Discover Scotland’s heritage at a remote location
Relax and enjoy the sunsets
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If you dream of living in a windswept lighthouse. getting rustic in a traditional cottage or even being marooned on a deserted island. help is now at hand. Escape To The Edge was launched earlier this year with five area tourist boards. highlighting remote parts of the Highlands and Islands. In part inspired by the demand created by BBC’s Castaway for holidays in remote locations with impressive scenery and plenty of culture and heritage to explore. The website looks great with plenty of photos and yOu'll find a range of special packages grouped by area and by themes such as nature. culture and island.
If it‘s romance and luxury you're after. you might be able to find it on special offer on the visitscotland.com site. The Autumn Gold promotion lasts until 30 November and there are hundreds of holidays available. If yOu want great food as well as scenery try the Old Pines Restaurant with Rooms at Spean Bridge by FOrt William. where you can have three nights dinner, bed and breakfast for 5.7180. enjoying the cuiSine that won it the Good Food Guide's Restaurant of the Year in 2000. Alternatively if you're craving that fairytale feeling how about Stonefield Castle
Hotel in Tarbert. From $351 per night for dinner. bed and breakfast you can live like a king. and for $100 a night YOu'lI get the luxury master suite.
www.wannabethere.com doesn‘t just feature activity holidays. it has its own section dedicated to the art of romance. entitled ‘Sweet Heart'. Here you'll find a range of packages designed to take you and your loved one away from the everyday treadmill. Currently on offer is ‘Return To 18th Century Romance' where you can spend a couple of nights in a Georgian country house on the Black Isle. This costs £95 per person. including complimentary champagne and unlimited billiards Or croquet. If yOu've ever yelled ‘I'm king of the waves' you might want to visit the Pool House Hotel. Here you'll find the Titanic-themed Diadem Suite that can be yours for two nights for $250 per person. The break includes lavish furnishings. five-course dinners. but not Leonardo DiCaprio.
As an area it has the highest concentrations of castles in the UK. so it's not surprising that Aberdeen & Grampian is being promoted as Castle and Whiskey Country. For a guide to the area's attractions check out www.agtborg or call 01224 288828.
Excess Baggage
Festivals, flights and fabulous fares
CONNOISSEURS OF Belgian beer should start making travel arrangements for the first weekend in November. The 24-hour
OBP festival in Antwerp
features over 40 breweries with more than 150 beers just waiting to be sampled. You’ll be able to seek out specialist beers as well as the big names and enjoy live music and entertainment (probably the people sitting next to you after six bottles of lambic). To find out more contact the Antwerp Tourist Information Office on +32 (0) 232 0103 or e-mail tourisme@ antwerpen.be
GAY TIMES AND Absolute Press have joined ferces to produce the first in a new series of travel guides prowding comprehensive listings and general information about gay and gay- friendly accommodation. pubs. clubs and bars in destinations. This first edition covers Great Britain and Ireland. Available now at $12.99. THE AIR AND STYLE Snowboard contest attracts people who like to party as well as
PHOTOGRAPHY
DANIEL SCHWARTZ
Travel
the world’s best boarders. This year’s event takes place on 14-16 December in Seefeld in the Austrian Tirol, and around 30,000 visitors are expected. MTV will be setting up camp to provide live music, DJs and the famed Snowball party. For more details check out www.air-style.at, email marketing@air- style.com or contact the Tirol Tourist Board on +43 (0) 512 598 500 or info@innsbruck. tvb.co.at
LOTS OF THEME
parks are going Halloween crazy at the end of the month. Chessmgton World of Adventures. Thorpe Park and Alton Towers all have special events. from fireworks to staying open late so yOu can feel the ultimate thrill of riding rollercoasters in the dark. For more details check out wvwvchessington.com. wwwthorpeparkcom. www.altontowers.com
MORE ROUGH GUIDES on the loose this month, including Dordogne & the Lot, looking at the popular area of France as well as updated editions of Tokyo, Vienna and Japanese and Russian Dictionary phrasebooks. More details on www.roughguides.com
The Great Wall Of China (Thames & Hudson £24)
The Great Wall of China is over 2000 years old, it stretches for 4500 miles from the mountains of Korea to the Gobi desert, and it is an
amazing architectural feat and testament to th
ingenuity of the Chinese people. Yet as Daniel Schwartz states in his introductory essay, it does not exist, it is a notion. A notion built from myth and a myriad of tourist snapshots. What Schwartz does with this book is demolish the wall that spans the popular conscience and rebuild it by taking the reader on a photographic journey that is stark yet beautiful. As you turn each page the awesome size of the wall becomes more apparent as does the realisation that the wall has many divisions, some completely ravaged by the environment and time reduced to nothing more than piles of rubble. This is an insightful book perfectly capturing one man’s odyssey in search of a myth.
(Isabella Weir)
I The Great Wall Of China is out now.
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