- travel
- articles/in full
- A Night On The Town: Benidorm
- Insight Pocket Guide (Costa Blanca: Alicante and Murcia)
London-Singapore, 1991/2001, 1,000 words; extract -
As a child I glimpsed Benidorm, the mecca of British beach-and-sand tourism, from the coastal road. I returned thirty years later, when I was writing about the Costa Blanca for Insight Guides. This is what I found.
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- Exploring Tarragona: Priorato and the Ebro
- Insight Guide (Catalonia: Costa Brava)
London-Singapore, 1991, 1,500 words; extract -
Tarragona is not much written up by comparison, say, with Girona, but its farming landscapes and magnificent architecture give it a resonance of its own. Here you can explore as much as visit, without knowing exactly what you will find around the corner.
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- Santiago de Compostela: the Cathedral of Northern Spain
- Insight Guide (Northern Spain)
London-Singapore, 1998, 4,000 words; extract -
Galicia was the first place in Spain that I visited as a thinking adult. Friends from Lugo invited me. Their love for the region and culture was so palpable and big-hearted that it rubbed off on me. One day they took me to Santiago and we roamed the old town, bumping into old friends.
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- The Balearics: Formentera
- Insight Guide (Mallorca, Ibiza, Menorca & Formentera)
London-Singapore, 1989, 1,800 words; extract -
Formentera, the smallest of the Balearic islands, sitting just south of Ibiza, has a mesmerising network of dirt-track roads lined by dry stone walls inland, away from the coast. Scale and modernity recede there and the landscape becomes almost completely abstract.
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- Vineyard Terroirs: The Human Landscape of Ribera del Duero
- Spain Gourmetour
Madrid, 1999, 3,800 words; extract -
On a trip around Castile León's vineyards in 1998 I met two superlative winemakers, Alejandro Fernández in Ribera del Duero, and Manuel Fariñas in Toro, who persuaded me that human character should be added to geography, culture and history as defining elements of terroir.
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- When a Bar is Not a Bar: The Tapas Trail in Madrid
- Time Out/Spain Gourmetour
London, 1995/Madrid, 2001, 1,000 words; adapted extract -
The question I'm asked more than any other by friends or family who come to Madrid is: how do people get by with so little sleep? The second question is: where can we pick up some good tapas? Here's the answer to the second question, written in a roundabout way.
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