Virgin Galactic plans to send a handful of paying passengers to the edge of space on June 8 as the space industry continues to grow and diversify.
28.05.2024 - 11:27 / theguardian.com
Everyone has a good holiday disaster story, don’t they? Even experienced travel journalists.
Ours was a twist on the classic passport fiasco, that saw us having to “exchange” a two-week trip to the sunny Cinque Terre on the Italian Riviera for sitting on a compost toilet in Wales.
Like all good stories retold among friends, that is a bit of an exaggeration. But after “passport-gate” – once the blame and threats of divorce had subsided – Bert’s Kitchen Garden, an eco campsite on a five-hectare (12-acre) farm in the Welsh village of Trefor on the Llŷn peninsula, became a half-term life-saver for our family of four.
The panic started just 24 hours before we were supposed to depart, with our six-year-old daughter remarking that she still “looked like a baby” on her passport. Yup, it was out of date, and this set off several stages of rapid-fire grief, which we had to cycle through before I could land on “acceptance” and start hatching an emergency plan to rescue half-term.
I’d had Bert’s on my longlist since reading about owners Ali and Ian Paice’s transformation of a former farm into an eco-retreat of connected meadows, woodlands and beach, with pitches mowed into wild meadows, shepherds’ huts and a feted kitchen garden restaurant.
Driving into Trefor, with views of the Yr Eifl hills to our left, we were held up first by a bus stuck on a precarious bend, then by a lorry with trailer. We later discovered the jam was caused by crew filming a new episode of HBO’s House of Dragons. Would we ever make it to Bert’s? When we eventually arrived, all that traffic noise was replaced by birdsong. The children set off to explore the meadows, riverside swing and hidden dens while we unpacked. Our home for the week was a cute converted railway carriage beautifully decorated in muted tones, with soft linen bedding on the small double bed, bunks for the kids, a kitchen area and a private compost loo outside (showers are on the main campsite).
Packing a picnic, we headed off down a track leading to Bert’s own pebbly beach. A further five minutes along the coast was a glorious and much livelier slice of sand, where local workers enjoyed their lunch breaks and teenagers careered off the end of the little quay despite the warning signs.
While the lost Italian holiday remained a simmering and fresh memory, the weather in north Wales held firm. The eco-campsite ethos calmed our frantic minds, and time on the beach soothed most lingering recrimination.
Some days were spent taking kayaks (hired from the campsite) around the coast to the sea stacks, hoping to get a glimpse of seals or even dolphins. Oystercatchers and cormorants sped by as we paddled across clear, calm waters. We also ventured to the coastal town of Criccieth
Virgin Galactic plans to send a handful of paying passengers to the edge of space on June 8 as the space industry continues to grow and diversify.
Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, June 7, 2024. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
Saudi Arabia is now developing towns with stays below the five-star price range.
Venice considers its entry fee for tourists an early success. A top official told Skift that in the next year the city could double the fee and charge it more often.
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Varenna is the perfect Italian village, from its hilltop castle to the shore of Lake Como. Easily accessible by train or ferry, it is host to a spectacular botanic garden. The meandering Passeggiata degli Innamorati – the Lovers’ Footpath – brings you in 20 minutes from the ferry to Villa Monastero (entry €10, open March-November). With pillars and pergolas, palm trees and pines framing views of the deep blue lake and mountains beyond, scented by citrus and herbs, the garden is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited. And there’s a bar. Perfect happiness.Maartje Scheltens
Nature has its way of derailing travel plans. A landslide in August 2023 in the French Alps blocked the main railway just west of the Mont Cenis tunnel. This route is used by all trains from Italy to Lyon and Paris. The sleek French TGVs and the even sleeker Italian Frecciarossa trains competing on the lucrative link from Milan to the French capital were stopped in their tracks. Many passengers bound for Paris and London from Italy rerouted through Switzerland, while others devised creative itineraries via the Riviera, using the historic railway running west from Genoa which, in 1872, became one of the first two routes crossing the frontier from Italy into France. The Mont Cenis route still hasn’t reopened so, needing to travel from Trieste to France, I opt for a dose of Ligurian sunshine and take the train via Genoa, following the coast west from there into France.
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For years I had been hearing about the island of Pantelleria, the craggy, hard-to-get-to Eden with middle-of-nowhere tranquillity that sits 89 miles southwest of the island of Sicily and about 50 miles east of Tunisia. Luca Guadagnino’s 2015 film “A Bigger Splash” painted a seductive idyll of mud baths, romantic ruins and secluded swimming coves. Celebrities like Madonna, Sting and Julia Roberts visited, drawn to the striking, Africa-meets-Italy ambience, along with Giorgio Armani, a part-time resident since 1980. The fact that nobody was impressed by them added to the allure.