The mournful wail of a Canadian Pacific express split the deep silence of the Romney Sands Holiday Park. It shimmied down the ranks of caravans and reached the steps of my top of the range Ashcroft model, where I sat reading about the biggest shingle bank in Europe just down the coast. So what acoustic… Continue reading →

The National Trust has charted a circular walk through the national nature reserve that wraps around the 300 year old Calke Abbey, where the rooms were left exactly as they were when the trust acquired the estate in 1985.

Oman is on the NE corner of the Arabian peninsula, with many more natural wonders to build its still small tourism industry on than its near neighbours. The 600 miles of scintillating coast and beach is as undeveloped as the Costa Brava must have been in about 1910. Inland Oman is a power landscape of towering mountains scattered with deserts, lush oasis settlements – wadis – and a surprisingly green south country.

There are two ways to go eyeball to eyeball with the Statue of Liberty. One is to hire a helicopter and hope you get close enough to the face of the 151 foot high statue before twitchy New York security hauls – or shoots – you out of the sky.

The other is to visit a museum in the little town of Colmar, in the Alsace region of France, where you may gaze at leisure into the formidable features of the most recognizable effigy on earth, in the definitive, person-sized scale model.She is the fullest expression of the traditional alliance between France and the USA.