What is the future of travel? Answering that is Skift’s editorial mission, and the release of our annual Megatrends is core to that mission.
04.12.2023 - 14:07 / theguardian.com
Here is a plan for a day out on the Metropolitan line of London’s underground, although we will at no stage be under ground, and will travel 25 miles from London. First, however, a little history.
In 1863, the Metropolitan Railway (Met) built the first subterranean railway – from Paddington to Farringdon. Five years later, the Met, an ambitious and restless outfit, added to this an above-ground northern prong, from Baker Street to St John’s Wood, in the hope of capturing commuter traffic. As this prong, known as the Extension Line at the time – and still called that by one endearingly affected friend of mine – bifurcated and stretched into Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, the Met built homes adjacent to it in the nostalgic Tudorbethan style. Between 1915 and 1933 (when the Met suffered the indignity of becoming a mere “line” of the London Underground), these were marketed as Metro-land.
Fifty years ago, John Betjeman (JB) – who’d recently been made poet laureate – wrote and presented a BBC documentary called Metro-land – and, yes, it’s on YouTube as well as DVD. In his biography of Betjeman, AN Wilson called it “a great telly-poem”, the script being partly versified, and the whole thing very lyrical. The producer, Eddie Mirzoeff, recalls: “As it came together in the cutting room, it became something exhilarating. I knew John liked it because he started to bring his friends in to see it.”
What follows is partly a retracing of the trip JB takes in the film, partly an itinerary for visiting the prettier Metro-land spots along the main strand of the Extension Line.
We begin at Baker Street, unofficial HQ of Metro-land. Above the station is a 1920s block built by the Met, Chiltern Court, where famous rail enthusiasts have lived, including HG Wells and the quizmaster Hughie Green, who had a big model railway in his flat. Chiltern Court once boasted a restaurant and JB begins there, reflecting on how Metro-land wives, “from Pinner and Ruislip, after a day’s shopping at Liberty’s or Whiteley’s”, would take tea at Chiltern Court, before riding the Extension home. Scenes almost as genteel unfold around JB as he speaks in 1973. That restaurant is today the Metropolitan Bar, a Wetherspoon’s pub that opens at 8am (9am on Sundays), which is either very civilised or very uncivilised. One definite plus is that it’s stuffed with Met Railway memorabilia.
We can disregard the early part of the Extension Line, which kept being rationalised to get trains out of London faster. Its stations between Finchley Road and Wembley Park, for instance, are now served by the Jubilee Line. We might disembark at Wembley Park to view some Metro-land homes. In the documentary, the camera tracks along Oakington Avenue, while
What is the future of travel? Answering that is Skift’s editorial mission, and the release of our annual Megatrends is core to that mission.
Virgin Atlantic will make it easier to fly between the United States and the United Kingdom next summer with added frequencies to both New York City and Boston.
Hop a plane across several time zones, and you may end up with what scientists call circadian dysrhythmia (aka jet lag). It’s a temporary sleep disorder where your body’s internal clock isn’t in sync with the time cues in your destination—daylight, dark of night, mealtimes.
When I was eight, Christmas was ballistically exciting and worth dragging my parents out of bed at 4am for. Over my 32 years since, a combination of atheism, credit card bills and John Lewis-branded Venus flytrap monsters has made me more cynical than excitable about the holiday.
Most Decembers, I take an admittedly self-indulgent look back at my favorite new and new-to-me hotels. As travelers continued to make up for lost time (even as staffing remained a challenge and the world became an ever more confusing place), hotels continued to dazzle. My hat is off to the places that opened. And my heart is filled with love for those places that have held strong, raised the bar and innovated.
Trevor Noah has spent a lot of time on the road lately. Since wrapping up his tenure as host of The Daily Show last year, the comedian has been hopping between continents to perform standup in some of the world’s greatest and most fascinating cities, from Berlin and Tokyo to Glasgow and Paris. His travels have also, unsurprisingly, given him more material to work with—much of which he explores in his new Netflix special, Trevor Noah: Where Was I, released on December 19. Condé Nast Traveler recently caught up with Noah—who also has a new Spotify podcast, What Now? with Trevor Noah, in the pipeline and will be returning as host of the 66th annual Grammy Awards in February—to talk national anthems, South African curries, and why travel has the power to shift our perspectives.
What a thrill to journey by train to St Moritz in the snowy Swiss Alps to see the work of Gerhard Richter (born in 1932), the German painter who critics describe as our “greatest living artist.” His works can be found in international collections and have been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries in Europe and the United States. He’s also the most expensive European living artist (his abstract painting Abstraktes Bild (599) sold for a record $46.3 million at Sotheby's in London). While Richter’s paintings are highly covetable, collectors visiting his new three-venue exhibition in the Swiss Alps must be content with simply viewing the works as none are for sale.
The first surprise is that a half-hour trip by train from Edinburgh to North Berwick is really as far as you need to go for a taste of Scotland that is elemental and remote, a place of windswept beaches, stunning coastal walks and panoramic views. The West Coast and the Highlands may be more extreme, but then so is the journey to get there. This, by contrast, is an easier but no less enjoyable adventure.
Europe is home to 63 of the top 100 city destinations in the world, according to a new ranking.
The first night train between Berlin and Paris will depart on Monday evening after a nine-year hiatus, plugging a significant gap in Europe’s increasingly comprehensive overnight rail timetable and giving a boost to travellers looking for a realistic alternative to flying.
Winter can be a tricky time if you’ve got kids of any age: darker, shorter days and inclement weather mean they inevitably end up stuck inside, with everyone getting bored, cross and arguing about screen time. Why not banish those winter blues with a change of scene and whisk them away on an impromptu weekend trip? After all, spontaneity is now a major travel trend – recent research from Hilton* found that only 22% of UK travellers consider themselves meticulous planners.
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