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Bequia has long had a name for its hand-built boats and its skilled seafarers - and the fact that its seven square miles also happen to be sensationally scenic means that this green jewel can float in the imagination like some emerald vision of Caribbean perfection. At least, that’s how thoughts of Bequia (pronounced Beckway) have been for me - I first heard of the island some 25 years ago, but the place is not exactly on the tourist map - few tour operators based in this country or anywhere else for that matter are set up to oblige. So, despite a quarter of a century of yearning, I'd never been.  Not surprisingly, the island’s off-the-well-beaten-track status has paid dividends – indeed this is how Frome-based travel experts, Just Bequia, introduce the island: “It stands as a reminder of how the Caribbean was 50 years ago, when only a few visitors ventured this far.” I had been warned that the flight to Bequia was going to be a treat – the 25-minute hop from Grenada takes you right up through the Grenadine Island chain passing impossibly romantic places like Mayreau, Tobago Cays, Palm Island, Canouan and Mustique along the way. But first our little Island plane dropped off two local passengers at Carriacou before heading north across the dreamy isles mentioned to arrive at the green, green jewel of Bequia.    From the small new airstrip we were taken by specially adapted pick-up truck – which is the ubiquitous form of public transport on this island - to the wonderful and luxurious Bequia Beach Hotel , where I could happily have retired from journalism and just about everything else forever. The resort is set on the slopes of the hill which run down to palm strewn gardens and a beach. Friendship Beach to be exact – which has now entered my list of Top 10 beaches in the world. Think warm seas washing soft sand, shaded here and there by dramatically drooping trees and punctuated at one point by the hotel’s bar and excellent restaurant. It wasn’t the busiest season when we were there and the only things we shared the beach with were pelicans and crabs. When the heat got too much our large, air-conditioned, sensationally decorated apartment was a stylish refuge if ever there was one. A complete island tour took just three hours despite the fact we never went above 10 mph - and included stops at different altitudinous viewpoints, visits to wild beaches tucked beyond mighty palm groves, and a fascinating tour around Bequia’s turtle rescue centre. There are about 5,000 Bequians – they’re of African, Scottish, Irish, French, Indian and Carib descent – and English is the main language spoken. I’d heard that these islanders have an open friendly attitude to visitors and it is true - you can experience the full and jolly brunt of it if you spend a morning or afternoon in the tiny capital Port Elizabeth. Nothing much happens save for the comings and goings of the St Vincent ferries, as well as the pick-up truck taxis – there’s a small market, quite a few intriguing shops and the general laid back buzz that somehow pervades the numerous restaurants and eateries where you can order all manner of Caribbean foods and dishes. I went for conch salad – which was excellent in a chewy kind of way. And Port Elizabeth – like all of Bequia – is beautiful to look at. Sublimely, dreamily, enticingly, beautiful. As you sit there sipping a cooling cocktail it is easy to think that this is the best location for a holiday in the world – until you remember all those other idyllic isles you flew over to get there. Check out  www.justbequia.co.uk

Saigon - or Ho Chi Min City, as it is now known - is a busy place. A crazy place, in some ways.  A place that booms and roars and demands your 100 per cent attention night and day. And I loved it. Perhaps because I enjoyed the ultimate refuge in the form of the lavish and opulent Reverie Saigon, which is located in the heart of this magnificent city.  It is housed in one of the tallest skyscrapers in all of Vietnam, and our 38th floor suite really did offer the ultimate air-conditioned refuge from the hot and sticky streets far, far below.  Not that I had anything against those streets. A few days in Ho Chi Min City is as colourful and exciting as a few days spent anywhere on Earth - and visits to the various markets and street-food emporiums are an absolute must.  More sobering is a visit to the Vietnam War Museum. It is not often that I’m rendered speechless, but that is how I felt after learning about some of the horrors of the Vietnam War. Indeed, like many visitors I was in tears - and altogether mystified as to how such horrors could have happened in such a beautiful and happy country.    Altogether more jolly was a visit to Saigon’s massive central market where they sell everything from silk shirts to sea-cucumbers… Back in the total luxury of The Reverie there’s time for one final swim in the rooftop pool before chilling out in the massive suite in the skies, before heading off to Ho Chi Min airpot for the Vietnam Airlines Dreamliner flight back to London.

Opening new doors is almost always a good thing to do. One should never be frightened to open up new opportunities. It has just been announced that I am the new Editorial Director of RAW Food and Drink PR - which is a wonderful opportunity for a journalist like me in these times when the entire media landscape is changing.  I have never worked for a public relations company before, but I know the team at RAW and believe the company is one of the most forward-thinking, intelligent and humble operations of its kind in South West England if not the entire UK. So we’re going to be opening up new channels through which we can tell the stories of clients, and others besides. However, if I am ever paid directly to put something on this website I will announce that on the page - or make it clear that a certain company mentioned is a client.  At the moment and for the foreseeable future there is no paid for content in these pages.  Anyway, I thought I’d talk about opening new doors with RAW - partly because it gives me an excuse to put up photographs of delightful doors I’ve spotted in countries all around the world over the years…

As another Middle Eastern conflict looms any thoughts of travelling to, and exploring, that amazing region diminish once again. But for years Oman has offered safe - and amazingly scenic - exception to the rule that the region can be unsafe to visit. Foreign places can grow in the imagination during a person’s formative years – we can nurture romantic and colourful ideas about a country or region and somehow they stick as you grow older. For example, mental images of the Middle East can be seeded and amplified by biblical stories. Then, perhaps, we may watch a classic movie like Lawrence of Arabia - and suddenly the hot dusty region takes on a whole new allure and fascination. What we see in our Arabian Night tinted imaginations are sandy deserts dotted with green oasis; bare mountains hiding white villages carved out of rock, lined with date palm gardens watered by clear flowing streams; haughty camels strutting where other creatures would fear to tread; mysterious gun-toting people in long robes; the haunting sounds of the Imam calling folk to prayer… Then the world changes. Suddenly the Middle East – or much of it anyway – becomes a little bit hazardous for Westerners. In some places – the most Arabic and perhaps beautiful of them all, like the Yemen – travel becomes downright dangerous.     We find ourselves writing off all those oriental dreams of Sinbad and Scheherazade. For many of us the more interesting destinations in the Arab world have become unsafe, while the few relatively secure places are two-dimensional and boring. And then we discover Oman… The wild and wonderful sultanate is all you ever imagined the Arabic Middle East could be. And perhaps a little more. Much if it is stunningly beautiful. The scenery can be awesome and dramatic. And the people are fantastically friendly – even though we Brits helped put the boot in to some of the hill tribes not so very long ago.  In fact, I went to a crag above one very beautiful village high in the Akhdar Mountains where my guide told me we’d be going no further. He said the people there were fed up with being gawped at by the odd tourist who was passing.  “Tourists? What tourists?” I protested looking at the vast empty rocky amphitheatre around me…  That’s when he told me the truth - that British forces had bombed the place in the 1950s. I tell you this because I wish to underline just how warm and friendly most Omanis are, regardless of any British involvement in the country’s history. This is partly because these patriotic people are passionate about the country in which they live and are proud to share it with visitors.  The first time I visited Oman my itinerary took me away from Muscat as a guide from the excellent Bahwan Travel Group turned up in comfortable air conditioned four wheel drive to take me exploring. It was these adventures – mainly in the Akhdar Mountain region - that I shall remember for a long, long time to come.  The range extends some 200 miles just inland from the Gulf of Oman and is as spectacular a sequence of eminences as I’ve ever seen. The highest point, Jabal Shams ( the mountain of the sun ), is almost 10,000 feet in altitude and is the highest point in Oman and the whole of eastern Arabia – and I know for a fact that it’s altitudinous because I was taken almost to the summit where you will notice a distinct shortness of breath.  These are desert mountains – by which I mean that they are, for the most part, bare rock. However, the higher areas receive a foot of precipitation each year which is enough, in the incredibly deep ravines and valleys at least, for scattered shrubs and trees and allows some agriculture.  Hence the name which, translated, means the Green Mountains. A bit of a colourful exaggeration. But then, I come from the emerald West of England.  The green bits you see are mainly where the locals have built complex runnels and aqueducts to irrigate terraced gardens in the valley bottoms. These are magical oases among vast vertical slabs of bare rock which seem to reach high into the heavens.  And I saw a great many of the mountains - roaring ever higher up seemingly impossible tracks in our four wheel drive. The most memorable journey was up the amazing Wadi Nakher, located in the depths of Oman's deepest canyon. Believe me, this is the nearest thing you’ll see to the Grand Canyon this side of the Atlantic. Apart from the little villages which cling impossibly to the sides of crags – with their terraced gardens and date palms looking more biblical than anything I’ve ever seen before – the place exudes a sense of eternal ancientness.  This is perhaps echoed by the fact that humans have been living in these lonesome places for a very long time – probably as far back as 100,000 years. That makes our own ancient sites look about as old as a Home County new town… Somehow you are aware of this time-immemorial aspect of the landscape as you lurch and bounce along the tracks that pass up through the wadis – which are the river valleys or ravines that man and his domestic animals have been plying up and down since way before the last Ice Age.   It’s not all savage scenery – the Jebel Al Akhdar is renowned for its fruit orchards which you find in the aforementioned terraces. Apricots, figs, peaches, grapes, apples, pears, pomegranates, plums, almonds and walnuts are grown up here amid the rocks under the endlessly blue skies.  Even better known are the roses of Jebel Al Akhdar - rosewater is distilled in homes across the range and the air in spring is said to be filled with fragrance. Perhaps most noteworthy of all is Nizwa - the gateway to the mountain range. The oasis city was the nation’s capital back in the 6th and 7th centuries, which means that it is a place which groans with history and romance.  And this in turn means that is the most popular tourist attraction in Oman – although you could hardly say the visitors overrun the many historic buildings or the imposing fort built in the mid 17th century by Imam Sultan Bin Saif Al Ya'ribi. The town has a population of around 70,000 and is almost completely surrounded by an immense palm oasis that stretches for five or so miles along the course of two wadis. At the very heart of the place is the famous, bustling, souk where you buy all manner of locally made copper and silver jewellery. Nizwah, which is sometimes called “The Pearl of Islam”, wasn’t always so welcoming of tourists. Just 60 years ago the British explorer Wilfred Thesiger was forced to steer clear of the place having arrived at an oasis just outside. Back in those days the town was run by an extremely strict regime and Thesiger’s Bedouin companions were convinced that the Nizwah-ites would have his guts for garters.   They don’t spurn tourists nowadays but try and sell them some kind of craft item or nick-nack instead. Which is fine – although I have one complaint when it comes to the relationship that Omanis have with their visitors… And that is the food. I’d been looking forward to some kind of local repast in Nizwah, but it was never going to happen. It seems that food preparation in Oman is almost always done by women – but in this Muslim country they are not really expected to be out and about making a living by cooking for strangers.  The result is that there are no restaurants selling local food. Eating outside the big international hotels means dining in one of the ubiquitous Indian restaurants that have a complete national monopoly when it comes to cuisine in this country.  Which is also fine. I like Indian food – especially the Keralan cuisine which is often served in the road houses out there in the mountains. But I would also have liked to sample Omani cooking.  However… This is the one and only downside of this most extraordinary of countries.

If there’s one thing most of us will feel in desperate need of in midwinter, it is a little sunshine.  You can jump on an airliner and get it. In a centrally heated conservatory you can feel it or you can dream about it under a sun-bed - but generally speaking the rays still beam down upon a world that is chilly and grey. You can, however, have a go at making your own. By which I mean prepare some kind of food that somehow captures the essence of sunshine.  There are foods and dishes all around the hotter parts of the world which seem to encapsulate the fact that they’ve been grown or prepared with the help of masses of sunlight. Not long ago I was pondering the subject of sunshine food in the bright warm islands of the Canaries where some things served at table seem to screech sunshine up at you.  Anyone who has holidayed down there half way to the Equator will know that most savour meals are accompanied by two or sometimes three small pots containing brightly coloured substances. In our stumbling culinary English we might describe them as dips, or sauces, or even salsas - but the real name for these intensely flavoured little accompaniments is mojo - pronounced mo-ho.  And they really do add a splash of sunshine to just about everything imaginable, from dry bread to hearty stews, from Canarian salted new potatoes to grilled octopus - which happens to be my own favourite way of consuming these liquid flavour bombs.   Mojo come in all manner of colours from orange to fiery red, or green to porcelain white, depending on their ingredients. Basically all are heavily flavoured with garlic - some are mild and creamy while others are spicy, or picón as it’s known locally.  Most will contain quite a lot of olive oil - some vinegar, or orange, lemon or lime juice - local sea salt, red pepper, generous amounts of cumin, almonds, thyme, oregano, coriander along with several other spices.  Canarian islanders - being from the busiest corner of the heaving Atlantic Ocean - emigrated all over the world down the centuries and took their mojos with them to places like Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela, other parts of Latin America and many of the non-Hispanic Caribbean islands. Canarian mojos didn’t just stay in the islands—they made their way to Cuba, where their bright, zesty flavours influenced local cuisine. In Havana, you can enjoy bold dishes like ropa vieja , tostones , and moros y cristianos , and no trip is complete without sampling the world-famous Cuban cigars , whether at a tobacco farm in Viñales or a shop in the city, ideally paired with a sip of rum or cafecito. Beyond food, the island’s vibrant streets, live music, and salsa rhythms bring Cuban culture to life, making every meal and moment feel like a taste of sunshine. But back at home in the islands most Canarian families have their own recipe for mojo - and let me say right away that the fresh homemade offerings are vastly superior to the jarred, industrially-made, versions served in many of the tourist restaurants. I was on a walking tour of Lanzarote with my friends from Ramblers Worldwide Holidays, and the beauty of this was the fact that we reached remote villages high in the hills or along lonely coasts, well away from the main visitor centres. The little restaurants and bars where we stopped for late lunches or tapas were more likely to bring us homemade dishes accompanied by mamma’s or granny’s favourite award-winning mojos.  The saucy offerings can be hugely variable in flavour, spiciness and texture. For example, there is a creamy garlicky almond mojo which is often used to accompany roasted meat. Canarian saffron is another favourite ingredient - apparently mojos made with it are often served alongside fried cheese. The wonderful thing is that, unlike so many holiday sunshine foods which do not travel well to freezing old Blighty, mojos made here can taste just as good as those found in the remote mountain restaurants and bars of Lanzarote. What you need are fresh good quality ingredients and one of those small food processors which are much better for making tiny amounts of liquid mixes than their big brothers where you end up having to make a minimum of half a pint. Having said that, many of the oil and vinegar based mojos will last in jars kept in the fridge for weeks or even months.  The secret is to experiment around the basic theme, adding whatever flavourings take your fancy. Even the most basic of mojos will add real life and sunshine to end of British winter stodgy stews and roasts that somehow require a kick up their lacklustre backsides. My stolid beef casserole this week suddenly became so exciting I thought it capable of leaping off the plate to dance the South American tango…  Basic Red Mojo  Bulb of best garlic you can find, 1 red chilli, 1 teaspoon of cumin freshly ground, 1 teaspoon of paprika, 4 tablespoons of vinegar, 10 tablespoons of olive oil, sea salt to taste. Peel the garlic cloves and take out any green cores which you find developing at this time of year. Put all the ingredients into the mini-food-processor and whizz into a thick paste. This can be diluted with a splash of water - or better still the juice of an orange or a couple of tangerines.  Basic Green Mojo  1 green peppers, small bunch of fresh coriander or parsley, 4 cloves of garlic, 2 teaspoons sea salt, 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar, 4 tablespoons olive oil 1 teaspoon cumin, 1 slice of white bread. Again, simply bung the lot into the mini-food-processor and whizz for 30 seconds. I add blanched ground almonds and lime juice if I am going to serve this mojo with fish. Another variation on the green theme mojo verde uses avocado - a mix which I think goes very well with salty traditional British cheeses like a strong cheddar.

The word exotic can conjure many images, but imagine finding yourself in the middle of a heady world that seems to encapsulate everything you’ve ever dreamed could combine to create its meaning.  In a hot perfumed wind not long ago I found myself walking along a moonlit street next to a tropical river. Around me there were lanterns everywhere, and thousands of people strolling up and down the alleyways and across footbridges that provided this magical place with countless thoroughfares.  Countless candles bobbed about in tiny paper boats. Old ladies were selling these illuminations to passers-by, then rowing them out into the middle of the stream in their sampans so customers could place the candle in the water and make a wish. Nearby a crowd sitting in a makeshift bamboo grandstand was laughing at the antics of a street theatre. A peddler was selling some kind of toy that you could spin and send flashing blue lights 50 feet into the night sky. Everywhere the makers of street food were frying, roasting or boiling savoury scented dishes.  And then there was the illuminated bridge - all dragons and lanterns - that took you across to an island where everything you’d just seen before was multiplied a hundredfold. I was entering the night-market, one of the highlights of ancient Hoi An. One of the highlights, indeed, of the whole of Vietnam - and one reason as to why the old port is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The name means translates as "peaceful meeting place” but it is busy every night of the year nowadays. This, however, does not mean Hoi An isn’t an interesting and truly fascinating to visit - especially during daylight hours when the fabulous local restaurants are a great deal less crowded.  Most of the visitors are Vietnamese, but I didn’t see a single car park or park-and-ride like you’d see at most celebrated, popular or historic European or American cities. Not that the absence of transport links was bothering us - we were staying at the gorgeous Anantara Hotel located just five minutes walk from Hoi An’s old town on the banks of the Thu Bon River.  A driver from the hotel had picked us up from the nearest airport at Da Nang, which is a larger city just 40 minutes north of Hoi An - and we’d been enjoying the conformable delights of the riverside resort between making forays out into the tropical sun.  The historic part of the city - known as Old Town - is one of the best preserved examples of a Southeast Asian trading port dating from the 15th to the 19th centuries and its many jumbled buildings laid out around an easy to follow street plan reflect a blend of both Vietnamese and foreign influences.  One of the best known structures is the covered "Japanese Bridge", dating to the 16th or 17th century. But eating out is the real big pleasure in this myriad of eateries - I’d recommend Nhan’s Kitchen.

Turkey, beef, pork, lamb, chicken, ham (both home cooked and Iberico) and tongue - not to mention numerous sausages, bacon and a few other carnivorous delights. Having got that little lot down last month, we thought we'd feature vegetarian food. Somehow the body cries out for a little light and easy going, easy-to-digest, plant-life. Of course it is a lot easier in summer. Salads - whacking great big salads filled to the brim with nourishment from the garden. That is exactly what many would eat by choice right now. And it would be easy enough to pop into a supermarket and buy some of those ready picked and washed salad leaves, a few greenhouse tomatoes, a cucumber and a pepper or two. But many people have a thing about seasonal eating. You don’t need to be religious about it, and you can drizzle extra-virgin olive oil over a bowl of Canary Island tomatoes happily enough - especially if you can add a handful of the herbs that still grow in the garden, not to mention leaves from the pot of basil that is struggling on the window sill.  Somehow though, it seems to miss the point. All those un-ecological food miles that the tomatoes have flown, all those poly-tunnels where the Spanish and others bung on the artificial fertilisers with enthusiastic abandon… Having once over-wintered near Motril on the Costa de Sol, and I know what goes into the average Spanish iceberg lettuce - and not a single crunchy but tasteless leaf of the stuff has passed my lips since The sunshine taste of the Mediterranean CAN be enjoyed however, with the help of a pulse and a bean or two. There is a bit of a problem here and it is that most dried pulses need a soak in water - some for lengthy periods - so you really need to get your act together and give your hardened dried vegetable jewels a plunge the day before you intend eating them. Or you can buy them in a can. Nowhere near as good, but what for instance could be more instantaneous and delicious than a simple salad made of cannellini beans, sliced red onion and a heft sprinkling of parsley from the garden? The only work you have to do after opening the can is to slice the onion and chop the parsley (what’s that, 30 seconds?) and make a substantial vinaigrette from the best extra virgin olive oil you can afford, lemon juice and a spoonful of French mustard. A sprinkle of sea salt, some crusty bread, a glass of wine, a little Flamenco music - and for a moment or two you could dream warm Spanish dreams of distant summer holidays. But I’d advise taking the time to prepare the dried pulses. That salad really does taste a thousand times better when you’ve soaked and boiled your own beans, but make sure you pour on some extra virgin olive oil just after you have drained them. This not only prevents them sticking to one another, but somehow heightens the flavour when combined with the eventual vinaigrette. And the great thing about bean salads is that you can add what you like to highlight the dish. If you don’t care who you breathe over and you fancy a little pizzazz - throw in a couple of finely chopped chillies as well as some olive oil soaked sun dried tomatoes, and add half a clove of garlic with some anchovies that you have crushed in a pestle and mortar. Nothing could be more simple and yet that dish will put the taste buds in overdrive. More-over, it's extremely healthy and remarkably cheap - especially if you buy the beans dried. In fact dried pulses must rate as one of the most inexpensive foodstuffs that you can purchase, and if you have a pressure cooker (like the electronic Instant Pot which is the one I’d recommend) they don’t even take that much expensive energy to cook. Add a couple of cans of tuna fish to the above and you will have a supper dish that will feed several people and cost under two quid! Chickpeas are another example of dried, value for money, nosh - and are so adaptable that you can find a thousand and one recipes for turning them into lip-smackingly good sunshine food. They go particularly well in tagines - those warming, Moroccan style, stews cooked in a shallow pot, usually made of brown earthenware with a strange conical top. You must soak chickpeas for at least eight hours and boil them for no less than one-and-a-half hours, but in a pressure cooker this can be reduced to just 30 or 40 minutes. A great favourite of mine is a fish tagine which requires a kilogram of any white fish you can buy. Cheap and cheerful will do, but best if you can to buy something fresh and delicious caught locally. Add large quantities of garlic, paprika, ground cumin, a chilli pepper as well as salt and lemon juice to taste. Simmer this lot in olive oil over a lowish heat for half-an-hour and then add the chickpeas and a little of their cooking water, stir gently in and simmer again for another 10 minutes. Not exactly difficult, but the dish is exotic and it will give you all the warmth of Morocco and brighten even the coldest of January days. Lentils are another great dried gift from summer gardens - especially the slightly more expensive green beauties from Puy in France. I say expensive, but compared to meat or fish they are the food of paupers, yet the flavour of these small pea-like wonders is exquisite. A Sicilian friend taught me this dish… Boil Puy lentils until they are al-dente, fry some garlic and onions in olive oil until soft and slightly browned, grab handfuls of spaghetti and break the stuff into inch long sticks, boil and drain. Combine the whole lot in a large ornate bowl and stir in copious amounts of the very best extra virgin olive oil. You really can’t get much simpler than that - the only other thing you add is some sea salt and lots of fresh ground black pepper - and yet this basic peasant dish is an absolute sensation for lunch.  It’s the sort of stuff you just can’t stop eating, which surely is what you want from any food. And I for one will be taking the simple, sunny, healthy, Mediterranean route to cooking in the next few weeks to save the poor old body from the heavier excesses of midwinter.

One of the best towers or cities I visited in 2019 was Funcahl, capital of Madeira.  It is a truly magical city and one of the best ways of exploring it is to go on a food tour, like the half-day adventures around the old town of Funchal led by the enigmatic Sophia Maul of Wine Tours Madeira (www.winetoursmadeira.com). We ate and drank our way around the island capital one very long lunchtime, enjoying a snifter of old fashioned Madeira wine in the historic HQ of an English family’s wine house one minute, tasting a sensational handmade chocolate or two (flavoured with tropical island fruit) the next, then pushing our way through the crowded central market filled with the most dazzling fruit and vegetables stalls to be found anywhere in Europe. After that it was down a cobbled side-street to a restaurant where we consumed the local version of tapas known locally as “petiscos”. Next was the main course in yet another cobbled street - this one narrow and dark but full of history and character. Here we shared a couple of plates - one of which I intend making soon. It was a pork dish in which the meat had been marinated in a mix of wine, vinegar and herbs for at least 24 hours. You’d expect such a dish could be overly vinegary but the additional orange juice and peel gave the ultra-tender meat a balanced richness.  Next we stopped at a small old fashioned grocery shop where the proprietors sold me some of their home mixed spices before serving us a glass of poncha - which is the island’s preferred poison. Strong and rejuvenating, this mix of aguardente de cana (local rum), honey and lemon juice is a great pick-me-up as long as you keep it to a single glass or two.  We ended the tour in what looked like an old fashioned English tearoom next to the port, where we drank a tisane made of the herb which gives Funchal its name (fennel) and slice of excellent Madeira cheesecake. Each night our hosts took us out to some of the best restaurants on the island like the Hostel Santa Maria in the old town, Estalagem da Ponta do Sol dramatically perched on the top of a high cliff and the amazing Nini Design Centre at the top of a converted warehouse in the modern port. In these pleasant watering holes we enjoyed treats like the season’s local tuna catch in all its fresh glory and the delicious scabbard fish, which is a speciality. This black and ugly creature lives thousands of metres down in the deeps, so that no one has ever seen a live scabbard fish - but they take the trouble to catch it by hook and line because it has a tasty firm texture that reminded me of monkfish, another dweller of the deep.

Climate change is the accepted term - as a journalist I was told years ago not to use “global warming” - but in recent months I have heard it being adopted once more by the media as the bush fires rage in Australia and the Greenland ice-shelf continues to melt at an alarming rate.  In slightly warm, slightly cold, mostly damp Britain - a land where almost everything is always moderate - climate change seems to mean more rain. 365-days a year of what used to be known as Spring Showers.  So at this midwinter time of the year, a few of us old romantics yearn for the magical snowbound days when the world turned briefly in a winter-wonderland full of all the slip-sliding fun that a “big freeze” could allow.  Sledging was winter-occupation number one for children who grew up in the UK’s mainly warmish damp West Country. In the Exmoor area, that meant a brief 20-second ride down a short sharp hill - which was exhilarating enough, but we kids used to dream of what it would be like to go for a real sledge ride across what used to be called The Frozen North. A sledge-ride like the one we’d read about - one towed by dogs through vast landscapes where the snow lay deeper than a house. And then one day I was enjoying such a sledge-ride in Canada’s vast empty north-east quarter where winter is writ very big indeed. Just being there, in a place where temperatures can dip to minus 50, is an adventure. Looking out of your hotel window at the all-embracing deepfreeze is a thrill. And travelling around in a place that is as big as Western Europe but which only has a population half that of a medium sized British market town is, somehow, breathtaking and astonishing. The immensity of the empty white-zone doesn’t necessarily mean void and silence. There are people and they do some thrilling things - like, for example, stage an annual 1000-mile long race in which extremely tough men and women take on the elements with the help of a handful of dogs. The Yukon Quest, held every February, is the longest such race in the world and what it demands of the “mushers” - who drive their dog-sled teams the equivalent of travelling from London to North Africa - is simply beyond imagination. The racers are allowed just one named helper who can give aid at a few stops along the way, but for the most part the mushers are alone out there in the wilderness that lies between Whitehorse in the Yukon and Fairbanks in Alaska. Apart from driving the dogs the mushers must look after them by arranging hay bedding at night and taking off the little Day-Glo booties each wears to protect its paws from ice crystals. Indeed, each dog paw has to be massaged and oiled after the rigours of a long stage. Imagine… it is cold enough to freeze the tears in your eyes; it is dark and snowing and you strike camp; put up your tent… And then you must see to 56 canine feet. You will already have started to boil the dog’s meat-stew on board the sled before you come to a halt - but only after you’ve seen to the bedding, feeding and foot-work can you grab a bite for yourself. This is followed by two hours sleep, and then you’re off in the appalling conditions again. And you will be doing this for nine or ten days! I attended the Yukon Quest and watched the mushers during their preparations and followed them for half the race - and I can only assume they must be made from a different grade of genetic material. I know this because I had a go at dog-sledding. An hour’s drive out of Whitehorse in the mountains around beautiful Fish Lake there are several businesses which provide the mushing experience for tourists. I’ve seen it on TV and vaguely thought it might be a bit of fun. But only a bit. It’s never been close to the top of my must-do list. But it is thrilling, exciting and, somehow, just slightly life-changing. There is something ancient and primeval about being towed through a vast white wilderness by a gang of man’s best friends. And, believe me, the dogs really do become your best friend out there in the freezer. For a start, you cannot believe how strong they are. First-time visitors are given just four dogs for a day out in the mountains – I weigh 13-stone but my team never ceased running, nor showed any signs of wanting to slow down. The most difficult part is the very start when the team will pull away like a bolting horse unless you put all your weight on the brake. For an hour I stabbed steel teeth into the ice, but it did little to slow the dogs down. That gave me even more respect for the professional mushers who race the Quest with 14 dogs. I loved every minute of my fortnight in the Yukon and will put more articles about my adventures up on the website soon.

When water freezes the resultant material tends to be slippery stuff. We all know that, but perhaps what no one will ever be able to explain is why we have become so addicted to sports that allow us to slide, often perilously, over ice or snow. In the past and for most non-alpine people aged over 50, skiing was something only the very rich could do. Something so fantastically expensive and beyond the realms of possibility for most folk, that only royalty or film stars could even dream of binding long thin planks to their feet in some pricey alpine resort. And when they did, a great many came back with broken legs. All of which is a long way of saying that, until my mid-50s I’d never been skiing. Or rather, hadn’t, until when one of my friends from Swiss Tourism invited me to give it a try. “I can’t believe you’ve never skied!” she said. “But you travel on press trips all over the place – you have done years – and you are telling me you’ve never tried the world’s favourite winter sport?” I did feel rather left-out and inferior. It was no good my telling this young woman about West Country penury when I was a boy and all that nonsense – she wasn’t even born when I passed 20 and probably couldn’t conceive of a Europe where large numbers of folk could never afford to visit the mountains. There was another factor which I had to mention to her: “I am tall and (apart from an increasing beer belly) thin. I have long thin legs which I am convinced could break easily – and, as I write about walks as part of my job, a broken leg would be a very bad career move.” She assured me modern skiing didn’t produce too many broken legs - and the next thing I knew I was swanning about in one of the best combined ski and snowboarding resorts in the world. For that is the way some ski-journalists I know describe Laax, especially when talking about the varied terrains that have been devised for snowboard enthusiasts in particular. I was to discover all this for myself during a long and extremely enjoyable (although at times arduous) weekend learning how to hurtle down mountains on board two sharp pointed planks. How did I get on? Well, pretty good I’d say, but in a totally uncontrolled and lucky kind of way. More of that later, but where and what is Laax? Basically it’s an area in the high mountains of the Graubunden canton in eastern Switzerland – a handy place to reach if you’ve flown in to Zurich on a regular Swiss Air flight from London City Airport. An hour’s stunning train ride past lakes and mountains, followed by half an hour in a local bus, and you are there – high up in the snow zone. The original village of Laax Dorf still exists just outside the big new and extremely busy complex at the lift-base which is surrounded by hotels and shopping and eating complexes. This is the bit that’s now known as Laax, of which the recently completed Rocksresort development is a part. One of the beauties of staying here is that you are only a few steps from the big lift that takes you on a truly glorious 15 minute journey up to the high snow slopes – and my newfound ski-buddies tell me that is a very important factor when it comes to a holiday based on hurtling down mountains.    The ultra-modern resort with its hip interior design and architecture built from local rock might disappoint those looking for the traditional alpine world of wooden chalets and chequered tablecloths. However, it will excite if you have an eye for well executed modern design. The Rockresort is to log cabins what Porsche is to the VW Beetle. I liked the place. I liked its modernism and its luxury. And I liked the short 50-metre walk from my hotel to the underground locker area where skiers are fitted with their gear - because it lies just beneath the main ski-lift. The gear and its fitting is a story in itself – especially for a beginner. The staff weigh and measure you, then hand out an impressive pair of modern skis. Then they torture you. By which I mean they measure the size of your feet before clamping them into the sort of boots gangsters use when they want to throw an enemy into a harbour in the hopes he will sink. If ski-boots are not made of concrete, they could be. “That’s too tight!” I cried to the guy fitting mine. “There meant to be,” he shrugged. Actually, he was wrong. So much pain was I in the next morning, that my ski-instructor – a calm and affable Englishman called Simon - told me to go back and get another pair. When I did the same fitter from the night before said: “Why have you got these? They’re a size too small.” In truth, the replacements weren’t much better. If I have one negative thing to say about skiing it is that the tight clamp-on boots are so painful they can spoil the whole thing. I suspect that I was either badly advised, or had on the wrong type of thick socks. At any rate, I still had a ring of black bruises around my upper ankle areas two weeks after I left Switzerland – which skiing friends say should not have happened. Anyway, upwards and onwards to the slopes… On our first morning there was a blizzard – not that this mattered at all because we were all kitted-up and concentrating hard. I was with a group of other journalists – all in their 20s, and most of them had never skied before either. So I was oldest by a quarter of a century – and I was also the only one who never fell over, which is a fact I wear with pride. For us greenhorns, Simon set in motion a basic “ski-lift”, which really was nothing more than a loop of thick soft rope running around a winch. By grabbing the rope at the bottom of the nursery-slope you could, if you were strong enough (and it took a lot of strength) be towed some 300 metres uphill. Within three hours we were all more or less getting down this slope – in fact I was flying down it – a fact which impressed Simon because I was able to turn and stay upright. “You are a natural,” he beamed. I protested and told him the truth: “I haven’t got the faintest idea what I’m doing. I’m just belting down because that’s what the skis are making me do – and I’m staying upright because I’m too scared to fall off.” He waved this aside. But it was the truth. I was hopeless at stopping effectively and, if anyone had cut in front of me, I would not have been able to avoid them. Long graceful turns at speed, I could do – tight fast turns, I most certainly could not. Anyway, the ever cheerful Simon beamed and encouraged. So I did a lot of vaguely controlled hurtling. And so it went on all weekend. I will admit that I am none the wiser now on even basic points of skiing let alone more advanced stuff, than I was after that first hour. But, by some miracle – more by accident (if I dare use that word) than design – I did not once come to grief.  Teaching an older person to ski in a weekend was always going to be a tall order – but I’ll say this: I left feeling certain that if I’d spent four or five days up there I would have cracked it. Unless those damned boots had cracked me first. Because of them, it was a relief to stop skiing. And then, realising the blizzard had been replaced by bright sunshine, I literally yelped for joy. Being high up in snow-covered mountains in sunshine is one of the greatest treats known to man. It is stunning. Sensational. I spent the rest of the day belting about on the various ski-lifts so that I could take as many photographs as I could. They might not be good compared to mountain landscapes taken by others, but the photographs I took are among my best shots in 30 years of travel journalism. And my photographic wanderings weren’t over on the first day – 24 hours later a small group of us went on an eight mile walk through snowbound forests on the other side of the village, and it was a truly magical, uplifting experience. Hardly anyone else was out in the silent woods – and eventually we came to a viewing platform dangling, quite literally, over a 1000 abyss. Deep below the young Rhine was doing what it has been doing for the past 10,000 years – cutting itself a gorge to pass through what is said to be the remains of Europe’s biggest ever landslide. Indeed, the whole of the Laax-Flims snow-zone is there partly thanks to this massive prehistoric parting of mountain – and the higgledy-piggledy forest we’d just walked through was the most obvious evidence that this entire valley was once a mass of debris. Walking through snow is tiring – and it was some relief that we regained the excellent Hotel Signina at Laax to enjoy a Turkish bath and a swim. And here’s another non-skiing highlight - if I had a favourite moment up there in the mountains it was dining high up in the pine forests above the resort, eating endless amounts of molten cheese washed down by equally large quantities of excellent Swiss wine. And here’s the magic moment – we were each handed a toboggan so that we could each sledge the main piste’s final mile or two in the moonlight. Talk about hurtling… I loved every crazy exhilarating minute of it. And when I looked back up at the steep drop we’d just sledged down the thought did strike me that perhaps old journalists prefer to do their hurtling sitting down.    FACT FILE There are regular return flights daily with Swiss Air from London to Zurich. Martin stayed at Signina Hotel, Laax:  www.signinahotel.com For further information, visit  www.graubuenden.ch

Post Christmas walks are a feature of the British countryside. You need to walk off all that festive excess. But not too excessively. When you get to a certain age and over it is wise not to overdo things - especially when your physical-being is already labouring under the Christmas excesses.  So what’s recommended is a little series of post-Christmas hikes that get more demanding each time you go out.  Perhaps the under-50s can do what they like, but I reckon people over that age who’ve been hammering away at the food and drink for a few days would be well served by a short Boxing Day hike of just three or four gentle miles. I know fitness buffs who’d laugh at this - indeed I write these words after just completing a crazily difficult yomp over the most difficult terrain in Southern England, by which I mean Exmoor’s boggy and sodden Chains - but health-care experts tell me that just a couple of miles walked at a brisk-ish pace can do wonders for your ticker and other bits as well.  For example, a friend who has diabetes has one of those little testing devices which measures sugar levels in blood, and he informs me that he can bring his count down a good few points just by walking twice around the flat recreation ground near his house. My dog Finn wouldn’t even regard that as a pee-break - let alone a hike. On the other end of the scale, I know people who believe in the big Boxing Day walk like some people believe in the Second Coming. Nothing will do for them but to punish themselves by yomping for miles over hill and dale in a guilt-ridden frenzy to make amends for the seasonal excess. Let’s be sensible and go down some kind of middle road. Not that middle of the road needs to be boring. Take the short, fairly unstrenuous, walk from Sennen Cove to Land’s End as the perfect example of the genre. Simply walk west out of Sennen on the coast path which runs up Mayon Cliff to the National Trust’s historic little look-out building at the top. That's the climbing bit over and done with and you can look over your shoulder and see all of Whitesand Bay in its great curving glory - and then turn to peer south west where the cliffs march with so much majesty to reach Dr Syntax’s Head and, ultimately, Land’s End. Dr Syntax’s Head? No, I don’t know why it’s called that either, but you pass it on the more or less flat stroll to that most iconic of all Cornish locations. And at Land’s End you can stop and stare at all that maritime wonder, proud of the fact that, just for a few minutes, you are the most south-westerly human beings on the British mainland. At the other end of our peninsula, there’s nothing easier - or perhaps more dramatic - than a walk in the Somerset Levels. And this year, touchwood, you won’t need your snorkel of flippers to enjoy the vast flat landscapes of this very special area.  One easy option would be the four mile hike around the RSPB’s Shapwick Heath Nature Reserve. From the Shapwick-Westhay road, stroll along the old railway line south east to the reserve - but do take the detour through the woods around the ancient Sweet Track as you go. This is very easy going – there’s not a slope in sight - and you can stop off in the various bird-hides along the way and watch countless feathered friends. If you are there early or late, you will even stand a chance of seeing the famous starling murmurations.  When it comes to easy walks, two organisations immediately come to mind. The South West Lakes Trust and the Forestry Commission are both ideal candidates when it comes to providing paths for people of all abilities - partly because they both look after what could be described as controlled environments. The SW Lakes Trust has the region's reservoirs - and most of these have circular paths around their shores which tend, by their nature, to be fairly flat. At Roadford Lake, just above the A30 on the Devon-Cornwall border, there’s Coombepark Walk which is a real lazy doddle because it only takes some 20 minutes each way. Access is from the dam-side car park, and the route takes you past the restaurant along Coombepark Valley towards the fantastic little cob shelter on a spur that stretches into the lake. Up on Exmoor the huge expanses of Wimbleball Lake offer more water’s edge hiking. On Dartmoor, Fernworthy Reservoir has a truly magical saunter right around the region’s highest sizeable stretch of water. From lakes to forests. A spokesperson for the Forestry Commission in the West Country once told me: “We have a policy of open access where we are able to offer it - so where you get car parks and notice boards with forest walks, then the public is welcome to explore.” One excellent area for a bit of post-Christmas walking - which offers stupendous views of the Exe Estuary and central south Devon as a bonus - is to be found at Haldon Hill above Exeter. Another easy access forestry zone can be enjoyed at Cardinham Woods on outskirts of Bodmin. On Dartmoor the Forestry Commission has woods at Bellever where there’s a car park and countless easy routes, including a short trail down to the East Dart river. And then there’s the newly laid, easy-access, footpath that runs down the River Barle from the central Exmoor village of Simonsbath to spooky and lonely Wheal Eliza… In fact, that might well be the route I’ll be taking to mark my own version of a healthy New Year

Nothing can be more magical than letting a genie out of a bottle. It’s an odd phrase that does of course have a flip-side - you can never get the genie to go back into the bottle - but even taking that into consideration, the idea of a bottled genie seems to wholly suit what is arguably the most exciting revolution going on in the world of UK food and drink today… I refer to the new bottle-fermented ciders which are beginning to appear here and there across the rural map. The genie analogy is fitting because something truly magical does happen when you use certain clever, centuries-old, techniques to turn apple juice into an alcoholic drink inside a bottle. Do it right and what you get is a product that is similar to good champagne. The liquid will be clear and sparkling and astonishingly refreshing. The bubbles hitting your tongue will be small and smooth, without any of the harshness you get with a drink that has been artificially carbonated. And the flavour… Well, once again, if the process has been completed in just the right way the complexities of flavour you’ll experience from a bottle fermented cider will leave you delighted and fascinated in exactly the same way as they would if you’d sipped a Grande Marque champagne costing £400 a bottle. If you think that is an exaggeration then I can report that deep in the Blackdown Hills this week I sampled a food and drink pairing which was the probably the finest marriage of solid and liquid ever to pass my lips.  Alex Hill, one of the UK’s leading experts on bottle-fermented cider, had poured a glass of his Bollhayes 2003 and also cut a slice of the best Iberico ham money can buy. It was as if someone had taken the classic combo of Sunday roast pork and apple sauce, and distilled them down to create two little phials containing essences of the real thing that were somehow 500 times more concentred and alive and exciting. The needle on the patent wowometer, which sits deep within the pleasure cortex of my brain, went straight into the red.  It was the kind of fabulous combination that I could imagine a multi-millionaire paying ludicrous amounts of money for in a top Michelin restaurant. This was epicurean pleasure raised to its very highest setting.  All I can do is quote from Alex’s tasting notes which describe the 2003 Bollhayes thus: “Deep amber with fine bubbles. Aroma: Complex, deep, rich, with a hint of smoky vanilla, plum and burnt sugar. Flavour: Richly bitter, with notes of juniper and burnt sugar.” Two mentions of sugar there, but one of the magical things about this particular kind of genie in a bottle is that there is either no added sugar, or just a tiny amount. And no other kind of artificial ingredient, I have to add, save in this case maybe a smidgen of champagne yeast. What you are getting with a bottle-fermented cider is apple juice that has been left to work a magic of its own.  A magic that elevates it from everyday cider in the same way as a bottle of Krug is placed far above a wine-box of cheap supermarket plonk.  But when I say “work a magic of its own”, bottle-fermented cider does need a helping hand. Indeed, it requires a great deal of attention and care, which is why the proper stuff will never be cheap.  After having lunch with Alex and sampling a couple of his Bollhayes products, cider-expert James Crowden and I drove 20 miles deeper into Devon to meet a young couple whose bottle fermented ciders can cost more than £50 a pop in top Michelin-starred London restaurants.  And why not? The champagne equivalent could cost way over ten times that in such establishments.  Polly Hilton and husband Matt run Find and Foster - a small bottle-fermented cider company named after the fact that Polly started out by finding rundown orchards in the rural hinterland north of Exeter and began bringing them back to life.   In a way James and I managed to visit both ends of this new cider revolution in that Alex has been in this particular game for longer than most other cider-makers in the UK (we even sampled a bottle of his truly amazing 1993 vintage) - while Polly and Matt are newcomers who happen to have already gained an impressive track record.  For many years Alex owned and ran a Devon-based business called Vigo which sells and designs the kind of equipment needed by cider-makers - but long before his retirement he was drawn to the idea of a bottle-fermented version of the drink. And, as I keep saying, it’s one that works by a kind of alchemy. A two-sided alchemy, as far as I can make out.. Bottle-fermenting is a complex process. Basically you can go down one of two routes… The methode-champenoise system - as followed by Alex - or you can use an ancient process known as “keeving” - which is often, but not always, practised by Polly and Matt.  As we walked into Alex’s cider-shed we heard the familiar bubbling sound familiar amateur wine-makers who have air-locks on their demijohns… “The music of fermentation,” is what Alex called the sound as we gazed at the big steel vats full of rapidly fermenting apple juice.  “Once it’s finished fermenting you don’t want air-contact because nearly all the spoilage organisms which can ruin cider rely on oxygen,” Alex explained. “If you can eliminate oxygen the cider has a better chance of tasting good. Traditional cider tasted pretty rough sometimes because people didn’t follow that simple rule.   “This is fermenting with wild yeasts,” he continued. “This is just pure apple juice with nothing added - the yeast is in the apples, in the air, in the cider-press boards - and it’s built up here over 30 years of cider-making. So I’ve probably got my own strains of yeast now.  “I still do draught cider, but my speciality is bottled cider made by the champagne method. There are more people making it now - but it is very important to distinguish this from artificially carbonated cider. This has gas in it from fermentation inside a sealed bottle - and it’s quite a complex process involved after that in getting rid of the yeast without getting rid of the gas.  “We use the methode-champenoise and it requires and element of skill and some very expensive equipment,” he said before we went into the farmhouse to sample bottles that were three, 15 and 25 years old.” Keeving, on the other hand, is a natural process which involves the formation of a layer of pectin that will, given the right conditions, float to the top of the pressed apple juice. This layer - which looks a bit like a huge digestive biscuit that’s been dunked in liquid - traps nitrogen and nutrients and is eventually removed. Without the essential nutrients, any fermentation of wild yeast will slow down or stop, leaving natural sugars from the apples themselves to sweeten the remaining liquid.  The keeved cider is then bottled, but it will carry on very slowly fermenting in its sealed home beneath the cork - which is why producers use the special toughened champagne style bottles that won’t explode. This secondary fermentation allows the liquid to develop its own natural sparkle. Polly told me she’d first set up the business in a bid to help save old run-down orchards after discovering that 90 percent of Devon’s traditional orchards had been lost since World War Two. “The apples in these orchards are incredible - they are local varieties, the trees are really old. There are no sprays or chemicals anywhere. “So it would have been a shame to make really standard cider - and obviously I couldn’t compete on how much I could make. So I wanted to do something unique by using the champagne and the keeving method - because some of these orchards were planted for keeving.   “We use very late ripening cider varieties and you macerate the fruit and a reaction happens between the calcium in the apples and the pectin in the skin,” said Polly, referring to the cap which rises to the top of the cider. “The fermentation stops before all the sugar has turned to alcohol, so you can create a naturally sweet, naturally sparkling, cider by bottling that low nutrient cider towards the end of the fermentation.” The Fine Cider Company in London now sells the couple’s products to top end restaurants - but you can buy it at local outlets like Dart’s Farm at Topsham - or, as is the case with both our interviewees today, from their websites. I’d definitely recommend getting some in this Christmas as a treat for your guests. That is, as I say, a very brief overview of the bottle-fermented cider making process. If you’d like to hear more about the subject, have a listen to my latest Adventures in Rural Journalism podcast which is all about bottle-fermented ciders. To buy bottle fermented ciders check out https://bollhayescider.co.uk/ Or  http://www.findandfosterfineciders.com/