Holidays

Travels With My Doctor – Thoughts on Madagascar by Dr. Bruce Dunlop

 

I rolled on the table and laughed.  It was ludicrous.  We had travelled 8000 miles and poured out who knows how many tons of carbon into the atmosphere.  We had sprayed our insecticide, consumed our malaria tablets, cut our way through packaging and processed food to arrive at an “Eco Camp” on the far side of the world and were now busy pontificating as to how to protect a rain forest we did not own and knew little about.  Surely if we really cared about the planet we would have stayed at home and become vegetarians.
Read more…
Morondava

Travels With My Doctor – Lalibela and Beyond – A Journey through Ethiopia by Dr Bruce Dunlop

Bruce Dunlop is a GP in Chichester, and an intrepid traveller and sailor. This is the first in a series of articles for The Vintage Magazine about his peregrinations:-

Lalibela and Beyond

In the West it is 2013, in Ethiopia, its Gregorian calendar says it is 2005 and time is not the only gulf that separates our cultures.

Lalibela is Ethiopia’s premier tourist destination and world heritage site. The ‘8th wonder of the world’ and a magnet to the faithful from  Ethiopia and the footloose from the world.
Read more…
Nakutolab Church Lalibella Ethiopia

PHUKET: ‘Pearl of The Andaman Sea’

I had been all over Thailand but never had any special desire to go to Phuket, but I succumbed last month, having been invited by a lovely generous friend, who had taken over a large private chunk of the legendary Amanpuri Resort, the first of the 25 Aman (‘Peace’) luxury resorts and apparently the favourite of Adrian Zecha, its founder.  I decided to go to the Amanpuri for a week and add on another week to further explore the island.  I discovered some magical places, enough to satisfy the most discerning of tourists, but there is much I wish I had know before I went.
Read more…
The Amanpuri - the pool and restaurant at dusk

Champagne Powder in British Columbia – the greatest skiing in the world!

Canadian Mountain Holidays (CMH) Heli Skiing

Canada is where heli-skiing all started and the interior ranges of British Columbia are seen as the Mecca of heli-skiing; famed for huge snowfalls of light, fluffy champagne powder and endless amounts of fantastic terrain, this is some of the best skiing on the planet!

And who better to explore this with than CMH Heli-Skiing, the inventors of heli-skiing in 1965.   CMH has an exclusive playground of incredible heli-skiing terrain 40% the size of Switzerland just waiting to be skied, but without the queues!

Read more…
Helicopter Landed

Shooting with Roxtons in the UK and Argentina

Shooting has changed beyond all recognition since the turn of the last century when it was very much the preserve of the aristocracy and landed gentry and, to all intents, a private leisure pursuit.  Today, it is a much more commercial entity and, while open to a far wider audience and thus having enjoyed something of a renaissance, it has enabled many landowners to offset the enormous costs of running a shoot by selling days and, in turn, opening up opportunities to some of the country’s finest properties to which most people would not normally have personal access.
Read more…
Shooting High Doves in Argentina in March

Back In The USSR – The Ultimate Fishing Experience

In June, 2000, I was lucky enough to be taken, as a guest of my old friend, Michael Jackson, on a fishing trip to Russia, to celebrate his 50th birthday, which was all extremely well-organised by Roxtons, the Sporting Agency, founded by Christopher Orssich, who was the first to offer trips to the Varzuga river.

We flew to Helsinki, then to Murmansk, where having cleared a very officious Customs regime, we were decanted into three vintage ex-military Russian helicopters and flown across arctic tundra for several hours, to a remote fishing camp on the Varzuga River on the Kola Peninsula, where the salmon run wild and plentiful. Read more…
Who's A Clever Boy

SUBSCRIBER SPECIAL OFFER: Crillon le Brave – Paradise in Provence

I have written elsewhere in this issue of The Vintage Magazine about the revolutionary Hotelier, Robin Hutson, and referred to his previous Finance Director, Peter Chittick, who, with his wife Carolyn created a stunning Hotel perched on top of a Hill Village in Provence, called ‘Crillon le Brave’.

It was in the summer of 1988 that Peter and Carolyn set about finding a Provençal property to convert into a hotel. Read more…
Crillon le Brave - Paradise in Provence