Five thousand miles of coastline and not a surfboard in sight – but that's all changing thanks to the Surfing Swamis
India has 4,700 miles of coastline, but the last thing you are likely to see on its palm-fringed beaches is a surfboard – until now. That's changing, thanks to a group of surfers from near the port city of Mangalore known as – what else? – the Surfing Swamis.
Born under the technical and spiritual guidance of a former American surfer turned swami named Jack Hebner, the group last year set up the Surfing Federation of India (SFI) and has just organised the first Indian Surfing Festival in Orissa state on the other side of the peninsula.
"In Orissa because a guy from the state who heads the Surfing Yogis has experience of organising festivals," says SFI founder Kishore Kumar. "But we're also getting a very good response from other states wanting to set up local surfing associations, and we've been recognised by the International Surfing Federation."
"Three fishermen take on the world and win," exulted CNN-IBN TV, as surfers from the southern Tamil Nadu state came first, second and third in the stand-up paddle event – the only race at the festival – against competitors from nine other countries, including the US, Australia, South Africa and Vietnam.
"Riding the padagu (catamaran) for a living makes us endure long stretches of stress," says Murthy Megavan, one of the fishermen/surfers. He and his team-mates were trained at the Bay of Life surfing school, where they learned stand-up paddle surfing in two months. "They have it in their blood," says Showkath Jamal, who set up the school in Tamil Nadu after watching foreigners surf at a beach near the southern city of Chennai.
"Indians respect, fear and worship the ocean, but as we propagate the idea of surfing as a sport – and also teach people how to understand currents, zips, etc – people are getting interested," he says. "Even now before we surf we say a prayer to Varuna, the god of the sea," says Kumar. "Ultimately, it's at the ocean's mercy that you catch a good wave."
India, Kumar adds, does not have "world-class surfing breaks", but there are several coastal and island beaches with good waves – up to 25ft high during the monsoon. "The number of surfers is small, but it is growing pretty fast," he says.
• Read more at http://eyeforindia.blogspot.in/2012/02/ramchandi-puri_20.html
• This article was amended on 22 February 2012. In the original, the quote, "Ultimately, it's at the ocean's mercy that you catch a good wave," appeared twice.
Boutique hostels are nothing new but the interior design at Plas Curig in Snowdonia has taken the idea to a whole new level, and wouldn't look out of place in an interiors magazine
It wasn't the built-in seating, the colourful Roman blinds, or even the trendy factory lights that revealed how much design thought had gone into Plas Curig, a new hostel in Snowdonia. It was the bedroom door. It glided slowly and silently shut without so much as a click. In shared dormitories, when you are at the mercy of others' nocturnal bladder control, a banging door can mean the difference between a good night's sleep and, well, a really bad one.
The last hostel I stayed in, in the Peak District, met my low expectations: dark Victorian furniture, threadbare carpet, thin mattresses and a chill wind blowing down the corridors. Hostelling in the UK is cheap and easy, but not luxurious. And although the YHA is smartening up some of its properties, most are still no-frills. In Europe, hostels are usually a little more modern – in Paris recently, I experienced psychedelic walls, elegant wallpaper and a cheerful cafe. But the bunks were still standard issue, and the walls were thin.
Plas Curig, by contrast, better resembles an extremely good value boutique hotel. It is interior-designed, plush and thoughtful. For its young owner, Amy McIntyre, getting the atmosphere right was uppermost. She was inspired by hostels in Malaysia – colourful and relaxed, where guests walk around barefoot, drink beer and chat to each other. "I wanted it to feel more like a travellers' hostel, or a small, communal hotel," she says. "Hostels in Britain are usually places people just turn up and sleep, and can be uncomfortable and freezing."
Her mother, designer Jane McIntyre, created the interiors. The communal entrance area has seating built from reclaimed scaffolding planks, piled high with stripey cushions. Shelves are filled with books for people to read or take – as long as they replace it with another. Just off it is another communal room with a log burning stove that's lit every night in winter, giant TV and more colourful cushions. The dining room has more wood seating – this time sanded and varnished.
"We had to use lots of warm colours as the light here is pretty murky," says Jane. None of it would look out of place in an interiors magazine.
The beds (made every morning) are bespoke and wooden, painted heritage shades, with panelled walls, reading lights and – on the bunks – curtains for privacy and ladders that don't shake the frame as you clamber up. There are Welsh wool blankets on each bed for chillier nights. Each bunk has two storage drawers, and some rooms a trunk for bags that doubles as a window seat. Lighting is soft and flattering; bathrooms small, clean and hot.
Plas Curig had been a YHA hostel since 1945, and was about to lose its one-star rating. McIntyre mother and daughter gutted it, lifting up vinyl flooring and worn terracotta tiles, and laying glorious slate, sadly not Welsh. They kept the elegantly worn central wooden staircase.
Best of all is the view. A hop across the road from the front door is the shapely mountain, Moel Siabod, with the River Llugwy at its foot, winding its picturesque way to Betws-y-Coed five miles away. We set off in the morning, following the river for half an hour before heading slowly up a gentle pass to the summit. Towards the top, rain-lashed blades of grass had frozen into delicate shards of ice that tinkled in the wind. Taking the more direct route down meant we were home just before sunset.
After hot showers all round, we headed to the pub next door, Bryn Tyrch Inn (bryntyrchinn.co.uk), for upmarket local food that's worth splashing out on if you can't be bothered to cook – a slap-up dinner there cost us the same as our bed. The following day, as the rain came down, we drove the winding four miles to the cosy Pen-y-Gwryd pub (pyg.co.uk) where Edmund Hillary based himself when training to climb for Everest.
Rooms at Plas Curig start at £22.50 per night for a bunk bed, and go up to £35 per person per night for a double. How is it able to charge hostel-style prices? "We're a few pounds more expensive than other hostels in the area, but we're still a hostel, after all," says Amy. "We had to put our prices up after we opened as people were suspicious of how cheap we were."
Now that Plas Curig is almost finished – they are redoing the car park – Amy has her sights on "premium hostels" in other UK beauty spots, including Dartmoor, the Lake District and Cornwall, each with its own character. Hostelling has never looked so attractive.
• Capel Curig, Betws-y-Coed (01690 720225, snowdoniahostel.co.uk)
As Hollywood's elite check in to Los Angeles' most glamorous hotels for the Oscars this weekend, we pick 10 brilliant places to stay beyond the celebrity haunts, from family-run guesthouses to boutique motels and quirky B&Bs
Big-hitter LA hotels such as the Beverly Wilshire or the Hollywood Roosevelt are so well-publicised and celebrity-haunted that they often blind tourists to more distinctive, reasonably priced accommodation in the city. Hidden in nooks, crannies and side-roads of the City of Angels, there are, contrary to popular perception, numerous family-run guesthouses, intimate boutique hotels and even quirky little B&BS. You just have know where to look.
The Cadillac
Built in 1914, the looming pink and turquoise art deco Cadillac Hotel is on the border of Venice and Santa Monica, with rooms looking out on Santa Monica bay and along the coastline to Malibu. It was once the summer residence of Charlie Chaplin and you'll find a host of eccentrics on your doorstep. From bodybuilders to fire-eaters, you'll never see anything boring from your window at The Cadillac.
The rooms are functional, although sometimes smell like they've been hot-boxed by over-excited backpackers who've discovered the numerous "medical marijuana" dispensaries on the beach. Despite recent renovations, it's still a backpacker hotel at heart, and everyone's up for a good time. The view from the roof is the best place to watch the sunset, and you're bound to find people to share a beer with.
• 8 Dudley Avenue, Venice, +1 310 399 8876, thecadillachotel.com. Doubles from $133
The Hollywood Pensione
This family-run, three-room guest house in East Hollywood is achingly chic, while retaining a homely vibe. Hidden in a 1915 Craftsman house on the edge of Franklin Village, it has sleek and unpretentious rooms, each with a private bath. There's also a common lounge with a balcony, and access to a fully-equipped guest kitchen.
Franklin Village is the haunt of local artists and writers by day, and hipsters by night. You'll find one of the best second-hand bookstores in LA, called Counterpoint, within skipping distance of your bedroom, as well as the best comedy-theatre, the Upright Citizens Brigade. Eat in the numerous restaurants in the village or buy groceries at the Mayfair Market and cook in the Hollywood Pensione's superbly kitted out and colorful kitchen. Then eat on the balcony, under the stars.
• 1845 North Wilton Place, Hollywood, +1 323 369 2411, hollywoodpensione.com. Doubles $165 ($875 weekly)
Farmer's Daughter
This has recently been renovated from a very basic roadside motel into a surreal tongue-in-cheek hotel that boasts all the cinematic charm of a seedy motel, with all the comfort of a beautifully designed boutique hotel.
"You have to keep to your roots," the manager winked at me one morning as he explained that the original Farmer's Daughter motel was a notorious haunt for desperate starlets new to the city, hoping to bump into producers from CBS Studios, just opposite. The hotel still harks back to kinkier days, while also offering free Wi-Fi and 24-hour secured valet parking. There are brightly coloured rocking chairs in the rooms, gingham curtains, denim bedspreads and if you're in the mood for love there's a "No-Tell Room" where you'll find mirrors on the ceiling and a fully stocked bar, as well as a mural of a wheat field to inspire a roll around in the hay.
Being just across the road from the Farmer's Market, the Farmer's Daughter is walking distance from the shops on Melrose, or a cultural wander down Museum Row. If jet lag has you awake before the market is open for breakfast, you can potter up Fairfax to Canter's, a 24-hour deli that's been a Los Angeles Landmark since 1931.
• 115 South Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, +1 800 334 1658, farmersdaughterhotel.com. Doubles from $219, $239 for the "No-Tell Room"
Hotel Figueroa
Located opposite the Staples Center in the urban heart of Downtown Los Angeles, stepping into the lobby of Hotel Figueroa is like stumbling on a Moroccan Riad. With high, mural-covered ceilings hung with amber lamps, and giant palm trees lolling next to faux-marble pillars, it's an unexpected oasis in the bustling concrete jungle of downtown.
It used to be a YMCA and it still has something of that vibe, but with more soul. It's bohemian rather than slick, but it's by far my favorite hotel down town. In the veranda bar, stained-glass windows spin LA's white light into colored patterns as you sip a mid-afternoon beer, then later in the evening you can take a mojito up to the Jacuzzi terrace, surrounded by cactus plants and skyscrapers.
• 939 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, +1 213 627 8971, figueroahotel.com. Doubles from $144
The Magic Castle Hotel
One sure-fire way to gain entrance into the iconic and secretive Magic Castle, the world's most famous private members' club for magicians and magic enthusiasts, is to stay in the nearby Magic Castle Hotel. Don't expect this friendly, motel-style hotel to have any of the opulence and mystery of the hotel's nocturnal cousin, though. There are no magicians' assistants lounging by the pool, or rabbits scrambling out of hats in the lobby, so if you're after high-drama look elsewhere. It is, however, clean and reasonably priced considering it's minutes from The Walk of Fame and Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Better still, after a hard day of sight-seeing on Hollywood Boulevard, the Magic Castle hotel will provide frozen popsicles while you sunbathe in their courtyard pool.
• 7025 Franklin Avenue, Hollywood, +1-323-851-0800, magiccastlehotel.com. Doubles from $164
Highland Gardens Hotel
The monochrome lobby, flooded with natural light and decorated with pristine white sofas, might as well be a different hotel from the old-fashioned guest rooms with their somewhat shiny bedspreads and patterned curtains, but it's still a reasonably priced and convenient place to stay in Los Angeles. Located near all the tourist sites of Hollywood Boulevard, this is slightly more grown up and slicker than the Magic Castle Hotel. There's a pool surrounded by a palm trees, and some of the rooms have private kitchen facilities. Try to get a courtyard-facing room.
It's worth knowing that the Highland Gardens Hotel was formerly the Landmark Hotel, where Janis Joplin died, so if you're feeling morbid, book room 105.
• 7047 Franklin Ave., Hollywood, +1 323 850 0536, highlandgardenshotel.com. Doubles from $119
Garden Cottage B&B
At the base of the Hollywood Hills, on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, is the quaint Garden Cottage B&B, where the proprietors, Ahuva and Bob, are known for providing superb organic breakfasts in their garden and great local knowledge.
Of the four rooms, the Terrace Room is probably the prettiest, with a mahogany double bed and a large balcony overlooking the garden. Alternatively you can rent your own little cottage, called The Garden Cottage, with its own private living room and kitchen. This serene little B&B is located just on the edge of glamorous Beverly Hills, near the Beverly Center, so if the wholesome organic vibe gets too much, you can use the money you've saved on accommodation to binge on Louboutin shoes.
• 8316 West 4th Street, +1 323 653 5616, gardencottagela.com. Doubles from $155
Topanga Canyon Inn
This isn't the place to stay if you want to spend your evenings dancing in West Hollywood with Paris Hilton or getting drunk with the girls from America's Next Top Model, but it is if you want to experience the grandeur of the Californian countryside. Tucked among the caves, cliffs and canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains, Topanga Canyon boasts nearly 40 miles of trails and views of the Pacific Ocean, Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.
It's a perfect jumping off point for mountain biking, horse riding or hiking, and it's also near a secret, romantic little bay called Topanga State Beach, which is quieter than other Malibu beaches because it has a rocky surface under the waves. The Topanga Canyon Inn is also convenient for the Getty, if you're looking for a splash of culture between hikes and early morning horse rides.
• 20310 Callon Drive, Topanga, +1 310 600-1325, topangacanyoninn.com. Doubles from $190
Cinema Suites Bed and Breakfast
This hotel was opened by Dianne Bennet because her show-biz friends were always asking for recommendations for reasonably priced, central Los Angeles hotels, of which she decided there were none. And so Cinema Suites was born with three simple, homely rooms right near LACMA, the Craft and Folk Art Museum, and the George C Page Park. It's slightly cluttered, a bit like the house of an eccentric family member, but well worth it just to meet the proprietor.
In addition to running the Cinema Suites, Dianne has been described as "LA's best matchmaker" and has apparently been operating nationwide since 1990. She claims to have a little black book full of industry contacts and her speciality is arranging matches between glamorous women and wealthy men. So if you're a single woman looking for a sugar-daddy, the Cinema Suites Bed and Breakfast might well be the place to head.
• 925 South Fairfax Avenue, +1 323 272-3160, cinemasuites.biz. Doubles from $120
Loz Feliz Lodge
The Los Feliz Lodge encompasses four separate Spanish-style 1920s bungalows, each with colorful living rooms and kitchens. It's almost like having your own little flat in the heart of Los Angeles, but with less hassle, and with people to clean up after you.
The Lodge is walking distance to Los Feliz Village, where you can sip a milkshake in Fred 62, an iconic 1950s diner, or scour LA's favourite independent bookstore, Skylight Books. You can also have one too many martinis in a Los Angeles drinking institution called The Dresdon while listening to Marty and Elayne – a lounge act duo who have been performing there since 1982 – and know that you can stumble home to your own little bungalow without getting in a car. Bliss.
• 1501, 1503 and 1507 North Hoover Street, Los Angeles, , +1 323 660 4150, losfelizlodge.com. Doubles from $150
• Anna Stothard's novel The Pink Hotel, partly inspired by the Cadillac Hotel on Venice Beach and about an English girl in Los Angeles, is now out in paperback (Alma Books, £7.99, tinyurl.com/pinkhotelstothard)
Tour guide Simon Cole discovers the area's greenest spaces and fascinating history
Audio slideshow The Hüttenpalast houses vintage caravans and mountain huts – indoors. Perfect for 'camping' in winter
Dog Falls walk, Glen Affric: The scene was awesome for one main reason: I was above the canopy of many of the trees and I suddenly felt very insignificant
This marked route runs through the core of the ancient woodland of the Caledonian pinewoods in Glen Affric. In the lower parts, I trod carefully over the wet, glistening rocks along the banks of the river Affric and heard the roar of the falls long before I reached them. The falls are not high but the narrow, rocky gorge forms an impressive torrent of foaming water as it hurtles downwards. The long, narrow bridge below is over a large, peaty stained pool on a broad, shallow rocky bottom where the water scarcely seems to be moving. Perhaps an otter had fished this pool at some time, as on a waterside boulder was an otter "spraint" (dung) to mark its territory.
Then came the steep walk up through the lower parts of the wood and the first impression of seeing a few dead trees that are an essential part of old woodland as they can support as much wildlife as the living ones. As I climbed upwards, the trees, particularly the old Scots pines – some of which could have been 400 years old – seemed to envelop me in a different world. Then on to the ridge and, walking silently on the thick bed of pine needles, I found myself standing under a single, huge, twisted pine. Below me was the Coire loch, perhaps my favourite loch, surrounded by the mainly Scots pine with occasional birch and rowan. The surrounding woodland was mirrored in the loch's calm waters.
I reflected on the scene, which was awesome for one main reason – I was above the canopy of many of the trees. It was a different arboreal world and I suddenly felt very small and insignificant, as though put in my place by the ancient trees. There was something missing and then a single guttural croak of a raven made me realise what it was – apart from the raven, there were no sounds at all and it all seemed very moving and slightly forbidding.
For the second instalment in our series on fabulous places to stay on the beach around the world, we pick 10 small, friendly gems in the eastern Caribbean for £80 per night or less
Hummingbird Beach Resort, St Lucia
Unfussy, wallet-friendly and convivial – this inn is ideally positioned on the beach in Soufrière, St Lucia's largest west coast settlement. This quiet town is the heart and soul of the country, with a smattering of colonial-era buildings scattered in the centre and a lively seafront. At the northern end of the beach, Hummingbird exudes a laid-back ambience that's typical of Soufrière. It's intimate and friendly, and appeals to couples looking for a comfortable stay without an exorbitant price tag – although it also caters to families. The nine spacious, no-frills bungalows are light-filled and kitted out with simple furnishings and a terrace. The ethos here is one of relaxation, so don't expect jet-skis or tacky entertainment programmes. At dinner, treat yourself to a healthy meal at Lifeline, the onsite restaurant. The fish is served up with a great view. Don't miss out on beach barbecue on Saturdays. And if you fancy taking the plunge, there's a dive centre beside the resort.
• +1 758 459 7985, stlucia.co.uk, doubles from around £55, including breakfast, in low season (mid-April to mid-December)
Balenbouche Estate, St Lucia
The Balenbouche estate, between the fishing villages of Choiseul and Laborie, to the south of St Lucia, comprises four all-wood cottages (sleeping two to four people). Two of them have self-catering facilities. It is surrounded by dense tropical foliage and a few paths that meander through the estate and lead to the remains of an old sugar mill dating from 1765, overgrown with serpentine tree trunks and covered with moss. There are two dark-coloured sandy beaches at the far end of the property, a five- to 10-minute stroll away. Your hosts can prepare delicious meals based on local ingredients on request (from around £17). There's also a green ethos – it uses solar heating and rain water, and there's no air-conditioning but standing fans are provided.
• +1 758 455 1244, balenbouche.com, cottages from around £70 in low season (mid-April to mid-November) based on double occupancy
Picard Beach Cottages, Dominica
A salt-and-pepper slip of sand, Picard Beach skirts Prince Rupert Bay, a popular natural anchorage, all the way to Portsmouth, the island's second-largest town. Attractive hardwood cottages snuggle up to the shoreline or sit a few steps away in unfussy tropical gardens. Each has a kitchenette, bathroom, air-con, TV and veranda. Le Flambeau Restaurant (good for salads, wraps and seafood) is an easy stroll up the beach, and there are plenty of other affordable places to eat thanks to the proximity of the local medical school. Picard Beach Cottages is handy for exploring the Fort Shirley Garrison ruins, the Cabrits and Morne Diablotin national parks, and for an Indian river boat ride (a Pirates of the Caribbean film location). For the best deals, visit between April and December.
• +1 767 445 5131, picardbeachcottages.com, cottages from around £80 a night (May-Nov) to £100 (Dec-Apr)
Veranda View, Dominica
Although Dominica's rainforest interior usually steals the headlines, the Caribbean's nature island has some fabulous beaches. In the north-eastern village of Calibishie, you can step right onto one of them from the intimate terrace restaurant of Veranda View. Attractively designed and altogether laid-back, this two-room guesthouse sits on a perfect streak of white sand on the island's Atlantic coast. Sheltered by an inshore reef, Calibishie Bay is shallow and placid and, at dusk and dawn, locals often wade its waters in search of shellfish and octopus. Owner-managed and well kept, Veranda View is easy on the eye as well as the budget. Its rooms are spacious, with private bathroom, kitchenette and large veranda with sea views. Home- cooked food is fresh and tasty (seafood is a speciality) and the beach is just a few lazy steps away.
• +1 767 445 8900, lodgingdominica.com, apartments from £60 sleeping two or £70 sleeping up to three, including breakfast and internet access
Beachcombers, St Vincent
Together with neighbouring Indian Bay, Villa Beach is one of St Vincent's finest beaches, and is where you will find the colourful Beachcombers, a family-run hotel, bar and restaurant. Standard rooms are the best budget options – they are comfortable, have air-con, TV, private bathroom and veranda. The restaurant is reasonably priced and popular, serving a surprising range of local and international fare – from catch of the day to shepherd's pie. Step right onto Villa Beach from the hotel gardens or the restaurant's sun terrace and pool. With white sand, turquoise sea, sailboats at anchor, and the captivating and exclusive Young Island just across the sound, it is picture-postcard gorgeous. Take a short ferry trip to sample Young Island's idyllic beach or negotiate a water-taxi ride along the coast or to the nearby capital, Kingstown.
• +1 784 458 4283, beachcombershotel.com, standard rooms from £60 a night, year round, based on two sharing
Sugarapple Inn, Bequia
Bequia is a very cool island, and a Grenadine that is still neither private nor exclusive. It is a popular haven for the Caribbean's ever-present sailing crowd, but also has a reasonable mix of accommodation and dining, as well as some great beaches. St Margaret's is the most popular but, on the Atlantic coast, Friendship Bay is just as scenic and often completely deserted. A five-minute stroll from the beach is Sugarapple Inn, a genuine Caribbean island treasure. Eight immaculate, self-contained and very colourful suites have air-con in the bedrooms, private bathroom, kitchen, TV and Wi-Fi. Sugarapple is a short bus journey away from the main town, Port Elizabeth, for shops and places to eat. If you don't have your own boat, a one-hour ferry ride is an inexpensive and convenient way to get to Bequia from Kingstown, capital of St Vincent.
• +1 784 457 3148, sugarappleinn.com, rooms from around £50 a night low season to £70 high season, based on double occupancy
Melodies Guest House, Petite Martinique
It is hard to get more off the beaten track in the Windwards than rarely visited, remote and unsophisticated Petite Martinique. One of just a handful of accommodation options, Melodies Guest House sits on a beach and looks out across the Caribbean to its southern Grenadine neighbours. Rooms are modest but clean and have private bathrooms. The bare-bones restaurant and bar serves catch of the day and is a fun place to swap stories with locals or organise a water taxi to Union, Carriacou, or the Tobago Cays. Most boats are built right here, a tradition that harks back to the Scottish shipwrights who settled here in the 19th century. On the shoreline of Sanchez, just a short walk from Melodies, their descendants are usually hard at work on a new wooden sloop or fishing boat.
• +1 473 443 9052, spiceisle.com/melodies, studio room with island and sea views £35 year round
Bogles Round House, Carriacou
Rustic self-contained wooden cottages sit in the grounds of Bogles Round House, one of the Grenadines' most unusual and highly praised restaurants. Owner chef, Roxanne (twice Grenada's chef of the year), prepares an eclectic fusion of international and Caribbean Creole. Her family's penchant for worldwide travel and doing something different is reflected in the Round House's original design. The cottages, on the other hand, are unembellished but comfortable and private, with their own kitchenette and bathroom. The Round House gardens spill onto Swallow Beach, a long and secluded strip of black volcanic sand where Caribbean sunsets are guaranteed. Outside the front gate is the village of Bogles, gateway to Carriacou's High North Nature Trail and two more fabulous beaches at Anse La Roche and Petite Carenage.
•+1 473 443 7841, boglesroundhouse.com, cottages from around £65 a night including breakfast, or £55 per night if you rent for a week
Jenny's Place, Grenada
Grand Anse is Grenada's signature beach, a two-mile stretch of sand and surf that is home to some of the island's most in-demand resort hotels. If you buy a package tour, there is a good chance you will stay around here. At the northern tip of Grand Anse is Jenny's Place, a more understated and affordable apartment hotel with its own beachside restaurant and bar. The apartments are spacious and nicely furnished with bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, air-con, and TV. At the bottom of a neat little garden is the equally unassuming Oasis Restaurant & Bar where you can get good food all day and enjoy live bands at weekends. Step out of the restaurant and you are right on the beach. With inclusive continental breakfast, Jenny's Place offers great value for beach lovers on a budget.
• +1 473 439 5186, jennysplacegrenada.com, ocean-view apartments from around £60 a night
Lance Aux Epines Cottages, Grenada
Tucked along the shoreline of Prickly Bay, a favourite sailboat anchorage on the leeward side of this upmarket peninsula, Lance Aux Epines Cottages has 11 self-catering units set in well-tended gardens by a secluded beach. The four apartments are the cheaper options. They are roomy, have a bedroom with air-con, kitchen, lounge, bathroom and Wi-Fi. Don't miss the Sunday beach cook-up, where you can try Grenada's national dish, called oil down, a one-pot meal of salted meat, chicken, dumplings, breadfruit and callaloo. On Fridays take a short walk to Prickly Bay Marina for happy hour, a fest of double drinks, pizza and live music. Lance Aux Epines is a great base for exploring southern Grenada, especially if you take advantage of their attractive weekly rates.
• +1 473 444 4565, laecottages.com, apartments from around £75 a night, or £60 a night if you rent for a week
• The two St Lucia entries were written by Jean-Bernard Carillet, co-author of Lonely Planet's Caribbean Islands guide
Rising interest payments on BAA's debts turned the operating profit of £572m into a pre-tax loss of £256m - a £60m improvement on its 2010 losses
The airport operator BAA has announced a pre-tax loss of £256m for 2011, despite record traffic at Heathrow and a leap in revenues.
BAA said it had delivered a strong operational year with continued significant investment that would ultimately see it turn a profit, although interest payments on its £10bn debt continued to drag its annual accounts into the red.
Colin Matthews, chief executive of BAA, stressed a continuing improvement in customer satisfaction. He said: "Passengers say Heathrow is getting better. Our punctuality is the best in a decade, passenger ratings are up in total, and particularly for transfers and on security waiting time.
"And we had more passengers, who spent more freely in our retail and car parks."
He said BAA had made almost £900m of investment in Heathrow over the year, mainly in the building of Terminal 2, which will handle 20 million passengers a year after it opens in 2014.
At BAA's second London airport, Stansted, passenger numbers continued to fall even on the disappointing 2010 figures, down to 18.0 million from 18.6 million.
Rising interest payments on BAA's debts turned the operating profit of £572m into a pre-tax loss of £256m - a £60m improvement on its 2010 losses. The interest bill rose from £696m to £790m last year. Matthews insisted: "BAA will make a profit. Predicting exactly when is difficult - but it will make a profit. The investors have always been there for the long term.
"It was a good year for improving passenger experience, which we have to do for people to see clearly: now people can see that the capital investment we're making to transform the facility will make it a better airport, and a good investment."
Heathrow operated at virtually full capacity last year, with 69.4 million passengers. BAA's revenues were up 9.9%, reflecting higher landing charges and retail income.
BAA raised £3bn in new financing last year and said it would pay dividends to its ultimate shareholders in 2012 for the first time since the Ferrovial-led consortium bought the operator in 2006.
Take the tour, read the books, and find new ways of seeing. Motorway sightseeing shows the modern pull of mundanity
Why would someone pay to spend several hours on a coach on the M25? To admire the design of concrete bridges? To find collective solace in the loneliness of motorway service stations? As a new form of trainspotting? Or maybe because it's now, well, fashionable? It has been building for years. Books in which philosophers ponder airport concourses. Meditations on British roads. Psychogeographers trudging round the orbital network. Television documentaries on the history of the motorway. Glossy service station scrapbooks. The news that a coach tour operator has sold out a complete tour of the famously entropic ring around London just shows how mainstream all this has become.
A possible ur-text for the contemporary obsession with modern mundanity is photographer Martin Parr's book Boring Postcards, published in the late 1990s. The point with the boring postcards is that they were not, in the context of the turn of the 21st century, boring. Rather they were bizarre, dreamlike, improbable images of things that we once must have treasured, that somehow became jokes and non-sequiturs.
Parr's collection amassed practically every component of the Newly Interesting Boring. 1960s concrete infrastructure, such as the sublime sweep of Preston bus station; public art on postwar marketplaces in Stockport; nuclear power stations; airport departure lounges; suburban developments, holiday camps, modernist housing estates; and, of course, the motorway, from its futurist service stations to the long strips of clear concrete ploughed between green verges.
For the past few years, the internet has abounded with material like this. Print publications range from David Lawrence's startlingly rich and comprehensive Food on the Move, a history of the motorway service station, to Anne Ward's travel guide to improbable Scottish holiday destinations Nothing to See Here.
What Parr did was a simple act of defamiliarisation. If these were just contemporary photographs, we would be nearer to the linked, but in many ways dissimilar Crap Towns or Is Britain Great? books with their imagery of miserable Blighty. These, though, were postcards – sent off by travellers, holidaymakers or the inhabitants of new estates with what must have been some pride, some sense that these "boring" places had real value, that they were worth looking at.
During the Blair boom, with its bright, restless, neoliberal effacement of the clunky, provincial modernism of postwar social democracy, this started to mean something quite different. The implication was that once, these mundane things were considered rather special, by their designers, owners and users. Maybe they could be again? Parr may not have intended the postcards to mean anything of the sort, and it could just have been an elaborate joke on his part. Others, though, were deadly serious about this archaeology of the mundane.
It's perhaps a way of reasserting something lost. In modern art and design from the 1910s to the 1930s, transport, production and urbanism were celebrated as a new technologised world; when Kraftwerk evoked the same in the 1970s, the assumption was that they were joking too. Instead, it's likely they were trying to recover a lost innocence – a simple joy at the capabilities of man and machine. The approach they took to this also borrowed from the interwar avant-garde. As Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky put it, "the purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known". The technique of art is to make objects "unfamiliar", to create a "deautomatised perception" in which you suddenly see something you see every day in a completely new and revelatory way.
This can be a very enjoyable game, and most of the books and projects mentioned above show generous, funny and warm ways of looking at what is all too easily dismissed as drab and nondescript. You could even create a radicalised definition of it, to encompass the seemingly "boring" work on containerisation and ports by photographer Allan Sekula, where seeing is radicalised by revealing the facts of production, distribution and exploitation behind the mundane everyday artefact. Yet it could just as easily be a wan, dilettantish and apolitical way of looking at the world of things – staring at the sheer misery of a traffic jam and whispering "the world is beautiful".
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Can you resist ordering something so ultra-local you may never have another chance to try it?
A friend left a message on my voicemail last week. He told me he was in a sandwich shop in Dewsbury and mucky fat sandwiches were on the menu. He smacked his lips and tongued his teeth as he said the words "mucky" and "fat", his delight in the words reflecting his excitement at the prospect of eating something he'd never seen before. "If you want to know what it is," he paused for dramatic effect. "You'll have to call me back."
"Lard!" he said, with delight, when I did. "Not quite sure whether to have one or not now."
I could see his dilemma. In this age of globalised menus, it's exciting to discover something new, something which appears to only be on the menu in a particular place. Not ordering it is like spurning your corner shop in favour of Sainsbury's Local; it's playing into the hands of the corporate homogenisers. But lard sandwiches?
The idea brought back to me memories of a piece of fish in tomato sauce that I was offered by a family in Salamanca. It turned out not to be cod or plaice, just a lump of congealed fat on a bed of tepid Mediterranean mush - but a local delicacy, I was assured, nevertheless.
"It's bread and dripping, really," I said, urging my friend to try a mucky fat sandwich, thinking they might be a down-to-earth Yorkshire version of Italian lardo, without the mucking about (excuse the pun) with toast and herbs and dressing it up as a gourmet treat.
I was to be disappointed: he left the shop with a cheese and pickle roll. Mucky fat's USP was that he'd never come across it before, but he's not big on bread and dripping and any pleasure the sandwich might have brought him would have been in its uniqueness and peculiar locality.
There is no word for savouring something which can only be eaten in a particular place, no mot juste for the sensation of going on holiday and sampling moussaka or baba ganoush in the days before both were to be found in supermarket ready-meal sections, when they were special and exotic.
But sitting in a café in Wales and being served cawl (a stew made from bacon, lamb or beef, cabbage and leeks) brings with it a satisfying sense of being "elsewhere" that a croissant in a French café no longer can. And the actual taste of a Sussex Pond Pudding is surpassed by the fact that you'd no more be offered it in Scotland than you'd find a Scottish Ecclefechan tart down south.
My neighbour eagerly anticipates holidays to the Lake District, not so much for the landscape but the Grasmere Gingerbread, a soft, crumbly ginger biscuit in a paper wrapper, which she maintains is better than any other ginger biscuit. Likewise, she views Edinburgh Rock as vastly superior to the Brighton variety on her doorstep.
Of course some "local" delicacies have made it into mass production. Eccles cakes, bakewell tarts and Cornish pasties can be found on supermarket shelves just about anywhere but to have grey peas (the dried variety traditionally associated with pea shooters!) and bacon you have to go to the Black Country.
My husband is from Liverpool and talks fondly of scouse. I used to think this was a nickname for an old school friend until I discovered it was a type of slow-cooked mutton and vegetable stew, still a staple in pubs and restaurants across Liverpool. In fact, it even made it onto the Liverpool Malmaison menu.
"You should make some," I say to my husband, when he's having one of his "scouse is delicious" reveries. "We live in Brighton," he says, dismissing the very suggestion. "It would not be the same."
A coach tour taking in the 'amazing sights' of London's orbital motorway is a surprise sell-out. But what else might you spot on the trip?
Celebrated as the nation's biggest car park, the road to hell, and the road to nowhere, no one normally chooses to while away a day on the M25. But a coach tour of the 117-mile London orbital has sold out after its £15 tickets went on sale. Designed "for lovers of modern coach travel", the Brighton and Hove Bus and Coach Company tour takes in "amazing sights" including Epping Forest, Heathrow Airport's Terminal Five and "the magnificent" Dartford River Crossing bridge. The view from the bridge, taking in the whole of London, is probably the only truly spectacular thing about the M25 but here are some less heralded highlights:
• Titsey Wood services
That's what Clackett Lane – one of just three service stations on the route – was more memorably called in the first planning application, after the historic oak woodland around it. The overcrowded service station is little-loved but park up in July and you might bump into a Purple Emperor – this rare and elusive butterfly's caterpillars have been found in the car park. By the end of this year, the Eden Project-esque tropical biome of Butterfly World should also be visible close to the junction with the M1.
• The North Downs
Between junctions 5 and 8, the motorway meanders along the bottom of the North Downs, past steep flowery slopes and a series of grand houses, including Titsey Place and Chevening, where the deputy PM likes to go swimming with the foreign secretary. Imagine how idyllic it would be without six lanes of traffic roaring past.
• All Saints Pastoral Centre
Currently subject to a controversial sale, this elegant building with its chapel designed by Sir John Ninian Comper in 1927 is a rare historic treat visible from the M25 close to London Colney.
• Chalfont viaduct
The motorway has been widened but still manages to squeeze through the blue-brick arches of Chalfont Viaduct, a century-old bridge that carries the railway from High Wycombe to London.
• Impressive junctions
The clockwise sliproad leaving the M25 for Reigate is the longest in the world outside the US and while Spaghetti Junction outside Birmingham leads the way, the M25 boasts formidable four-tiered intersections with the M1 and the M23.
• Red kites
Apart from the odd truck-flattened fox (or cat), the best wildlife is usually found in the skies – junctions 16 to 21. The distinctive forked tails of Red Kites, attracted by aforementioned roadkill, are even more common above the M40.
• Bell Common tunnel
You will have to imagine the idyllic scene – a cricket oval and the northern edge of Epping Forest – because inside the 450m-long tunnel you won't see any of it.
A journey from Mount Hagen requires the traveller to brave giant potholes and notorious 'rascals'. But the mausman's in charge
I thought it was an accident scene when I saw four or five vehicles blocking the road ahead. Then I saw a young man approaching us waving a 2-kina ($1) note. He saw me in the passenger seat and immediately substituted a 5-kina note. Ruben rolled down the window and exchanged words in rapid pidgin. Money changed hands and we drove on.
People had told me about road blocks on the Highlands Highway. In this case there was a good pretext. The young men were filling a particularly deep channel that had been gauged across the road by heavy rains, so road users were being asked to pay an informal toll. Ruben explained that he was willing to pay something if a public service was really being performed, but too often it was just an attempt to get some easy money. The village elders generally frown on it, but in a spirit of compromise they let the youngsters do it for a couple of hours in the morning.
Wikipedia sums up the Highlands Highway as follows: "For most of its length the Highlands Highway is no more than a single carriageway two-lane road which is often hindered by potholes and land slips. It is also notorious for being the place of numerous armed hold-ups and robberies committed by local bandits called rascals." We saw no rascals, but everyone has stories of trucks being held up and looted.
Four of us were driving south from Mount Hagen to visit a rural development project, with the rehabilitation of a gravel road as its centrepiece. I was to have a chance to explain my assignment and seek help with periodic surveys to assess the project's effectiveness.
We were taken to a schoolroom to meet about 30 elders and representatives of various interest groups: women, youth, churches. The meeting was conducted by the mausman (mouthman = spokesman). He was a retired teacher with a voice much bigger than his frame and an even bigger smile. Everyone was invited to address the meeting, and the women's representative was the last to speak. When she finished, the half-dozen members of her group came forward to present each visitor with a traditional knitted cap.
As we were leaving, the mausman approached me and spoke in English for the first time. "John," he said, "when you are writing your report you must wear your cap so you will remember our village."
Every week Guardian Weekly publishes a Letter from one of its readers from around the world. We welcome submissions – they should focus on giving our readers a clear sense of a place and its people - send them to weekly.letter.from@guardian.co.uk
Peter Rabbit would have eaten them and been sick. His creator painted delicate watercolours of them, and was a match for her Victorian scientific contemporaries
Her rabbits are famous – Peter, Flopsy, Mopsy and company – but the world at large knows less about Beatrix Potter's toadstools.
That's now to be put right by an analysis of this expert side of the writer and farmer's life at the prestgious Linnaean Society – the one which has an enticing nameplate in gold script as you go through the entrance arch, with all the Hockney devotees, into the Royal Academy courtyard in London.
Prestigious, but in the old days, stuffy. Miss Helen B. Potter, as she was known at the time, was not allowed to follow in the footsteps of Charles Darwin et many al by reading her paper on fungi in 1897. Trouble was, she was a woman and that wasn't on.
The paper, On the germination of spores of agaricineae, which is considered a significant contribution to fungal research, had to be read by a male friend instead. She had illustrated it and other work with delicate and accurate watercolours of the relevant toadstools – forerunners of the likes of Mrs Tiggywinkle and Pigling Bland.
A good selection of these fungal pictures is on show at the excellent Armitt Museum in Ambleside, in the Lake District, where Potter made another reputation as Mrs Heelis, breeder of the local Herdwick sheep and extremely generous donor of land to the National Trust. The original Linnaean paper, alas, has not survived; discrimination was one of the reasons why Potter gave up scientific research and went for the bunnies instead.
But its essence has been tracked down and pieced together by Prof Roy Watling of the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh and the resulting 'restoration' will be read to the Linnaean by a young fungal expert Ali Murfitt. Sitting alongside the Beatrix Potter Society's patron Patricia Routledge, she will be part of a women's quintet that should compensate the writer's spirit for the Victorian snub. The event was organised by Prof Eileen Jones of Huddersfield university and the Linnaean's executive secretary is Dr Elizabeth Rollinson, who says:
We hope that this event will stimulate interest in the fascinating and accessible arena of mycology, which extends well beyond mushrooms and toadstools. The Linnean Society is delighted to host this meeting as part of its ongoing remit to encompass the whole spread of natural history.
Murfitt says:
I've been reading more about Beatrix and realise what an honour it is to 'be Beatrix' for a day. I share a lot of her interests from fairytales to farming, and mycology of course.
And the fifth woman, the Armitt's curator Deborah Walsh, says:
This is a very exciting prospect which will highlight the immensely important and influential nature of the work which Beatrix Potter achieved, and will bring to national attention the wonderful collection of her work which our museum holds…
The lecture is on 20 April and tickets, costing £10, can be booked by calling the Linnean Society on 020 7434 4479, or via their website.
Dickens let reality feed his imagination and it's still possible to see many of the places that inspired him
British street food is improving by leaps and bounds, and the hot dog is helping quicken the pace
• Recipe: Babushkas' eastern European bratwurst stew
There's something inherently funny about hot dogs. Sellers like to give them silly names, whether it's The Notorious P I G, The Snoop Dog, or the Hot, Diggety Dog. But it's time to take hot dogs seriously. With Wieners on the menu at The Delaunay, and Franks on the menu at Mishkins, times are changing. Welcome to the world of the "haute dog".
When John Candy's character ordered hot dogs in The Great Outdoors, Dan Aykroyd's character laughed. "You know what they're made of, Chet?" he asked. "Lips and assholes." They had a PR problem. Then there was the matter of the sodium nitrate. And the MSG. If you ever stopped to think about what you were eating, you would never go near a hot dog.
But "haute dogs" are different. They're made from quality cuts, stuffed into all-natural casings – and they don't come out of a can. Street caterer Babushkas' bratwursts are made, to their own recipe, by WH Frosts in Chorlton. They've got a kick of fresh marjoram, and the meat – 85% pork and beef – comes from farms in Oldham. But the most surprising feature of the Babushka brat is its lack of fat.
But it wasn't the healthy menu that got them a top pitch on a business park in Cheadle. "They liked us because we're dinky" says Amy. "Plus we don't have a generator, so we're not noisy. And our van is beautiful." Babushkas don't even pay rent. "We keep worrying the business park owners are going to turn round one day and say 'I'm afraid there appears to have been a mistake … '."
Their client base is expanding – literally. "We get a lot of overweight customers" says Amy. "We've got one woman who's at Slimming World, so we steer her away from our bratwurst stew towards our veggie option. And we've got one lad who comes every day who's obsessed with our BLTs. I'm beginning to get uncomfortable. Soon I'll be like 'Try this instead'. I'll do it nicely, with the banter. You can do anything with the banter."
Abiye Cole of London's Big Apple Hot Dogs is a master of the banter. It's his dogs that are named on the menu at Mishkin's. They deserve it. When I first tried a Big Apple Dog, standing by Abiye's lovingly polished stall on the Old Street roundabout, a jet of hot red grease shot onto my blue jacket. "You've just been anointed" said Abiye. That's how it felt. To this day, it's the best dog I've ever tasted.
There was something about the natural casing, with a "snap" on every bite, and the roll, stuffed with onions fried in in butter and thyme. But it was the dog's seriously meaty texture that really did it for me. Cooper Deville, who runs The Dogfather – London's other haute dog stall – likes 100% kosher beef dogs for that reason. They don't have that slurry of mechanically recovered meat. They taste proper.
Cooper won't say which butcher makes them for him. All he'll say is it's just "some Jewish guy". Abiye is the same. "The quality of the sausages is driving my business, so it's not in my interest to shout from the rooftops where I get them from." Yianni Papoutsis never let on about his suppliers when he ran the Meatwagon – he knew his sources needed protecting. Chefs don't want a limited supply to become even more limited; and they all know a little bit of mystique goes a long way.
Ken Livingstone has pledged to bring the capital's cycle hire scheme within the scope of the Freedom Pass that allows older and disabled people free use of most public transport. His announcement comes in advance of tomorrow's (Tuesday's) first hustings of the mayoral election campaign, which will be hosted in Euston by Age UK. Such ruthless timing.
There's a particular logic to the Labour mayoral candidate's idea given that, despite its being sponsored by Barclays, the hire scheme introduced by his Tory rival Boris Johnson has become another mode of tax-payer subsidised public transport, just like the buses and the Underground. That's because it's losing money, of course. Transport for London (TfL) estimates the current annual cost of operating the scheme to be about £15 million a year, which will increase to about £20 million once phase two - expanding the territory covered by the scheme eastwards to Bow - opens for business from 8 March.
Last October the Evening Standard's Ross Lydall reported that TfL was anticipating only £7 million in revenue from the scheme by the end of this financial year. From MayorWatch we now learn that Tower Hamlets is having to stump up cash it was originally given by TfL to fund its own local projects in order to help pay for the scheme's expansion on its patch.
At this point it would be remiss not recall a few words from page 32 of Boris's 2008 transport manifesto:
We will broker a deal with a private company to bring thousands of bikes to the capital at no cost to the taxpayer.
That cruel barb hurled, what makes Ken think his own plan stacks up? The Freedom Pass is funded by London's local authorities and managed by them too. Wouldn't he have to ask them nicely first? Yes he would. But he claims that wouldn't be a problem because, he says, the total cost would be less than £250,000 a year, implying that this would be a small price to pay for "encouraging and enabling" more older Londoners to cycle. What will Boris make of that?
Two further questions come to mind. One, how many older Londoners really want to cycle in the busy parts of town? Two, has Ken himself yet learned how to ride a bike?
It appears my suggestions for displaying our Turners (Comment, 15 February) were made with insufficient clarity, which has led to misinterpretation (Letters, 18 February). Simply put, our nation is blessed by Turner's bequest in having 35,000 works by arguably one of the world's 10 greatest ever painters. This is too many to display, unless the government makes good on a promise broken 22 years after Turner's death, and creates the Turner Museum he was offered at the time of his gift.
Today, I believe Turner would prefer to have his work spread around and seen in major museums around the globe rather than hidden away in vaults.
My central argument, had it been better stated, is that Britain is woefully lacking in a broad spread of top quality works by Klimt, Manet, Picasso, Cézanne, Malevich, Brancusi and many, many key artists – all financially beyond reach and all vital for a national collection as important as ours. A few of our stockpiled Turners could be traded with other museums for masterpieces by artists they themselves hold in some depth; they give up one or two in order to achieve the Holy Grail of a powerful Turner collection and archive. I am convinced that is what Turner would have wanted – his work gathering a worldwide audience rather than gathering dust.
A further twist in the Turner tale is that The Blue Rigi, saved for the nation by almost £5m of the public's money, has now ended up hidden in storage alongside all the other Turners you own, but cannot see.
Charles Saatchi
London
• Charles Saatchi's interest in Turner's work will be welcomed by all who are interested in integrity. The decision to go against Turner's conditions in his bequest was, and is, shameful. Could I ask Saatchi to throw his weight behind promoting the jewel in the crown of Margate harbour, the Turner Contemporary gallery, which is almost one year old?
Mollie Holden
Westgate-on-Sea, Kent
Melbourne, Australia: It was once a site of heavy industrial use, but now Merri Creek waters the green spaces where it is good to live and breathe
Merri Creek flows some 70km from the north down to join the river Yarra at Dights Falls outside Melbourne. And just a short, downhill walk from where we were staying, in the suburb of Thornbury, the steep and rocky channel of the creek, lined with gumtrees, winds between grassy banks. Some of the banks were built as levees after destructive storm floods in 1974. The number and diversity of eucalyptus trees are bewildering – among the better known are the stringybark, with long, fibrous threads of bark, and the ironbark, hard, deeply furrowed, almost black – but it is the river red gum, very frequent along inland waterways, that attracts my eye. I looked at a tall, handsome specimen, its spreading upper limbs smooth ivory, stripped of bark, while lower down the process of bark-shedding in ribbons left an irregular pattern of stripes and patches in shades of grey, brown and red, with a ragged litter around the base.
By our local stretch of creek is a wetland recently developed from a man-made flood-break and now nurturing native flora and fauna – part of a campaign to restore the nature corridor formed by Merri Creek after the damage done by more than a century of industrial development along its course. In places the water ripples over rocks and boulders of bluestone, a major building material used in the building of the city.
At Northcote, we looked down on boulders and cracked slabs in the riverbed close to the winch tower of a giant quarry developed in the 1860s, and filled, 100 years later, with rubble by a demolition firm. Some disused quarries became refuse tips, and a potential source of pollution. But nowadays, where Merri Creek waters the green spaces of places where it is good to live and breathe, you meet, in the cool of the evening, walkers, cyclists and runners, and fathers and sons out for cricket practice.
Travelodge's 10-to-one ratio of debt to earnings was asking for problems – and they have duly arrived in the form of two US hedge funds
Travelodge is not the first company from the 2006-07 buyout vintage to find that its highly leveraged balance sheet looks a bad joke in the colder climate of 2011-12. Even so, the numbers are extraordinary.
The 2010 accounts – the last filed at Companies House – show a business with revenues of £335m and ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) of £47.8m. That's clearly a feeble platform on which to attempt to support bank borrowings of almost £500m. A 10-to-one ratio of bank debt to ebitda is asking for trouble.
That is doubly so when you consider the inflexible nature of Travelodge's main overhead. Those 2010 accounts show an annual rental commitment of £114m with leases having an average life of 25 years and containing upward-only rental reviews.
Trouble has duly arrived. Two US hedge funds, with an eye to protecting the value of the junior debt they own, are now cast as would-be saviours. GoldenTree Asset Management and Avenue Capital are prepared to underwrite a £60m loan and, probably, take control via a debt-for-equity swap.
Dubai International Capital, which led the £675m highly leveraged purchase of Travelodge in 2006, wrote off its investment as long ago as 2008, so presumably will welcome anybody willing to attempt a financial reconstruction. DIC should count itself lucky to have a couple of volunteers – otherwise the staff might fairly expect it to defuse the over-the-top financial engineering.
As the Olympics loom, Alexandra Topping takes a tour within sight and sound of the London 2012 site
Interactive: an alternative tour around the site
The Olympic Stadium gleamed in the winter sunshine: imposing, elegant and, best of all, complete. But from the vantage point of the Greenway path, all around the signs of construction rumbled on.
Damien Erni, visiting the Olympic site with his family from Switzerland, looked impressed, if slightly concerned. "It's quite amazing how they are constructing all these buildings which will be used for different things afterwards," he said. "But we did kind of wonder ... is it going to be finished on time?"
Despite the lorries, high wire fences and men in hard hats, visits to the Olympic site are booming. Jo Hoad, chair of the Blue Badge 2012 tours, said: "People from all over the world are genuinely interested in the chance to see and hear about the Olympic Park for 2012. Over 34,000 of the public have been on the walking tours since April 2010 – the majority of these are proud Brits."
On a weekday trip, the viewing area is packed with visiting groups: a group of older women from Wimbledon, an army of small, very excited children and a batch of hungover students among them. Myrtle Linberg, 76, on a private tour with a Wimbledon ladies' group, admitted she wouldn't normally venture to this part of the city. "It was such a poor area before, wasn't it? But look at it now," she says, pointing at the stadium. "We've just been told there are more than 10,000 toilets in there."
Official tours run daily and cost £9, but some private companies are taking a more lavish approach. The Blue Tiger Company offers a 30-minute private helicopter flight above the site, lunch and tour for £350 a couple. "We get a lot of corporate and private clients, entertaining clients from the far east and Russia, but most people are from the UK," said Mia Patel, the sales director.
Simon Cole, tour guide and Hackney resident, has a different take. For him the Olympic boroughs – Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Newham, Greenwich and Barking and Dagenham – are worth discovering on their own merits. "To a lot of people, the idea of east London conjures up images of industrial decay or gun crime," he said. "But there is an incredible amount to discover here – you can look back 200 years and to the future, without having to move."
Cole gave the Guardian an alternative tour of the Olympics, taking in filter beds and football pitches, street art and the former Matchbox factory, as well as the swoop of the Aquatic Centre and the unromantic bulk of the media hub.
Starting the tour at the Princess of Wales pub on Lea Bridge Road in Hackney, he led the way into a little-known east London delight – the Middlesex Filter Beds, built after London's worst cholera outbreak struck in 1852. When they were closed a century later, the beds became an inner-city wildlife haven and today provide a pocket of tranquillity. Rushes rustle in the wind and the rumble of traffic can only be faintly heard behind the birdsong. A short walk further on to the expanse of Hackney Marshes – the spiritual home of Sunday league football with more than 80 pitches – provided a particularly urban bucolic scene – with centuries-old trees surrounded by tower blocks and former power stations. It is an area packed with historical significance: in the ninth century part of the Danelaw boundary between the Saxons and Vikings, later a haunt of highwaymen. Edward Walford wrote in 1878: "In the Marshes towards Hackney Wick were low publichouses, the haunt of highwaymen and their Dulcineas. Dick Turpin was a constant guest [...] and few police-officers were bold enough to approach the spot."
Following the walk along the Hackney Cut – an artificial channel of the Lee Navigation canal built in 1770 to improve transport links – towards the Olympic Stadium takes the explorer though the East End's former industrial centre. The area has its own wildlife – the lesser-spotted hipster, to be found among the street art and identifiable by thrombosis-inducing trousers and bear-like overcoats. "Walking around here gives you a timeline of London history," said Cole. "This was the beating heart of industrial east London but in recent years has started to transform and now has the highest concentration of artists in Europe, with more than 600 studios."
After passing the media centre we entered the Olympic zone: security fences grow higher, canary-yellow sentry posts appear along the route and urban ramblers – slightly incongruous with walking poles and backpacks – stomp by. Random facts from different and competing tour guides fill the air: "The Olympic Park is two and a half square kilometres – that's the same size as Hyde Park!"; "At the peak of construction more than 10,000 people were at work here"; "The Aquatics Centre is made from 2,800 tonnes of steel."
From the Greenway, the Olympic Stadium, which will seat 80,000 people during the games and may afterwards, legal wrangling permitting, be the home of West Ham, fills the horizon.
More than 800,000 tonnes of soil were removed and 33 buildings demolished before construction could begin, with 5,250 workers taking three years to finish the stadium on time and within budget. A little further along the path you see Zaha Hadid's Aquatics Centre, with its wave-shaped roof and detachable wings for spectators that will be removed after the games, the concave roof of the Velodrome and the temporary bubble structure of the Basketball Arena, which will glow at night.
Next to the stadium, Anish Kapoor's ArcelorMittal Orbit – Britain's largest public sculpture – rises like the world's most frightening rollercoaster, promising the best view of the Olympic Park.
Still, those looking on from the Greenway don't seem to mind this next best option.
There is a sense of fizzing anticipation, which seems set to keep visitors streaming to the site right up until the Olympic flame is lit during the opening ceremony.
"It's something a bit different to do, for certain," said Erni. "And even though it looks a bit like a building site at the moment, it is really quite exciting."
Our weekly look at what's new and fun in the world of travel, including tented camps in wild Kyrgyzstan and a cosy boutique hostel in Snowdonia
Tweet us @guardiantravel or email us about your travels
Escapism
A new series of tented fixed camps in the vast, little-explored, and utterly beautiful Tien Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan have made independent treks here a realistic proposition for the first time. Walks Worldwide's (walksworldwide.com) 14-night, self-guided trip to Khan Tengri base camp costs from £1,775pp, including meals, helicopter flights, camping gear and route notes, but not international flights. Departs July and August.
What's new?
Accommodation
Boutique hostels are not a new idea, but most of the ones we've come across are abroad. So hurrah for Plas Curig, a new, beautifully decorated independent hostel slap-bang in the heart of Snowdonia national park. The (unisex) dorm rooms have bunk beds, complete with Welsh blankets and curtains for privacy. Beds in here cost from £22.50, but a room for two is not much more, at £25pp, and a family room costs £27.50pp. This price does not include breakfast but there is a swish kitchen and a dining room, plus library, lounge, drying room and bike storage.
• snowdoniahostel.co.uk
Tour
HiddenCity is a simple but clever way of exploring a city. You put together a team of mates and then solve a trail of clues sent to you by text, each leading to a new location. There are 11 themed trails (art, food and drink, open spaces and more) available in London, Brighton, Newcastle and York; the most recent is aimed at a younger audience – the Science Museum Discovery Trail. Perfect for text-savvy kids.
• £16 per team, inthehiddencity.com
Deal
Augill Castle, a family-friendly B&B in a 175-year-old castle on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, is celebrating its 15th birthday by offering double rooms at the 1997 rate of £80 B&B throughout March. Quote "15 years old" when booking.
• stayinacastle.com
Tweet ur trip: insect horror
• Getting to the bottom of my Christmas chicken curry in Malaysia to find a cockroach drowned in the sauce @Andyho73
• Pulled back the sheets on my bed in a hostel in Flores, Guatemala to discover a sea of pulsating bug eggs @gemma_howe
• Being laughed at in Laos for eating the entire cricket not realising the locals pick off wings, head, legs @EllaMullings
• Bitten by spider in Belizean jungle, intense pain. Guide said try sleep, we've adrenaline if you stop breathing. Thanks @Recruitment2Rio
We had some great tales from you about your horrific insect encounters – see our pick of the best here on Storify
Next week: Bizarre transport. Tweet us @GuardianTravel #TravelCorkboard
Whether you are a collector, bargain hunter or mere browser, antiques markets offer a special atmosphere. Been there readers recommend their favourites, from London to Vienna
• Add a tip for next week and you could win a digital camera
WINNING TIP Ludwigsburg Antiques-Mile, near Stuttgart, Germany
The annual fair in this charming town sells everything from tiny Bavarian hedgehog brooches – made from acorns and fluff – to six-foot Chinese vases, along with local delicacies such as schupfnudeln (delicious potato noodles). If you tire of the crowds, and are a lover of baroque, Ludwigsburg Residential Palace is a must.
29-30 September, ludwigsburg.de
Pippy1985
UK
The Georgian Rooms, Bridlington, East Yorkshire
The Georgian Rooms are very special.On the well-preserved high street of the old town, this is a treasure trove of fascinating pieces, mostly antiques, with some vintage clothing, garden ironmongery, furniture, photographs and a wonderful tea room on the ground floor, serving home made homemade cakes and lunches. The owner collects items from far and wide and has a keen interest in the unusual. We picked up some Frank Meadow Sutcliffe photographs, pretty art nouveau crockery, and silverware, all reasonably priced. The garden has several rooms and sheds with interesting outdoor objects, restored furniture and follies.
thegeorgianroomsbridlington.webeden.co.uk
kris1
Newark Antiques Fair, Winthorpe, Nottinghamshire
Claims to be the biggest antiques fair in Europe, and the size has to be seen to be believed! It makes for an interesting day out and takes place a few times each year (next one is 12-13 April).
iacf.co.uk/newark
erinhuckle
Portobello Road, west London
So many visitors to Portobello Road miss the wonderful antiques stalls in the rambling arcades. So go early – 8am on a Saturday – and enjoy the opportunity to talk unhurriedly to the experts, then buy some beautiful, unusual presents. At 10am, stop for coffee and freshly baked cakes at Books for Cooks (booksforcooks.com) and leave the road to the growing throng.
portobelloroad.co.uk
Snagglepuss1956
Broad Street, Leominster
This small market town in Herefordshire is a gem for antiques. Try Broad Street for Teagowns and Textiles, a lovely vintage shop with a great selection of clothing, as well as table linen, and the Leominster Antique Market, a treasure chest on three floors, where small rooms are let out to individual traders. They have vast amounts of pottery and china. Corn Square is home to The Merchants House, which is more expensive but definitely worth a look.
leominster.co.uk
missmarple0512
The Style Fair Vintage and Preloved Events, across Northern Ireland
The home of the Style Fair is Belfast but the fair travels to various locations across Northern Ireland. Each event has around 30 stalls packed with top-quality, premium-brand preloved clothing, as well as exciting garments from top vintage dealers. The perfect place to bag a bargain at a fraction of the original price. Some fairs specialise in Style for the Home and some have exclusive handcrafted items from local designers. Each venue is always different and has other features, including style makeovers and beauty advice from professionals. It is a great place to go with friends for a fun and rewarding shopping experience.
thestylefair.co.uk
Beverwee
France
Antiques market, Aix-en-Provence
The brocante market in Aix is held on a wide boulevard shaded with trees and surrounded by flower displays. The locals set out stalls under brightly coloured umbrellas – wander from one to another, enjoying coffee and pastries at cafes along the way. There is an eclectic mix of antiques, from extravagant chandeliers and jewels to dusty books and agricultural ironwork. The market has a lovely, relaxed air; visitors can soak up the sunshine and chatter of the locals while searching for a little piece of treasure.
Place de Verdun: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday (aixenprovencetourism.com)
jaynemoobs
Allées Jules Guesde, central Toulouse
This brocante market sells all sorts of antique French tableware, including stunning linen and lace, as well as homeware and furniture, alongside old posters and adverts on old, weather-beaten enamel panels. There are food stalls at either end, and the Natural History Museum is just next door.
Allées Jules Guesde, metro station Carnes: first Friday, Saturday and Sunday of each month
missmarple0512
Antiques market, Nantes
A huge car park that magically becomes a market overnight. Step out, as we did, from the hotel door and there it is: stalls and stalls of French history waiting to be persuedperused. It´ll It takes some time, so allow the whole morning and preferably have plenty of space in the car.
en.nantes-tourisme.com
Andaluciaforholidays
Austria
Naschmarkt, Vienna
This mixture of Austrian traditions, antique dealers, flea market and food stalls is located near two beautiful art deco houses built by Jugendstil architect Otto Wagner and dates back to the 16th century. You will find antique dealers selling everything from old postcards, books, porcelain, Austrian glassware, gramophones dating back to the early 1900s and old dolls, to vintage clothes, bric-a-brac, exotic goods and curios. The market has a very vibrant atmosphere, and is a mix of Austrians locals and tourists. By the end of the day, stallholders lower their prices considerably, and near closing time some items are free.
6 Wienzeile, U-bahn stations Kettenbrückengasse and Karlsplatz: flea market 6am-4pm on Saturday; (wienernaschmarkt.eu)
ninnytendo
Avenue Capital and GoldenTree Asset Management pledge to step in with £60m in funding and seize control of the hotelier
Travelodge, known for its £10-a-night rooms, is to be taken over by two US hedge funds that stand ready to inject some much needed cash and save the budget hotel chain from collapsing into administration.
The debt-laden company, which has more than 470 hotels in Britain, Ireland and Spain, and employs more than 6,000 people, needs to raise £60m to survive. It is owned by Dubai International Capital, a private equity house backed by the Gulf state, which stands to lose up to £400m.
Two New York-based hedge funds, Avenue Capital and GoldenTree Asset Management, which have been creditors to Travelodge since 2006 when DIC bought the business, have pledged to step in with £60m, a Travelodge spokesman said, and intend to take control of the hotelier in return. They are talking to Travelodge's main lenders – Investec, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Babson – about whether they want to be involved in the rescue.
Creditors were forced to inject £10m of emergency cash in recent weeks. It is in the hedge funds' interest to keep Travelodge afloat because insolvency would wipe them out as the junior lenders. After pumping in more money, Avenue and GoldenTree plan to seize control of the firm from DIC through a debt-for-equity swap. There are hopes this process could be wrapped up in the next two months.
DIC's equity stake would be wiped out unless it injects more capital to retain its investment, which is thought unlikely. It bought the firm from Permira in 2006 for £675m, backed by loans of £478m.
GoldenTree said it had been a "very supportive lender to Travelodge for many years and continues to work closely with the company and management".
Some believe Travelodge is in trouble mainly because the 2006 takeover saddled it with too much debt. The hotel chain now has borrowings of £530m and an annual interest bill of £100m.
Just last month budget fashion chain Peacocks collapsed with £600m of debts.
Travelodge is offering a £10 nightly rate between April and August. It stressed its budget hotels were performing well as the economic downturn was forcing more families to holiday in Britain. Profits for last year climbed 20% to £65m while revenues rose 16% to £370m.
A spokesman said: "The budget hotel sector is growing. People are staying in the UK more than going abroad." Rooms were basic but cheap, and the spokesman noted: "When you turn the lights off you could be in any room."
There are signs that even budget hotels are not immune to Britons' belt-tightening. Nonetheless, both Travelodge and its main rival, Premier Inn, owned by Whitbread, are steaming ahead with new room openings. Travelodge intends to open 41 new hotels this year, including 11 in London, and hopes to have 1,100 hotels with 100,000 rooms by 2025. Premier Inn plans to open 4,000 new rooms this year.
Name the place and win a £150 voucher from Hotels.com, letting you stay at thousands of hotels worldwide
At least four seriously injured as coach taking ski trip pupils back to Birmingham overturns on motorway near Reims
A coach carrying British tourists and schoolchildren back from a skiing holiday in the Italian Alps has crashed in northern France, leaving one man dead and at least four people seriously injured.
The coach was returning to Birmingham with 49 passengers on board, including 29 children from Alvechurch middle school in Worcestershire, when the accident happened on the A26 near Châlons-en-Champagne, about 30 miles south of Reims, in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Interski Snowsport School, the company that organised the trip, said a 59-year-old teacher leading the group had been killed in the accident. A schoolgirl passenger was said to be in a critical condition.
A Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) spokesman said there had been "four to five" serious injuries in the crash and that 22 people had been slightly hurt.
A statement from Interski said: "We are saddened and distressed to report the death of a party leader following a coach accident in the Reims area of northern France at approximately 2.30 GMT this morning. Our thoughts are with the bereaved family and friends, to whom we offer our sincere condolences."
The casualties, who have been taken to hospitals in Reims and Châlons-en-Champagne, were a mixture of adults and children, he said.
A spokeswoman for the school, whose pupils are aged between nine and 13, said it had no further information to give. "We are liaising with the police and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office," she added.
Few details of why the crash happened were immediately available. French media said the coach, owned by Solus Coaches of Staffordshire, overturned and crashed into a ditch on the side of the motorway as it made its way back from the Aosta Valley in northern Italy.
Images of the coach on its side and without its front window were shown on news channels. No other vehicle is believed to have been involved. Interski said: "We understand that the coach in question veered from the motorway before coming to rest on its side at the foot of an embankment. The emergency services were alerted by passengers on a following coach, which stopped and assisted with the evacuation and rescue."
Francis Soutric, a local official, told French radio that one of the two drivers on board was among the injured.
Christian de Rocquigny, the local prosecutor, told Le Parisien the injured driver had shown no sign of having drunk alcohol or taken drugs, but he would be taken in for questioning upon leaving hospital. Police would investigate the possibility that he had fallen asleep at the wheel, he added.
The FCO said it was providing consular assistance to those affected and had set up a helpline for those concerned: 020 7008 1500.
Douro wines show there's much more to Portugal than port
The Douro valley in Portugal is stunning: vertiginous granite slopes, each one divided into rows of narrow terraces topped by vines and supported by dry-stone walls, sweep up from the wide Douro river as it meanders west towards Porto. It's been described as the most beautiful wine region in the world.
Then there's the intriguing social structure. With its mix of tens of thousands of grape growers and a small officer class of wine producers with strong historical links to Britain, the region has, to the outsider, a decidedly Victorian character. Many of the most celebrated producers were founded, and are still run today, by upper-crust expat families including the Symingtons (who produce Cockburn's, Dow's, Graham's and Warre's ports) and the Robertsons (of the Fladgate Partnership behind Taylor's, Fonseca and Croft's ports). Their Portuguese peers tend to share their formal dress codes and manners and both stand in stark contrast to the growers working at their tiny plots.
But while appearances might suggest that this is an inherently conservative place, the Douro has changed. For centuries it had been known only for port, but for the past decade or so it has been arguably the most dynamic table wine region in Europe, helping to establish Portugal as a great producer of top quality dry reds.
If a single individual embodied these changes, it would be the charismatic Dirk Niepoort. Born into a port-producing family of Dutch origin, Niepoort made his first table wine, the massively tannic Robustus, in 1990. The reaction from critics was lukewarm, but Niepoort tried again in a different style with Redoma in 1991, going on to create a range of brilliant wines that made him a cult star.
Niepoort was by no means the first to make decent table wines in the Douro. Barca Velha, the wine with which José Mourinho endeared himself to Sir Alex Ferguson in one of their post-match chats, had its first vintage in 1952. But Niepoort's success was a catalyst, and during the 1990s and 2000s dozens of producers, some established port producers, others new estates, have been moving into table wine.
Though each producer has their own style, Douro reds tend to have perfumed, aromatic dark fruit similar to port, with a craggy, monolithic structure that softens after a few years in bottle to reveal a subtle mineral streak. At their best, the whites tend to be distinctively herbal with tangy acidity and that same minerality.
Not that everyone believes the table wine revolution has been a good thing. With his tongue only slightly in cheek, David Guimaraens of Fonseca port describes the new breed of dry wines as "port for diabetics", and his company has been conspicuous in not moving into table wine. Guimaraens also worries about the sustainability of the shift: local wine regulations mean impoverished growers are guaranteed a fixed price for port grapes that is considerably higher than the unregulated price they can get for table grapes, a price that does not cover the cost of production. In Guimaraens's view, that effectively means port is "subsidising" table wines.
With port sales in long-term decline, however, table wines are going to be increasingly important in the Douro. But the future of this strange and beautiful region rests in producers and growers finding a way for both of these great wine styles to survive.
Six of the best Douro wines
Lavradores de Feitoria Blanco 2010 (£8.50, The Wine Society)
The Douro's white wines tend to get overshadowed by the reds, but they can be beguiling. This one, which is made by a co-op of 15 producers with winemaking overseen by Dirk Niepoort, is alive with the joys of spring: a squeeze of citrus and some rich rounded apple fruit.
Quinta do Crasto Douro 2009 (£9.99, or £8.49 if you buy two bottles, Majestic; £8.99, or £8.09 as part of a case of 12 bottles, Adnams)
This fine old producer does a brilliant job of making Douro wines and ports at accessible prices, both in supermarket own-label wines and in this boldly fruit-driven red. The tannins are considerably softer than your average Douro red, making it a good alternative for Aussie shiraz.
Waitrose Douro Valley Reserva Quinta da Rosa 2009 (£10.69, Waitrose or £10.15 at waitrosewine.com)
The best of the supermarket own-label Douro wines, this is made by Quinta de la Rosa, and it has all the trademark elegance and floral aromatics the producer is renowned for. There's plenty of guts and flesh here, too: a piece of red meat is required to soak up the tannins.
Niepoort Drink Me Douro 2009 (£10.95, Uncorked)
Much of Dirk Niepoort's prolific output is designed to age for years and is sold for high prices (although they're no more expensive than many French wines half as good). This one, however, is very accessibly made and priced: with explosive red and black fruits, it's supple, succulent and moreish.
Quinta do Noval Cedro do Noval Vinho Regional Duriense 2007 (£15.50, The Wine Society, ; £18.35, Berry Bros & Rudd)
One of the finest port houses, Noval was a relatively recent convert to table wine, but the move has been entirely successful. Unusually for the Douro, there's a little bit of syrah in here which adds a bit of peppery spice and sinew to a meaty, powerful red.
Quinta do Vale Meão Douro 2009 (£59.95, Handfords)
Expensive it may be, but this is simply stunning wine, comparable in quality to the very best in the world. It's an uncanny mix of the elegant and the powerful with aromatic, violet lift, very pure red and black fruit and mineral depths. One to keep for a few years yet.
Visit Belfast's famous shipyard; take a break in Bath; and enjoy a trio of painterly scenes in Yorkshire
Take me there
Not since the Titanic launched has Belfast's shipbuilding quarter been the subject of so much optimism. As the countdown begins to the centenary of the ship's doomed voyage in April 1912, preparations are being put in place for the opening of the Titanic Belfast exhibition. The €113m attraction is expected to bring massive regeneration to the shipyards, now rebranded the Titanic Quarter. The building will house nine interactive galleries, including a ride through the recreated shipyards of 1911. It opens on 31 March. Admission: adult £13.50, child £6.75 (titanicbelfast.com). For details of the city's Titanic Festival, themed walking tours and packages, go to discoverireland.com.
Travel clinic: hen weekends
The dilemma I've been given the task of organising my friend's hen weekend in May. She wants something "classy and low key". There will be 14 of us, ages ranging from 35 up. Yasmina, by email
Joanne replies I'm sensing that L-plates, stretch limos and strippers are off limits? Let's give hen party hot spots Newcastle and Brighton a miss then in favour of something more genteel. With its beautiful Georgian architecture, great shops and serious spa credentials, Bath rarely fails to delight.
Start your weekend by soaking in the heated rooftop pool at the Thermae Bath Spa, then enjoy a champagne afternoon tea in the glorious setting of the Pump Room. Bath Tourist Information Centre offers great packages combining the two with a visit to the Roman Baths for £63.50pp. Visit its website to book these and other creative ideas, including narrowboat trips and craft workshops (visitbath.co.uk/groups/itinerary-ideas/hen-party-ideas).
The Big Domain has a selection of large self-catering houses. The Duchy is an elegant Georgian townhouse in the city centre which sleeps 16, with prices from £50pp per night (thebigdomain.com/large-houses/the-duchy-prince-charles-townhouse-in-bath).
If you have a travel dilemma, email Joanne O'Connor at magazine@observer.co.uk
Three of the best… Hockney sites
Have you been inspired by the Royal Academy's David Hockney exhibition? Then head to Yorkshire to discover three iconic locations that are intimately connected with the artist.
1. Salts Mill, Saltaire, Bradford
Imposing former mill in Hockney's home town that features a substantial collection of the artist's work. Free (saltsmill.org.uk)
2. Kilham
Featured in several artworks, this Wolds village is a great base for a Hockney trail. Stay at the lovely Kilham Hall hotel. From £130 (kilhamhall.co.uk)
3. Thixendale
Hike the Wolds Way to see the beauty spot captured in the Three Trees near Thixendale paintings (nationaltrail.co.uk/yorkshirewoldsway/)
It's massive, expensive and the food is shocking. But what's truly surprising about Novikov is that it's also full
50a Berkeley Street, London W1 (020 7399 4330). Meal for two, including wine and service, £160
You could, if you wish, hate Novikov on principle. Arkady Novikov, whose name is above the door, owns 50 or so restaurants in Moscow and likes to boast of his connections to Vladimir Putin. He has talked to me of his work as outside caterer to Putin's Kremlin and once broke off from an interview with me to entertain Putin's wife Lyudmila with a tour of his next venue. Of course, Putin has been accused in diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks of turning Russia into a wretched kleptocracy. He pursued violent campaigns in Chechnya and is being fingered for nicking Russia's parliamentary elections. If we know a man by the company he keeps, then perhaps the arrival in London of a big-ticket Novikov restaurant is not something to be universally applauded.
But you really don't have to hate Novikov on principle. There's more than enough about the place to let you hate it on its own terms. There is the usual stupidity of booking a table for 9pm only to be told that your booking is for just two hours. There is the unusual stupidity of an ape in a bomber jacket shoving his body between you and the door and barking: "Are you eating here tonight?" To which I could but reply: "Only if you'll let me." Inside more people step in our way. But we are spotted and led through the crowds. Novikov is vast. Indeed, it is two restaurants in one. The front half is a pan-Asian place that serves a menu of Chinese, Malaysian and Japanese dishes as if they are all the same thing (including the highly endangered bluefin tuna. Don't look so surprised. Novikov feeds Putin. You think he'd care about a small thing like sustainability?).
Down a flight of stairs, past the crowds of young ladies with older gentlemen sucking the bar dry, and you are in the huge windowless Italian restaurant, denoted by bits of wrought iron, faux rustic chandeliers, a huge open kitchen with meat-hanging cabinets, and the bash and clatter of music so loud I feel it in my prostate gland. It reminds me of the mega restaurants of Las Vegas, with one crucial difference. In Vegas the restaurants are generally very good. There's too much competition for it to be otherwise. This is generally very, very bad: prices that knock the wind out of you and moments of cooking so cack-handed, so foul, so astoundingly grim you want to congratulate the kitchen on its incompetence.
We eat some good things. Its vitello tonnato – thinly sliced veal with an anchovy and tuna sauce – gets the approval of my companion. The fried mushrooms topped with eggs are fine, too, as they should be for £18.50. This isn't in any way Italian. We order a rabbit ragout with pappardelle and calf's liver with butter and sage. My companion says: "This tastes like cheap Chinese food." She's right.
It takes me a minute to nail the rabbit dish: the small gnarly bits of meat, the heavy sauce that tastes as if it has been thickened with cornflour, the weird hit of chicken flavour I associate with stock cubes. It's a chicken and mushroom Pot Noodle. Without the useful plastic pot. The liver dish has all the same vices. The tragedy is that underneath the wallpaper-paste sauce is some very good liver that has ended its life badly. Zucchini fritti are so much hot, wet, floppy saltiness. We finish with a pile of formless Italian meringue. The hit of sugar feels like a reward. The wine list is punishing and includes bottles which retail in Italy for €8, priced here at £50. Waiters are impeccably Italian in that they will argue with you. Dishes are mispriced between the menu and the bill.
And the most depressing thing? It's full; packed to the fake ironwork with the hooting and the depilated, the bronzed and Botoxed. And so my advice to you. Don't go to Novikov. Keep not going. Keep not going a lot. In a city with a talent for opening hateful and tasteless restaurants, Novikov marks a special new low. That's its real achievement.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place
From smoked salmon in Tasmania to a proper sausage sandwich in London, here's how and where Britain's top chefs and restaurateurs like to start their day
Bar Italia, London
Chosen by Fergus Henderson, chef patron, St John
In an ideal world, my favourite way to start the day would be a plate of devilled kidneys washed down with a black velvet (a cocktail made of Guinness and champagne). But that's just not the kind of thing you should do very often. Normally my morning "meal" is an espresso and a few cigarettes – as a chef you're handling and tasting food all day, so breakfast often isn't a priority – but at the weekend I make an effort for the kids and get crispy croissants from Maison Bertaux in Soho, or make bacon and scrambled eggs – cooked slowly in lots of butter. I do love butter. I had some interesting breakfasts when I was last in India, including a deep-fried squash croissant, which was all kinds of sweet, buttery unctuousness. If I have a morning off in town, I'll nip into Bar Italia – my favourite breakfast pit stop – on Frith Street in Soho and get a sausage bap. I'm very partial to them.
22 Frith Street, London W1D 4RP
Twenty Three Cafe, Auckland
Chosen by Anna Hansen, chef patron, The Modern Pantry
I'm a massive fan of Twenty Three Cafe. They do my favourite breakfast – grilled sardines on sourdough toast with gremolata and smoked tomato salsa. If I really want to push the boat out I'll have their ginger marinated scallops on toast with black pudding. They also make a mean coffee and are super friendly – both essential ingredients for a good breakfast experience. I try not to miss breakfast, although sometimes sleep takes priority. On a usual day, I'll have porridge with wheatgerm and manuka honey, or some of the granola we make at Modern Pantry. Breakfast was an important meal growing up, and one we enjoyed as a family. Porridge was a major fixture: mum would serve it either with butter and salt – sounds odd now, but it was delicious – or brown sugar and milk. In which case, in the days before homogenisation, my brother and I would pay tribute to our Danish genes and fight over who got the top cream.
23 Mount Eden Road, Eden Terrace, Auckland, NZ
McDonald's
Chosen by Will Beckett, co-owner, Hawksmoor
My fondest breakfast memory is going to our local Little Chef with my grandparents and having the Olympic Breakfast. It felt like a huge mountain of food to conquer back then, and I'm pretty sure I always finished it. I think that kick-started my love for down-market breakfasts – the king of all of them, for me, being the McDonald's sausage and egg McMuffin. There was a McDonald's by the bus stop on my way to school, and I used to go in with my best friend Huw (who I now own Hawksmoor with) a few times a week and get one. I'm not going to attempt an argument in their favour, they're just dirty and delicious and we loved them when we were 11. I don't get them that often now (although they're still a shameful pleasure), but we do a homage to it at Hawksmoor: the sausage and egg HkMuffin, made with a flat sausage and either Ogleshield or Colston Basset stilton and two fried eggs. There's a guy who comes in once a week for one like clockwork – a man after my own heart.
Berardo's, Noosa Heads, Australia
Chosen by Bruno Loubet, chef patron, Bistrot Bruno Loubet
One of my most special breakfast locations is Berardo's bistro on the beach in Noosa, Australia. It offers fantastic, inventive brekkie food and has stunning views of both Noosa's main beach and the magnificent Laguna Bay. Its Huon Tasmanian smoked salmon with warm brioche, goat's cheese mousse, slow-cooked egg, cucumber ribbons and dill is just perfect with a glass of champagne. I can't wait to go back. When it comes to breakfast on a weekday, I'll usually just have fresh fruit. But sometimes, for energy, I'll have porridge with sliced garlic, honey and olive oil. As a child my mother insisted we have food to start the day, but with seven children it was quite a task! We'd have grilled sourdough bread with butter and homemade jams, dipped into big bowls of cafe au lait. On very cold days we'd have grilled sourdough rubbed with raw garlic and spread with fat scraped off a large piece of salted back fat hanging in the cellar.
Beachfront, Hastings Street, Noosa Heads, Queensland, Q4567
The Modern Pantry, London
Chosen by Angela Hartnett, chef patron, Murano
Breakfast during the week for me is usually little more than coffee. Sometimes I'll grab a piece of fruit, or a very quick bowl of cereal, but the constraints of a busy kitchen mean making time for breakfast can be hard. Come the weekend, though, I love to go to the Modern Pantry in Clerkenwell. Their vegetarian breakfast – grilled sourdough, halloumi, eggs, tomatoes, mushroom and spinach – is fantastic, each component done so well. That and a good coffee is Saturday heaven. Generally speaking, I do like a savoury meal in the morning – that continental-style breakfast of bread, cheese and ham is much more appealing to me than anything sweet and sugary. Another wonderful breakfast can be had at Michel Bras's restaurant, Bras, in Laguiole in the Midi-Pyrénées. The breakfast buffet, full of homemade breads, local cheeses and salamis, is delicious.
48 St John's Square, Clerkenwell, London EC1V 4JJ
The Fat Delicatessen, London
Chosen by Jason Atherton, chef patron, Pollen Street Social
During the week I'm up at 6.15am and breakfast is usually a cup of coffee, a bowl of cornflakes and an apple, then straight out of the door to work. At the weekends I like to go to a place down the road from where I live, in Balham, called the Fat Delicatessen. They do the best sausage sandwich I've ever had – just really good bread, great sausages and a chunky brown sauce with apples and molasses that's more like a chutney. It's delicious. When I'm in the Philippines, where my wife is from, I enjoy a hot chocolate made from raw cacao with boiling water poured on top. You drink it with empanadas filled with soft purple yams – the milky lilac colour is out of this world – and margarine (you'll have to trust me on this) and cheese on top. They're phenomenal to eat, but not for your waistline. Neither is my other favourite breakfast – my mum's full English. She can't cook anything else, but I've never had better.
7 Chestnut Grove, London SW12 8JA
The Wolseley, London
Chosen by Giorgio Locatelli, chef patron, Locanda Locatelli
Breakfast when I was a boy would be a mug of hot milk and five or six little biscuits, given to me by my grandmother. Quite often, my grandmother would be sat at the other end of the table preparing that day's lunch or dinner, and I have an abiding memory of her butchering a rabbit. As a grown up, breakfast these days is little more than a couple of Marlboro and two espressos – I'm never hungry first thing in the morning; if I have eggs too early it can really mess me up. Later in the morning I'm game for anything. My favourite place for brunch has to be the Wolseley – it's just amazing. I was last there for a meeting with AA Gill and had what I always have: scrambled eggs and smoked salmon. It's so grand in there, such an experience. I want to take my mother and father – they'd explode.
160 Piccadilly, London W1J 9EB
Hotel Sacher, Vienna
Chosen by Alexis Gauthier, chef patron, Gauthier Soho
When I think about the breakfast in the Sacher Hotel in Vienna, I smile from ear to ear. I eat their amazing pastries with a little whipped cream. Whipped cream for breakfast is not for the faint-hearted, but it's expertly done here – not over-whipped or over-sweet. I have a small hot chocolate with them – you may as well go the whole hog. I do have to be careful with what I eat, though, since being diagnosed with a fatty liver in 2010. I moderate carefully, but if I have a chance to treat myself, pastries are my weakness. Especially pain au raisin. I start each morning at the table with my children – it's the only meal I have with them during the week, so it's very important to me – with some hot water and lemon, followed by muesli and toast with Nutella. I've had Nutella every day since I was a child. My sister and I probably had the equivalent of a mustard pot of the stuff every day. Some habits you just can't shake.
Hotel Sacher Vienna, Philharmonikerstraße 4 1010 Vienna
Bubby's, New York
Chosen by Russell Norman, Polpo, Polpetto, Spuntino, Mishkins
I used to think breakfast during the week was for wimps. Until, that is, I joined a gym and the personal trainer refused to work with me unless I ate in the morning. Apparently I was "defeating science" or something. So I'm now in the habit of eating fruity, healthy things when I get up for work, and then five or six less-healthy espressos in the run-up to lunchtime. They're like jump leads – I get withdrawal headaches without them. When I'm travelling the world to research ideas, breakfast is important because there are often very long days. I really get my breakfast mojo when I'm in New York, and always visit this 24-hour Tribeca brunch place, Bubby's. It's un-fancy, a tiny bit grotty and magnificent. I'll either have their eggs Benedict (done properly with English muffins and ham-like Canadian bacon) with hash browns or, my favourite, fried eggs, sausages and grits. I have a clandestine love for grits.
120 Hudson Street, NY 10013
Allpress Espresso, London
Chosen by Skye Gyngell, head chef, Petersham Nurseries
I generally don't put much in my mouth except for coffee before 11am. But by far my favourite place for a late breakfast in London is Allpress Espresso, just around the corner from Brick Lane, and for one major reason: the coffee. It's all I really want for breakfast and, in my opinion, no one in London makes it better. All the beans come from Costa Rica and are roasted on the premises. When I get to the front of the queue (there's always one) I get a takeaway piccolo latte, a tiny glass with two shots of espresso and twice the amount of piping hot milk, and one of their little cakes that are not too sweet. I have wonderful memories of breakfasts as a child, especially on Sundays. We'd go for an early morning swim on Bondi beach and when we got home my mother would have squeezed mangoes for us, and we'd eat fried eggs on Vegemite toast with slices of tomato, lemon juice and lots of black pepper.
58 Redchurch Street, London E2 7DP
The Towpath Cafe, London
Chosen by Mark Hix, chef patron, Hix restaurants
The Towpath Café tucked away beside Regent's Canal in London does one of my favourite breakfasts – masala-spiced scrambled eggs with chilli and spring onions. It's a great, powerful mix of flavours that the eggs carry so well, and watching the ducks swim by while you eat it is really lovely. Their cheese and onion toasties are a bit of a guilty pleasure, too. Breakfast is an important part of the day and I try not to miss it. Growing up, I used to wake up in the morning and look forward to the breakfasts my grandma would make me – usually a little fry-up or a bacon sandwich, that we'd eat together at the table. When I'm travelling I love to eat the traditional breakfast of the country – Japan has it sussed, I think, with big bowls of miso soup. I had a great one once with eel and bean curd in it which was more like a light lunch, but filled me up for hours and hours.
Located between Whitmore and Kingsland Road bridges, London N1 5SB; 020 7254 7606
The Seafood Restaurant, Padstow
Chosen by Tom Kerridge, chef patron, Hand & Flowers
Really good, strong coffee in the morning is a chef's best friend because often you don't have time for breakfast. Also, if you're tasting reductions and correcting seasoning from the get-go, the last thing you want to do is start the day on a full stomach. And then there's the need for sleep: if it's the choice between a bowl of cereal and an extra 15 minutes in bed, I know which one I'm choosing. When I was younger, my mum brought us up by herself, so I'd help out by cooking in the evenings. But she always made us have a bowl of cornflakes before we went to school. The only time I really savour breakfast is when I'm on holiday, and the best breakfast I've had in a long time was at the hotel that's behind Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant in Padstow in Cornwall. It was the full-on continental affair; really good breads, pains au chocolat, cheese. I go there two or three times a year, and I always look forward to coming down from our room to that bounty
Riverside, Padstow, PL28 8BY
Finding empty slopes, rugged mountain runs and an antidote to the modern 'industrial' ski experience in Telemark, Norway, birthplace of skiing
Almost a century and a half ago, in a village in Norway's Telemark region, a poor tenant farmer named Sondre Norheim came up with an inspired idea. A prodigy on the wooden skis that had been used in Scandinavia for winter travel for thousands of years, to which the foot was traditionally secured by a loop of twisted birch, Norheim attached a second fitted loop to grip the heel. In doing so, he invented the world's first "relatively" stable ski binding that would allow steeper slopes to be tackled.
All of which explains why I am standing on the gentlest of powder-covered slopes beneath the barn roof that Norheim once jumped off, and where the villagers of Morgedal would gather on Sundays to play on their skis. Because "relatively" is the operative word. I slide forward a bit and fall over. I get up – not without difficulty – and try again. And fall over again. The birch loop slips off one heel. My foot rolls inside the front loop. And I fall over. Finally I manage to descend a very short distance upright, impressed by the huge skill possessed by the early pioneers of modern skiing.
I have to remind myself that on skis like this Norheim travelled 200km in three days to Oslo, where he won Norway's first national skiing competition. He ski-jumped on them as well – including a leap he performed several times off a barn roof with a 5m drop to a bouldery landing – and opened runs down the steep mountain slopes around Morgedal, inaugurating the world's first slalom, meaning literally "twisting track".
Later I climb this first slalom run with Hamish Moore, a New Zealander who has settled in Morgedal. This time we are on modern Telemark skis with artificial (gripping) "skins" attached to the bottoms – but they are still essentially the same-shaped skis as those Norheim preferred. The turning technique, too – dropping to one knee and pushing one ski ahead of the other – was first popularised by Norheim, who also developed the "stem christie" turn. What makes this descent much easier is the fact that the skis we are on now are made of composite material with metal edges, and we are equipped with plastic boots and cable bindings which allow the ski to be turned with relative ease.
I've come to Morgedal for two reasons. The tiny village, which has a single button lift around 500m long, has a huge importance in the history of Norwegian mountain culture. It was not only Norheim who lived here but also Olav Bjaaland, a fellow master skier who developed the sledges that Roald Amundsen used on his trip to the South Pole, and who also broke trail on large sections of the route. The second reason is that I am looking for a different kind of ski experience. At the top of the world's first slalom slope, a wooded slope, we stop at a wooden shelter for lunch. It is midweek and the mountains are deserted. Moore gathers a few sticks and windfall branches and soon we have a fire going to dry our gloves. "It's a cultural difference," he explains. "When people in Norway say they are going skiing, this is generally what they mean." It is an experience far removed from the automated, industrial experience of lifts, crowded pistes and mountainside restaurants, more interested in the business of journeying on lightweight equipment over rolling terrain, or – like us – hiking up on skis before making a descent. And today we are skiing down to the one-room cabin where I am staying at Øverbø, the tiny farmstead where Norheim was born, reached only by a short walk or ski.
If Norheim is one of the two presiding spirits of the place, Bjaaland is the other, their efforts celebrated at the town's small museum. And if the wooden skis were hard to use, not much less difficult is the method of travel favoured by Amundsen in the race to the pole: Nordic skiing behind a dog team. Unlike Canadian mushing, where the handler rides on the back rail of the sledge, this technique involves being tied to the back of the dog sled and being towed on lightweight skis on the downhill sections and running on skis on the uphill to help the dogs. Olav Kjetil Bang, who has undertaken trips in excess of 1,000km with his dogs, tells me most of the falling will happen at the beginning. The skis we are using this time are cross-country skis, waxed for climbing, with soft boots.
He is right about the falling, but only just. It does get easier eventually, but eventually is a long time. The problem with falling behind eight strong moving dogs, some of whose names have been inspired by prog rock bands, is you tend to get dragged along. And stopping and starting behind a heavily laden sledge similar to that used by the polar explorers has its own unique problems, with the momentum generated through the traces (straps), then the sledge and then the towing rope. Finally there are dog turds to be avoided: the poo sticks to the wax and makes the base too slippery to climb.
We are only going 20km in total up into the Rauland mountains, passing the entrance to the valley where the Heroes of Telemark – the saboteurs who hit the Nazi heavy-water project – hid out, to deliver wood and supplies to Olav's winter camp. He tells me stories of polar-bear encounters he had while travelling with his wife in the Arctic regions around Svalbard, and how to ice fish in the lakes we pass, using a birch peg to hold the line and piling the hole with soft snow overnight so it does not freeze over while the line is out. It is a beautiful journey following a track up into the mountains before Olav heads the dog team off towards the woods where he keeps his lavvo – a Sami herder's teepee with a wood-burning stove and reindeer skins to sleep on. Olav's neighbour, a Canadian-style musher, joins us for coffee and lunch: fried sausages rolled up in flat bread.
The 10km back feels easier and is much faster, descending from the wide valley. I learn to relax on the skis and find my balance at last. On the final stretch, the dogs reach almost 30kph, with Olav whooping. It is too fast for me. So I unclip from the sled and ski down the last kilometre under my own steam.
On my last day a ski tour is planned up Ordalsåta with Hamish and Ståle Lindheim, a local Telemarker. We park a little way up the mountain. Hamish wants to video Ståle skiing, so we cut off the track quickly to follow a route to the mountain's first peak through untracked snow. We skin up through soft powder and trees heavy with snow; through the magic silence of the winter woods. There is a short slope to the first peak, with a higher peak beyond where we won't ski because of the flat light. Ståle and Hamish go first, bouncing effortlessly on Telemark turns. I mix up my turns – Telemark, parallel, stem christies and step turns – as we find a way through the narrow glades of trees and even tighter woods. It's all over too soon; my legs are tired after 600m of ascent, the descent and a traverse back through the woods to find the car. It has been only one run. But in this kind of skiing that does not matter. It is a joy to be travelling through the empty mountains.
Essentials
Ryanair (ryanair.com) flies from Stansted to Oslo from £58 return. Winter weekend offer: two nights B&B at Morgedal Hotel, including dinner, two-day lift pass, Telemark ski hire and lessons, approx £321 (morgedal.no).
Basic wilderness cabins from approx £28 pppn (morgedal.com).
Dog sledding trips from £500pp for five days: gulloggronneskoger.no
