Actually, it’s questionable whether we’re even still in winter anymore - technically, March is spring, and the current climate (sunny, chilly days, and the sensation of a face rub from the Ice Queen when the wind blusters) seems to back up that assumption.
What is certainly true, however, is that England has been consistently cold since early December. That’s 100 days of tight-scarfed, eye-runningly polar dashes for the tube, impromptu ice skating on the way to Tesco and shuddering, foul-mouthed mutterings after every shower.
Recent news suggests we’re not the only ones suffering inclemency, though. First Monaco suffered a snowstorm (above and below), as reported by our client the Monaco Tourist Authority and on Monte Carlo Daily Photo.
Then, earlier this week, Ian uncovered pictures of an unexpectedly blanched Canal du Midi and Languedoc region.
And the news this morning suggests that the white stuff has now spread as far south as Catalonia in Spain (below), and east to Switzerland. A 25-year-worst snowfall in Barcelona in mid-March? It hardly seems feasible. In past years, it’s around this time I’ve been discussing with Real Holidays which warm parts of southern Italy might be suitable for a March visit. This year, only the inside of a cosy villa with a decent fireplace and hot coffee sounds appropriate.
All of these Arctic overtures in Western Europe’s traditionally hot spots encourages one singular question: what on Earth is life like in Scandinavia? (Our clients include the West Sweden Tourist Board and Sunvil Holidays, which has a detailed Scandinavia programme.)
Similarly bizarre is the answer. Such has been the proliferation of powder snow this year that West Sweden briefly introduced skiing options onto its website for the first time earlier this month. The Baltic Sea has frozen, trapping ships. From Sunvil’s account holder Sarah come stories of the seas being frozen between some islands outside Stockholm. Where normally you sail from one isle to another, at the moment one can ski or ice-skate…
Part of me relishes hearing these stories – there’s a certain open-mouthed enjoyment that comes with seeing pictures of a whitened Barcelona, or through learning of unique ‘walking on water’ possibilities. But the other, sunnier side of my personality recoils: it really can’t wait for summer to start. Happily, it seems the wait might not be a long one… check out next Monday’s forecast (c/o BBC weather):
Each year in December, Rodney Bay - on the lush, tropical island of St Lucia in the Caribbean - is the finishing destination for the ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers), a 2,700 nautical-mile passage across the Atlantic from Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. The largest transocean sailing event in the world, it usually takes between 14 and 21 days to complete with over 200 yachts, from 29-112ft, making the crossing (along with numerous NARC (Non-ARC) vessels). My father was racing on Star Chaser, a beautiful Swan 51 vessel, and so it was only right that I, together with my mother and brother, flew over to greet him at the finish line!
The first two yachts to arrive crossed the finish line in Rodney Bay on the 4th December, separated by just 16 minutes and five seconds. Big One and Bagheera arrived after just 12 days at sea and an exciting gybing (turning) duel, one which intensified over the last 24 hours. That left over 200 vessels still at sea, however, and not all had such an easy crossing - in fact some unlucky crews didn’t complete the voyage at all. Auliana II was abandoned and the crew evacuated following the loss of her rudder on the 23rd November - just one day into the race. Further misfortune befell Pelican on the 1st December: following a rig failure, the crew had to be evacuated around 300 nautical miles west of the Cape Verde Islands. Others still had big decisions to make. The crew of Silver Bear took the brave and valiant call to slow their boat down and shadow another yacht, Star Fire, for over 1,500 miles after she got into difficulty - providing selfless assistance and delaying their own arrival by several days. Who said it would all be plain sailing?
My extremely-elated Dad and the rest of the equally-chipper Star Chaser crew arrived on the 8th December at 19:50 local time, after 16 days sailing (final results showed Star Chaser’s position as 28th out of 158 in the Cruising Division, and the crew won an award for the best photos taken at sea - not bad at all!). A warm St Lucian welcome greeted them in Rodney Bay Marina, with rum punches at the ready… Not that the crew needed anything in the way of pick-me-ups after the rally: they were all high as kites on the back of such a transatlantic achievement. It proved to be a full-time job to keep them from swaying around and falling off the pontoon into the murky-marina water below!
The following day, the partying at the marina intensified as over a third of the fleet had docked safely in St Lucia. The consistent winds meant that average passage times were reduced by nearly three days compared with 2008. Rodney Bay buzzed with a unique atmosphere created by the coming together of hundreds of people from around the world united by a common accomplishment.
The fog horns, sirens, screaming and whistling continued even as the last yacht, ErasmosI, arrived on the 19th December after a string of nautical difficulties. Camaraderie was high and the rapturous ovation was unparalleled. ErasmosI may have taken her berth in the marina but for the pontoon-side celebrations with steel bands and fire dancers, this was just the beginning…
Welcome to St Lucia and the distinctly Caribbean pleasure of island time!
Much of Japanese culture revolves around the distinct seasons, and it is heavily influenced by Shinto beliefs, which emphasise harmony with, and an appreciation of nature. I love the peacefulness of Shinto shrines, which are made of wood and are usually near a sacred tree and flowing water.
The traditional Japanese sport, sumo, was originally performed to entertain the Shinto gods over 2,000 years ago and Shinto rituals are firmly embedded in this sport today. When my brother and his mate came to visit us in Tokyo, we went to watch a sumo wrestling championship at the kokugikan (sumo stadium) in Tokyo. The bi-lingual information booklet explained that the canopy above the wrestling ring is made in the style of the roof of a Shinto shrine (see the photo below, my brother Graham’s, not mine). The four tassels on each corner of the canopy represent the four seasons, the white one as autumn, black as winter, green as spring and red as summer. The purple bunting around the roof symbolizes the drifting of the clouds and the rotation of the seasons – beautiful.
Sumo in Tokyo
As spring approaches in Japan, you can’t help but get caught up in the nationwide excitement about the imminent cherry-blossom (sakura) viewing festivals. News presenters give animated reports about the progressive blooming as the country becomes awash with pink starting from the sub-tropical climes of the southern island and finishing in the cooler climes of the north. Now it is autumn, and the changing of the leaves is as eagerly monitored only this time from north to south. Right now, at the beginning of November, the leaves are just about changing in the Tokyo area….Mika Bishop
One of the most notable tenets of the Twitter boom has been the spree of Twitter-supporting applications launched to work with the networking site. Want to have your Twitter feed automatically update? Easy – use Twitscoop or iGoogle. Need to know when your client’s mentioned on Twitter? Tweet Beep ought to help. And so on, and on, and on. A quick scroll down Squidoo’s list of Twitter ‘apps’ reveals quite how many of these programmes exist. I tend to think of them as flies on a cow; in a sense they’re opportunistic and a little detestable, yet they’re also sensible and useful.
The good news is that these apps are getting increasingly innovative, and valuable. Step forward Twihotels: a travel-related app that launched to some fanfare this week. What does it do? In its makers’ words:
“Twihotels.com helps you to tweet your hotel requirements on Twitter.com. It will help you to connect with users who would give you expert advice on the best form of accommodation. Quite likely, you could be directly approached by hotels, apartments & lodges, which means more options for you to choose from. Your followers on Twitter will also help you out wherever they can.”
So basically, using Twihotels – you can log into your own Twitter account on its page – you Tweet your hotel requirements, and then sit back and hope someone can help you. Your request appears in your own Twitter feed, as a tweet, in case one of your followers can help (unlikely), and also on the Twihotels feed, where hoteliers, hotel chains and booking agencies will be reading, in the hope that one/some of them can help (very likely).
Does it work? Twihotels is reliant on a few things. Firstly and chiefly, that a real range (geographically and financially) of hotels etc. are signed up to, and attentively following, its feed. After all, it’s no good if, for example, you ask for suggestions for a hotel in Ottawa if none of Twihotel’s hotels etc. serve Ottawa. No hotel website is going to be able to satisfy every single diverse query from Aachen to Zuzan, but the best can claim to be reasonally comprehensive. Twihotels needs to be able to claim the same in order to be a worthy stop for the hotel-seeking web surfer.
To test out Twihotels’ efficiency, I make this pretty average request:
Within 24 hours I have four responses, written not as direct messages but on feeds with my username @dickmellor tagged. The first (chronologically) is simply a re-tweet by @BountyTours, which I find out is the feed for a “travel agency in and for Morocco”. Through them I can apparently book 250+ Moroccan hotels online. That’s good – my request is going to a wider, yet more tailored audience. Kudos to Twihotels that Bounty Tours is among its followers.
The next response is more spammy – it’s from Bounty Tours’ Operations feed, and they say: “we invite u to register on our web site so u can check rates, hotels… www.bounty-tours.com”. However, there is a certain degree of sense to this suggestion, and they also end with a question: “you are looking for which category?”. That shows that this is a personal reply – always a positive for the consumer – and also raises another point, about Twihotels’ search parameters. They’re fine other than the category parameter, which is, well, a bit rubbish. You can opt for five-star, four-star and three-star, or the despairingly vague ‘Discount’ or ‘Budget’. What does ‘Discount’ mean – a saving, or just mid-range prices? As for ‘Budget’, that’s surely a bit qualitative: one man’s bargain is another man’s rip-off. I think it would be better here to have the star-ratings as a separate, optional parameter, and then have a box where you select a price range, with the option of USD, GBP, EUR or the chosen destination’s currency. I don’t blame Bounty Tours at all for asking for clarification from me.
Nor indeed do I chide the fruity-sounding Riad Orangeraie, who write: “Hi, when you say ‘Budget’ - what does that look like in £, $ or €?”. Sensible price query aside, Riad Orangeraie’s reply is exactly what I hoped for as a Twihotels trialist. Were I genuinely interested in Marrakech accommodation, I’d reply with my criteria and almost certainly end up with enough details to decide whether I wanted to stay at the riad.
The final response again carries a whiff of spam, but turns out to be valuable. It’s from @bnblovers, which I find out is the Twitter account of BedandBreakfast.com, an online agency and search facilities for worldwide B&Bs. They advise me: “Save $50 on your online reservation when you book here: http://ow.ly/jhTE”. The link, as the subsequent sentence (“five great bed and breakfast options for Marrakech”) suggests, takes me to BedandBreakfast.com, but to a results page on there for a Marrakech search. Not only that, but a search on the dates I requested, and with my other criteria satisfied. Someone somewhere has gone to appreciable lengths to start my search for me, and again as a consumer I value the effort on my behalf. It makes me feel wanted, and that in turn would incline me to trust this company and book with them.
Furthermore, according to Twihotels, some hoteliers may also be inclined to offer discounts and bargains as a result of finding them on Twitter. This tallies with a recent story that Pueblo Bonito Oceanfront Resorts and Spas is offering exclusive reductions to its Twitter and Facebook followers.
But what about personal recommendations? All of my responses indicate sensible businesses using Twihotels in a diligent manner, and all show them serving my purpose impressively. But what of the suggestion that Twihotels also serves to bring the enquirer personal recommendations, tips, that sort of thing?
As Ron Callari outlines on InventorSpot, this is Twihotels’ co-aim: “Hotel booking sites like Hotels.com can locate a number of hotels any where in the world and if you are diligent enough to cross-reference with TripAdvisor you can most likely obtain a review on that hotel’s performance. But until now, there was no one site that could surface hotel recommendations for you firsthand, without a lot of searching and cross-referencing. Twihotels is filling that void nicely.”
Hmm. In my (admittedly not exhaustive) experience, it doesn’t plug the void. None of my followers came back with any suggestions, only businesses. Why not? It’s impossible to say with certainty, but having quizzed a few of them, those who saw my request simply couldn’t help. Their knowledge of budget hotels in Marrakech was non-existent. And that’s fair enough – this is a specialist subject, one which relies on a niche bank of knowledge or the slim chance of personal experience. On top of which, there are additional hurdles: any follower who actually could help me would have needed to be checking their feed at the right time in order to see my request; what’s more the Twihotels tweet, when it appears, does look a bit.. spammy. To be honest, if someone I followed tweeted a message like mine, I’d be pretty likely to dismiss it as junk. It just has that feel.
In terms of getting pointers from your followers, you can obviously improve your own odds. The more followers you have, the better chance of there being one who could help – that equation seems to make sense. Better yet, were I to have a bank of travel-hardened, Twitter-attentive followers who shared an interest in Morocco, I’d have been laughing.
But for an ordinary Joe like me, with ordinary Joe followers, there seem pretty long odds on getting a decent, neutral recommendation. And without that, Twihotels risks simply becoming a Twitter variation on the likes of Hotels.com, one still needing cross-reference with TripAdvisor-type sites for those crucial ordinary Joe recommendations. Although Twihotels does seem to have in its favour the charmingly personalised responses from businesses that an enquirer can expect. That’s an attraction in itself, but is it enough to persuade hotel-seekers to turn to Twihotels?
Esquire’s round-up of 10 beaches best-avoided begins with Goa, where “sacred cows roam freely on the sand, taking cover under tourists’ umbrellas”. This picture proves as much, apparently showing a cows taking a break during a game of beach volleyball.
As Esquire admits, sat at your computer desk and free of the noxious downside, there’s something very cute and quaint about this scene. But Goa’s not the only place where you can share the shore with unlikely wildlife - we’ve been inspired to list five more…
Tassi Savannah, Gabon Part of Loango NP, Tassi Savannah borders the Atlantic and is renowned in National Geographic circles for its unusual beachcombers: during the rainy season (Oct-Apr), elephant, buffalo and even hippopotamus are often seen splashing in the shallows, or swimming in the surf. Families of gorillas forage in the trees along the beach, as well – an exotic variation on pickpockets at Positano, if you like. (Photo below - credit Michael Nichols, for National Geographic)
Bahamas In one of its best-ever Page 3 stories, free UK morning newspaper Metro recently splashed about paddling piglets in the Bahamas. On the curiously-named Big Major Spot Island in the Bahamas, a family of boars and piglets have swapped sty for blue sky, and decamped to a tropical paradise beach. The swines. Now feral, the gang can regularly be seen trotting along the beach, or oinking with delight and surging into the swell to bestow friendly greetings on newly-arrived catamarans, and cutely beg for a little lunch. Give it a year, and they’ll probably be dishing out parasols and wearing tight red shorts.
Isle of Mull, Scotland
For idyllic, deserted white sand beaches and crystal clear (albeit cold!) waters, there are few places more idyllic than the Isle of Mull in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides. Mull’s wonderful-looking Highland Cattle seem to think so too, grazing as close to the water’s edge as it’s possible to get – seemingly ferocious beasties whose horned heads and shaggy ‘Sesame Street’ fringes belie an altogether more approachable, adventurous animal!
Turtle Beach, Barbados
There are many areas in Barbados where you can swim among turtles (green, hawksbill and leatherbacks), but at Turtle Beach on the west coast, there are two friendly turtles that visit every day directly in front of the famous Lone Star Restaurant (picture below)! To meet the duo, the optimum time is nesting season, between May and October. In fact, during this period large numbers (100-150 at a time) of turtles instinctively hatch in tandem, and then make their way down to the sea in a mass procession – an incredible sight.
Turtle Beach, St Kitts
Across the Caribbean, another Turtle Beach was once famed for its wildlife mayhem. In the case of Turtle Beach on St Kitts, it was the sight of monkeys pinching punters’ beer… and then getting decidedly wobbly. The video below captures the comedy of an addled ape perfectly – we can all recognise that look of blurry confusion and disorientation. Sadly this particular animal playground has been bought by a private company, and the muddled monkeys banished from its shores.
It may be the middle of July, but winter sports enthusiasts are already looking ahead to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver next February. Making headlines recently has been Women’s Ski Jumping USA, which filed a lawsuit in May 2008 against the organising committee’s decision only to include men’s ski jumping at the Games. Despite the Canadian Supreme Court’s agreement that this was discriminatory and “distasteful”, the court ruled against WSJUSA last week after concluding that the International Olympic Committee was at fault, not the Vancouver organising committee.
The Games will also see ski cross make its Olympic debut – a new and high-octane freestyle skiing event with roots in motocross and downhill skiing. Team GB has suffered a blow as British number ones Angus Morison and Emily Sarsfield have both sustained major injuries this season, but there is strength in depth and the likes of Craig Robinson and Sarah Sauvey will have to step up.
There are also serious medal contenders for Britain in bob skeleton, snowboard cross, curling and alpine skiing (even if slalom skier Alain Baxter, who was stripped of his bronze medal in 2002 after failing a drugs test, is now looking to win a medal in 2012 on a bike!).
A few of us have little girls under the age of three waiting for us at home every evening, so it’s no surprise to read that we’re suckers for cutesy videos of toddlers that make us laugh. It probably takes our mind off the reality of having young kids - food flying in all directions at dinnertime, disastrous potty training, clothes regularly covered in puke, the screaming in public places…you get the idea!
We couldn’t resist this video by Evian, it even reminded us of some of the antics our little angels get up to…. and before you ask, no, Evian isn’t a client! Ian Bradley
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Vancouver 2010
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009It may be the middle of July, but winter sports enthusiasts are already looking ahead to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver next February. Making headlines recently has been Women’s Ski Jumping USA, which filed a lawsuit in May 2008 against the organising committee’s decision only to include men’s ski jumping at the Games. Despite the Canadian Supreme Court’s agreement that this was discriminatory and “distasteful”, the court ruled against WSJUSA last week after concluding that the International Olympic Committee was at fault, not the Vancouver organising committee.
The Games will also see ski cross make its Olympic debut – a new and high-octane freestyle skiing event with roots in motocross and downhill skiing. Team GB has suffered a blow as British number ones Angus Morison and Emily Sarsfield have both sustained major injuries this season, but there is strength in depth and the likes of Craig Robinson and Sarah Sauvey will have to step up.
There are also serious medal contenders for Britain in bob skeleton, snowboard cross, curling and alpine skiing (even if slalom skier Alain Baxter, who was stripped of his bronze medal in 2002 after failing a drugs test, is now looking to win a medal in 2012 on a bike!).
Tags: bob skeleton, cool, curling, ski cross, skiing, snowboard cross, travel, winter olympics, www.travelpr.co.uk, “Association of Independent Tour Operators”, “travel pr”
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