the capital. Just five minutes later, I was stood in front of ‘Onefifty Fenchurch Street', a brand new luxury aparthotel.

British travellers often overlook the Belgian coastline in favour of the medieval centres of Bruges or Ghent nearby. This is a habitual oversight. While the inland cities offer history and canals, the westernmost point of the country provides an environment defined by expansive natural spaces and a specific history. De Panne sits directly on the border with France. It is the location where King Leopold I first entered the country in 1831 to claim the Belgian throne.

The best holidays begin well before you land. Mine started on a SkyAlps turboprop out of a small, deeply civilised airport called Bolzano, where the security queue takes approximately the same amount of time as tying your shoelaces and the bar is somewhere you would happily choose to sit on a free afternoon. No theatre, no performance, no baffling queues for things you did not ask for: just a compact, calm, elegant little terminal and a flight that feels like the beginning of something good. Bolzano is, without much competition, my favourite airport in Europe.

A pine-scented Italian mountain refuge beneath Monte Bianco where folklore, food, skiing, and serious pleasure converge, and where leaving feels faintly disloyal

Courmayeur sits at the foot of Mont Blanc with the quiet confidence of a place that knows exactly who it is. It has no need to shout. Unlike many Alpine resorts engineered for throughput and spectacle, this is a real town with a proper centre, cobbled streets, stone houses, and a rhythm dictated as much by weather and tradition as by ski lifts and restaurant bookings.

The SUV That Started It All: Still the One to Beat

“Focus on a point at the other side of the lake and step-in, you can do it” boomed Philipp Steiner, a cold-water therapist and former ski-racer, who was already submerged in the icy lake, waiting for his new recruits to join him. 

Ripples of near-freezing water radiated-out from around the ancient timber boat station, our entry point to the only pocket of water not frozen over by thick ice. 

There are destinations we choose, and destinations that choose us. The last time I was in the Maldives was on my honeymoon, just over 25 years ago. I remember two things from that trip. Firstly, we slept for 33 hours straight after we landed (God’s honest truth) and that trip ruined all other holidays for me for the next two decades of my life. The Maldives, with its impossible palette of blues, is a place so ethereal it seems less like a holiday and more like a deliberate seduction.

And also: an eagle ray, but we’ll get to that.

They do it so well. The Italians that is. Such imagination and such refinement in best utilising their impossible precipices and improbable shapes and angles.

For I had come to Lake Iseo, an hour from Milan’s Linate airport and called Sebino from the Latin for ‘double-hooked’ and divided between Bergamo and Brescia. It’s wonderfully punctuated with a dozen towns, some medieval.