Travel

I loved Verona and Lake Garda as the perfect week away.
Especially before Easter, as the season starts and when the traffic is reasonable and it’s all round not too taxing, when things are just opening up and the staff have more time and there’s a catching undercurrent of excitement for the season ahead when it’s quiet around the lake and when the boats are a rarity upon it. Take a copy of by far the most interesting and informed book on the area ‘111 Places in Verona and Lake Garda That You Must Not Miss’ by Petra Sophia Zimmermann.

An Eclectic Collection of Latin American Craft: From Designer Bowls To Tequila  

At 8 am a slant of car hacks emerged from the Low Wood Bay Resort and Spa on Lake Windermere to crawl tentatively into a convoy of Jeeps, made up of a mix of Sahara's, Overlands and Rubicons in a rainbow of colours. My colleague Mark took the wheel first so I leapt into the passenger seat of a Granite Crystal Metallic (charcoal grey) Jeep Wrangler Sahara and sat back to admire the interior.
 

I was warmly greeted by Brendan as I ambled out of Dublin airport security. It’s been a while since I was last in Dublin and his easy charm and humour made me regret that as he escorted me over to the Jameson's Bow Street Distillery, for a couple of days whiskey blending and tasting to launch the new Bow Street 18 YO Batch 2. In half an hour we had covered our similar family histories, Brexit and exchanged a jokey tale or two. It was good to be back.

What a blessed, fertile, cultured and cultivated island Madeira is. This ‘island of eternal spring’ was a ‘paradise of naturalists’ with its exoticism attracting Thomas Cook and Joseph Banks. I’ts immensely fertile, everything seem to grow here, having been colonised by Henry the Navigator who introduced the sugar cane from Sicily and the Malvesia (Malmsey) vine, mentioned by Shakespeare’s Falstaff, from Crete. And it’s a big enough island to house different dialects with some pronouncing the second syllable of Madeira with an ‘E’ and others with an ‘I’.

Danesfield House and Spa evoked 50's movies as we cruised up the steep winding hill through the gardens in the Aston Martin Vantage, before stopping at a tree lined drive dominated by an imposing gothic clock tower. This vast sprawling and imposing Neo-Tudor mansion was completed in 1991 by architect W.H. Romaine-Walker for a soap magnate's son, Robert Hudson. Later during the war it was requisitioned by the Air Ministry as a reconnaissance and photography unit and was known as RAF Medmenham.

Eighty Percent of yacht activity takes place in 20% of the world's oceans. Only 5% of what is beneath the world's oceans has been seen, let alone experienced. Oceanco's newest project, the 105-meter (345ft) diesel-electric driven Esquel has been conceived and designed to explore new territories.
Oceanco has created Esquel in collaboration with Timur Bozca Design, stylist Gina Brennan, Lateral Naval Architects and Engineering, and Pelorus—a leading experiential and yacht expedition travel company.

One word “friendly” sums up Banff’s Sunshine Village ski resort, but do not be fooled by thinking that all its slopes are flattering even to the lazy skier.  There is a good spread of runs to keep the interest of all skills within a mixed abilities party across three mountains, all within the UNESCO World Heritage Site - Banff National Park.  Cruise to your heart’s content through tree lined trails, take the lifts to the top of Lookout Mountain for some more demanding slopes,  or tackle the ‘Double Diamond Blacks’ on Goat’s Eye Mountain.  

The mere mention of “the largest ski area in the world” gets a surprisingly mixed reception.  The span of reactions is wide whilst some skiers feel threatened and daunted by the sheer scale of so many elements, through those who feel they have to cover everything to be able to match their peers, to dedicated skiers who relish the prospects of skiing their hearts out.     

‘What beauties doth Lisboa first unfold,’ gasped Byron’s Childe Harold and certainly the city is highly reminiscent of Paris decades ago. Her special quality consists partly from the exhilarating light falling on her blue-tiled walls and white stone pavements: a clarity assisted by cloudless skies. Indeed the climate was fabulous as, over the New Year, the sun not only shone it penetrated with a refreshing breeze coming off the Atlantic off whose coast Lisbon is the only European capital.