Sporting an impressive beard and nursing some broken ribs from his most recent adventure, Ben Fogle heroically managed to give a fascinating lecture on the Azores last week all the same. I was lucky enough to be invited to attend the Royal Geographical Society event by the excellent team at Hills Balfour , and I was pleased to be joined by my best ...

It all started innocently enough in my hotel room in the Latvian capital, with some crisps that look a bit like my daughter's name. However, as you can read in my piece all about it in Travel Culture Magazine , it didn't take long for me to be cruising the streets of Riga in search of local refreshments. I found them in bars on winter wonderland Ol...

It’s not very often that you get a backstage pass to a place of which Richard Twiss remarked in 1775: “this I believe is the only house in Ireland to which the term palace can be applied”. It’s fair to say I pretty much bit the hands off my wonderful hosts at Barberstown Castle when they suggested that I could do just that, by touring Castletown of...

We had wandered up and down the Corniche for a few days, hovering rather cluelessly near the Museum of Islamic Art, before we eventually achieved our goal of taking a sunset boat ride around West Bay, with spectacular views of the city skyline.   What finally galvanised us was the presence of my dear old schoolfriend Lisa, a longtime Qatar resident...

On a recent, fantastic visit to Barberstown Castle, I also took the opportunity to explore the village that Barberstown lies on the edge of, Straffan. Straffan boasts a Steam Museum and a Butterfly Farm, but I was there off season, so I had to get a bit more creative about my activities. (Apparently when the Steam Museum is open, Robert Guinness hi...

I've written about Herathera Island Resort in the Maldives on previous occasions after a fabulous trip there a few months ago. I was very pleased to see my article on Herathera and on locally-produced luxury go up on the Travel Belles site last week. The fragility of the ecosystem in the Maldives gets you thinking about conservation issues and risi...

Any Dane will tell you that Jutland is unlike any other region of Denmark, and the particular, pretty remote, forest region that I headed for has its own microcosmic unique features too. On the shores of Hald Lake, I was there as the Historic Hotels of Europe 's Historic Traveller to write about the cosy, torchlit oasis amongst the dense trees that...

My first stop during my stay in the Black Forest was Freudenstadt, at the Historic Hotels of Europe property the Hotel Palmenwald. Now a very accomplished spa hotel, it has had a chequered history and a relatively large number of different incarnations during its decades of existence through war and peace. It even has the cartoons and graffiti of s...

Before my recent Historic Traveller Grand Tour, I was unfamiliar with the Black Forest, and it was wonderful to bring the folk tales and legends to life during my visit. One lovely unexpected feature of the region was the lakes between the trees, providing the opportunity for all kinds of watersports, hiking, and of course tomantic dining gazing ou...

I have just had my first piece published by Globe Connoisseur , a luxury travel website for women, which I am very pleased and excited about. The Royal Park Hotel seemed like a natural first place to cover for the site, because it's an intimate spot with a number of features which make it well-suited to both women travelling alone and those who wan...