Two outback outposts in particular have left their mark on us, albeit for very different reasons.

Body surfing and bush tucker in Broome

If you’ve ever body surfed you’ll know it can be an almost spiritual experience. Cable Beach in Broome Western Australia, one of the most beautiful 13 mile stretches of sand you’ll find anywhere in the world is where I’ve felt this most strongly. It helps that the Indian Ocean waters are a warm and crystal clear turquoise and the waves, which can rise up to nine metres at high tide, topple onto almost perfectly flat sand, which in the early mornings when keen body surfers go to worship, is empty but for a few fellow supplicants.

This quaint town in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia on the traditional lands of the Aboriginal Yawuru people is nearly 1400 miles from the nearest city. Still a major hub for the farming of some of the world’s finest South Sea cultured pearls (a lure not lost on Sabrina), Broome originally owed its existence to Pearling. Starting in the 1880s with the harvesting of mother of pearl, it rapidly grew into the world’s pearling capital with a thriving Asian workforce, recruited specifically for their pearl diving expertise (in a rare if entirely self-interested exemption to the country’s racist “White Australia” policy). Even today, Broome boasts one of Western Australia’s most multi-cultural communities, though the Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Malay and Filipino descendants of those divers are more likely to be running one of the many Asian eateries in bustling Chinatown, than working in their forbears’ industry.

As a beach holiday destination Broome is second in our experience only to Goa in southern India, but as a place to spend a couple of weeks it exerts an equally strong pull on our hearts. Sunsets at Cable Beach are as transcendent as early mornings, not least because (to our daughter’s delight), you can take a camel ride along its length, finishing as darkness softly falls.

Broome is the place we had our most memorable cinema-going experience at Sun Pictures, the world’s oldest functioning outdoor ‘Picture Gardens’, which date back to 1916. Moviegoers sit in rows of colourfully striped deckchairs in balmy nighttime temperatures, which may or may not be interrupted by a cleansing tropical rainstorm. It’s also the place where members of the Yawuru people, one afternoon guided us on a fascinating walk through the sand dunes and mangroves. Our guides explained how goannas (large indigenous lizards), hibernate in burrows until woken by thunderclaps at the start of the ‘Wet’, showed us how to strip tree bark to create footwear for crossing the reef safely at low tide, which tree branches can be used to fend off lightning in an electrical storm and which of the local plants were safe to eat.

Afterwards we enjoyed some more substantial bush tucker at Matso’s Café and Brewery, which rapidly became our favourite place to eat in town for its imaginative way of preparing the local flora and fauna and its wicked selection of local craft beers.

Kangaroo in Black Bean and chilli Sauce: Serves Two

Kangaroo is a wonderfully lean meat- perfect for wok frying, provided you don’t overcook it. Venison is an excellent substitute.

1lb kangaroo tenderloin, sliced thinly (2”x 1”)

1 tbsp black bean and chilli sauce (you can find this at a Chinese Food Store)

1 bell pepper and 1 medium onion, both cut into 1” strips

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp cornstarch

½ tsp sugar

1 tbsp soy sauce

Mix the kangaroo with the cornstarch, sugar and soy sauce.

Heat a large fry pan or wok with two tablespoons of oil; add the garlic, onion and black bean and chili sauce, stirring for a minute. Then add the kangaroo, tossing to combine, cooking until the meat is nearly done. Finally add the pepper, again tossing to combine. Cook until the meat is just done; be careful not to over-cook, as kangaroo can get tough. If it is a little dry you can always add some water.

Rising with the sun for one final surfing communion I walk all the way down to Gantheaume Point where the rocks and driftwood are gloriously illuminated. There are just the four of us this time and we exchange nods and smiles of recognition as we will the point break to deliver a perfect wave.

Crocodiles, rock art and bush fires in Kakadu National Park

The handwritten sign was a masterpiece of Aussie understatement:

Freshwater crocodiles inhabit Jim Jim Fall’s waters. You are warned not to approach them in the water or on the rocks. Parents with children and non-swimmers using lilos, should be especially careful.

If provoked, crocodiles may become territorially aggressive.

Superintendent, Kakadu National Park

These days, swimming up to this preternaturally beautiful waterfall is banned, but having driven for hours on dirt roads with my brother (Sabrina, as regular readers will know is allergic to sleeping under canvas so was sitting this trip out), I wasn’t going to let an unexpected life and death warning sign get in my way. After all, the previous morning we’d had to rapidly break camp at dawn leaping into our rented 4WD truck to flee a fast running bush fire. While the previous week we’d been fording rivers in another 4WD on the treacherous Bloomfield Track coastal route to Cooktown in Far North Queensland’s, Cape York. So that day after we’d hiked the final mile or so to Jim Jim Falls, I banished any lingering doubts my brother might be harbouring by pointing out other ‘thrill seekers’ in the water. Grabbing a couple of large sticks for self-defense, we took the plunge.

Part of the reason I’d come to Australia in the first place was to be exposed to the Outback in full tooth and claw. To that end I’d already joined a hunt for fearsomely tusked feral pigs (a massive pest on pastoral lands) from the back of a speeding pickup truck and (rather more sportingly), stalked them on my hands and knees through densely tangled thickets. I’d also survived a solo three-day 1800 mile round trip drive through the dust and heat from Sydney to Adelaide and back. So this trip to Kakadu National Park and Cape York was intended to help me round out my experience and find out once and for all if those ridiculous looking floppy hats with corks hanging from the brim really do keep the swarms of cattle flies off your face, (the answer is a resounding “Yes!”).

Kakadu is situated just couple of hours south east of Darwin, the only major city in the “Top End” and the place where the expression “Gone troppo” was first coined by Australian servicemen stationed there in World War Two, driven mad by tropical heat and humidity during the annual ‘Wet’. The National Park is a huge 20,000 square kilometre Unesco World Heritage site with a staggering diversity of ecosystems, flora and fauna and is home to Rock Art dating back 20,000 years which depicts the rich creation myths of the Aboriginal peoples’ ‘Dreamtime’.

As in Broome, Kakadu’s own version of bush tucker makes plentiful use of sustainable local ingredients, in this case crocodile (a surprisingly delicious tasting combination of chicken and fish). My brother and I enjoyed it as a deep-fried marinated bar snack with a few stubby coolers (small squat bottles of beer) at Barra’s Bar & Bistro on the shores of the Yellow Water Billabong, a popular fishing spot for the locals.

Deep Fried Marinated Crocodile: Serves Four

2 lbs of Crocodile, cut into 1” chunks

6 tbsp sake

4 tbsp mirin

6 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp ginger “juice” (grated and squeezed ginger root)

Potato starch for coating

Combine the first five ingredients together and marinate for 7 minutes. Dry on paper towels, then dust with potato starch. Fry in hot oil, until golden.

It’s the only encounter with a crocodile that I’m up for repeating these days

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Stereotypes have emerged over the years, with prim and proper, picture-perfect Edinburgh contrasting with the grit, warmth and rebellious spirit of Glasgow. As ever, these clichés deceive as much as they illuminate. ‘Trainspotting’, Irvine Welsh’s darkly comic novel about dysfunctional heroin addicts is a case in point. The book is actually set in Edinburgh, but Danny Boyle who directed its film adaptation chose to shoot it in Glasgow.

"Auld Reekie”

Sabrina and I first visited Edinburgh (nicknamed “Auld Reekie” for its former winter smogs) in the deep snows of December and its bright lights and warm bars were a balm from the freezing cold and damp of the ancient castle where we were staying, just a few miles to the south.

Now we are discovering that this city is never more enchanting than in high summer, when the deep greys of its gorgeous granite contrast fetchingly with powder blue skies and languorous evenings stretch ever onwards in the seemingly inexhaustible Northern light.

Intrigued by its storied past we are staying in the Scottish Renaissance splendour of the Scotsman, which was ingeniously transformed from the century old offices and printing presses of the Scotsman and Edinburgh Evening News newspapers into a hotel two decades ago. A friend of ours who worked at the Scotsman as a young reporter back in the day, had spoken fondly of her time there in the final years before the move to new premises and it’s not difficult to imagine how this walnut-panelled, marble staircase filled monument was in the heady heyday of hot metal typesetting, with chain-smoking news hounds and steam trains whisking bundles of newspapers to all points of the compass from Waverley Station, which is directly beneath the building.

The conversion can’t have been easy and it is still a work in progress, but the scale of the Scotsman’s ambition to create its own standard of luxury deserves fulsome praise, from the painstakingly patient explanation by the peerless concierge, Brian about which ‘peaty’ single malt we should buy for friends and where to find it (our combined knowledge of whisky being almost zero), to the hotel manager’s decision to only open the opulent Grand Café for part of the week as “it takes fifty staff to operate it to the standards we like”.

Situated as we are on the North Bridge between the Old & New Towns, we quickly sate our curiosity for the wee dram and tartan theme park that The Royal Mile has recently become and the glitzy, granite version of London’s Oxford St, which is today’s Princes Street. This new flesh may be a taint, but the city’s lovely bone structure and fascinating history endures beyond these two ravaged spines, as we explore further afield.

Starting at Holyrood Park & Palace, we climb the hill to explore the Old Calton burial ground, the scene of grave robbing skulduggery in the early 1800s, as enterprising thieves sought to cash in on the insatiable demand of the city’s many anatomy schools for cadavers. From the top of the watchtower built in 1820 to deter these grave robbers, we look across to the austere Robert Adam designed mausoleum where philosopher and historian David Hume lies and in the far distance to the granite monoliths of the Martyrs’ obelisk and the inverted telescope-shaped Nelson’s monument on Calton hilltop.

Also there is the Parthenon style National Monument of Scotland, which is dedicated to Scottish servicemen who fell in the Napoleonic wars and was left half finished in 1829 due to a lack of funds, (an apt metaphor for England’s insufficient appreciation for Scotland’s contributions to the Union, which has certainly fuelled its independence movement). I must confess to a bias here, as I have distant Scottish roots on my father’s side of the family, although our humble lowland clan colours will never make the grade in any book of the great tartans.

Looking back rather wistfully from the summit of Calton Hill both to the volcanic mass of Arthur’s Seat in one direction and the Rock topped by Edinburgh castle in the other, I wished heartily that we had more than 36 hours here, and vow that next time I will climb all seven of this city’s dramatic hills.

Close by, the display of magnificent Greek Revival architecture continues with Regency architect William Playfair’s strikingly elegant Royal, Carlton and Regents Terraces. Sating our curiosity and thirst we drop into 24 Royal Terrace which has been artfully converted into a small hotel and earmarking it for a future visit, we are shown a couple of the rooms (number 11 is especially beautiful). Hungry, we descend Jacob’s Ladder, a steep stairway carved centuries ago into the volcanic rock of Calton Hill as a short cut down to Waterloo Place in the New Town, where we enjoy superb Singapore Noodles in the (reassuringly crowded with Chinese families) upper room of an East Asian restaurant.

Singapore Noodles with Bok Choy: Serves Four

Weirdly the dish that bears this city’s name is nigh on impossible to find there. I first ate it years ago in Sydney’s Chinatown and there are two versions- the Chinese which is spiced with Curry Powder and the Malay version made with Chilis, which is the one that I prefer to make. Legend has it, that the name Singapore Noodles was actually invented by an enterprising restaurateur in China, to give these spicy noodles a more exotic allure.

1 lb fresh rice sticks, or 8 oz dried rice sticks; (if using dried you must soak them first)

1lb boneless skinless chicken breast, poached and shredded

1 lb small shrimp peeled and deveined

5 cloves garlic, minced

4 red Jalapeno chilis, or whatever chilis you like (they should have some heat)

1 lb bean sprouts

4 eggs scrambled

2 heaped tsp curry powder

4 whole Baby Bok Choy cut into four lengthwise

3 clove garlic, minced

Heat a wok or a very large fry pan with high sides, add 1 tablespoon of oil and scramble the eggs. Transfer to a dish, add a little more oil and quickly fry the shrimp, just until it changes colour. Transfer to a dish, add another 2 tablespoons of oil to the pan and then add the garlic and chilis (this should be done on the highest heat), toss and be careful not to let it burn. When the garlic mix is fragrant and golden, reduce the heat to medium low and return the shrimp, chicken and eggs then the noodles, bean sprouts and the curry powder to the wok; toss to combine. Add two to three dashes of Fish Sauce (or to taste), and serve with stir fried bok choy. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil, add the garlic until fragrant then add the bok choy, toss until done. Season with fish sauce to taste.

So surprising a discovery was this, that it even eclipsed the luscious lobster tail in bisque and beurre blanc we enjoyed that same evening in the White Horse Seafood and Oyster bar, as the most remarkable meal of our stay.

“The Dear Green Place”

The gargantuan Finnieston Crane is one of the few relics still standing of Glasgow’s former industrial might as the “Workshop of the World”, which at its heavy engineering height built vast numbers of locomotives and nearly a quarter of the world’s ships. However, evidence of the fortunes this created are everywhere, in its magnificent red sandstone cityscape, monumental museums, expansive green spaces which are second in acreage only to London’s in the UK (hence “The Dear Green Place’) and sprawling hilltop Necropolis. Here the city’s magnates moulder in ornate ill-kept mausolea, designed by a who’s who of Scotland’s most distinguished Victorian era architects who set out to create Glasgow’s equivalent of Paris’s Père Lachaise.

Back in the city of the living, there are echoes of this decline but hopes for a brighter future. Massive deindustrialisation may have hollowed out its population and insane city planners who might as well have hailed from our former hometown of Los Angeles, have riven the city in two with a massive, multi-lane highway, but this proud place is no Rustbelt basket case and there’s a growing sense of energy, brio and creativity especially in its East End, where we are staying.

Crossing over the ugly blacktop scar to the city’s West End after a late breakfast at the Art Nouveau Willow Tea Rooms, the most complete example of Charles Rennie Macintosh’s intricate Glasgow Style, we find ourselves in another world entirely. Here grand red sandstone squares, botanic gardens and the imposing Gothic Revival and Spanish Baroque bulks of the University and the Kelvingrove Museum are yet more living proof of the fortunes made in Glasgow’s heyday as the “second city of Empire”.

We may be less than an hour from Edinburgh, but there’s a pleasing absence of twee tartan and tam o’shanter emporia and indeed of the tonnage of tourists that crave them. The dining scene too is a revelation, heavily influenced by the waves of Italian immigrants that settled here early last century and we enjoy the best Caccioucco (Tuscan Seafood Stew) we have ever had outside of Italy.

Yet another reason to visit this vastly underrated city.

It’s our last day and I’m curious to experience one other hangover from Glasgow’s industrial past, so we take the train from Glasgow Central Station along the banks of the River Clyde to Wemyss Bay on the West Coast, where you can still catch a boat to the erstwhile Victorian seaside resort of Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, a popular destination for the paddle steamers that used to ferry boatloads of thirsty passengers there, exploiting a loophole in the licensing laws which forbade the serving of alcohol on Sundays (their one day off). The phrase “steaming drunk” was coined to describe these pioneering ‘booze cruises’ which were hugely popular from the 1850s onwards, until the 1882 Passenger Vehicles Licences Act shut them down.

Little remains of Rothesay’s glory days apart from the extravagantly ornate gothic public conveniences on its West Pier, but we do find an excellent smokehouse a couple of streets back from the harbour front, where we stock up on kippers and smoked salmon. Asking the helpful owner where we should eat lunch in town we are laconically informed “I wouldn’t advise it. The food’s terrible because people here don’t like to spend money”.

With two hours to kill until the next ferry, we briefly contemplate taking the open top bus tour around the island, but allow ourselves to be driven to drink instead.

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For the last two summers we’ve come here to spend time in our friends’ back garden in the tiny resort town of Ambleteuse, overlooking wind-sculpted dunes, old oyster beds and the meandering Slack estuary, which winds its way slowly to the beach where Julius Caesar launched his successful invasion of England in 54 BC and Napoleon hatched his own abortive plans to repeat history in a rambling manse on the hilltop with its panoramic views of the harbour and forbidding bastion of Vauban’s 17th century fort. A few miles to the North, massive World War Two era concrete bunkers and gun emplacements known as the ‘Atlantic Wall’ are still trained on England’s southern coast.

Tragically nowadays these dunes are also the hiding place for scores of families waiting to attempt the hazardous crossing of the English Channel in small over-crowded boats.

Kent’s White Cliffs of Dover, which are visible on clear days from the Côte d’Opale may be England’s most famous range of chalk sea cliffs, immortalised in popular culture as one of the nation’s most emblematic patriotic symbols, but to our mind East Sussex’s lesser known Seven Sisters, a pristine coastal section of the South Downs National Park, which run between the mouth of the River Cuckmere near Seaford and Beachy Head, are a far more fitting counterpart to France’s Opal Coast. The rollercoaster ride of dips or ‘swales’ that separate each of its seven crests make for one of Southern England’s most satisfying and challenging hikes, across a landscape which save for erosion has remained virtually unchanged since a group of conservationists led by Rudyard Kipling rescued it from property developers a century ago. Ironically it’s these same white cliffs which are often used as a film and TV stand-in for Dover’s, as they have retained their bright white colour and are free from the modern development that bedevils that bustling port.

On the French side of the Channel the old Customs Officer’s path between the dramatic capes of Gris Nez and Blanc Nez, while not as strenuous as the Seven Sisters’ switchbacks, is every bit as scenic. The dunes and beach at the charmingly old fashioned Belle Époque seaside resort of Wissant also make for a delightful mid-hike pit stop. Tempting as it is to linger over a long seafood lunch on its bracing seafront promenade, we limit ourselves to a Bière Blanche de Wissant and head instead to the port city of Boulogne-sur-mer, the Côte d’Opale’s capital. Our destination is the weekly harbour-side Seafood market but we detour first to the old town to circumnavigate the fortified walls and take in the open air sculpture exhibition on Place Godefoy de Bouillon, before stocking up on shellfish and artisanal cheeses for a feast which includes a sweet, buttery Scallop Risotto enjoyed in the open air as the light dancing on the estuary slowly turns from silver to gold.

Scallop Risotto: Serves Two

2 tbsp olive oil plus a little extra for frying

1 shallot finely chopped

2 garlic cloves crushed

200g arborio rice

1 glass white wine

500ml hot light fish stock

75 gms of butter

6 large scallops

handful of chives chopped

½ lemon juiced

pinch of mace

Heat the oil in a deep frying pan and fry the shallot until softened. Stir in the garlic, fry for about a minute then stir in the rice. Toast, stirring to coat in the oil for a couple of minutes, then add the wine and bubble until mostly absorbed.

While continually stirring, add a ladle of the stock to the rice, and keep stirring until it has been absorbed. Add another ladle, and keep going until most of the stock has been absorbed, and the rice is tender and creamy. Check for seasoning, then add 25g butter and cover with a lid. Leave to rest off the heat while you fry the scallops.

Heat a frying pan over a high heat. Pat the scallops dry on kitchen paper, season with salt, and brush lightly with a little oil. Add to the very hot pan, and sear for 1-2 mins on each side until golden brown, or 2-3 mins for larger scallops. Remove to plate. Take the frying pan off the heat, and stir in 50g butter. Stirring until foaming and browned and smelling nutty. Add back to a low heat if you need to. Season with black pepper, the chives, lemon juice and mace. Add the scallops back to the warm brown butter, and spoon over the tops.

Give the risotto a final stir before transferring into two shallow bowls. Add the scallops to the dishes and spoon over the chive brown butter to serve.

Jack, our friends’ much loved Weimaraner waits patiently as we finish our meal for one final walk through the dunes down to the beach.

I can think of no better way to end the day.

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Sabrina always laughs at my family’s apparently limitless reserves of eccentricity and bad behaviour. For those of you who take a vicarious pleasure in that kind of thing, my paternal great grandfather, Edmund who is the dubious leading man in the second story below also has a walk on role in a post we published a while back about the island of Madeira.

So without further ado, welcome to Oslo Fjord in the summer of 1939.

“Time for the Old Cheese!”

As a small boy, my father Tim used to look forward to the annual late summer vacation with his Norwegian cousins with a mixture of fascination and dread. The family, who had made a small fortune in pharmaceuticals, lived on a large property in the town of Moss overlooking Oslo Fjord, in what can best be described as one part country estate mixed with two parts scout camp. Resolutely off the grid at a time when the rest of Europe’s wealthy and powerful were embracing every creature comfort that money could buy, Feste House which had neither mains drainage nor electricity, was a wildly eccentric Scandinavian outpost of muscular Christianity.

Campfire entertainer-in-chief. My Great Uncle Olaf.

Every morning in all weathers, except on those rare occasions that the fjord was iced over, Wilhelm the family patriarch, known to everyone as ‘Bestefar’ (Norwegian for grandpa) would march to the water’s edge in his pyjamas to take a bracing naked dip and then repair to one of the small ‘earth closet’ huts ranged across the hillside, to read his copy of Norske Dagsbladet. Having once stumbled bleary eyed on an irascible Bestefar in the middle of this ritual, my father was terrified whenever nature called.

With five sons who were members of the Norwegian parliament, a daughter (my great aunt Maria) and three grandsons (John, Olaf and Martin) who were close to my father’s age, Bestefar would preside over enormous extended family meals eaten at all hours at a long table next to the croquet lawn, in the near perpetual daylight of a Scandinavian summer. Inevitably the centrepiece would be a pickled herring dish of one kind or another but on one strange and unforgettable occasion my father was part of an ancient Viking tradition. As dessert was cleared away Bestefar solemny announced “Olaf, time for the old cheese! Take Tim with you.”

Olaf set off across the croquet lawn with my father in tow and disappeared into a thicket of rhododendrons, which revealed a hitherto unnoticed wooden box that was about six feet square. Ranged neatly inside it were several large tins with dates on the labels like so many wine vintages. Selecting the oldest of them, they headed back to the excited gathering. Eyes shining, Bestefar opened the tin of Gamalost (Norwegian for ‘old cheese’) and my father’s senses were assaulted by a pungent smell that has been flatteringly described as ‘dog’s bed’ or ‘old socks’.

That visit was in August 1939. On the second of September, with a British declaration of war against Germany seemingly inevitable, my father and his family hastily packed and boarded the boat train from Oslo to Newcastle. Nervously scanning the horizon in their lifejackets for hostile shipping throughout the crossing, they made it back home hours before war broke out. The following evening the SS Athenia, an unarmed passenger ship was torpedoed by a U boat in the Eastern Atlantic and the blockade of Norway’s ports which culminated in Germany’s invasion and occupation began.

These extended family gatherings resumed for two summers starting in 1947, but somehow with Bestefar no longer around, (he had passed away in 1945 at the age of 101) and with the lingering hangover of a conflict that no one wanted to talk about, the visits petered out.

“Does the apple fall far from the tree? My god, I hope so!”

My paternal great grandfather Edmund, a wealthy, irascible publisher lived in high style in the 1930s on a nineteen-acre estate on the outskirts of Leeds in the North of England.

My Great Grandfather Edmund putting the photographer at ease.

Stories of his ludicrous, imperious behaviour abound and my father, who spent many happy weekends there as a young boy loves to regale us with them. Edmund’s marriage to Emily Rosa my great grandmother, was a loveless disaster and they lived in separate wings of their enormous house meeting only at mealtimes. Every morning before leaving for the office Edmund would underline articles in the local newspaper ‘The Yorkshire Post’ which he expected poor Emily to read, so they could discuss the issues of the day over dinner that evening.

He terrorised the family’s servants- the estate’s three gardeners were taken on a ‘tour of shame’ of the grounds every Sunday after church, with Edmund furiously blowing a whistle at every weed he discovered. It was the same with the two chauffeurs, Stanley and Durrans and the ‘wash boy’, whose sole purpose in life was to keep the family’s cars in gleaming condition. These consisted of two Buicks, one for ‘shopping’ and the other for longer distances, and a Cadillac V-16 - purchased to one-up his rival and neighbour, the renowned surgeon Lord Moynihan’s coach-built Rolls Royce.

One weekend lunchtime, my father remembers watching nervously as Emily pierced the habitually stony mealtime silence with a simple and seemingly reasonable request: “Edmund dear, would it be convenient for me to take Durrans and the shopping Buick on Tuesday morning?” Edmund, who had not spoken the entire meal looked up from his food and with a haughty “I hear what you say”, left the table in a huff and was not seen nor heard from for the rest of the day.

Summer vacations were taken at the Hotel Bristol in Beaulieu-sur-Mer on the French Riviera with Edmund, Emily and her ‘lady’s companion’ Bessie, taking the Train Bleu to Nice and then three separate suites at the hotel. One year Edmund declared angrily that he would be packing his own luggage, as his manservant could not be trusted. Two days later as his trunks were unpacked he discovered that while jackets and waistcoats were in plentiful supply he had failed to include a single pair of trousers. A lengthy telegram was dispatched to Stanley, the head chauffeur in Leeds, with instructions for him to set out immediately in the Cadillac with the missing garments and Edmund shuttered himself in his suite and sulked until they arrived.

Taking my father to the house, on a first visit for over 60 years, he found the main building and chauffeurs’ cottages, although now converted to a nursing home had hardly changed. I explained who we were to the nurse on duty and she kindly let us explore the ground floor. As we peered into the former dining room with its huge bay window, my father recalled Sunday roasts of Beef, Pork and on special occasions Venison, which were carved with great ceremony by the family’s butler.

Roast Venison with Blackberry Sauce: Serves Six

I first made this for a birthday dinner as an experiment. I’m not quite sure where the inspiration for the Blackberry Sauce came from, but the berries contrast brilliantly with the rich, dark meat and are a tart change of pace from a typical wine reduction sauce.

Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees F

3 and a half ponds of Venison Tenderloin; trimmed.

8 ozs Blackberries

1 cup dry red wine

1 cup Ruby Port

1 quart beef stock (home made or store bought)

Salt and Pepper to taste

Place the blackberries, red wine and port in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until one cup of liquid remains; strain and set aside. At the same time reduce the beef stock to one cup as well.

To finish the sauce, add the blackberry liquid together with the stock in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Reduce again until you have 1 and a half cups left. Make a “beurre mani” (1 tablespoon of butter mixed with 1 tablespoon of flour into a paste). Add little by little into the sauce until you have a smooth, thick end product, the consistency of cream.

Season the venison. Heat a large fry pan (oven safe) with one tablespoon of oil; sear the venison on all sides (you may have to do this in batches). When all the pieces of venison are seared, place them back in the pan and roast them in the oven until the internal temperature of the meat is 115 degrees F (testing with a meat thermometer every 4 to 5 minute).

Remove, lightly cover and let rest for five minutes.

To serve, cut the venison into 1-inch-thick slices on the bias and pour sauce over them.

As we walked back to the car Sabrina and I overheard him my telling our daughter how he used to wait for Edmund to stub out his half-finished post Sunday lunch cigar and throw it into the rhododendrons at the edge of the driveway. Moments later he would retrieve it and hand it to Stanley the head chauffeur to enjoy!

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Having barely cracked the baby care routine at home, the last thing we’d expected to be doing with our five month old was wintering for a fortnight in the Caribbean, but having unexpectedly won a prize draw at a work event, we found ourselves at a newly opened luxury resort right between those twin St Lucia volcanic spire landmarks, the Pitons.

Photo credit: Depositphotos

Jalousie Plantation had notoriety built in as the new plaything of Lord Glenconner, who having grown tired of the society magnet he had so successfully created on the island of Mustique moved here and built a collection of red gingerbread cottages for paying guests which dotted the hillside above Sugar Beach, each with its own postage stamp sized pool and tropical garden. Overlooking it all was Beau House, the mid-1700s plantation home that Glenconner and his pet elephant ‘Bupa’ occupied in a weird brand of eccentric tropical feudalism. Apparently the locals were less than impressed with an all inclusive resort being created in this iconic location, but somehow he got the green light. There was no sign of either his lordship, nor of his pet pachyderm during our stay, a pity really as our daughter would certainly have loved to have met the latter.

It’s a good thing it was warm as most of the space in our suitcases had been taken up with every conceivable baby ‘necessity’ and for the first few days we settled happily into the new feeding régime that the resort imposed, (turned out that ‘all inclusive’ which we had never experienced before, is pretty damned perfect for newbie parents).

It might have been the absence of the pet elephant on site, or the complete lack of any human baby rivals, but we rapidly became a mobile petting zoo ourselves, as literally every other guest and member of staff wanted to meet and greet our tiny ‘celebrity’, whether she was ‘swimming’ in the pool, propped up in an armchair in the bar, or ‘dancing’ on my shoulders after dinner.

This imposition of routine might have been a blessing, but as ever after a few days, curiosity got the better of us and we broke camp for a few hours to visit the island’s old capital Soufrière, a few minutes south of the hotel. Founded by French sugar plantation owners in 1746 and rebuilt several times after five hurricanes, a fire and a major earthquake, this lovely little town was fought over by the British and French for more than half a century, changing hands fourteen times and though you might think its name connotes ‘suffering’, Soufrière actually refers to its ‘sulphurous air’ and volcanic activity. We came for its bustling Saturday morning market but were sidetracked by an unforgettable Jerk Pork. Cooked the traditional way in a smoke pit by the beach, this is barbecue at its most visceral, and the Jerk spice rub used, a mixture of Scotch Bonnet, All Spice and other herbs and spices, combined with the 95 degree heat, called for the consumption of a great many bottles of Piton, the rather predictably named local brew.

Jerk Pork: Serves Four

We first had pit barbecue on our honeymoon in Port Antonio, Jamaica but this one in Soufrière was especially delicious. The Jerk Spice rub will work its magic equally well on just about any type of meat, fish or even tofu.

4 pork chops

1 Habanero Pepper, with or without seeds, roughly chopped (almost as hot as Scotch Bonnet and more readily available)

1 oz ground allspice

4 whole green onions, chopped

2 bay leaves, roughly chopped

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

3 tbsp oil

Place all the ingredients, except for the pork chops, in a food processor, process until a paste is formed. Rub the paste over the chops and refrigerate overnight. Cook on the grill, over direct heat for just 1 minute on each side, then, indirect heat until it is just cooked through. Do not think the meat has been burned; it’s just that the rub is very dark and becomes even darker when it’s grilled. Serve with rice, beans and greens.

While we sat on the sand and ate, our daughter slept soundly in her sling, her head shaded by a little white sailor cap. A group of young kids were playing boisterously on the wooden pier and Sabrina and I wondered aloud at how this little person who is our whole world, would turn out.

Complacency having set in at the apparent ease of it all, we foolishly rolled the dice on our very last evening. Normally, the three of us would have been eating dinner together in the main dining room, but we’d hired an extremely expensive baby sitter to watch over our little one and booked a romantic table for two in the resort’s second restaurant, which charged a hefty supplement. Drinking a toast to our good fortune, we were initially oblivious of the Maître d’ who was hovering anxiously by our table with a cordless phone. We were reunited a few minutes later with our now beautifully behaved daughter, who the babysitter said had screamed incessantly from the moment we left the room. Attempting to salvage something from the evening we placed her under our table with Sabrina’s handbag, knowing that she would amuse herself for a while by removing and playing with the contents. That didn’t work for more than a few minutes, so expensive lesson learned we beat a hasty retreat and had the meal delivered to our room.

Back to the future, indeed.

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Épernay’s enterprising cellar masters managed to outwit their Nazi occupiers by doctoring the records of their vintages and building false walls to hide their most prized bottles from plunder (the German army and high command had a remarkably voracious thirst for champagne, with an estimated two million bottles being expropriated and sent back to Germany). More altruistically, this same maze of passageways was also used by Champagne houses such as Moët et Chandon and Pol Roger, as havens for the local French Resistance to secretly shelter Allied airmen and escaped POWs (no wonder Pol Roger was Winston Churchill’s favourite tipple). Local legend has it that in a delicious irony, the location of some of these false partitions have yet to be found even today and there are still visible traces of wartime graffiti left on the chalk walls by those who hid and worked in these cellars during the conflict.

There seemed to be little point in a cellar tour and tasting of a champagne brand we could find on a supermarket shelf back home, so we opted for Boizel, a house founded in 1834 which has been run by the same family for six generations and that despite its impressively grand establishment is small enough to take a far more artisanal approach to winemaking than its mass market neighbour Moët, which ships an average of 30 million bottles a year to Boizel’s relatively modest 400,000. Small it may be, but its cellars are an extraordinarily atmospheric treasure trove of vintages, including a formerly walled off room which houses its oldest, most prized bottles.

Back in town we discover to our huge surprise that first impressions are misleading as there are two distinct sides to Épernay, with the incredibly grand Avenue de Champagne a world apart from the charmingly old fashioned small town farming community surrounding it. Teenagers speed around its narrow streets on asthmatic sounding mopeds, or hang out smoking cigarettes or eating pancakes from the Crêperie stand in the main square, while families crowd the weekly food market at the Halle St-Thibault, much as I remember from when I first lived in rural France ages ago. There’s a traditional Boulangerie on almost every street corner, an old school Bar Tabac with a pinball machine and one very grand (but not remotely stuffy or self important) white table-clothed bastion of old fashioned French Provincial cooking, where we enjoyed a quite wonderfully indulgent lunch, which featured one of the most delicious Magrets de Canard we have ever tasted, preceded by an equally delectable bowl of baby grilled squid.

Magret de Canard: Serves One

1 large duck breast (approx. 350g–400g)

Coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 minced shallot, 2 tbsp red wine, and 2 tbsp chicken stock.

Prep the duck. Using a very sharp knife, score the thick fat cap in a criss-cross (diamond) pattern. Be careful to cut through the fat, but do not slice into the meat itself. Rub salt and pepper directly into the scored fat and lightly on the flesh side.

Place the duck breast skin-side down in a cold skillet (preferably stainless steel or cast iron). Turn the heat to medium. Let the duck cook slowly for 8 to 12 minutes until the skin is a beautiful deep golden-brown and most of the thick fat has rendered into the pan. Carefully pour off the excess liquid fat as it accumulates (save it in a jar for roasting potatoes).

Flip the duck over and sear the flesh side for 3 to 4 minutes until it reaches medium-rare (an internal temperature of 135°F / 57°C). Remove the duck to a cutting board, loosely cover it with aluminum foil, and let it rest for exactly 10 minutes. This is crucial for retaining juices.

In the same pan add the shallot and sweat until translucent then add the red wine and bring to the boil, add the stock, bring to the boil again then whisk in a piece of butter until slightly thickened.

Slice the duck against the grain into half inch thick pieces and serve with the sauce.

Seeking a little spiritual solace after all this overindulgence, we stop in the small hilltop village of Hautvillers on the other side of the Marne river (which meanders its way slowly through the vineyards), to make a short pilgrimage to the modest tombs of Dom Pérignon and Dom Ruinart in Saint-Sindulphe church by the abbey and former monastery of St Pierre. These two Benedictine monks, who perfected the art of champagne distilling and later lent their names to two of its most famed labels have earned the village its nickname of “Le berceau du Champagne” (Cradle of Champagne). Further up the hill there’s a gorgeous panorama of the Marne valley and its wine terraces and we lay out a blanket for the picnic we have brought with us, to drink it all in.

Continuing on with our newly established zigzag between piety and pleasure, we travel to the far north of Champagne to explore the gargantuan gothic magnificence of Reims cathedral, where France’s kings were crowned for six centuries. Flooded with light from stained glass masterpieces created by a cavalcade of artists from the 13th century onwards, including contemporary works by Marc Chagall, Imi Knoebel and Brigitte Simon-Marq, this soaring building is an extraordinary, uplifting immersion in restrained religious and abstract art and a whiplash contrast to the Art Nouveau opulence of Villa Demoiselle, headquarters of the Vranken Champagne house, which was our very next stop. Completed in 1908, this passion project of wealthy industrialist Henry Vasnier, who managed the much larger sister Champagne house of Maison Pommery from 1890-1907, contains an impressive mixture of artistic elements from the stained glass windows on its serpentine ash staircase, a wildly eccentric cabinet of curiosities and extravagantly decorated mahogany sculpture of a fireplace, and is an unrestrained exemplar of the money no object“L’Art dans Tout” (art in everything) architectural movement. We found it a wildly over-rich diet, which was not at all nullified by the way too floral flutes of champagne which we tasted afterwards on the villa’s lawn.

Craving something much earthier we drive next to the tiny hamlet of Villers-sous-Chatillon at the far western end of the Marne Valley to taste organic champagnes from the boutique house of Roger-Constant Lemaire. The setting is charmingly bucolic, the pours are generous and the welcome couldn’t have been warmer, but once again we were left scratching our heads at the nosebleed prices, which were on a par with the prestige marques of Boizel and Vranken.

Wondering aloud if we were ever going to taste a wine affordable enough to bother bringing back home, without resorting to the local Carrefour (where according to a confiding cashier, the locals buy theirs), we make one final trip to the village of Hautvillers, which to our delight when we explore beyond its iconic church is chock full of charming boutique wineries, where more often than not you find your glass being filled by the winemakers themselves. One of these is the small, unassuming family business of Champagne Pierre Fedyk, where buying at the cellar door is the only option and a case of their Cuvée Brut Réserve was less than half the price of anything else we’d tasted and every bit as delicious.

All we needed to do apparently, was to go back to the cradle.

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Does the tell-tale click when I lift the receiver on that orange plastic 1980s rotary dial phone in our room mean it’s bugged? One can but wonder.

We were prepared for crowds, but the inebriated crush of spring breakers, cheek by noisy jowl with stag and hen party celebrants on the Charles Bridge is so oppressive that we are literally propelled across it past the startled saints on their plinths to the Malà Strana (Little Quarter) where the scrum miraculously reduces to a mere ruck. With the struggle to reach the actual (royal) castle looking as impossible as Kafka’s metaphoric one from his last novel, we allow ourselves to be manoeuvred as far as the lower reaches of the Palace gardens with its exhibition of 1938 anti-propaganda posters and the parliament complex, before breaking free of the current.

Guided by some mysterious internal compass, (typically we are exploring without a physical or digital map and it’s been over twenty years since I was last here), we find our way back across the river to the Old Town Square (Staroměstské náměstí) which is at least large enough to hollow out the hordes, though the Thai Massage Parlour complete with rolling neon sign on the ground floor of an otherwise unblemished Renaissance building somehow sums up how much this beautiful city has lost its soul in its attempts to cash in on its ‘must visit’ status.

Wondering aloud if I have committed the cardinal travel sin of revisiting a beloved place once too often (this is Sabrina’s first time here so fortunately she has no point of reference), we stumble on towards Wenceslaus Square where a massive Primark and a host of other familiar fast fashion stalwarts compete for attention with an enthusiastic folk dancing troupe making moves against the backdrop of the National Museum.

Fortunately this moment proves to be a nadir of sorts, as we find our way by accident in the quiet oasis of the small Františtânská zahrada (Franciscan Garden) where we sit in the sun sipping watermelon juice as a grizzled guide enthrallingly relates to an even older tour group how it was to live through the Prague Spring and Velvet Revolution. Silently applauding his storytelling we slip quietly back to consult with the venerable gentlemen at the front desk about dinner. Where on earth can we eat authentic Czech food, with local people at ‘normal’ prices? Turns out there’s a restaurant inside a brewery ‘U Medvidku’ close by, where we enjoy a refreshing raspberry pilsner with pork schnitzel and potato salad under the stern eye of the server and are surrounded by students, with nary a foreign accent in earshot. Afterwards, even the sunset seems to promise the world for the early start I have planned for tomorrow, to hopefully see the city as it should be, in a brief moment of quiet.

Sabrina sleeps on as the shag pile carpeting absorbs the noise of me getting ready and I step out into an almost deserted streetscape just before 5:30am. Nightclub bouncers are finally shutting up shop, while a few stragglers weave their way woozily to wherever home is and the detritus of last night’s excesses is everywhere. Trams old and new are already clanking past the impressive Neo-Renaissance bulk of the National Theatre, as I round the corner onto an almost deserted Charles bridge, which suddenly looks surprisingly large and recognisably the magnificent statue-lined span that I remember. Looking for a more interesting vantage point I head north up the riverside and finally find it in the lee of Mánes bridge.

Feeling like we’ve turned a page I breezily suggest to Sabrina at breakfast that we make the long trek to Holešovice, which bills itself as ‘the coolest neighbourhood in Central Europe’. Hyperbole aside, this former industrial area certainly has emerging hipster potential and for now at least is blissfully empty of tourists, though even here in the charming Bethesda restaurant where we stop for a cold beer, a large table of American gap year students are trying to hit on the shy barman. Crowds are not far away however and on our way back to the river we pass through multitudes of beer drinkers in Letenské sady park while down on the river bank groups of guys are massing as they wait for their party boat cruises. It’s all a bit much in the heat of the afternoon.

By way of atonement, I promise to take Sabrina to a trio of Prague’s finest Imperial-era cafés and to our joy we find that they are every bit as atmospheric as their Vienna counterparts. If there’s a finer spot in Central Europe than a picture window table at the Kavárna Slavia we’ve yet to find it, as tea and Sachertorte (even better in Sabrina’s opinion than the one served at the Sacher hotel in Vienna itself), give way to cocktails and the sun sets over the midstream island of Střelecký and the left bank. Of all the traditional Mittel-European cafés this and Café Leopold Hawelka in Vienna are now our firm favourites. Hawelka looks like it has barely changed since it first opened its doors in 1939, and when you visit you’ll more than likely be greeted at the door as we were, by a gracious elderly gentleman, who is none other than the son of Leopold and Josefine Hawelka, the establishment’s founders. But while Hawelka’s interior is dark, cosy and more than a tad raffish, Slavia’s art deco dining room is high-ceilinged, flooded with light and full of starched, white aproned waiters and waitresses doing brisk but not brusque business, as the resident pianist works his way through a repertoire of polkas and waltzes. Allegedly, prior to its temporary closure in 1991, this was a favourite spot of Vaclav Havel, Czechoslovakia’s last president and you can still sit at the table where he and other members of the great and good, plotted the finer details of the Velvet Revolution.

Sachertorte

5 oz 70% chocolate, chopped

5 oz unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

5 eggs, separated

3 oz lightly packed almond flour

1/2 cup gluten-free or regular plain flour

Filling and frosting:

6 tbs apricot jam

Chocolate ganache

6 oz bittersweet/dark chocolate, roughly chopped

1/4 cup double cream

1/2 tbsp butter

1 tsp vanilla essence

Preheat oven to 175 C. Oil and line the bottom of a 9 inch round cake pan. Melt the chocolate over simmering water, set aside to cool slightly. Using a stand mixer, cream the butter, then slowly add the sugar until fluffy. Add the melted chocolate and vanilla until combined. Add the egg yolks, almond flour and the flour beat until combined. In a separate bowl beat the egg whites until stiff peaks. Fold one third of the egg white into the chocolate mixture to loosen it, then fold in the rest until no whites are showing. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan and smooth the top. Bake for 45-60 mins or until cake springs back when lightly touched. Allow the cake to cool for 10 mins in pan before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. While the cake is cooling make the filling and frosting. Heat the apricot jam until bubbling, remove from heat and strain, leave to cool.

For the Chocolate frosting; heat the double cream until it starts to boil. Pour over the chocolate and the butter, let it sit for a few minutes, then stir until smooth, then stir in the vanilla.

Slice the cake into three layers, lay the bottom layer on the cake rack and spread some of the apricot jam over it. Then lay the second layer over it, spread with jam. Top with the last layer. ( if the top of the cake is slightly domed trim to flatten). Pour the chocolate frosting over the top and sides of cake and smooth. Put in the fridge to set the frosting, preferably overnight.

Also delightful and right across the Legion bridge from Kavárna Slavia is the Art Nouveau Café Savoy. More opulent and Viennese in style than its right bank neighbour, it does double duty as a fine dining establishment in the evening and serves one of the best apple strudels you’ll find anywhere.

Last and definitely most if folderol is your thing, is the extraordinary confection that is Kavárna Obecní Dům, which is like the eccentric love child of Donald Trump and the Czech Art Nouveau graphic artist Alphonse Mucha, with a menu to match. We couldn’t get out of there quickly enough, but if gilded cages are your thing it takes the concept of dinner and a show to new heights, as the café shares the building with the Prague Philharmonic. A little Caviar and Waffles or Foie Gras Mousse with your Dvořák, perhaps?

It’s our last afternoon in the city and still searching for traces of Kafka beyond fridge magnets and other tat we explore the surprisingly deserted Jozefów (Jewish Quarter) where he was brought up and spent most of his life as a writer. Jarolav Róna’s enigmatic memorial statue of Kafka stands guard over the remarkable Spanish Synagogue (the youngest of the six here) and for an hour or so we feel like we have escaped the fever dream of the Old Town which is but ten minutes walk from here, before partially re-joining it as we visit the Pinkas Synagogue and poignantly atmospheric old Jewish cemetery, though here the throng is peaceful and chatting away animatedly in Yiddish and Hebrew.

What their forefathers would have thought of the A-Z of luxury brands stores on nearby Pařížská Street is anyone’s guess, but in this city of constant reinvention to harvest the tourist dollar, it’s just one conundrum among many.

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It’s extraordinary to think that 15th century devotees en route to Papal Rome from Canterbury on the Via Francigena pilgrimage route would have recognised this view of San Gimignano’s unmistakeable profile across the Val d’Elsa. Our ancient Agriturismo would have been a newly built farm back then, so weary walkers might well have spent the night in one of its barns. This vista of vines, cypresses and medieval hilltop towns, (Certaldo Alto is also nearby) backed by the Monte del Chianti, is so enthralling that it’s tempting to drink it in at all hours from a sun lounger with a glass or two of Vernaccia di San Gimignano on hand, especially around sunset which washes the sky in delicate water coloured hues.

Pilgrims still ply the narrow ridge top road past our Agriturismo through the tiny hamlet of Pancole on their way south to San Gimignano, Siena and beyond as they have since Archbishop Sigeric ‘the Serious’ of Canterbury first documented that 1700 kilometre journey in the year 990, but we have our eyes fixed on more earthly pursuits. This is wild boar and truffle country and we don’t need to look far to hunt them both down in the two medieval hilltop towns right on our doorstep.

San Gimignano in late April is already on the cusp of falling into its annual mediaeval theme park melée, with a Dante Alighieri tribute act in red skull cap and robes loudly performing excerpts of the ‘Divine Comedy’ from the town’s ramparts. Still, there are quiet corners away from the inferno of selfie sticks in the main square and real life continues uninterrupted in the venerable Salumeria ‘Mangius Gastronomia’ where we stock up on fat, freshly cured Wild Boar Salamis while close by groups of Italian Americans from New York seek kinship in this “Mediaeval Manhattan”.

With this weight of visitors it seemed unlikely that we were going to find authentic Pappardelle al Ragù di Cinghiale (wild boar) or Tagliatelle al Tartufo (black truffles are currently in season) in San Gimignano, but we did enjoy them both in Certaldo Alto on Ristorante L’Antica Fonte’s beautiful terrace. Here you are just steps away from Palazzo Pretorio, with its ceramic coat of arms studded exterior, but more importantly only a short funicular ride down the hill to the modern town of Certaldo Basso, which means this particular mediaeval hilltop town is full of life all year round, not prey to tourism’s famine and feast.

Pappardelle al Ragù di Cinghiale (Wild Boar Ragù): Serves 4

4 tsp EV olive oil

½ medium onion, finely diced

½ small carrot, finely diced

½ rib celery also finely diced

1tsp anchovy paste

1 tbsp chili flakes

1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary leaves

1 cup of dry red wine

1 cup of tomato sauce

½ lb boar shoulder, cut into 1” cubes

1 lb fresh pappardelle

Salt & pepper

Heat the olive oil in a heavy 6-8 quart saucepan. Add the onion, carrot and celery cooking until golden. Then add in the anchovy paste, chilli flakes, rosemary, red wine and tomato sauce and bring to the boil. Now add the boar meat, which you have seasoned with salt and pepper and return to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 90 minutes.

The meat should now be falling apart. Allow it to cool for 10 minutes, then put it in a food processor, pulsing a few times until it resembles a meat sauce (ragù).

Cook the pappardelle in lots of boiling salted water until al dente. Drain and toss with the ragù and serve garnished with fresh rosemary leaves.

It’s a lesson we should have taken to heart from our time in Lucca a few days back.

There’s an infectious brio within the fortified walls of this Renaissance town in Northern Tuscany, which by a happy accident has miraculously escaped the year- round crush afflicting its near Northern Tuscan neighbours of Florence and Pisa. There are tourists for sure, but the vast majority are charmingly boisterous groups of high school kids excited to have escaped their textbooks for a day of exuberant high fives and living history, in the former hometown of Giacomo Puccini.

The sense that you are in a real place rather than a museum is reinforced by ranks of haphazardly parked residents’ cars, noisy delivery vans and local buses on all but the narrowest streets which still follow the original Roman built grid pattern radiating out from Piazza San Michele with its delicate white marble Romanesque church and the elliptically shaped Piazza dell’Anfiteatro, built respectively on the ruins of the town’s forum and amphitheatre. Today these mark the central points of the evening passegiatta and though three Euro ‘happy hour’ cocktails can be hard to resist, there are quieter corners close by where you can enjoy a more tranquil tincture, or better yet take in the Puccini concert which takes place every evening from April to October at the Basilica of San Giovanni.

The miracle of Lucca’s preservation can be hard to grasp as you wander its streets and alleyways. Circumnavigating its wide tree lined Renaissance walls opens up tantalising vistas of terracotta rooftops, Romanesque churches and the former palazzi of the silk merchants who built the town’s wealth, many of which at street level hide their secrets behind grandiose gateways. However, only by climbing the twenty eight flights of steps to the roof garden with its small grove of ancient holm oaks atop Torre Guinigi, can you begin to appreciate the complete picture in all of its understated magnificence. After this exertion, (best done early before it gets too warm) you can enjoy a well earned cappuccino and custard crammed cornetto at Bar Piqui at the foot of this fourteenth century status symbol, the Trump tower of its era.

Blessed by their lack of world beating sights (there’s no equivalent here of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, Pisa’s leaning tower or Siena’s Piazza del Campo) the Lucchesi go about their business of enjoying life with gusto relatively unmolested. Chief among these pleasures, beyond a boisterous evening passeggiata, is the serious business of savouring some of the best Tuscan food and wine you’ll find in the region. One lunchtime in the atmospheric arched brick interior of Osteria Baralla (formerly the stable block of Palazzo Buonvisi) a group of good old boys at the table next to ours are passionately lamenting the misfortunes of their soccer team Lucchese 1905, while impressively working their way through the menu from antipasti to dolce, with wines to match. Observing this process we are introduced to two unique Lucchese dishes, Garmugia which is a bright, vibrant green Springtime soup made from fresh fava beans, peas, artichokes, and asparagus and Tordelli Lucchesi, half-moon shaped pasta pockets stuffed with a rich filling of beef, pork, mortadella and Swiss chard spiced with nutmeg and served with a meaty ragú sauce. Realising that this was what we’d watched being hand made in the picture window of Trattoria da Nonna Clara the day before, we made sure we weren’t sidetracked this time round by a flame grilled platter of thickly cut Tuscan T- bone steak.

The summer crowds will be here soon enough, but for now we’re glad to have enjoyed a glimpse of real life among the Lucchesi.

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Funchal is in full bloom as African Tulip, Frangipani and Jacaranda tree blossoms festoon the pavements and perfume the air with their scarlet, yellow and violet droppings as the city gears up for its annual Flower Festival. Likewise, at the Art Deco Mercado dos Lavradores, it’s peak season for the panoply of exotic fruits that grow in the rich lava soil of this remarkably fecund sub-tropical island. At just one stall we count five types of bananas, three types of passion fruit, mangosteens, two types of dragon fruit, custard apples, prickly pears and tiny mangoes so sweet and tender that you can even eat the skins. It’s an exotic array we have not seen outside of Hawaii or Southeast Asia.

Few places in our experience change for the better, but in the decade since we last visited Funchal feels like it’s been injected with a surge of energy, youth and modernity (and dare I say it, homegrown pride). The city in 2025 no longer trades on the faded, genteel glories epitomised by the blazer wearing, outstretched-pinkie-fingered Anglo pomposity of Reid’s Palace Hotel, although that fusty establishment still looks down its aquiline nose on the party below from its bougainvillea-bedecked hilltop. Excitingly, the Ritz Café, that other former bastion of English Home Counties snobbery is now Irish run, so has discovered the Craic.

The Ritz’s deep first floor verandah bar turns out to be an excellent vantage point from which to take in the carnival atmosphere of flower filled festival pavilions. Scents waft intoxicatingly upwards from the freshly stitched carpets of blooms which adorn the pavements of Avenida Arriaga and the festival’s flower girls pose like a bunch of bored floral Carmen Mirandas for photos.

The real party however is down on the seafront esplanade, where the city’s bus station has been commandeered as a rallying point for the floats and dancers taking part in this afternoon’s parade and flower girls of all ages are waiting excitedly for their show to begin.

Predictably every seat on the parade route was booked up weeks ago, so we escape the crush and find that Rua de Santa Maria which runs from Mercado dos Lavradores to the imposing oceanfront Fortress of São Tiago in the city’s oldest, most tourist dense neighbourhood and dates back to its first settlement in the 1420s, is correspondingly deserted. So for the first time ever, with its restaurants and fado bars mostly shuttered we are able to properly appreciate the neighbourhood art project that depicts the community’s folklore and its wicked sense of humour on its two hundred plus doorways. The few other flower parade refuseniks that we do find are propping up the ramshackle waterfront bar by the picturesquely dilapidated old 17th century fortress, or eating lunch in the adjacent turquoise painted Art Deco Bathing Club, which has hands down the most scenic views in the city. Joining them, we drink a couple of glasses of Albariňo and enjoy a simple medley of grilled tuna, rockfish and red snapper.

The food here is far more predictable than the weather, which cycles haphazardly between sunshine, storm clouds which oftentimes come to nothing and sudden torrential tropical downpours. So we have sought out favourite dishes we enjoyed when we were last here- Espetada (charcoal grilled cubes of beef on sticks, marinated in garlic with bay leaves), Lapas (limpets served grilled in their shells with garlic and lemon) and Cataplana (a fish and seafood stew cooked and served in a metal clam shaped container), all of which are wonderful.

However, as so often happens to us it was a restaurant we hadn’t even planned to visit which served up the dish of the trip. We were exploring the little port town of Câmara de Lobos a few miles west of Funchal, armed with newly bought umbrellas having been soaked to the skin the previous day, when high winds and squalls of horizontal rain suddenly appeared out of nowhere and our newly acquired rain gear fell apart on their first test. The words of the store owner “would you like cheap ones” were ringing in our ears as we took shelter in ‘Deserta Pequena’, which seemed like an ironic name under the circumstances. We were an awful long way from Lombardy, but they served the best, most comforting Osso Buco we have ever eaten.

Osso Buco: Serves Six

6 thick cut veal shin bones, complete with marrow. Ask your butcher for hind quarter shin bones (about 4cm thick), as they’re meatier and more tender than the front ones

10g packet dried porcini

50g unsalted butter

3 tbsp olive oil

Small handful of gluten free or wheat plain flour seasoned

1 medium onion, diced

1 large carrot, diced

1 large celery stick, trimmed and diced

250ml beef stock

200ml dry white wine

225ml tomato passata

Potatoes for ‘smashing’

Soak the porcini for at least 15 minutes in 200ml/7fl oz boiling water. Don't remove the membrane that holds the veal together, but trim off any obviously fatty or lumpy bits. Dust both sides of the meat with the seasoned flour.

Heat the butter and oil in a very large flameproof sauté pan or casserole over a medium-high heat. When the sizzling stops, put in the veal and fry the slices for 2-3 minutes on each side until golden brown. Transfer the meat to a plate.

Replace the pan over a low to medium heat and tip in the onion, carrot and celery. Gently fry for 5 minutes until the vegetables have slightly softened, then raise the heat and pour in the wine. Bubble the wine furiously for 2 minutes, then remove the pan from the heat.

Strain the softened porcini out of the soaking liquid, squeeze out the excess moisture and reserve the liquid. Chop the porcini roughly and add to the sauté pan, together with the soaking liquid. Add the passata and stock, stir.

Return the veal back into the pan in a single layer, cover and bring to the boil. Immediately reduce the heat and simmer very gently for 2 hours, turning the veal slices halfway, until the meat is very soft. The liquid should reduce to a thickish sauce, but if it’s still thin after 1¼ -1½ hours, half uncover the lid to allow evaporation.

Serve on a bed of ‘smashed’ potatoes.

I am in my element on this island as hiking is one of Madeira’s true glories and the variety of terrain on offer is staggering. In addition to spectacular cliff and mountainside trails, you can follow the paths of the vast network of levadas (the island’s ingenious watercourses), which have irrigated crops here since the 15th century. Fed by the frequent rainstorms which keep this island so preternaturally green, the levadas range from the epically steep, where the channels are fed by waterfalls, to the gentle mimosa, eucalyptus and agapanthus lined Levada dos Tournos, which even agoraphobic suffering Sabrina enjoys.

Resting up at the delightful Hortensia Tea House near trail’s end while trying to figure out how we were going to get back to the city, as the closest bus only runs a few times a day, we discover to our amazement that Uber can ride to our rescue on the side of a mountain.

In a final ironic twist, having avoided driving up or down precipitous slopes all week, our driver takes us back to town down Rua de Barreira, the island’s steepest road, with a gradient of 45 degrees.

We should have waited for the bus.

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It’s joyfully easy to get lost here, (well not so joyful when you are toting luggage) and we waste no time doing so on our way to the La Vucciria neighbourhood from the railway station, having arrived here on a glacially slow train from Catania, a fitting metaphor for the patience required to get anything done on this beloved island.

Our hotel ‘BB22’, a former pocket-sized palace (not that that’s in any way unusual), is craftily hidden away in a tangle of tiny alleyways and when we finally find it well past our appointed arrival time, the place is deserted. On the point of making the call we are greeted by two disarmingly jolly ladies, laden with food shopping. “You have the best room” chirps Rodi after introducing herself, and indeed it is quite delightful with a large terrace that looks out over the courtyard’s massive fig tree which shades the silversmith and jewellery workshops below. Close neighbours that had especially appealed to Sabrina when we chose this place.

It’s just about warm enough for us to sit out on the cobbles by the restaurant Rodi recommended (Osteria Mangia i Bevi) and we enjoy a late lunch of baked swordfish with fennel and fish scallopina, thinly sliced in a lemony sauce.

Baked Swordfish with Fennel, Lemons and Capers: Serves Four

I love this classic example of Sicily’s “Cucina Povera” and only wish that I could put swordfish on my shopping list more often (sadly it’s so high in mercury these days that’s it’s an occasional treat at best)

4 pieces Swordfish, about 6 oz each

2 large bulbs of Fennel, trimmed and finely sliced

1/3 cup olive oil

1 large lemon, thinly sliced

3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1 tbsp dried oregano

1 tbsp rosemary

1/2 cup capers

1 cup dry white wine

Heat 2/3 of the oil in a large ovenproof fry pan, add the Fennel, cook until soft. Add the Swordfish, lemon and garlic, scatter the herbs and capers, drizzle the rest of the oil and season to taste. Bake in a preheated 400ºF oven for 10-12 minutes, then add the wine and bake for a further 5 minutes.

Serve the Swordfish with the fennel and lemon slices, with the juices poured over it.

Though it’s the start of springtime the temperature difference versus Catania where we’ve had the odd day in the low 20s is immediately apparent. As if in confirmation, an attempt to order granita, that Sicilian classic, produces a shrug from our waiter who exclaims “it’s too cold for granita- we don’t serve it until May!”

No matter.

Exploring La Vucciria from its food market all the way down to the yacht club after stopping by Piazza Marina and the gorgeous Giardini Garibaldi with its elaborate Art Nouveau wrought ironwork, we sneak in a mid afternoon aperitivo with a middle aged, monied crowd who certainly don’t seem to have an office to get back to this Tuesday afternoon. Watching the boats go back and forth in the marina, we toy with the idea of catching one to Mondello beach for dinner, but feel too indolent and relaxed to act on that impulse.

By the time we make it back to our micro palazzo it’s clear that our instincts in selecting this part of central Palermo were sound as it’s away from the main tourist beat being east of the crossroads of Via Roma and Via Vittorio Emmanuelle, and while BB22 itself is in a quiet residential pocket with a few neighbourhood stores and restaurants on the doorstep, it’s close enough to the city’s thrumming nightlife as we discover on our way home through La Vucciria’s Night Market where young Palmeritani were still enjoying their aperitivi well after 10pm.

Stopping for coffee and freshly made pistachio Cannoli after enjoying a delicious Risotto al frutti di mare at Osteria Al Casarrecio, we couldn’t help but think of our old home city of Buenos Aires where weeknight festivities are barely underway at midnight.

We’re loving the warm welcome at BB22 and are already planning our return. After a convivial breakfast hosted by Rodi who had stocked up yesterday with loads of gluten free options for Sabrina (hence the loaded shopping bags when we met), we crossed the ‘dividing line’ at Via Roma to the main shopping streets of Via Ruggero Settimo & Via della Libertà as far as the Giardino Inglese, amongst hordes of Easter Holiday tour groups, most of them from mainland Italy. We’ve noticed that the Palmeritani like to make fun of their mainland visitors pronunciation, never more so than at lunchtime in Ballaro market where the waiters keep pretending to mistake “arancini” orders for “arancia”. This and the equally chaotic Capo market are a tsunami of activity- revving Vespa scooters pushing their way through the crowds, machine workshops cheek by jowl with madly shouting and gesticulating costermongers and cleaver wielding flyblown butchers, hastily improvised drinks stands and street food stalls selling Pani ca’ Meusa (spleen sandwiches), babbaluci (sea snails), panelle e crocché (salty pancakes made with chickpea flour) and a myriad of other appetising and not so appetising options, under a tangled web of guide ropes and tattered crisscrossed awnings of all different shades, which are punctuated by balletic wait staff dodging traffic with trays of food and drinks. The whole backdropped by stunningly decrepit palazzi, churches, scaffolding, crumbling masonry and random tracts of wasteland. If Istanbul had a Latin cousin, this would be she.

Throwing her Gluten free diet temporarily to the winds Sabrina enthusiastically orders a huge tray of Fritto Misto.

Continuing east after our joyful repast we walk a couple of hundred yards out of Ballaro market and suddenly find ourselves surrounded by abject poverty amongst row upon row of decrepit low rise 1950s tower blocks. It’s as if we’ve stumbled onto the set of a gritty post war Italian Neo-Realist movie and feels like we have crossed yet another dividing line. Though we don’t feel threatened we are nonetheless relieved to soon find ourselves at the apex of the old city by the colossal fortified Arab-Norman citadel of the Palazzo dei Normani (something to save for a rainy day) and the equally imposing Arab-Norman cathedral. Tempted to make our escape by gaily painted Piaggio Scooter taxi we are swept instead by the crowds back down Via Vittorio Emmanuelle and are more than happy to be back in La Vucciria where the market is still wearing its fruit and vegetable stall day clothes under the fairy lights.

Rodi had told us about a cocktail bar on the roof of the swanky La Rinascente department store across from the handsome Baroque church and Column of the Immaculate Conception on Piazza San Domenico, so after leading Sabrina gently up the escalators past the designer labels we find ourselves the early birds on a massive terrace and enjoy a couple of the store’s signature ‘Uomo’ and ‘Donna’ cocktails as the sun sets by the distant waterfront.

One casualty of the Easter holiday crush is that we didn’t manage to visit the Antonio Pasqualino Puppet Museum. This early 19th century tradition lives on in this establishment run by the Bumbello family, who stage daily shows featuring two knights who slay demons, dragons and other foes (with liberal gore and beheadings) and make Punch and Judy’s simplistic storylines look stupidly crude.

It’s our last morning and if we didn’t have a train to catch we would happily have spent hours talking to Rodi, her colleague Emmanuella and the hotel’s owner Patti over endless cappucinos and cornetti in the hotel’s dining room.

As a parting gift Patti shows us the other rooms and we really did have “the best one”. So when you book, ask for ‘Mandarina’.

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Grasmere village is the poetic and literary heart of ‘the Lakes’ and it was writing from there that William Wordsworth, the leading light of the ‘Lake Poets’ school of Romantics first captured the public’s imagination to experience its savage beauty at the start of the 1800s. An early nature conservationist as well as a celebrated poet, Wordsworth’s verses and his book ‘Guide to the Lakes’ emphasised the importance of preserving the natural beauty of the area and its accessibility to all. Whether he would still consider it “the loveliest spot that man hath ever found” is unlikely, given the twenty plus million visitors who descend on the National Park annually, the long lines outside the village school where he taught, which is now the world famous Grasmere Gingerbread Shop and the countless pilgrims who visit Dove Cottage where he lived and picturesque riverside St Oswald’s churchyard where he is buried.

Other literary names including John Ruskin and most famously Beatrix Potter, later took up Wordsworth’s environmental mantle and they would certainly appreciate the protections that the staunchly conservationist National Trust, which owns around a fifth of the Lake District and its National Park and UNESCO World Heritage status affords. Against all odds it remains one of the wildest and most beautiful regions in the British Isles, but the threats it faces from climate change, pollution and the sheer weight of footfall on its fragile fells are mounting. Recent algal blooms on Windermere, England’s largest lake from a toxic mix of human waste, pharmaceuticals, and microplastics have made it especially vulnerable and spawned a vociferous protest movement with the powerful corporate backing of environmentally focussed clothing company, Patagonia.

The converted 17th century fell side sheep farm in the Vale of Grasmere where we are staying, certainly feels very far indeed from the crowds down in the village. Dramatic storm clouds and the potential for biblical downpours seem to be ever present, all the better to spotlight the extraordinary verdancy, as dramatic shafts of sunlight pierce the sky and distant rainbows illuminate the far flung fells and ribbons of water. No wonder so many of the place names in the Lakes are from Old Norse, as the Vikings who first settled here in the 10th century must surely have felt right at home in these glacier carved landscapes.

The old buildings of our lodgings hunker down for shelter from the elements and its tempting to linger way past lunchtime in its excellent restaurant which serves comforting, locally sourced roasts on Sundays and towering pastry-topped pies all week long.

Cumbrian Roast Rack of Pork with Apple and White Wine Sauce: Serves Four

1 whole rack of pork chops

1 cup dry white wine

2 cups chicken stock

1/4 cup apple sauce

Salt and pepper to taste

Rub salt and pepper all over the pork, place in a roasting pan with a rack. Roast in a 350F preheated oven until your instant meat thermometer reads 160F (stuck into the thickest part of the meat). Remove from the oven and place on a dish, loosely covered to rest. Pour off any fat collected at the bottom of the pan reserving the juices. Heat the pan with the juices and add the wine, scraping any bits that have caramelized, reduce half the wine then add the apple sauce and the stock. Bring to the boil and reduce slightly then make a butter and flour mixture, (1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon flour) and add to the sauce, until it has thickened, check the seasoning and add to your taste.

Cut each chop and serve with the sauce poured over it. I like to serve mine with new potatoes and cauliflower au gratin (cheese and mustard sauce).

Chasing childhood memories from long ago family vacations, I decide on a whim to drive Sabrina over the brutally bleak Kirkstone Pass to Ullswater and find to my huge surprise that the hulking granite mass of a hotel where we used to stay at the water’s edge, is virtually unchanged.

As if on cue, the Victorian steamboat ‘Lady of the Lake’ which we’d catch to Pooley Bridge at the northern end of Ullswater chugs cheerfully past the islet we swam out to as children and all of a sudden I am struck by an overwhelming feeling of affection for this precious place, as so many have before me.

It’s still possible to feel ‘lonely’ as Wordsworth did in the best possible way, as you explore this landscape of lakes and mountains, but for how much longer?

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd
A host of dancing Daffodils;
Along the Lake, beneath the trees,
Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee: --
A poet could not but be gay
In such a laughing company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

William Wordsworth, 1807

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Packed with colourful unrestored ‘azulejos’ (tiled houses), which the townsfolk are fighting hard to conserve against a rising tide of gentrification, Ohlāo is an unlikely slice of Old Portugal on its most visited coastline.

Harbingers of a cookie cutter future are encroaching fast however, as there’s already a shiny new ‘tourist district’ cheek by jowl with the old town, where a swanky new marina and apartment blocks, a smattering of sunset cocktail spots and a large hotel catering to the aforementioned golfing crowd have sprung up, but as of this moment old Ohlāo stands fast, centred on its waterfront fish and vegetable market and massive whitewashed Baroque church with its resident family of giant storks.

Fantasies of a fixer upper in the charming tangle of streets which radiate outwards from the port and the church are fuelled by the delightful small hotel where we are staying, which was recently converted by an enterprising French couple from a pair of semi-derelict courtyard houses, so that we spend even longer than usual glued to estate agents’ windows and casing faded beauties.

If there’s a single place that represents the essence of this port town and its strong sense of conviviality, community and continuity it has to be Grupo Naval de Ohlāo. Part water’s edge restaurant, part social club and part old marina hub this charmingly ramshackle institution has Vinho Verde on tap and dishes up some of the freshest, most delicious seafood we have ever encountered. Serving only what the town’s fishing boats bring in each morning, their signature ‘Cataplana’ (seafood stew in a metal clam-shaped pot) is different every day. Our waiter apologised profusely that there were no razor clams on offer on the first lunchtime we visited, but that omission was more than made up by the remaining array of astonishingly fresh fish and seafood.

Algarve Seafood Stew (Cataplana): Serves Three to Four

1 kg mixture of fish

400 gr clams

300 gr shrimp

1 onion

6 potatoes

1 green pepper

1 red pepper

2 tomatoes

20 gr tomato purée

5 gr paprika

2 garlic cloves

50 ml olive oil

1 bay leaf

Roughly chopped parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

100 ml white wine

Cut the fish into cubes of similar sizes. Cut the onions into half-moons, slice the potatoes and tomatoes, cut the peppers into thin slices and the garlic cloves into thick slices.

To prepare the cataplana, cover the base with a generous drizzle of olive oil, followed by the onion, garlic, chili peppers, bay leaf, tomato, peppers and potatoes (all in layers).

Add a bit of tomato puree and repeat the process. Season with salt and pepper, a bit of tomato puree and paprika.

Place the fish on top of the last layer and, on top of the fish, add the clams and the shrimp. Drizzle with white wine and finally with olive oil.

Cover and let cook on a low-medium heat for 30 minutes.

Serve sprinkled with the freshly chopped parsley.

Another of Ohlāo’s many charms is the small railway station which connects it with other towns and cities up and down the Algarve coast. So instead of speeding along an anonymous freeway you can use the venerable Linha do Algarve, whose antique single railway track dates back to the 1880s, to make a day trip all the way to Lagos in the far west or to the Spanish border town of Vila Real de San Antonio. However, as this is the ultimate in slow travel and the timetables are more of a suggestion than a guarantee, we confined ourselves to exploring only a few stops up or down the line in either direction.

Even on an afternoon of pouring rain, we were particularly taken with the ancient town of Tavira which sits handsomely on either side of the Gilāo river, spanned by a 14th century bridge and shares the Rio Formosa Natural Park with Ohlāo. After a warming lunch of baked octopus with onions, peppers and potatoes followed by Bacalhau Fresca (salted cod) baked under a cheese crust, we were more than ready for a little entertainment. There are apparently no less than twenty one churches in Tavira, but as luck would have it we stumbled upon the only one hosting a Monday afternoon Fado performance, which suffused us with an appropriate amount of melancholy before we got wet through sloshing our way back to the train station.

Sunshine restored, we take the ferry over to the barrier island of Armona on our very last day in Ohlāo. On our way to the ocean beach we find to our astonishment that there’s an Argentine steak restaurant nestled in the dunes and that of course after a fish and seafood heavy week, a Rump steak is exactly what we’ve been craving.

Leaving Sabrina to place our order, I go to dip my toes for a final time in the ocean.

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The magnificent Moorish masterpieces of Granada’s Alhambra, with its awesome Sierra Nevada backdrop and Córdoba’s Mezquita, a 10th century mosque within a cathedral, are undeniably impressive. Sabrina and I wouldn’t have missed visiting them for the world, but what we’ll remember most fondly from three weeks of riding the rails in Andalucía are not these UNESCO World Heritage listed wonders, but the small, relatively unsung port cities of Cádiz and Almería.

Western Europe’s oldest city goes its own way in pursuit of pleasure

The extremely slow train we took to Cádiz from Córdoba was the first clue that we are way off the Andalucían tourist circuit. Refreshingly, Uber has no jurisdiction here either, so an old school taxi hail is the order of the day at Cádiz’s small railway station, while the cab itself wouldn’t have looked out of place in a small North African town.

We’re absolutely not in Seville and honestly, that’s a relief.

This ancient city, which is spectacularly located on a narrow peninsular on the Straits of Gibraltar, was first settled by the Phoenicians just a few decades after the end of the Trojan wars nearly two millennia ago, though today it wears the weight of that history with remarkable insouciance. Not so our lovely host Jessica, who after showing us around the glorious Art Nouveau apartment with its soaring twenty foot ceilings where we are staying, is literally bursting with pride to share the places in town she loves the best. Refreshingly, rather than giving us one of those colourful maps covered with advertisements for restaurants, bars and museums that is the usual tourist office staple, she hands over a very short typed list of her own favourites, which she then proceeds to enthusiastically annotate for us.

Thanking her profusely we head straight for the waterfront at La Caleta, serendipitously timing our arrival to precisely the moment that the sun is setting and the ornate street lamps which line the boardwalk are lit up. It might be an unseasonably cold early January evening, but the beach front is so chock full of rugged up ‘Gaditanos’ that La Caleta’s one and only beach bar is standing room only. Any other prime stretch of waterfront in Andalucía would have numerous hostelries to choose from but here there are just two, so we have to content ourselves with taking a table on the terrace of the other one, which is set back from the water on the palm tree lined esplanade.and that bizarrely, given that it’s a Saturday is soon to close up for the evening. It’s our third clue that this town is unlike anywhere else we’ve been to in Southern Spain.

No restaurant here opens for dinner before 8:30pm at the earliest, so we join the tapas crawl in the adjacent La Viña neighbourhood and find to our joy that there are dishes we’ve never encountered before. Tuna Lasaňa (cooked with tomatoes and bell peppers) is especially characteristic of Cádiz as the catch is brought in daily from the Straits of Gibraltar, but Chicharrones de Cádiz, Garbanzo beans in a tomato sauce with langoustines and Grilled Ibérico ham from Jabugo, reputedly the finest in Spain were also delicious new discoveries. However the dish of the evening and indeed of our short stay was the Frittura Mista we ate much later that evening at Restaurante Entre Castillos.

Carnival doesn’t officially start here for another month, but we follow the sound of music to Plaza de San Francisco where boisterous celebrations have already begun with ‘Pestiňada’, an all night street party featuring traditional ‘Gaditano’ folk songs and free ‘Pestiňos’ (carnival fritters flavoured with anise and sesame seeds). Fortunately the tumult is far enough away from our apartment for us to get some sleep. Not so the locals, as pre-Carnival festivities continue all the next day with three more food and music events around the city- ‘Erizada’, ‘Ostionada’ and ‘Mejillonada’ featuring celebratory tastings respectively of sea urchins, oysters and mussels. accompanied by song and dance troupes.

It’s a bit early for such seafood treats so we hightail it back to Plaza Candelaria for brunch at Café Royalty, which is just a few doors down from our apartment. It’s another ‘only in Cádiz’ institution which was founded in 1912 as Spain’s sole Viennese style coffee house and apparently, at this time of year at least the city’s solitary tourist attraction.

Spaghetti Westerns and Strawberry Fields Forever in Andalucía’s desert city

One could be forgiven for thinking that Almería peaked in the mid 1960s with Sergio Leone’s ‘Spaghetti Western’ movie trilogy that made a star of Clint Eastwood who was nicknamed locally “el payo del cigarro” (whitey with the cigar) and John Lennon’s stay in 1966, when he wrote that Beatles classic ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ while pining for his hometown of Liverpool.

Actually these cultural milestones are mere blips in Europe’s only desert city’s more than eventful millennium of history. Crowned by its redoubtable 10th century Moorish fortress the Alcazaba, which is the second largest after Granada’s Alhambra this was a city under almost constant siege, first by fearsome Barbary Pirates, then the Catholic forces of Aragon and finally by Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War, when it was the very last significant Republican stronghold to surrender.

Not so today, as remarkably few tourists make the journey to this remote South Eastern corner of Spain, although apparently there are a clutch of canny foreigners from frigid Northern climes, who call this balmy spot home and indeed it is the one and only place we have visited on what has been an unseasonably cold and wet Andalucian winter, to live up to its promise of warmth.

Our journey here on a ‘Tren Regional’ from Granada, was even more convoluted and glacially slow than the one to Cádiz as it trundled its way at a steady 50 kmh through the southeastern Sierra Nevada and Sierra de Las Filabres badlands, before disgorging us for an unscheduled final twenty minute coach ride to Almería’s diminutive station.

Our hotel cum hammam looks out over the Alcazaba on its hilltop with the forbidding vastness of the Tabernas desert beyond and its hard to tear ourselves away from this dress circle view and the temptation to drink it in on a lounger, especially at sunset.

However the surrounding old town is so eerily empty of people that it’s a delight to explore, especially the Almedina, the old Muslim quarter which is right below the Alcazaba. Hot, tired and hungry after climbing the long winding path to the fortress keep we are surprised and delighted to find that there are several traditional Moroccan restaurants there doing brisk business (Moroccans are by far the largest foreign segment of the city’s population) and that our favourite dish is every bit as good as in its home country.

Tagine of preserved lemons and chicken with rice and olives: Serves Four

1 whole chicken 1.3 kg

3 cloves garlic, minced

Small bunch of coriander, finely chopped

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1 tsp salt

4-5 tbsp olive oil

1 large onion, grated

1 pinch of saffron threads

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp black pepper

1 cinnamon stick

1 1/2 cups of green olives

2 preserved lemons, sliced

Rub the cavity of the chicken with the garlic, coriander, salt and lemon juice. Mix the olive oil with the grated onion, saffron, ginger and pepper, rub this over the outside of the chicken. Place in a large dish, cover and let marinade for at least 2 hours.

Place the chicken in a flameproof casserole and also the juice from the marinade. Add enough water so it comes halfway up the side of the chicken, add the cinnamon and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer for an hour, occasionally turning it over.

Preheat the oven to 150 C. Lift the chicken out of pan and set aside, turn the heat up and reduce the liquid for 5 minutes then place the the chicken back into the pan, add the preserved lemon and the olives, baste the chicken cover and place in the oven for 15 minutes. Serve immediately with steamed rice.

After the hordes at Granada’s Alhambra and Córdoba’s Mezquita, it seemed quite extraordinary to stand looking out over the Gulf of Almería from the Alcazaba’s battlements with just Sabrina for company. Long may it be so.

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We were up early the following morning to explore Karnak on its sacred lake setting, or rather barely to scratch its surface, as its vastness as the world’s largest temple complex has challenged even the collective efforts of generations of Egyptologists to document its wonders. Beyond the remarkably intact forest of monumental pillars which make up Karnak’s Great Hypostyle Hall, much of the site to our untrained eyes at least, seemed like nothing more than a random Jenga-like jumble of stone artefacts. These remnants had been buried for millennia by succeeding Pharaohs, as each new ruler sought to expunge or outdo the efforts of his or her predecessors and to stamp their own signature on the site.

By midday, even though it was mid winter, the midday sun was so remarkably fierce that we had to beat a hasty retreat to the cooling long shadows cast by the vast columns of the Great Hypostyle Hall.

Somewhat rested after a siesta at our hotel, we set out again mid-afternoon to hike the trail to the summit of the hill above the Valley of the Kings, retracing the steps that countless generations of tomb construction workers had taken for millennia. Following this still used donkey path with its precipitous views in the heat and dust was hard enough in a hat and sunglasses, but even more difficult to conceive blindfolded, as the stonemasons are said to have been to avoid them revealing the locations of the tombs they were building to grave-robbers. Leading eventually up and along the length of the escarpment which hides the Valley of the Kings from the outside world, the path passes through the Deir el-Medina (artisans village) containing their own modest tombs, the Valley of the Queens and the Valley of the Kings.

En route in the far distance the narrow, impossibly green fertile strip of sugarcane fields on either side of the Nile river basin, contrasted dramatically with the surrounding desertscape and the vast grandiosity of the ‘Ramesseum’, constructed over a two decade period as the final resting place of the great Pharaoh Ramesses II and the inspiration for the English Romantic poet Shelley’s famous sonnet ‘Ozymandias, King of Kings’. Hot and tired, we approached the path’s summit and suddenly the vast panorama of the Valley of the Kings opened up before us and we stared at it slack jawed before beginning our descent to the vast necropolis of the warrior queen Pharaoh, Hatshepshut, at Deir el Bahri.

As I walked, the archaeologist Howard Carter’s famous words as he unsealed the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings “I see wonderful things…” were ringing in my ears. Though this signature discovery and his earlier excavation of the much larger Tomb of Queen Hatshepshut with fellow Egyptologist Flinders Petrie were of course a mixed blessing, as they reignited the West’s obsessive Egyptomania and the theft of so many of that country’s precious artefacts. No wonder Carter’s reputation locally still veers on the notorious.

It’s long been accepted that ancient Egypt’s temples were a riot of vibrant colour when first constructed, but we’d never really seen a living example. So the still bright pigments illuminating many of Hatshepsut’s temple friezes were an almost jarring contrast to the monochromatic sandstone exteriors, a reminder of what has been lost over the millennia that these structures were buried beneath the desert sands or under other later constructions (like the monastery that was built above this very site), before Petrie and Carter completed their excavations in 1909.

Hidden in not so plain sight were the Pharaoh Queen’s attempts to airbrush her gender from history, (rather like the later official portraits of England’s First Elizabeth, which depict her as at best an androgynous figure). In some of her later statuary Hatshepshut even adopted the classic Pharaonic beard, as ancient Egypt’s longest serving queen was always vulnerable to male dominated court factions siding with her young stepson Thutmose III, for whom she acted as regent for nearly two decades.

Once again we found ourselves defeated by the vastness of the temple complex and vowing to return there at sunrise we hailed an ancient Peugeot 405 taxi and had him drive us back to our hotel, catching the giant silhouettes of the Colossi of Memnon in the setting sun en route. These massive figures still stand guard at the entrance to the scant remains of Amenhotep’s memorial necropolis, destroyed by a massive earthquake in 1200BC, which was even larger in its day than the monumental ‘Ramesseum’.

Up as early as we could on our last morning to cram in as much as possible before a midnight flight to Cairo, we fuelled up as we had every morning here with Fuul Mesdames (fava beans cooked in cumin) and served with flatbread), that classic Egyptian breakfast staple.

Fuul Mesdames: Serves Four or Five

2 cans fava beans

1/2 cup water

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1 or 2 chili peppers, finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

Juice of 1 lemon

1 cup chopped parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

EV Olive oil

Heat a skillet with water and add the fava beans, salt and cumin; warm through then partially mash with a potato masher (it shouldn’t be too smooth).

Mash the garlic and chili peppers together in a pestle and mortar, making a paste, then add the lemon juice and combine into a sauce.

Add the chili pepper and garlic sauce to the fava beans with a generous pour of EV olive oil, then top with the chopped parsley.

Serve with warm pitta bread, sliced tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, green onions and olives.

Unfortunately we were not nearly early enough for Hatshepshut’s temple, which was already filling up with tour groups, so we hightailed it to the almost deserted Valley of the Nobles which is modest in scale and where the tomb entrances are interspersed with the bustling dwellings of the desert village of Qurna.

The guide we’d found to help us navigate the warren of tomb entrances showed us the simple tomb of the Governor of Thebes (as Luxor was called in Pharaonic times) during Akhenaten’s brief reign, which featured still intact Aten worship symbols- incredibly rare, as these sun god motifs were almost all destroyed in the rapid return to religious orthodoxy by the priests of Amun, after Akhenaten’s death. This modest two roomed tomb with its simple stone sarcophagus brought us full circle back to Tutankhamun, Akhenaten’s eldest son who ruled for a brief period until his untimely death at just nineteen years of age.

It was a modest but moving link to the “wonderful things” Carter uncovered nearly a century earlier and for us, equally unexpected.

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It’s our last evening on the island and as we pack for tomorrow’s early start we are sorely tempted to wedge the citrus fruit we picked this afternoon in the nooks and crannies of our suitcases. The scent of the three types of oranges (Jaffa, Blood & Merlin), mandarins, pink grapefruits, pomelos and lemons from Lena’s family’s orchard is intoxicating and there could be no better, bittersweet souvenir of a month of warmth.

It’s ironic that it has taken us until the very last day of our stay, when we spent the afternoon with Lena’s family that we would finally get to experience the magic of rural life here. We now completely understand what drew Lena’s parents back to the place they reluctantly left at the age of sixteen in 1960, to make their lives in England. Long simmering tensions between the ethnic Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities in their village (and island-wide) had become violent clashes. A legacy that is still visible today in the many buildings pockmarked with bullet holes and in the dialect which is spoken here- a mixture of Cypriot Greek and Cypriot Turkish, which apparently is quite distinct from the languages spoken on either mainland.

Warmly welcomed by Lena’s parents Erene and Rotis and her brother Miltos, to the house where Erene grew up, we have our first experience of a Cypriot home cooked meal. We begin with freshly squeezed orange juice and tiny green olives ‘tsakistes’ sprinkled with coriander seeds and lemon juice, then feast on Keoftedes, barbecued chicken and black-eyed peas and bitter greens drizzled with just harvested and pressed green olive oil from their grove, which is dramatically situated high on an escarpment above the village with views of the sea in the far distance. One day, Lena plans to build a house on this land and I can think of nowhere we’ve visited in the Eastern Mediterranean which has a more beautiful prospect.

As Rotis shows us around in his old Toyota pickup truck we are struck by his huge pride in the land and culture and the spirit of friendship in this Greek Cypriot village where every one we encounter seems to be either an extended family member or close friend. Every day here is lived to the full, in harmony with the rhythms of the land, but in the knowledge too of the fragility of it all as talks to reunify the island ebb and flow, but get no closer to resolution, nearly 50 years after the partition.

Erene’s Keoftedes: Serves Four to Six

After a month of (admittedly spectacular) fish and seafood, these meatballs and the bitter greens and black-eyed peas enjoyed at a long table in a shady vine covered backyard pergola on a warm January afternoon, will be the meal I will most remember from our time here.

500 gms pork or chicken mince

2 medium onions, finely chopped

3 large potatoes for grating

1/4 of a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a pinch of cloves

A couple of sprigs of fresh mint and a small bunch of parsley, finely chopped

1 tbsp EV olive oil

1 egg

Olive oil for frying

Salt and black pepper to taste

One or two lemons

Place the mince and chopped onion in a large bowl. Grate the potatoes into a smaller bowl using a medium sized grater, then taking handfuls of the grated potatoes, squeeze them tightly until they run dry. Add each dried handful of potatoes to the mince and chopped onion as you go. When done, pour the potato juices away but reserve the starch at the bottom and add this to the mixture too. Add the remaining ingredients to the mixture and mix thoroughly.

Shape the mince mixture into palm-sized ovals and pan fry them in batches.

Serve them with a squeeze of lemon juice.

While today in Agios Theodoros it finally felt like we’d found the island’s rural heart, looking back over the last few weeks we’ve certainly enjoyed searching for it.

In Zygi, a small fishing village east of Limassol on the south coast we drank frappés on a restaurant terrace next to a traditional bread oven, then enjoyed a magnificent Fish Meze in the sunshine overlooking the village’s fishing fleet at ‘The Captain’s Table’ which consisted of taramasalata, tahini, tirokateri cheese, pickled squid and olives as a cold starter, followed by deep fried and grilled prawns and mussels, grilled calamari, sardines, ling and whiting. Already more than full to the brim at this point, we were about to ask for the bill when yet another course arrived of grilled sea bream & octopus and a seafood soufflé, served in a clam shell!

Here, as in so much of the island, we were surrounded by bevies of Russians young and old, who have taken shelter here either from the regime or the taxman and as we discovered they are just as likely to be waiting tables and manning store counters as they are to be splashing the cash.

Away from the coast, distances in kilometres have little meaning on steep hairpin studded byways and we got ourselves into a lot of trouble trying to visit the tiny hamlet of Fikardou in the Troodos mountains, with its wooden balconied Ottoman period houses, as it began to drizzle and dense fog descended. Driven on by sheer bloody minded determination to reach our destination before nightfall, we took it as a good omen when a monk from the nearby monastery of Maheras suddenly appeared by the roadside in the murk. Having reached the village in pouring rain and near total darkness, there was nothing to do but turn the car round. The nightmarish two and a half hour crawl back to Larnaca where we were staying, in almost zero visibility on narrow roads with no guard rails, is a journey we felt lucky to have survived.

The countryside in the western part of the island is gentler and more verdant- an emerald green land of coastal banana groves that in parts resembles Hawaii, while its vine covered countryside is dotted with pine forests. The island’s wines are a wonderful surprise (to us at least) and our tasting at Vouni Panayia Winery was a revelation- five exceptional vintages, two white, two red and a rosé harvested from pre-phylloxxera root stock (Cyprus escaped the late 19th century blight which ravaged continental Europe’s vines), using indigenous grape varieties such as Xynesteri and Maratheftiko.

Just up the hill from here is the austere 12th century monastery of Chryssorogiatissa where we’d been hoping to eat lunch but not a soul was about apart from a solitary old lady, who admired the expansive view across the valley with us.

The village of Panayia itself was similarly shuttered and with lunchtime hunger pangs mounting we passed through village after village before finally finding the unusually named ‘Spring of life forever’ taverna in Amargeti. Leaving a large party of ‘ancient Britons’ to colonise the sunny terrace (there is a huge community in and around Paphos), we ducked inside and got chatting to a couple from Lyon, while the husband, wife and son who run the place served us delicious Goat Kleftiko and flame grilled lamb chops and vegetables.

Goats are indeed everywhere, seemingly roaming free and on our way back from tasting olives and olive oil in the lovely village of Anogyra a few days later, we spent fifteen minutes in their company as they surrounded our car while enjoying the roadside vegetation.

Greek Cypriot cities are admirably multicultural and this goes way beyond the aforementioned British and Eastern European communities. Indeed, (again to our surprise) according to the UNHCR, the Republic of Cyprus is the leading asylum receiving country per capita in the EU. We saw this in the larger villages we visited too, such as Omodos in the Western Troodos mountains, where apart from the now familiar sight of Russians in retail (two very jolly young women were running operations at ‘George’s Bakery’), we encountered Bangladeshi waiters in the restaurant where we ate lunch in the pretty cobbled main square.

One can only hope that the warm welcome that Greek Cypriots are giving to the world will count for something in the long road to reunification. Rotis told us the story of when the border was first re-opened twenty years ago and of the emotional reunions in their village with the many former Turkish Cypriot residents who flooded into Agios Theodoros for the day, to find their still empty homes and drink coffee with their erstwhile Greek Cypriot neighbours.

Apparently this happens every day in Pyla, the only village in the South where Greek and Turkish Cypriots still live side by side. Sadly, it is located in the UN controlled Buffer Zone, so we were unable to visit, but its very existence is a heartening sign.

In case you missed the first part, you can read it here:

We are moored in the moonlight on the beach of the tiny island of Horybyabab, guarded by the four dogs who call it their own. The islanders’ livestock have lain down for the night safely tethered in their palm frond pens after being herded there by their donkey riding master. To the East there’s a massive stand of bullrushes, to the North a magnificent mango grove whose irrigation channels are fed by an ancient water wheel, to the South there’s a second ‘dahabiya’ (traditional Nile sailboat similar to ours) tied up for the night and to the West lies the palm covered West Bank of the Nile with the inky black desert beyond.

It could be an illustration from a child’s bible, and yet here we are huddled together for warmth on the top deck under a pile of rugs, sharing a bottle of wine and enjoying a dram or two of Jameson’s. It’s a scene more or less repeated for the four nights we spent on ‘The Royal Cleopatra’, but it’s this first one I will remember most vividly.

The next morning I was up even before the crew and watched the sunrise deckside, before walking gently across the island as the livestock woke up and the dogs lazily stretched. Returning to the boat as our cook and crew were completing their morning ablutions in the river, our sails were soon hoisted and we were underway as breakfast was served in the galley- a spread of salads, cheeses, warm flatbreads and fried eggs, served with a generous helping of Ful Medames, that Nubian mashed fava bean staple that we had enjoyed so much on the West Bank in Aswan.

There’s just ten of us on board- Sabrina, our daughter, two dear friends from London, one of whom speaks fluent Arabic and is an expert decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphics, plus cook, crew and guide. Our quarters are definitely on the spartan side, a far cry from the fever dream ‘1001 nights’ opulence you’ll find on some luxury cruise ships. Not that we’d have it any other way. Twin-masted, barge-like sailing vessels like our ‘dahabiya’ have been around in one form or another for thousands of years, with similar craft depicted on the walls of many Pharaonic tombs and they were the standard vessel for archaeologists and tourists alike until the 1870s. It’s wonderful to see them making a bit of a comeback for Nile travellers seeking a more authentic river voyage experience.

The southerly breeze had been so stiff as we left Elephantine Island in Aswan that hoisting the sails was initially impossible and we had to be towed by our motorised tugboat ‘King Tarek’, picking up a stranded felucca en route, but from then onwards we have been able by and large to tack our way down river, freed with our boat’s shallow draft to moor pretty much at will in solitary locations where tourists never tread.

The second day’s highlight ought to have been the riverside temple of Kom Ombo, but it was overrun by cruise boat hordes and touts shouting “Hello Money!”. Far more rewarding was our completely unmolested exploration of the small East bank town of Darow. Our guide Mohamed showed us around the ancient mud brick Nubian house of ‘Beit al-Kenzi’, which is thatched with dom palm leaves and features a ‘kitchen’ straight out of an old testament illustration, but then much to his dismay we cut loose for a surpassingly rare opportunity to mix with the locals. The vendors at the camel market proudly pitched us their finest and pointed out the adjacent butcher’s shop as part of their sales patter, a wizened vegetable vendor shows us his wares and the streets were filled with people just going about their business, apparently oblivious to our presence.

Back underway, we moored further upstream on Gebel Silsileh island in the gloaming, after an extraordinarily beautiful sunset and will visit its sandstone quarries, used by Rameses 1st to build the massive temple of Karnak, at sunrise tomorrow before the crowds gather. There are a half dozen other dahabiyas moored close by, a further heartening sign that this mode of travel really is enjoying a resurgence.

The same pattern as at Kom Ombo temple is repeated at our penultimate stop in Edfu. Initially things look promising as we dock soon after sunrise right next to a stunningly colourful clothes market and there is not a cruise ship in sight. Just over an hour later we visited the Temple of Horus, a beautifully preserved Greek replica of a Pharaonic structure and find it already rammed with superannuated, fanny pack toting tours. Finding a quiet corner, we listen enthralled as our friend tells us the story of the ‘Sacred Drama’, the conflict between Horus, the deity of the fertile lands adjacent to the mother river, and Seth the god of the surrounding desert, as Horus seeks revenge for the murder of his father Osiris, while poor Mohamed lurks uncomfortably in the background.

Further adding to Mohamed’s discomfiture we then set off for another unscheduled walkabout and a final lunch, before setting sail for our final stop in Luxor. Exiting the souk, Sabrina was drawn by the most delicious smell of frying and we enjoyed the meal of the voyage, deep fried bright green Ta’amiya (Falafel) served with pita bread, onions and tahini on a long table set up with hookahs for an afternoon’s smoke. Such a pity we were on a deadline.

Ta’amiya (Green Falafel)

I was amazed by these falafel having only ever seen them made with chick peas. When you bite into them they are bright green!

2 cups dried broad (fava) beans, soaked overnight

1/2 cup fresh dill

1/2 cup coriander

1/2 cup of coriander

2 medium onions roughly chopped

10 cloves garlic

1 small leek (white parts only), cleaned and roughly chopped

1 tsp sodium bicarbonate

1 tsp ground cumin

Salt and pepper to taste

EV oil for frying

In a food processor add the drained beans with the herbs, leek and onions. Process until it forms a paste, then add the spices, seasonings and sodium bicarbonate, processing again to combine. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and set aside for one hour.

Scoop small amounts to form a series of approximately 5x2cm thick ‘disc’ and sprinkle one side with sesame seeds. Deep fry in hot oil until brown.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

As our last night’s near full moon appeared over the mud brick houses, palm groves and alfalfa fields of El Fazawa, our final island mooring and the muezzin called the faithful to prayer, we sat on deck for one final time as the scene faded to black and vowed to return to complete our journey to the Nile delta.

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The traditional Nile sail boat we have chartered waits patiently for us at her mooring on the East bank of Elephantine Island. From there we will sail down river to Luxor, stopping pretty much anywhere the mood takes. There’ll be just the five of us plus crew, cook and Egyptologist on board, so our voyage will be a delightful throwback to a time when sail really was the only option. An era which ended overnight when Thomas Cook launched his fleet of package tour steamships, which first cruised this mighty river way back in 1869.

In planning our journey, it was always this storybook voyage, rather than the bookends of Aswan and Luxor that felt like it would be the highlight of our Egypt experience, but reflecting on our time here, Aswan has been so much more than its must see island Temple of Philae and the eccentric pink Victorian splendour of The Old Cataract Hotel, offering the briefest of glimpses of contemporary Egypt, amidst the antiquities, tourist tat and ever present high security, thanks to the fluent Arabic spoken by one of our party.

Our friend’s superpower is immediately pressed into service at our airport rendezvous as he miraculously conjures up the first of many ancient Peugeot 504 taxis amidst the press of noisy, gesticulating taxi touts. Luggage heaved onto the massive roof rack, we lurch and belch our way up to our hotel’s hilltop eyrie. A brutalist concrete monstrosity with Pharaonic touches best describes it, but the views across the river are magical and our two companions, who have spent the last week under canvas in the Western desert are just delighted at the prospect of a real bed.

It’s getting late, but Sharia as-Souq beckons with its spices and produce stalls sprinkled in with amulet and Egyptian deity fridge magnet emporia, but this is no time for spice haggling as the hunt is on for an early dinner, which we find at a Mezze restaurant on the nearby Corniche. Once again we have packed way too optimistically for the temperature, which is unseasonably frigid. Finding our hotel room to be no better and unused as yet to the loud calls of the muezzin, we sleep fitfully at best.

Putting this behind us the next morning, we take the ferry to mid-stream Elephantine Island, so named for the huge rounded rocks on its riverbanks. It’s here that ‘Mr Tibbs’ gently introduces himself as we walk past his home in the village we are exploring. Normally we avoid guides, but his boundless charm and enthusiasm are so infectious that we let him take us under his wing.

Loading us onto his small launch he takes us first to explore adjoining El Nabatat Island, the former home of Lord Kitchener, who laid out its Botanical Gardens, then across to the massive desert dunes on the West Bank where we enjoy a medley of traditional Nubian dishes at a family (more than likely his own family’s restaurant), including Bamiya (okra stew), Ful Medames (mashed fava beans), Tagen (fish stew with tomato and onion), Tahina (sesame paste) and Shish Taouk (grilled lamb). Especially delicious is Shamsi, a round flatbread that has been baked since Pharaonic times, and which is unique to the villages of this Upper Egypt region. The perfect vehicle for mopping up the Ful Medames.

Bamiya (Okra Stew): Serves Three to Four

1 tbsp olive oil

1 lb (approx. 450g) meat (lamb or beef stew meat, cut into cubes)

1 large onion, finely chopped

3-4 cloves garlic, crushed or minced

1 tsp ground coriander

1 can (approx. 14 oz/400g) diced tomatoes, or 3 fresh tomatoes chopped

2 tbsp tomato paste

2-3 cups water or beef/lamb stock

1 lb (approx. 450g) fresh or frozen small okra, tops trimmed

Salt and black pepper to taste

1 tbsp pomegranate molasses or lemon juice (for tang)

In a large pot or Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium-high heat and brown the seasoned meat cubes in batches. Remove the meat and set aside. Add the onion to the pot and cook until soft. Add the garlic and ground coriander, cooking for another minute until fragrant. Stir in the chopped tomatoes, tomato paste, water or stock, salt, and pepper. Return the meat to the pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer until the meat is almost tender (about 30-40 minutes).

Add the trimmed okra to the pot. Cover and continue to simmer until the okra is tender (about 20-30 minutes, less if using pre-cooked/frozen okra). Stir in the pomegranate molasses or lemon juice just before serving. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.

Serve warm, typically over white basmati rice or with bread.

Giving a wide berth to the camel drivers who are busy loading up tourists, we walk up the dunes past the Tombs of the Nobles to the Monastery of St Simeon and find to our surprise that we have the place to ourselves. Partially destroyed by Saladin during the second crusade in 1173, it housed up to 1000 monks in its heyday and you can still see their bench-like beds in some of the cells. A few of the walls are daubed with surprisingly ribald Muslim pilgrim graffiti (this is one of the historic routes to Mecca), which Mr Tibbs somewhat bashfully translates for us. The views from the monastery walls across the sands and the river to the old mud brick quarter of the city on the hilltop are extraordinary. We have Mr Tibbs drop us at The Old Cataract Hotel for cocktails and watch the feluccas perform their age old dance on the water, as dusk rapidly descends.

Up early the next morning we revisit the souk where Sabrina, with a bit of help from our fluent friend, strikes deals on indigo, saffron and other spices from a stunning array of colours and textures.

At the island of Philae and the temple of Isis, our friend’s second superpower finally comes into its own as he translates the hieroglyphics which tell the story of Isis bringing Osiris back to life, giving birth to Horus, and mummifying Osiris after his death, leaving Mr Tibbs standing sheepishly on the sidelines, to the amazement and amusement of the other guides.

As the sun sets through the bullrushes on the riverside, we wonder aloud how the dynamic with our on board Egyptologist, Mohammed is going to work when we visit some of the archeological sites down river. Will he be stunned into silence like Mr Tibbs or manage to hold his own?

We set sail tomorrow, so don’t have long to wait for the answer.

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Fellow Foodies and Travellers,

Thank you for being here and for riding shotgun with us over this past year!

We especially appreciate all our subscribers and the many writers on this platform who continue to inspire us. Special mentions (in no particular order) go out to , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , &

We’re all too aware of how lucky we are to be able to travel and eat the way we do and having begun this year in agony from a leg injury, I feel especially grateful for the twelve places near and far, that we’ve been able to visit in 2025.

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas and New Year holiday,

Marco and Sabrina

PS We’ll be banking more food and travel memories for most of January, so look out for us for the odd bulletin on Notes, while we take a break from posting stories.

January

Marrakech

Life within the red clay walls of ‘The Red City” simply teems at street level at every hour of the day and night. On Rue Boutouil, a short walk from where we are staying in the far north of the medina, metalwork and motorcycle repair shops shower sparks as panels are beaten and edges are ground or soldered, as they compete for sidewalk space with bakers, barbers, costermongers, spice shops and a myriad of other merchants twixt wood smoke burning food stalls hawking everything from boiled sheep’s brains and snail soup to merguez and mechoui (slow roasted lamb). A rich stew of sounds and smells punctuated periodically by prayer-summoning muezzin, though even their calls seem to have little effect on practically perpetual motion.

Dish of the visit Merguez Couscous at La Famille Berbère.

Erg Chigaga in the Sahara Desert

Sandstorms only happen in the movies, so we are more than surprised when in the middle of the night we find ourselves engulfed in one. The door to our tent is wrenched open by the sheer force of the wind and after securing the tent flaps as best we can against the onslaught we huddle together for dear life under the covers, wondering if we will either literally be blown away or suffocate under a newly formed dune. Come morning, all evidence of the storm around the guest tents has been miraculously erased in the early hours by the team at the camp and indeed the only evidence that the whole thing wasn’t a fever dream is the novelty of breakfast by candlelight, as the dining tent is still battened down.

Desert camp dish Amazigh Breakfast Eggs.

You can read the whole story here:

Essaouira

The words ‘Morocco’ and ‘relaxation’ rarely if ever appear together in the same sentence, but I can think of few places better than this shabby chic surf town on the Atlantic coast to while away winter doing nothing in particular, as large numbers of superannuated Gauloise chain-smoking French expats have clearly discovered.

Days pass in a blur of eating and drinking on its many rooftop restaurants and bars or the Fish Souk at the harbour, where fishermen unload and clean the day’s catch from their small blue boats, before weighing and grilling their customers’ selections at an adjoining ramshackle kiosk.

Dish of the visit Grilled giant and killer prawns, calamari and sea bass in the Fish Souk.

March

Ohlāo, Portugal

Sandwiched between the Algarve’s crass mega resorts and golf courses, there’s a small, unpretentious port town sheltered by the Ria Formosa’s pristine National Park, a string of pristine barrier islands which you can visit on small ferries for a windblown beach walk and a long drawn out seafood lunch in the dunes.

Packed with colourful unrestored azulejos (tiled houses), which the townsfolk are fighting hard to conserve against a rising tide of gentrification, it’s an unlikely small slice of old Portugal on its most visited coastline.

Dish of the visit Cataplana de Marisco (Seafood Stew in a metal pot) at Grupo de Naval Yacht Club.

May

Funchal, Madeira

Funchal is in full bloom. African Tulip, Frangipani and Jacaranda tree blossoms festoon the pavements and perfume the air with their scarlet, yellow and violet droppings as the city gears up for its annual Flower Festival. Likewise, at the Art Deco Mercado de los Lavadores, it’s peak season for the panoply of exotic fruits that grow in the rich lava soil of this remarkably fecund sub-tropical island, and we count five types of bananas, three types of passion fruit, mangosteens, two types of dragon fruit, custard apples, prickly pears and tiny mangoes so sweet and tender that you can even eat the skins, at just one stall, an exotic array we have not seen outside of Hawaii or Southeast Asia.

Dish of the stay Espetada Madeirense (cubes of grilled marinated beef on skewers) at O’Celeiro.

June

Grasmere, England’s Lake District

Storm clouds gather as I summit Helm Crag and pinch myself at the vivid panoply of greens. To my south lies shimmering Grasmere (the only one of the Lake District’s ancient glacial ribbon lakes that actually uses that prefix, the rest are ‘meres’ from Old English or ‘waters’). For good measure there are also innumerable ‘tarns’, which are small lakes or pools from Old Norse. To my west and north lie the hulking masses of Scafell Pike and Helvellyn, the highest of the National Park’s more than two hundred ‘fells’ glowering in the far distance.

Dish of the visit Cumbrian beef cheek, stewed in red wine gravy with silverskin onions at The Yan, Grasmere.

Glasgow, Scotland

The gargantuan Finnieston Crane is one of the few relics still standing of Glasgow’s former industrial might as the “Workshop of the World”. However, evidence of the fortunes it created are everywhere, in its magnificent red sandstone cityscape, monumental museums and sprawling hilltop Necropolis, where the city’s magnates moulder in ornate ill kept mausolea designed by a who’s who of Scotland’s most distinguished Victorian era architects who set out to create Glasgow’s equivalent of Paris’s Père Lachaise.

Back in the city of the living, there are echoes of this decline but hopes for a brighter future. Massive de-industrialisation may have hollowed out its population, but this proud city is no Rustbelt basket case and there’s a growing sense of energy, brio and creativity amongst the still all too visible poverty and blight. Game on for a resumption of that longstanding rivalry with its picture-perfect, patrician neighbour, Edinburgh.

Dish of the visit Ribeye Steak and triple cooked fries at The Butcher’s Block.

July

Côte d’Opale, Pas de Calais Northern France

French painter Édouard Lévêque was so entranced by the iridescent light and constantly changing colour palette here that he nicknamed France’s Northern Riviera the “Côte d’Opale”, where opalescent white cliffs mirror those on England’s Kent coast.

For the last two summers we’ve come here to spend time in our friends’ back garden in the tiny resort town of Ambleteuse, overlooking wind-sculpted dunes, old oyster beds and the meandering Slack estuary, which winds its way to the bracing beach where Julius Caesar launched his successful invasion of England in 54 BC and Napoleon hatched his own abortive plans to repeat history. We also love to hike the old Customs Officer’s path between the dramatic capes of Gris-Nez and Blanc-Nez before a visit to Boulogne’s harbour-side market, where we stock up on shellfish and artisanal cheeses for a late al fresco lunch, as the light dancing on the estuary slowly turns from silver to gold.

Dish of the visit Seafood platter and cheese board.

September

Naples

Like Catania’s Mount Etna, Vesuvius looms over the Bay of Naples as an ever-present reminder of the importance of celebrating the random chaos and beauty of life every day and indeed nowhere we’ve visited in Italy embraces ‘La dolce vita” quite as intensely. Almost every viewing point is an excuse for a sunset Limoncello Spritz, while at street level the party seemingly never ends, whether it’s in the narrow, seething alleyways of old Chiaia, Montesanto or the Quartieri Spagnoli, or under the soaring glass of the Neo-Renaissance 19th Century Galleria Umberto.

Dish of the visit Spaghetti alla Pescatore.

You can read the whole story here:

October

Haarlem, Netherlands

The city of Frans Hals may be just a short train ride away, but the contrast to the 17th century core of Amsterdam where the vast majority of the city’s 9 million or so tourist influx congregate could not be more dramatic. As we explore the streets and alleys radiating outwards from the food market on Grote Markt. tousle-haired blonde kids are ferried around in serried ranks of cargo bikes and although their riders have the same ‘take no prisoners’ attitude as they do in Amsterdam, there are almost no clueless selfie snapping foreigners to mow down. Absent this simmering Dutch road rage we could almost be in ‘happiest place on earth’ Copenhagen.

Dish of the visit ‘Uitsmijter 1879’ (traditional Dutch breakfast), at Café Brinkmann.

November

Gower Peninsular, South Wales

This preternaturally green headland owes its extraordinary verdancy to frequent Atlantic squalls punctuated by brief bursts of sunshine and to get the full effect we have situated ourselves with maximum exposure to the elements at its extreme western tip on Rhosilli Bay, where wild ponies roam the dunes and cliffs.

The Gower is a mystical land of ruined castles and neolithic burial chambers linked to Arthurian lore, but we are here for its legendary Saltmarsh grazed lamb, reputedly the finest and sweetest tasting in these isles. We enjoy the best lamb chops we have ever tasted in the ancient village of Llangennith, before stocking up for the journey home by the ruins of windswept 14th Century Weobley Castle.

Dish of the trip Gower Lamb chops at the Kings Head pub in Llangennith.

Bordeaux, Southwest France

If like us you yearn for Paris’s Marais district before the chain stores and luxury goods emporia moved in and changed it forever, there’s a beautiful substitute right by the Garonne river, where the tallest building is the Gothic Revival Church of St Louis, quirky boutiques, antique shops, wine merchants and traditional bistros enliven blonde limestone 18th century streets and there’s the elegant outdoor drawing room of the Jardin Public to explore.

Bordeaux’s Chartrons district has been the epicentre of the city’s wine trade since the Middle Ages and we delved deep into its history and tasted the region’s current vintages in the Musée du Vin et Negociants ancient wine cellars, after pleasurably lining our stomachs with an excellent lunch at Bistro 111 on Rue Notre Dame.

Dish of the visit Steak au Poivre at Bistro 111.

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The pine clad islets, oyster beds and ‘stroll’ gardens of Matsushima Bay.

Matsushima Bay with its 260 pine clad islets, three of which are joined to the mainland by ornate red lacquered wooden bridges, truly deserves its cultural designation as one of ‘the three great sights in Japan’ (‘Nihon Sankei’). We explored them by boat under a lowering cumulus laden sky, pursued by two hunting sea eagles and a flock of audacious gulls that took food from our hands while still in flight.

Matsushima is also justly famed for its ‘Miyagi’ oysters, which have been farmed in the bay since the 1600s. Back on the quayside, we secured the last two seats at an L shaped counter in a tiny one roomed ‘Kaki-goya’ (Oyster hut), run by a diminutive old couple who wordlessly served us the only two dishes on their menu, deep fried oysters and large steaming bowls of poached oysters in a broth on a bed of fat, chewy strands of Udon.

Sabrina and I were in seventh heaven.

Deep-fried Oysters: Serves Four

These two oyster dishes are amongst the most delicious shellfish I’ve ever eaten, but sadly I’ve yet to decode exactly how this little gem of a restaurant made their Oyster Udon, so I can re-create it. So here regrettably, is just one of their recipes.

16 oysters (if possible buy the largest fresh oysters you can find, or frozen ones from a Japanese supermarket)

Flour for dusting

1 egg, lightly beaten

Panko

Vegetable oil for frying

Dust the oysters with the flour and then dip into the egg and coat with the panko. Set aside until all are coated. Heat oil in a deep, medium-sized saucepan (about a third of a pan) to 360 degrees F.

Fry the oysters until golden; drain on kitchen paper and serve with drinks!

Back on shore we wandered gently through the Entsu-in (Rose) Temple’s moss and rock ‘stroll’ gardens, the latter a beautiful Zen representation of the archipelago we had just visited. Then as the light faded we crossed over two of the red lacquered bridges (intriguingly named respectively, the “matchmaking” and “breaking relationships” bridges), to the islets of Fukuura and Oshima.

A beautiful ending to a wonderfully tranquil day.

Osaka’s ‘Blade Runner’ neon & ‘Kuidaore’ food culture

Even Las Vegas has nothing on Tokyo’s justly famed neon and sleek Omotesando with its high end clothing stores, is especially immersive and impressive.

That is until we travelled to Osaka.

This extraordinary city, even more so than Hong Kong, which was the actual inspiration for ‘Blade Runner’ director Ridley Scott’s future shock neon hellscape, is the closest real life facsimile to it that we have experienced and the Dotonbori canal district is its beating heart. This part of the city has been full of life since the early 17th century, when it first began to flourish as an entertainment district, after theatre companies and playhouses began to move into the area on the canal’s southern bank, while the northern bank enjoyed its own boom with its restaurants and teahouses.

Appropriately we were there for dinner and a show ourselves and after two hours of incomprehensible but wildly theatrical Kabuki at the Shochikuza theatre, we were more than ready for the feast we’d promised ourselves in Japan’s most food obsessed city, where they talk passionately about “kuidaore”, which depending on the context means either “eat ‘til you drop” or “eat ‘til you’re broke”.

Wandering wide-eyed through serried ranks of Beyoncé-styled teens, past the array of extravagant neon restaurant hoardings which included a giant animated crab, we ducked down a back alley and found to our consternation that we had walked into the time warp of stone-flagged Hozenji Yokocho alley. Pinching ourselves that we had somehow been teleported into Gion, Kyoto’s old geisha district, we ducked into the lantern illuminated doorway of a tiny smoke-filled tabletop barbecue restaurant, where we barbecued an array of thinly sliced beef, pork, chicken and vegetables which we enjoyed with a Yakinuku dipping sauce, followed by that classic Osaka savoury pancake dish Okonomiyaki, which Sabrina prepared on our sizzling hot plate.

Yakinuku dipping sauce

1/2 cup soy sauce

2 tbsp mirin

2 tbsp sake

2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp sesame oil

1 clove minced garlic

1 tsp grated ginger

1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds

Optional: green onions and red pepper flakes

Combine ingredients in a saucepan and simmer for 3-5 minutes, allowing the flavours to meld. Use this as a marinade for thinly sliced beef, pork, or chicken, and as a dipping sauce.

Okonomiyaki Savoury Pancake: Serves Fou

Pancake Batter

1/2 cup (75g) all-purpose flour

100ml dashi stock

50g grated nagaimo (Chinese yam, optional for fluffiness)

2 large eggs

2 Tbsp tempura bits (tenkasu)

10g minced red pickled ginger (beni shoga)

Fillings

200g shredded cabbage (about 1/2 head)

160g sliced pork belly (or substitute shrimp, squid, or chicken)

Chopped green onion

Olive oil (for cooking)

Toppings

Okonomiyaki sauce (or Tonkatsu sauce)

Japanese mayonnaise (kewpie)

Dried aonori seaweed flakes

Bonito flakes (katsuobushi)

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, dashi stock, grated nagaimo (if using), and eggs. Add the shredded cabbage, tempura bits, pickled red ginger, and chopped green onions to the batter. Mix well until everything is evenly coated.

Lightly oil a large frying pan or griddle and heat over medium heat.

Pour a scoop of the batter mixture onto the pan to form a round pancake shape. Lay slices of pork belly on top of the raw batter. Cook for about 5 minutes, until the bottom is golden brown and crispy. Flip the pancake, cover the pan, and cook on low heat for another 4-5 minutes, until the pork is cooked through and the inside is set.

Transfer to a plate and generously brush with okonomiyaki or tonkatsu sauce. Drizzle with Japanese mayonnaise, then sprinkle with aonori and bonito flakes.

Suffused with good cheer and with our eyes streaming from all the barbecue smoke, we paid our respects at adjoining Hozenji Temple, another slice of 17th century Japan hidden in plain sight amongst the narcoleptic neon, where we waited our turn to splash water for good fortune on the moss-covered statue of Fudo Myoo, the guardian deity of Japanese Buddhism, before catching a sleek Japan Rail Shinkansen back to Kyoto.

How comforting it was to see that Japan’s fusion of ancient and modern was alive and well, even in its most futuristic metropolis.

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Photo credit: Villa Gran Canaria

Such are Gran Canaria’’s extremes of climate, landscape, flora and fauna it is often nicknamed the ‘miniature continent’ and as is so often the case in this archipelago, the vast majority of sun starved Northern European and Scandinavian tourists that flock here in wintertime congregate in its sunbaked southern reaches. Well aware of this climatic honeytrap we thought we’d be clever and escape the hordes by staying in the coastal village of San Felipe on the island’s North western shore. A big mistake as it turns out, as while we have a stunning storm-tossed stretch of black volcanic beach to ourselves, the temperatures even in daytime are frigid at best and as our apartment has no proper heating to speak of, we are forced to sleep rugged up in almost every item of clothing we have packed.

On the plus side, we are just a half hour from lively Las Palmas, easily the most cosmopolitan city in these isles, with its magnificently stocked food markets and historic district of Vegueta, which predates Christopher Columbus’s arrival in 1492 on his maiden voyage to the Americas.

Like its other Canary Island counterparts, Gran Canaria was born from persistent volcanic activity over the course of millennia, though in this case there is nothing to fear as the last volcanic eruption took place over 2,000 years ago and its benign legacy is the extraordinary fecundity of its lava rich soil, the biodiversity of its flora and the drama of its landscapes. Climbing a switchback road from the south western coast, the rock formations are shot through with colour like Arizona’s Painted Desert or Zabriskie Point in California’s Death Valley. We stop slack-jawed at one particular ‘artist’s palette’ of pink and verdigris to buy papayas and prickly pears at what must surely be the most beautiful fruit stand backdrop we’ve ever encountered. Our climb continues with folded hills similar in scale to those on the Hawaiian islands of Kaua’i and O’ahu, until we begin our descent to Bar Avenida at La Aldea de San Nicolas, where we find a table overlooking a pebble beach and enjoy grilled baby calamari and octopus, which in Sabrina’s opinion are even better than their stellar Greek island equivalents, because of the garlic and mixed herbs they are marinated in. Served with a side of Papas Arrugadas (‘wrinkly’ Canarian potatoes) and enlivened by the mellifluous music of surf-crackled pebbles, it was a lunch we won’t soon forget.

Herb and Garlic marinated grilled calamari and baby octopus with Papas Arrugadas (Canarian ‘wrinkly’ potatoes) and Mojo Picon sauce: Serves Two or Three

Papas Arrugadas (Canarian Wrinkly Potatoes)

This traditional dish is made by boiling small new potatoes in very salty water until tender, then drying them in the pot to form a salty, wrinkled crust.

Ingredients:

1 kg (2 lbs) small new potatoes

1/4 cup coarse sea salt (or to taste)

Water (enough to cover the potatoes)

Wash the potatoes thoroughly, leaving the skin on. Place them in a large saucepan. Add the salt and enough cold water to just cover the potatoes.Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer, partially covered, for about 20-30 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender when pierced with a knife. Drain most of the water, leaving about 2-3 tablespoons with the potatoes in the pot. Return the pot to very low heat and let the remaining water evaporate, shaking the pan occasionally to prevent burning. Continue this process until a white, salty crust forms on the skin and the potatoes look wrinkled. Remove from heat and let them rest for a few minutes before serving.

Mojo Picon Sauce (Spicy Red Sauce)

Ingredients:

4-5 cloves garlic, peeled

2-3 dried red chilies (or 1 tsp cayenne pepper/pimentón picante)

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tbsp paprika (sweet or a mix of sweet and spicy)

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Salt to taste

Rehydrate dried chilies in hot water for 15-20 minutes, then drain and remove stems/seeds. Combine the garlic, chilies, cumin, paprika, vinegar, and salt in a food processor or blender. Blend until a thick paste forms. Slowly pour in the olive oil while blending until the sauce emulsifies to your desired consistency. Adjust salt and vinegar as needed.

Herb and Garlic Marinated Grilled Calamari and Baby Octopus

Ingredients:

500g (1 lb) cleaned baby squid and octopus (tubes and tentacles)

3 tbsp olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped (plus extra for garnish)

Juice of 1 lemon (plus wedges for serving)

1/2 tsp smoked paprika (optional, for colour and depth)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Prepare the seafood by rinsing and patting it dry with paper towels. Marinate in a bowl with olive oil, minced garlic, lemon juice, paprika, salt, and pepper. Toss to coat evenly. Cover and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes (no more than 2 hours).

Preheat your grill or a grill pan to high heat. Ensure the grill rack is clean and well-oiled to prevent sticking. Grill the calamari and octopus for 2-3 minutes per side, pressing gently with a fish slice to ensure good contact with the heat. They should be opaque and slightly charred at the edges. Remove from the grill immediately and place on a serving platter with the papas arrugadas. Garnish with an extra drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkle of fresh parsley, and lemon wedges on the side for squeezing over.

Serve the grilled seafood and potatoes while hot, with the mojo picon sauce on the side for dipping.

Equally memorable in a totally different way was the steep, winding ascent to the mountain town of Tejeda, which at an elevation of just under 2000 metres is perched on the rim of the vast Tejeda caldera. We have a dress circle view of this magnificent abyss and the basalt monolith of the Roque Nubio from the terrace of Restaurante Almendras. Leaving Sabrina to enjoy a quiet beer I take the steep path up to its base before rejoining her for grilled veal and peppers in the welcome warmth of the afternoon sun.

In my fitful dreams in the freezing cold of our apartment, I can see two mirror image views of desert dunes framed by the deep blue of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a beautiful notion but sadly a mirage, as Gran Canaria’s Masapalomas dunes, which are on the south eastern tip of the island are over three hundred miles from their West African counterparts. Hiking through this extraordinary climatic phenomenon I am struck by a weird sense of otherworldliness as they are backed by a vast mountain range and surrounded by glitzy Las Vegas style hotels whose serried ranks of sun loungers lie unloved and unoccupied on the sands.

It’s our last afternoon here and we beach comb for black pumice stones on our stretch of black volcanic sand before setting out for Agaete in the far west of the island. Late afternoon storm clouds are gathering to greet the sunset at Puerto de Los Nieves where a sleek Fred Olsen ferry is preparing for her late afternoon crossing to Tenerife and after a ‘golden hour’ walk along the beach we settle down for the main event with a platter of garlic prawns, mussels and grilled ‘Saharan Squid’, so called because they are caught off that coast.

A serene ending to a week that has confounded our expectations at almost every turn.

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