Travel

There are Good Hotels and Great Hotels; Gidleigh Park is a Great Hotel

It is possible to drive from Winchester to Chagford, on the edge of Dartmoor in two hours, but the final few miles to Gidleigh Park hotel can take another half an hour if you make the same mistake we did of relying on SatNav to take us to our destination!

Do not make the same mistake. Follow the instructions which the hotel give you, and you will avoid a veritable ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ of the ludicrously narrow lanes in this part of Devon, and the ire of your wife, or partner, and any passengers.

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Gidleigh park Chagford Devon

Cigars, Rum, Cars and Music! That’s the vintage Cuban life

The Vintage Magazine travel correspondent Paul Thomas is a former Fleet Street journalist and founded and ran what became a major consumer and tourism PR company in the 1980s and 1990s.  Today, taking it a little easier to enjoy vintage lifestyle, he is a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers, aids charities and also runs a film-making company, www.wideangles.tv

Paul Thomas visits this unique, for some, eccentric time-warped country and asks if its time for a change.  Cuba, a communist land of vintage characteristics, prize cigars, rum, 1950s cars and music, music, music, is facing a classic challenge – change may be on the way.

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The farmer makes cigars

The True Story of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift – Not A Lot Of People Know That

It was fifty years ago that the Battle of Rorke’s Drift was immortalised in the film Zulu, on the 85th anniversary of the action.  So it seems appropriate to reproduce The Vintage Magazine’s article , ‘A day in the life of Lt John Chard, Royal Engineers – 22 January 1879’.   Whilst the film was not a documentary and for the sake of a good story the historical facts may have been tinkered with, overall it is down to this film that the Battle Of Rorke’s Drift did not just become another forgotten foreign war.

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The Defence of Rorke's Drift by Lady Elizabeth Butler commissioned by Queen Victoria and inspired by survivors accounts 1880

Golf Cruises – Improve Your Swing on the High Seas by Annie Elleson

With the first recorded round of golf taking place in Edinburgh in around 1456, Brits have a deep and long-lived passion for this sport.  At first glance, the idea of a golf lover taking a cruise appears to be the strangest of matches – however look a little deeper and the opportunities a golf cruise offers become clear.

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Golf Course destinations on Golf Cruises

LIFE IN THE FAST LANE by Robert Jarman

One of the ‘perks’ of publishing a lifestyle magazine like The Vintage Magazine is that you occasionally get to drive some of the most wonderful cars, eat the finest food and drink the finest wines in the best restaurants, and stay in the best hotels, so I thought I would write a ‘Review’ of the past year to record and remember some of these experiences.

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Life in the Fast Lane the 12 cars reviewed in 2013 by The Vintage Magazine

A Chelsea Weekend at The Draycott

The Vintage Magazine sent our Media consultant, Charlotte Holme, and her husband, Marc to London for the weekend to sample the delights of The Draycott Hotel in the middle of Chelsea.  This is a traditional old style hotel formed by the joining together or 3 traditional London townhouses.and only two minutes from Sloane Square, centre of the known universe, and the ultimate venue for a weekend in London, with easy access  to so many stunning shops, restaurants, bars and gastro pubs.

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Draycott hotel Chelsea London

‘California Dreamin’ by Robert Jarman

Welcome to The Vineyard, aka ‘food heaven’ to those in the know, and a wine connoisseur’s paradise.  The Vineyard at Stockcross near Newbury in Berkshire is the creation of Sir Peter Michael, who virtually single-handedly introduced Californian Wines to the UK, and this was the foundation upon which he built this wine lovers and foodies paradise.  You only have to look at their website or their brochure to see what is most important thing here and, and that is WINE.

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The Vineyard at Stockcross

Zimbabwe – Then & Now by Antony Johnson

This quite fabulously beautiful, productive and wonderfully sensational land has, sadly, become synonymous in recent years with one of the most hated and despised abuser of all forms of human rights, torturer, genocidal maniac, destroyer of his country and all round big time baddy, Robert Mugabe.  But from the ashes of destruction, the land and hope of resurrection is gradually rising like the glimmer of sunlight in an early dawn.  So, let us go back a while and look at this bejewelled piece of God’s earth as it was only 130 years ago.

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Hwange National Park

Nautical Nirvana – Les Voiles de St. Tropez 2013

One of the most enjoyable events in the South of France calendar is ‘Les Voiles de St Tropez’, and it happens in late September, and early October when all the summer crowds have gone home, and the holidaymakers are back at work, and all the plastic gin palaces have been removed from one of the most famous harbours or ports in the world, St Tropez.

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Racing at St.Tropez

Hotel TerraVina – A Shared Passion

The Vintage Magazine wrote about the Hotel du Vin Group and Robin Hutson in a previous article, called ‘The Revolutionary of the British Hotel Industry’, click here, and this article is about his partner, Gérard Basset, OBE and the hotel which he built, called ‘Hotel TerraVina, but first ‘a brief history’.

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Hotel TerraVina